‘Hold on, Red.’ Collier held up his hand like a traffic cop. ‘Don’t you think you should wait for the ME before you go traipsing in there?’
Sara gave him a look that had once presaged the two most miserable hours of Will’s life. ‘I’m the medical examiner, and I would prefer that you call me Sara or Dr Linton.’
Faith barked a laugh that echoed through the building.
Sara braced her hand against the wall as she walked into the room. Ripples spread through the pool of blood. She picked up the purse in the corner. The strap was broken. There was a long tear down the side. The bag was black textured leather with heavy brass zips and buckles and a padlock at the clasp, the kind of thing that could be very expensive or very cheap.
‘I don’t see a wallet.’ Sara held up a gold tube of lipstick. ‘Sisley, rose cashmere. I’ve got the same at home.’ Her eyebrows furrowed. ‘The gold is scratched off on the side, just like mine. Must be a manufacturing defect.’ Sara dropped the lipstick back into the purse. She tested the weight. ‘This doesn’t feel like Dolce and Gabbana.’
‘No.’ Amanda peered inside the bag. ‘It’s counterfeit. See the stitching?’
‘The ampersand is in the wrong font, too.’ Faith spread plastic on the ground so they could do a more careful inventory. ‘Why buy a fake D and G when you can afford Sisley and La Mer?’
Amanda said, ‘Twenty-five-hundred-dollar purse versus fifty-dollar lipstick?’
Faith said, ‘You can palm the lipstick, but not the purse.’
‘Maybe a tester. The scratch could be from peeling off the label.’
Will tried to give Collier a conspiratorial ‘us manly men have no idea what they’re talking about’ look, but Collier was already giving him an ‘I want to shoot you in the face’ look.
Sara went back into the room. This was her first opportunity to really examine the murder scene. Will had caught glimpses of this side of her before, but never in an official capacity. She took her time exploring the room, silently studying the blood patterns, the spray on the ceiling. The graffiti did not make her job easy. The walls were painted black in places from oversprayed logos and tags. She got close to everything, putting on her glasses so she could differentiate between the spray paint and the blood evidence. She walked around the perimeter of the room twice before beginning her examination of the body.
She couldn’t kneel in the blood, so she squatted down at Harding’s thick waist. She searched his front pants pockets, handing Faith a melted 3 Musketeers, an opened pack of Skittles, a wad of cash strapped by a green rubber band and some loose change. Next she checked Harding’s suit jacket. There was a folded sheet of paper inside the breast pocket. Sara unfolded the page. ‘Racing form. Online betting.’
‘Dogs?’ Amanda guessed.
‘Horses.’ Sara handed the form to Faith, who set it on the plastic alongside the other items.
‘No cell phones,’ Faith noted. ‘Not on Harding. Not in the purse. Not in the building.’
Sara patted down the body, checking to see if she’d missed anything obvious in his clothes. She pushed open Harding’s eyelids. She used both hands to force open his jaw so she could look inside the mouth. She unbuttoned his shirt and pants. She studied every inch of his bloated abdomen. She pulled back the unbuttoned cuffs of his shirtsleeves and looked at his forearms. She lifted his pant legs and pushed down his socks.
Finally she said, ‘Livor mortis indicates the body hasn’t been moved, so he died here, in this position, on his back. I’ll need to get ambient and liver temp, but he’s in full rigor, which means he’s been dead for more than four but less than eight hours.’
‘So we’re talking a timeline of Sunday night into Monday morning,’ Faith said. ‘The fire department estimates the car was set on fire four to five hours ago, which brings us to three AM. today. The nine-one-one came in at five AM.’
‘Sorry, but can I ask a question about that?’ Collier was obviously still licking his wounds, but he just as obviously wanted to prove his usefulness. ‘He’s got mold around his mouth and nose. Wouldn’t that take a lot longer than five hours to grow?’
‘It would, but it’s not mold.’ Sara asked, ‘Can you help me roll the body onto its side? I don’t want him falling forward.’
Collier pulled two shoe protectors out of the box. He gave Sara a lopsided grin as he slid the booties over the old protectors he’d put on when he entered the building. ‘I’m Holden, by the way. Like in the book. My parents were hoping for a disaffected loner.’
Sara smiled at the stupid joke, and Will wanted to kill himself.
Collier kept grinning, taking the gloves Sara offered, making a show of stretching out the fingers with his child-sized hands. ‘How do you want to do this?’
‘On my three.’ Sara counted down. Collier grunted as he lifted Harding’s shoulders and tried to roll him onto his side. The body was stiff and tilted like a hinge. The weight wouldn’t transfer without sending Harding face down into a pool of blood, so Collier had to brace his elbows against his knees to keep the body raised.
Sara peeled up Harding’s jacket and shirt so she could examine his back. Will gathered she was looking for punctures. She pressed her gloved fingers into the skin, testing for open wounds and finding nothing. The dark blood on the floor had made Harding look like he’d been dipped into a pan of motor oil.
She asked Collier, ‘You okay for another minute?’
‘Sure.’ The word got mangled in his throat. Will could see the veins in his neck popping out. Harding was at least two-fifty, maybe more. Collier’s arms were shaking from the effort of keeping him tilted up.
Sara changed into a fresh pair of gloves. She reached into Harding’s back pocket and pulled out a thick nylon wallet. The Velcro made a ripping sound when she opened it. She called out her findings. ‘Ticket stubs, receipts for fast-food places, betting slips, two different photographs of a naked blonde courtesy of BackDoorMan.com. Some business cards.’ She looked at Collier. ‘You can put him down, but be careful.’
Collier groaned as he settled the body back to the floor.
‘You’re going to want to see this.’ Sara passed one of the business cards to Faith. Will recognized the full-color logo. He had seen it countless times on documents turned over by Marcus Rippy’s sports management team.
‘Motherfuck,’ Faith muttered. ‘Kip Kilpatrick. He’s Rippy’s manager, right? I saw him on TV.’
Will looked at Amanda. She had her eyes closed like she wished she could wipe the man’s name from her mind. Will felt the same way. Kip Kilpatrick was Marcus Rippy’s manager, head lawyer, best friend and all-around fixer. There was no legal proof, but Will was certain Kilpatrick had used his thugs to pay off two witnesses from the New Year’s Eve party and intimidated a third into silence.
Sara said, ‘I hate to make things worse, but the doorknob missed Harding’s jugulars and carotids. And his esophagus. And pretty much anything else that matters. There’s no blood in his mouth or nose. There was very little bleeding from the spindle, just a trickle that’s dried down the side of his neck. He doesn’t have any other significant injuries. This blood, or at least this volume of blood, isn’t from him.’