Defensive Wounds Page 10

  She touched a few areas of the sink and the toilet with Hemastix. No reaction. If the killer had gotten blood on his hands and cleaned up in the bathroom, he had rinsed away all evidence of same. Three of each kind of towel plus a bath mat remained present, all apparently clean except for a hand towel on the sink. Bruce Raffel had not done much in the room since the maid had cleaned the previous day.

  Theresa reentered the bedroom just as Neil Kelly pulled a small brown bag, the size of a kid’s lunch, from Raffel’s suitcase.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “He had it shoved under his boxers and next to his bottle of Airborne. I’m not sure I want to touch it.”

  She laughed. “You’re wearing gloves.”

  “Sometimes gloves aren’t enough.” He set the bag down, reached in, and pulled out a thin black leather belt. It had a perpendicular strap containing a ring and further on a wider patch with some sort of embedded object.

  “What is that?”

  He got that goofy twelve-year-old-boy smirk that men got at any mention of sex. “You don’t know?”

  “I could probably figure it out, but I don’t think I want to.”

  Powell appeared in the doorway. The lines in his face had deepened with lack of sleep, and the strands of his comb-over had gone astray. “I finished up at the esteemed firm of Goldman & Jackson. What’s that?”

  Neil held up the belt. “The Lawyers Gone Wild theory just caught some traction.”

  “You’re telling me. Wait until you see what I found in that bitch’s office.”

  CHAPTER 11

  *

  “I don’t know,” Theresa said once the two men finished giggling over their respective finds: Bruce had packed not only the belt getup but a small leather whip and a set of buckled leather cuffs with matching covered cords, apparently to attach the cuffs to bedposts or other furniture without scratching their finish. Marie had kept a bland-looking metal file box at the bottom of her desk drawer with an industrial-size box of condoms (half full) and four different kinds of lubricating gel.

  “It’s okay not to understand it.” Powell held the whip with two fingers and said, with either kindness or sarcasm, “It probably means you’re normal.”

  Theresa applied a strip of clear packaging tape to the carpeting next to Bruce Raffel’s thigh, determined to find even the tiniest hair or fiber or flake of skin. In the absence of bodily fluids—and she didn’t see any—they would have to grasp at any straw of physical evidence. She intended to use magnetic powder on his skin, on the off chance they might find a print. Theresa couldn’t escape the sinking feeling that the killer had come, killed, and left without dropping any handy clues in his—or her—wake. “He’s got three faint marks on his back that could be old whip scars, but no one’s been using a whip on Marie’s perfect skin. At least not recently.”

  “Of course not. She probably used it on others.”

  Theresa went on, ticking off her other objections. “If this guy died because some sex game got out of control, then why were his toys still in a bag at the bottom of his suitcase? Why did the killer use his socks when he had these leather cuffs handy—not to mention a couple of neckties?”

  “Raffel didn’t need to get out his toys because the killer brought his own?” Neil Kelly guessed.

  “But used the victim’s socks?”

  “Couldn’t leave his own stuff behind.”

  “Again, no fresh marks, no chafing on the wrists, and no one struck him with anything other than this chair. If this is all about sex, why are Bruce’s toys out of reach and Marie’s supplies are back in her office instead of the Presidential Suite?”

  “Are you always on a first-name basis with your victims?” Neil asked her. He seemed to find this curious.

  “I find it less confusing than ‘Vic 1’ and ‘Vic 2.’ And how would Bruce Raffel and Marie Corrigan know people in common? Unless there’s some sort of nationwide sex club and they get together at every convention or know how to contact the local members in any city—”

  “Kind of like the Masons,” Neil said.

  “But the meetings are a lot more fun,” Powell put in. “Besides, I’ve got an answer to that. I spoke with Bruce Raffel’s office manager—he, Raffel, has only lived in Atlanta for the past year. Before that, he lived here.”

  “In Cleveland?” Neil asked. “Please tell me he worked for the illustrious firm of Goldman & Jackson.”

  “No such luck. Hernandez, O’Malley & Ferrari, five years. Started at the public defender’s office but jumped ship as soon as he had enough time on his résumé. Well, I think they all start at the public defender’s office—Corrigan, too. Only the die-hard bleeding hearts stay there.”

  “Like the prosecutor’s office,” Neil mused. “Only the power junkies and the true believers stay there. Anyone who wants to turn a decent buck goes into private practice.”

  “Did the two of them work at the PD at the same time?” Theresa asked. She finished with the back of the victim’s body and now turned him, stiff with rigor, to one side. His face and chest were a mottled purple from the blood pooled there, his nose squashed into an unnatural shape from having been driven into the carpet and left there as the cells began to break down. His brown eyes stared, beginning to cloud, his mouth open in a silent scream.

  Powell said, “I have Corrigan’s résumé, but not his yet. See anything interesting?”

  Theresa intended to discuss the state of rigor but surprised herself by saying, “I don’t think he wanted to die.” Then, at the odd looks from the two detectives, she added, “No injuries to the face. It’s all to the back of the head. No defensive bruises or cuts on the hands. He didn’t get into a fight. I’d say rigor is beginning to fade, so I’d guess time of death—and it’s little more than a guess, you’ll have to get a more accurate estimation from the pathologist—would be yesterday evening. After the conference ended for the day, but not into the wee hours.”

