"As requested," Grayson said. "Here's a copy of everything."
He handed a file to him and Thompson stepped back with it to a counter where he opened it and began scanning pages.
"So, I've told you what I know, gentlemen," Backus said. "Now I'd like to hear what it was about this case that dissuaded you from calling it suicide."
"Well, I don't think I was entirely dissuaded until I heard your story," Grayson said. "Now I think this Poet fucker-excuse me, Agent Walling-is our guy. Anyway, we raised the question and then decided to go with a classification of homicide because of three reasons. One, when we found Bill, his hair was parted the wrong way. For twenty years he'd been coming in the office, his part is on the left. We find him dead and the part's on the right. That was a little thing but there were two others and they add up. Next was the forensics. We had a guy swab the mouth for GSR so we could make a determination if the gun was in his mouth or held a few inches outside or what. We got the GSR but we also got some gun oil and a third substance that we haven't been able to identify properly. Until we could explain it I wasn't comfortable going suicide on this."
"What can you tell me about the substance?" Thompson asked.
"Some kind of animal-fat extract. There's pulverized silicon in it, too. It's in the forensic report that you've got in that file, too."
I thought I saw Thompson glance at Backus and then away, a tacit admission of knowledge.
"You know it?" Grayson asked, seeming to catch the impression.
"Not offhand," Thompson said. "I'll get the specifics from the report and have the lab in Quantico run it on the computer. I'll let you know."
"What was the third reason?" Backus asked, quickly leaving the subject.
"The third reason came from Jim Beam, Orsulak's old partner. He's retired now."
"That's his name, Jim Beam?" Walling asked.
"Yeah, the Beamer. He called me up from Tucson after he heard about Bill and asked if we'd recovered the slug. I said sure, we dug it out of the wall behind his head. Then he asked me if it was gold."
"Gold?" Backus asked. "Real gold?"
"Yes. A golden bullet. I told him no, it was a lead slug like all the others in his clip. Like the one we dug out of the floor, too. We'd figured that the floor shot was the first one, a get-up-the-courage shot. But then Beamer told me it was no suicide, that it was murder."
"And how did he know this?"
"He and Orsulak went back a lot of years and he knew that Orsulak occasionally… hell, there probably isn't a single cop who hasn't thought about it at one time or another."
"Killing himself," Walling said, a statement, not a question.
"Right. And Jim Beam tells me that one time Orsulak showed him this golden bullet that he got from somewhere, he didn't know, a mail-order catalog or something. And he says to Beamer, 'This is my golden parachute. When I can't take it no more, this one's for me.' So what Beam was saying was no golden bullet, no suicide."
"Did you find the golden bullet?" Walling asked.
"Yeah, we found it. After we talked to Beam we found it. It was in the drawer right next to his bed. Like it was kept nearby in case he ever needed it."
"So that convinced you."
"In totality, all three things leaned it way over toward homicide. Murder. But like I said, I wasn't convinced of anything until you walked in here and told your story. Now I got a hard-on for this Poet the size of-sorry for the offense, Agent Walling."
"None taken. We all have a hard-on for him. Was there a suicide note?"
"Yes, and that's the thing that made it so hard for us to call it a homicide. There was a note and damn if it wasn't in Bill's writing."
Walling nodded that what he had just said was no surprise.
"What did the note say?"
"It didn't make a whole lot of sense. It was like a poem. It said-well, hold on here. Agent Thomas, let me borrow that file a sec."
"Thompson," Thompson said as he handed it over.
"Sorry."
Grayson looked through some pages until he found what he wanted. He read it out loud.
" 'Mountains toppling evermore / Into seas without a shore.' That was it."
Walling and Backus looked at me. I opened the book and started paging through the poems.
"I remember the line but I'm not sure where."
I went to the poems that the Poet had already used and started reading quickly. I found it in "Dream-Land," the poem used twice before, including the note left on my brother's windshield.
"I got it," I said.
I held the book out so Rachel could read the poem. The others crowded around her as well.
"Son of a bitch," Grayson muttered.
"Can you give us a rundown on how you think it happened?" Rachel asked him.
"Uh, sure. Our theory is whoever this doer was, he came in and surprised Bill in his sleep. With Bill's own gun. He made him get up and get dressed. That's when Bill parted his hair wrong, I mean, he didn't know what was going to happen or maybe he did. Either way, he leaves us a little sign. From there he's taken out into the living room, put in the chair and the doer makes him write out that note on a piece of paper torn outta his own notebook he keeps in his coat pocket. Then he pops him. One in the mouth. Puts the gun in Bill's hand, puts the slug into the floor and you've got gunshot residue on the hand. The doer's outta there and we don't find poor Bill for three days."
Grayson looked over his shoulder at the body, noticed it was being unattended and looked at his watch.
"Hey, where's the guy? he said. "Somebody go get him and tell him we're through. You're through with the body, right?"
"Yes," Thompson said.
"We have to get him ready."
"Detective Grayson," Walling said. "Was there a specific case that Detective Orsulak was currently pursuing?"
"Oh, yeah, there was a case. The Little Joaquin case. Eight-year-old kid abducted last month. All they found of him was his head."
Mention of the case and its brutality brought a moment of silence in the room where the dead were prepared. Before that moment I had no doubt that Orsulak's death was related to the others, but after hearing of the crime against the boy I felt an unwavering certainty and the anger that was becoming so familiar to me foaming in my guts.
"I assume everyone is going to the funeral?" Backus said.
"That's right."
"Can we arrange a time to meet again? We would like to see the reports on the boy, Joaquin, as well."
They set the meeting for nine o'clock Sunday morning at the Phoenix Police Department. Grayson apparently felt that if it was on his turf he might be better able to hang on to a piece of it. But I had a feeling that the Big G was about to move in and sweep him aside like a tidal wave hitting a lifeguard stand.
"One last thing, the press," Walling said. "I saw a TV truck outside."
"Yeah, they've been all over this, especially when they…"
He didn't finish.
"When they what?"
"Well, somebody sort of put it out on the police frequency that we were meeting the FBI here."
Rachel groaned and Grayson nodded as if he expected it.
"Look, this absolutely has to be contained," Rachel said. "If any of what we just told you men gets out, the Poet will go under. We'll never catch the man who did that."
She nodded at the corpse and a few of the cops turned to make sure it was still there. The undertaker had just stepped into the room and was lifting the hanger containing Orsulak's last suit. He was looking at the assemblage of investigators, waiting for them to leave so that he could be alone with the body.
"We're about out of here, George," Grayson said. "You can start."
Backus said, "Tell the media that the FBI's interest was purely routine and that you will continue to handle the investigation as a suspected homicide. Don't act like you are sure of anything."
As we were walking back through the lot to the government cars, a young woman with bleached-blond hair and a grim look on her face came up to us with a microphone, a cameraman in tow. Holding the mike to her own mouth she asked, "Why is the FBI here today?"