I had a lot of trouble getting this part out, mostly because I finally had to get into a few details about the crime scene, something I’d managed to avoid up until now. I honestly don’t know how his is all going to work, I feel like I’m trying to solve this thing right along side Nick.
Next time should be better, I’ll be getting back to some action now that I’ve gotten this round of information out of the way. At least, I think so. You never know, I didn’t originally intend for it to take over five thousand words to get Nick back to the office once he started walking, after all.
For Idle Hands (working title) - Day 9
I walked back to the office despite my mother’s insistence on driving me. It was only a mile or so, and I was feeling a bit better now. I’d gotten some tension out, and had a chance to sit and doze a bit, and the cool morning air was just what I needed after that to clear the cobwebs. I stopped at the 24 hour gas station in the middle of town and picked up some beef jerky, a couple “tall” cans of Arizona green tea, and the biggest bottle of ibuprofen they had. I walked the rest of the way through town walking down the center line in the middle of rt. 25. Traffic was usually light this time in the morning, and at the moment even that little bit was nowhere to be seen. The town was deathly quiet as the stars burned brightly, even through the street lamps. I stopped walking in the middle of the intersection in front of my building, and just soaked up the peacefulness of it.
A motion caught my eye and I turned in time to see a coyote cross the street down a bit, near the town cemetery.
I’d heard a report recently that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of coyotes living in downtown Chicago. Right in the heart of the city, only they being nocturnal, and very stealthy and clever, they were rarely seen. The same was probably true of every North American city. No surprise, then, that a largely rural community like Idle Maine would be crawling with them, if only you could be quiet and still long enough to see one.
Headlights appeared up the street, heading into town. Reluctantly I left the street and headed into the office to see what Derrick was up to, and to begin the soul draining work of sifting through. The preliminary crime scene reports Dever had sent us.
My office was located on the bottom floor of a an old and rather plain victorian that I owned. When I decided to go into business for myself, I’d decided that I needed the freedom of having my own place, rather than renting space in a larger building like the lawyers and accountants in town. My mother had cosigned the loan since the bank wouldn’t approve me by myself, and I’d never missed a payment, no matter how bad things had gotten.
Derrick was asleep on the sofa we kept for waiting clients - on the odd occasion that we had enough that one had to wait - sprawled out in a way that would have rendered me immobile for a week. I kicked the arm of the couch as I passed by, tossing my coat on the coat rack as I did.
“God damn it, Nick,” Derrick grumbled as he sat up, “not only do I really need some sleep, I was having the best dream. It involved a dachshund, Joss Wheadon, and Gillian Anderson, the three greatest things on the planet.”
“Whatever, where are the reports?”
“On the conference table, as you could have seen without waking me up. Do you want me to read them to you too?”
I ignored him. I could either go “boss man” on him and shut him up that way, or I could let him go back to sleep. It’s not every day I get an easy way out of dealing with Derrick, so the choice was clear. He either knew what I was thinking, or had made up his own mind regardless, because he turned over and was asleep again in no time.
I poured myself a mug of old coffee. Black, I knew I’d need it to get me through this.
There wasn’t much to the reports that Dever sent us, but this probably was all that was available at the moment. Glancing at Gunn’s supervisory report, he’d done the smart thing and called in the State Troopers’ Evidence Response Team to process the scene, and the Game Wardens to scour the area for anything that might be a clue. Good. Idle had as good a police force as you could expect from a town this size, but a murder investigation was a bit beyond them, if only because things like this just didn’t happen here. Gunn had his people cordon off the area, and take some initial photos and sketches just in case, as they waited for the Troopers to arrive.
The photos weren’t the detailed and precise pictures the Troopers undoubtedly took, but they did the the trick for my purposes. Derrick was right, what had been tragic in the dark had become horrific in full light.
Yadira lay face down in about an inch off water at the bottom of the small gully I’d found her in. Her face was turned towards the road and her eyes were open and staring, her jaw slack. That was the worst part for me, even worse than the hole in her back.
Yadira’s killer had used a shotgun, and from close range. The hole in her back was obviously an exit wound, a ragged mess where the shot had torn its way out, spreading as it did.
She’d looked her killer in the face before she’d died. For some reason, that helped, just a little.
There wasn’t much else to find at the scene. Shotgun pellets can’t be identified the way rifle and pistol bullets can, since they’re smooth bore weapons. However, a spent cartridge was noted in the initial sketch, and undoubtedly had been collected by the Troopers. If the murder weapon was found, the firing pin and ejector could be checked for a match. It wasn’t much, the weapon still had to be found, but it was something. Yadira’s sidearm, a standard issue Glock 23, was found a few feet from her body, likely dropped or tossed there when she’d been shot. A couple shells had been noted closer to the road. Derrick and I had walked only a few feet from there, luckily we hadn’t disturbed anything obvious, though I noticed with chagrin that our path from the road had been noted and clearly labeled. The better to nail us with if we were found to have screwed something up.
The next report answered a question that had been nagging at me since I’d found her, how had she ended up there? Her car was found twenty yards from beyond where I’d stopped. It was pulled off the side of the road so far that it had become stuck in the soft shoulder, it was evident that the furthest wheel had spun. The driver’s side door was open. Yadira’s purse was on the floor in the front seat and the keys were still in the ignition, though the car was not running. There were some footprints visible, but the thick coating of fallen leaves made following them far impossible.
There were the usual notes and observations, weather, temperature, humidity, names of all present, things like that, but nothing of any real note. For anything more we’d have to wait for the Troopers and Wardens to finish processing the scene, and then for the lab to do their thing. That could take days or even weeks.
“What the hell happened out there, Yadira?” I said, to no one in particular. Lots of pieces, but none of them seemed to fit together. At least, not yet, but I still hadn’t exhausted every line of inquiry yet. I still had to speak to Charlie Dyer. And I planned to have a word or two with Gunn, though I imagined he’d be finding me soon enough.
On the fax cover sheet, Dever had dutifully filled in the name off everyone who was getting a copy of this report. Gunn would know I had these, and he sure wouldn’t be happy about it.
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