  Theresa studied the mashed face, tried to imagine the nose on a normal day. Now she remembered. She had testified in front of Bruce Raffel at least twice, both gunshot cases. But she’d been to the courthouse because of him many times. He liked to subpoena all the prosecution witnesses or potential witnesses or just the dispatcher who answered the 911 call, hoping that at least one of them would not show up, and he could then ask for a mistrial. He would have vague reasons for needing her testimony and even vaguer reasons for not using her once she’d spent a taxpayer-paid morning twiddling her thumbs while her work piled up, but that was the power of a legal subpoena. She could do nothing about it. It never worked, and even if it had, a mistrial did not delete the case—but apparently any delay was a good thing in the practice of law.

  Blood had soaked into the carpet, spread even further than in Marie’s case. Perhaps Raffel had lived a bit longer, but Theresa saw no signs that the man had moved after the blows to the head. The pool of blood was neatly circular, without any smears or swipes other than a slight break in its outer border. She tugged on the socks around the wrists, felt that some elasticity remained. He had not stretched them to their limit trying to escape. Even the dried rivulets down the sides of the dead man’s skull remained in clear, distinct lines, not mussed or redirected. How do you get a man to lie quietly on the floor while you bash his head in?

  Because he’s not expecting to get his head bashed in? Or because he’s already quiet, unconscious, dead to the world? Theresa glanced at the water glass again. She would not only swab the edge for DNA, she’d take the water inside to make sure it contained only molecules of oxygen and hydrogen.

  She spread magnetic powder over Bruce Raffel’s body, without discovering any usable prints, only vague smudges, marked and removed the sock, listening absently as Powell and Kelly discussed how to proceed. Questioning over three hundred defense attorneys about their last known contact with Marie Corrigan in order to get a timeline was one thing. Questioning them about their sex lives was quite another.

  T
heresa tried to look past the trees. Someone had entered this room and killed Bruce Raffel with a chair provided by the hotel and a pair of socks provided by the victim. How did he get in? With the same passkey that got them into the Presidential Suite to kill Marie Corrigan. Or Bruce had let him—or her—in, either because he knew the person, had invited him, or because whoever it was had provided some reasonable excuse for him to do so. Maintenance to check the heater. A maid, carrying towels. Room service, though no evidence of food or beverages remained. Too many possibilities.

  Once the man was dead, how did the killer get out?

  He walked out the door, after first using the peephole to be sure no one was in the hallway.

  Theresa took her fingerprint kit and dusted the back of the door. A few smudges appeared, marks probably made by fingers but without the visible ridges necessary to use them for identification. She hit the interior doorknob, too, though it had already been handled by the hysterical maid, the hotel manager, and countless police officers. The door was difficult to open or prop, so even gloved they would have rubbed off any prints by now. But she tried anyway, because you never knew. Miracles could happen.

  But not today. No prints. She tried the doorjamb, too. Nothing but smudges.

  The body snatchers arrived. She helped them move Bruce Raffel into a white plastic body bag, watching to be sure no one stepped in the pooled blood under his head. It appeared to be dry, but such an amount soaking into a carpet would take a long time to dry completely and would squoosh up if stepped on. And she had an idea.

  The pool of blood had that one abnormality to its surface, on the edge away from the bed. The killer could have stepped in it, gotten a splotch on his toe. Or knelt in it or leaned a palm on it, who knew? What would be crystal clear on a tile floor was only a suggestion on the rough loops of the Berber carpet. But if it had been a foot, perhaps he’d left them a trail. She pulled out her small Maglite, her back protesting as she examined the floor anew.

  Trying to find a smear of dark red on the burgundy-patterned carpet made needles and haystacks seem like a bar bet. Theresa trained her eyes on the lighter, cream-colored flecks in the pattern and found a darkened one. A bit farther on, she found another. She took another look at the bathroom—with the added light from the extra-bright flashlight, she searched for another smudge of blood. The stuff could be remarkably tough to get rid of—just ask Lady Macbeth.

  Nothing. The killer didn’t seem to have cleaned up in the bathroom, but he also wouldn’t have risked wiping any bloodied hands on his clothing and walk out advertising his recent deeds.

  Most likely the killer hadn’t gotten any blood on himself, other than the one foot. The seat of the murder weapon could have blocked any spray, and the body hadn’t been moved after the injuries were inflicted. The killer could have walked out of the room and immediately blended back into the ebb and flow of the hotel population, into a public area where he could leave entire handprints and it wouldn’t prove a thing. Even if he didn’t have a good reason to be on the fourteenth floor, there were plenty of so-so reasons to choose from. I meant to get off on a different floor. I wanted to visit a buddy of mine but then forgot his room number. I had to make a delivery, and Dispatch sent me to the wrong place. I wanted to get some exercise and walk a bit, and I prefer quiet hotel hallways to the bustle of the mall downstairs. I was looking for the ice machine.

  Reasons that wouldn’t sound exactly right but couldn’t be proved wrong.

