“Hey, Travis, anything unusual on the Lee woman?”
Vedder put down his scalpel and picked up a foam cup with his bloody, gloved hand. He peeked out at Leo over the rims of his glasses and spat into the cup.
“Unusual? No.”
“What were your findings.”
“You can’t read?”
“Yes, despite the rumors, I can read. But I like hearing it from your smiling face.”
“It must really suck.”
“How’s that, Travis?”
“To have been the big man. And now you’re the little man. They won’t even let you read the autopsy reports. That must really suck.”
“Yeah, you know what, Travis? It does suck. It sucks like you wouldn’t believe. Thanks for reminding me. Oh, and by the way, fuck you.”
Leo turned to leave, his nausea momentarily eclipsed by his anger.
“Wait.”
Leo turned back to Vedder and followed the stoop-shouldered man to a wall of cadaver drawers. Vedder pulled out one of the drawers and unzipped the plastic body bag that held Rachel Lee’s corpse.
“So whadda ya wanna know?”
Leo looked down at the body. He could feel the coldness radiating off it. The absence of life.
“I want to know what happened.”
“She got hit on the head.”
“No kidding. I thought maybe she had a heart attack.”
Vedder spit into his cup and wiped a spidery thread of tobacco juice from his chin. Leo thought, I wonder if it’ll fuck up my image if I faint?
“Nope, impact to skull resulting in depressed fracture. Traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage.”
Vedder pulled a huge magnifying glass from his pocket and positioned it over the wound in Rachel Lee’s head.
“See this?”
Leo worked to steady his voice. “Yeah. It’s a great big gash in her head. So?”
“Look closer. Around the edges of the wound.”
Leo, very much against his better judgment, leaned in closer, and then, under the magnifying glass, he thought he could see faint threads of what could only be tiny shards of glass. “It’s glass. So?”
“Not glass, crystal. Very expensive crystal.”
“The kid hit her with a crystal ashtray. I know that already.”
“How am I supposed to know what you know and what you don’t know?”
“Well, what else can you tell me? Is there anything unusual? Anything out of the ordinary?”
“Generally speaking, I would say that being killed by a crystal ashtray is out of the ordinary.”
“Well, surely to God there’s more you can tell me than that.”
“Actually, there is. Stand back a little. Look at the wound as a whole.”
Leo did just that, but all he got for his efforts was a little sicker to his stomach. “What?”
“The angle, the degree, the location. What does it tell you?”
“That she got hit hard.”
“That whoever hit her, hit her from behind, was taller than she was, and was probably left-handed.”
“That’s not exactly a bloody glove.”
Vedder shrugged and spit into his cup. “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
TWENTY-TWO
Leo stood outside the door for a minute. The lettering on the door read PAULA MANNING, ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY. Three years ago, he remembered, it had been his name on the door. Three years ago Paula Manning had been a deputy prosecutor working under Leo Hewitt’s supervision. Three years ago things had been a lot different. Three years ago he had been the assistant district attorney and a likely candidate for becoming the youngest district attorney in the county’s history. But that was three years ago. That was before the Guaraldi case.
Leo knocked on the door.
“Open!”
He stuck his head into the office and saw Paula Manning reclining in her desk chair, her stockinged feet kicked up on her desk, a hamburger and fries resting in her lap.
“Hey, got a minute?”
“Leo, my loyal and trusty servant, come in.”
Just as he was often shocked at his own sudden hair loss, Leo found himself taken aback at the changes the last few years had wrought on Paula. She had once been very pretty, and he supposed she still was, but now Paula’s features had an angular sharpness to them that hadn’t been there even a year ago. She was the same old Paula, maybe fifteen pounds lighter and with lines setting in around her tight mouth and open brown eyes. The weight loss and stress lines had given her a hardness that had never been there before. At least on the surface.
“So, Paula, how they hangin’?”
Paula pretended to adjust her crotch. “A little to the left, actually. What can I do for you, Leo?”
“Well, actually, I was wondering what the status is on that Lee thing.”
“Lee… Lee… Lee. Oh, yeah, the retard did it. Did the same thing five years ago. The family doesn’t want formal charges, neither do we. Right now he’s on the locked floor at the Hendrix Institute pending a judge’s order for placement at the state forensic facility. Maximum security. Seems pretty cut-and-dried.”
“Yeah, it seems pretty cut-and-dried, but according to the coroner’s report-”
“The coroner’s report? Since when do you have access to my files?”
“I don’t. I just talked to the guy. I mean, I was there that night, so I’m interested. That’s all.”
“Yeah, well you know, I still don’t know what the hell you thought you were doing by going out there. Your job is to prosecute delinquent traffic violations. If Bob found out-”
“How would Bob find out? Are you gonna tell him? What? You think I enjoy hanging out in traffic court? I mean, goddamn it, Paula, gimme a break. You used to work for me. How do you think that makes me feel?”
“Well, now you work for me. I would think that you’d be used to it by now. What do you expect from me? Should I resign because your feelings are hurt?” He was making her feel uncomfortable. Didn’t the fucker know who got him his lousy job in traffic court? She was sure it was humiliating, but, goddamn it, it also paid the bills. And wasn’t that what he wanted when he came to her begging for a job? And she had wanted to help out. She felt sorry for him and had gone to Bob to see what he would let her throw his way. And really, she and Bob had shared the same concern about the situation. It wasn’t that they held a grudge, it was that something like this might happen. That Leo might start bringing up the past. He might try to remind her of the way things used to be. He might make her feel uncomfortable.
Paula took a bite from her burger and asked, “What is it you want from me?”
“Just a chance. To do something besides speeding tickets.”
“Ever since what happened, you’ve been looking for that big break. A way to prove yourself again. I know that. I respect that. But, Leo, you might as well face it, no one’s ever gonna forget what happened.” She felt bad. That was a low blow, but Christ, he was asking for it. What did he expect from her?
Leo nodded his head. “Yeah, I know. No one’s ever gonna forget. Least of all you.” He turned to leave. And the shrug of defeat that passed through his shoulders was too much for her. She wasn’t fucking heartless, was she? She had, after all, once worked for this man. This pathetic excuse for a man who made her decidedly uncomfortable. She wasn’t a shrew, after all. For God’s sake, the man only wanted to feel like a man again. Who would it hurt if he asked a few questions?