Death on the Diagonal - By Nero Blanc Page 0,36

on his hands and knees toward the far end of the hallway, stopping now and then to retrieve some object from the carpet and then seal it in a containment bag, which was duly labeled.

“Is this clear down here?” Rosco called to the man bent over the carpet.

He cocked his head back toward Rosco and said, “Yeah, we’re all done with that end. Knock yourself out.”

Rosco walked to the doorway and slid past the fingerprint expert. It was a large bedroom, furnished with what he assumed were valuable French antiques. The dresser, night-stands, armoire, and bed were ornate and gilded. Sky blue, apple leaf green, and powder pink seemed to be the color scheme, and the walls boasted paintings that matched: pastel-colored gardens, soft-faced and amorous couples, fountains, and flowers in full blossom. Rosco guessed they were pricey objects. Against this bowerlike decor, the businesslike humans with their dark and austere clothing were a stark contrast.

He spotted Lever, Jones, and the medical examiner, Herb Carlyle. All had removed their latex gloves, which indicated that forensics had finished with the room; and judging from the bulging ashtray, Lever was already on his eighth or ninth cigarette—meaning things weren’t going as smoothly as he wished. But then, with Carlyle on hand, homicide scenes were never easy.

True to form, the ME had plunked himself unceremoniously on the deceased’s bed and was scribbling notes on paper attached to a stainless-steel clipboard, while his equally spooky assistant, Estelle, hovered at his side holding a large black plastic zippered bag. Ryan Collins’s body was stretched out sideways across the bed only a few inches to Carlyle’s left. She was obviously still in the spot where she’d died.

Her corpse was lying face up. She was dressed in dark red satin men’s pajamas, and from the neck down it almost appeared as though she were sleeping. From the neck up, however, the story was different. Her head rested in a large pool of blood that had begun to dry; the color now resembled that of her pajamas. Her skin was no longer pink or even a deathly blue; it had become a chalky gray white, and her features were flattened against her facial bones. From Rosco’s vantage point he wasn’t able to observe the extent of the wounds, but he noted they were centered above her ear on the left side of her head.

Lever and Jones had their backs to Rosco and hadn’t yet seen him enter, but Carlyle looked up from his clipboard and uttered a carping, “Polycrates, wonderful, just what we need. The squeaky-clean hero in action.” If his words had failed to indicate the disdain he felt for Rosco, his tone made up for them. The edgy relationship dated back to when Rosco had been NPD and had spared no criticism of the ME’s sloppy methods. “This guy’s like a bad penny,” Carlyle continued in his jeering manner. “Is this some unfortunate coincidence, Al, or did you invite him here just to make my life miserable?”

“Alright,” Lever grumbled, “I’m not here to play referee between you two children. If you’re finished, Herb, let’s bag her up and move on out of here.” He turned to Rosco. His eyes looked tired. Homicide was Lever’s beat, but unlike Carlyle, he didn’t enjoy it. “The only reason I let you in here, Poly-crates, is because you’ve got a relationship with these people.”

“Not much, Al.”

“Anything’s better than nothing.”

Estelle placed the plastic body bag on the bed beside Ryan and slid the zipper open. Then she and Carlyle hefted the corpse into the bag and sealed it.

“What happened?” Rosco asked Lever.

But the medical examiner replied with an answer Rosco had heard from him one too many times: “Pretty cut and dried, really.”

He waited for Carlyle to say more, and he wasn’t disappointed. When it came to lugubrious details, the ME was in his glory. “Somebody slammed a hoof pick into her temple. And, yeah, we got the weapon. Once probably would have been enough to do the job, but our perp really went at it. Six or seven whacks from what I can tell. I’ll get a clearer picture once I get her back to the morgue and do some digging around.” Estelle smiled at this thought; clearly she was also anxious to get to work.

Rosco, along with Lever and Jones, watched as the pair placed the body on a gurney. As they left the room Lever said, “Let me know if anything unusual turns up, will you, Herb?”

“Sure, Al,