  Theresa looked up and down the hallway. If I had just killed someone, she thought, I don’t think I’d want to get into an elevator. You never knew who you might run into, who might remember seeing you on that floor at just that time.

  She found the stairwell door, gave it a thorough once-over. No blood that she could see. Maybe she should ask hotel management if she could turn out all the lights on the floor and spray the entire hallway with Bluestar. Yeah. They’d be crazy about that idea.

  She brushed black powder onto the stairwell door’s push bar and the outer edge of the door. This dark coating revealed nothing but dirt, smudges, and the swirl marks left by a maid with a spray bottle of disinfectant. The hotel wouldn’t be crazy about that either.

  She pushed the door open. The gray-painted concrete steps traveled upward and downward, framed by a matching curved-pipe banister. One could check in to the most expensive hotel in the world and the stairwell would still look as if it should be attached to a factory. Decor stopped at the fire door.

  Up or down? Depended on whether the killer had a room at the hotel to return to or whether he simply wanted to get out of the place after committing a bloody murder. Theresa guessed down. She stripped off her blackened gloves and set her fingerprinting kit out of the way. Then, with the aid of a flashlight, she examined the landing, the banister, and each descending step. A door opened from one of the thirty-three floors that fed into the stairwell, but the echo made it difficult to tell if the sound came from above or below.

  On the second step down, she found another pink fiber. Unfortunately, the stairwells were not cleaned anywhere near as often as the rooms, and on the same one step she also found enough hairs, fibers, dust, and lint to roll into a good-size bunny. She dutifully pulled it all into a manila envelope with a pair of plastic tweezers.

  Footsteps tapped over their own echoes; the sounds sorted themselves out, and she realized that someone was coming up.

  Theresa usually opted to take the stairs; they worked off more calories and, at least in the medical examiner’s office building, were faster than the elevator. Other than that, she hated stairwells on principle, particularly ones in parking garages, the Justice Center, and hotels. Closed off behind heavy doors and often dimly lit, they were an invitation to crime.

  On the third step, she found more hairs, more fibers, a scrap of thin cardboard with a perforated edge that had probably come from a box of cookies or crackers or some other snack, and a piece of crumpled cellophane. This all went into another manila envelope. She would have to go to her car and get some more of those if she intended to do the entire flight between fourteen and thirteen. Did they have a thirteenth floor? So many hotels had left it out for so many years. Ditto the thirteenth row on trains or airplanes. What about cruise ships?

  “That’s dedication.”

  She turned her head a bit too fast, annoyed that someone had snuck up on her, annoyed that she had allowed a five-foot-ten, two-hundred-pound-plus-plenty-of-spare-change man who now breathed with a slight wheeze to sneak up on her. Annoyed that it would be this man.

  Her favorite defense attorney.

  “Ms. MacLean,” he said by way of greeting, eyebrows raised under slicked-back hair and his hand resting on the banister she hadn’t fingerprinted yet. Last seen asking her why she hadn’t found gunshot residue on his dead, disadvantaged, carjacking client if he had fired upon the officers at the scene, then scoffing at the idea that the driving rainstorm occurring at the same moment might have had any effect on the adhesion qualities of tiny microscopic particles. The well-cut suit managed to look good even on his ungainly body, and he carried a leather briefcase, worn enough to be an unexpected sign of humanity.

  “Dennis.” She used his first name on purpose, letting familiarity imply contempt.

  “Are you really going to examine every shed hair in this entire hotel? I’ve never known you to show such initiative before.”

  She gritted her teeth and concentrated on picking up another tuft of dust and fibers. No adequate response came to mind, save for pushing him down the stairs. She settled for, “I imagine there’s quite a bit you don’t know.”

  “Such as?”

  She straightened, deciding to stop at the fifth step down, a completely unscientific and arbitrary decision that this man in particular would crucify her for in court, should he notice. So she faced him and asked, “Do you know who killed Marie Corrigan?”

  This seemed to catch him off guard, if only for an instant. He must have been expecting a s
narky comment about himself. “You have me there. No, I don’t.”

  “Any ideas?” She enjoyed being able to ask the questions for once.

  “Not a one. Marie was an excellent attorney, and her death is a grave loss to the legal community.” He rattled this off with less attention than a kindergartner reciting ABCs.

  “You don’t seem too broken up about it.”

  A quick, annoyed glance. Because he didn’t relish being the witness for once, or because he’d really cared about Marie? “As an attorney I’m surrounded by stressed, emotional, volatile people. I’ve learned to keep my feelings to myself. I would think you would understand that.”

  She did not retreat. “Is this supposed to be some sort of bonding moment?”

  His ability to flush had doubtless been lost long before, but he could still frown. “You shouldn’t be surprised that I want Marie’s killer caught, much more than you do. She was my friend. You’re probably rooting for the guy to get away with it.”

  She reached out, languidly plucking a stray hair from his lapel. “What about Bruce Raffel? Was he your friend, too?”

  He answered this more slowly. “I didn’t really know him.”

  She took a shot in the dark, since Britton, Marie, and Bruce Raffel would all be within ten years of age of one another. “Not even when you were all at the public defender’s office?”