an afterthought, and turned back around. "Uh . . . ?"
He stared at me.
"How many suicides have you investigated?"
"I don't know. A good many. This is a high-stress area code. Within the county, we experience more suicides than homicides."
"How many of those suicides involved guns?"
"A few. Perhaps three this past year. Overdoses and slashed wrists are the norm. A majority of our suicide victims are teenagers who can't afford--"
"I understand . . . thank you." I asked Tim, "Did you observe any blood splatter on the gun?"
"Yes, some. It was fired from very close range, and there was a volume of blowback. Also, even visually, I can detect powder residue on the victim's left temple. That means--"
"I know what it means." I asked, "Have we confirmed if the pistol belonged to the victim?"
"Not yet. The serial number is unobservable until we turn it over. We don't rearrange the evidence until after I've finished my site inspection."
I pointed at the silencer on the end of the pistol. "Have you ever seen a suicide where the victim used one of those?"
"Uh . . ."
I remembered to specify, "Yes or no?"
"No."
"Does the silencer strike you as odd?"
"I leave the conclusions to the detectives."
"As you should. Except I'm asking your opinion."
"Yes. It is unusual." In fact, I was sure Tim regarded it as more than unusual--even suspicious--though, sucked inexorably back into his orbit of qualifiers and modifiers, he suggested, "You could postulate, I suppose, that the victim didn't want to disturb his neighbors. A final act of courtesy, so to speak. Or he didn't want to be discovered. I've seen suicides where the victim went to great lengths to avoid attention."
"I see." Sometimes it's the little things. Essentially, in almost every way this looked like a suicide; that is, every way but two. To begin with, that petrified expression on Daniels's face--eyes wide open, mouth contorted, a mixture of frozen shock and amazement. It's my impression that most people, in the millisecond before they blow a bullet through their own flesh, reflexively shut their eyes, purse their lips, and contract their facial muscles--this is going to hurt, a lot, and the mind and the body respond instinctively, even reflexively, toward the anticipation of pain.
Ergo, shock and surprise seemed wrong. After all, the act of suicide was his idea. Relief, anger, sadness, pain--these, or some combination of these, are the expressions one would expect on his death mask.
Plus, the silencer was weird. If I assumed the pistol was Clifford's weapon, silencers are hard to come by, expensive, and, even for radical gun lovers, an unusual accessory. I mean, gun nuts live for the big booms. No, silencers are an instrument of assassins.
Neither of these incongruities was entirely dissuasive of suicide, and neither alone implied murder. Taken together, however, they raised doubts, and doubts are like termites; ignore them at your own peril.
I was about to ask Tim another question when I heard footsteps. I turned around in time to see Major Bian Tran, accompanied by a tall, lanky black gentleman in a tweed blazer, walk through the doorway into the bedroom. The gentleman looked amazingly like that actor who played Alex Cross in Along Came a Spider, down to the pockmarked face, high cheekbones, salt-and-pepper hair, and thoughtful brown eyes. Weird.
The gentleman was staring at me with a pissed-off expression. Major Tran, also with an eye on me, had an amused squint.
CHAPTER THREE
The gentleman marched straight up to me and asked two direct questions I did not want to hear: "Who the hell are you? And what in the fuck are you doing at my crime scene?"
I withdrew my creds and flashed them in his face. "Special Agent Drummond."
He snapped the creds out of my hand and studied them for a moment. I had the impression he knew I was full of shit.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Detective Sergeant Barry Enders. This is my investigation."
I shifted my attention to Major Tran. She was apparently preoccupied, because she avoided my eyes.
Enders pocketed my creds and said, "Look, Drummond--if that's your real name--you logged into a crime scene using a phony federal ID, you entered the premises, and lied to my investigators. Let's see, that's"--he began drawing down fingers--"impersonating a federal officer . . . trespassing . . . interfering with a police investigation, and . . . give me a minute--I'll think of three or four additional charges."
He reached down to his belt and whipped out a pair of metal cuffs, apparently not needing another minute.