When Detective Sergeant Cyrus Auburn reported for duty at eight A.M., his immediate superior, Lieutenant Savage, met him in the hall outside his office. “Don’t take off your jacket,” said Savage. “We’ve got a citizen down, over in Harmony Heights.”
Auburn had no trouble finding the place along Route 5 where the body was lying, covered now by a blanket and surrounded by an investigative team. Figuring out where they’d parked and how they had made their way to the site on the other side of the fence took considerably more effort.
A chance glimpse of a strip of yellow plastic tape fluttering in the morning breeze led him to a cul-de-sac under a viaduct where a cruiser and an evidence van were parked. As he pulled in next to them, another van, belonging to the coroner’s office, stopped behind him with a squeal of brakes. A dark-haired, heavy-featured man stepped out and pulled a camera case and a square leather grip after him with an air of urgency.
“Turn off your siren, Nick,” said Auburn. “They don’t call you for live ones, remember?”
Nick Stamaty’s greeting was goodnatured but sardonic. “I want to get in there before Kestrel has him posted and pickled and shoved in a box.”
Together they walked along the fence and passed under the yellow tape with which the first officers on the scene had cordoned off the area. Three ten-year-olds, who should have been on their way to school, were hovering near the tape, seeing nothing but hiding their disappointment under a brave show of nonchalance.
Kestrel, the police evidence technician, was making measurements with a spring tape and entering them on a sketch map mounted on a clipboard. The older of the two uniformed officers stood over the body while the other combed the dense growth of brush and weeds that covered the slope overhanging the path, looking for a castoff weapon or a wallet emptied of cash. All three lanes northbound on Route 5 were busy, but the pace was so brisk that most of the drivers probably didn’t notice anything unusual going on on the other side of the fence.
Auburn stooped and uncovered the dead man’s face briefly. “Any I.D. yet?” he asked the nearer patrolman.
“No, sir. Somebody cleaned him out good.”
Stamaty squeezed past Auburn with his camera and took the first of several pictures. Kestrel, habitually dour and reticent, went on with his work as if there were nobody within a mile but him and the body.
“Nothing on him at all?” Auburn asked him.
Kestrel fished a clear plastic bag out of his field kit, which lay open on the path, and held it up for Auburn to see without really offering it to him. It contained a ring of keys, a few coins, a cheap pen, a quartz wristwatch, and two sizes of stubby screwdriver.
“Some kind of a mechanical type?” suggested Auburn.
“His hands would tell you that,” said Kestrel. “Calluses, abrasions, ground-in grit, nails broken off to the quick...” Auburn and Stamaty exchanged glances.
“You got his blood type yet?” asked Stamaty with a coy twinkle in his eye.
“Not my department.” Nobody knew whether Kestrel’s inability to see a joke was genuine or just a colossal put-on. But none of his colleagues could remember ever having heard him laugh.
“How did he get here?” queried Auburn. “He didn’t walk in here with his head bashed in like that. And it would take four men and a boy to hoist him over that fence from the highway, even if the traffic over there ever died down long enough.”
“We figured a couple, three guys jumped him in here sometime last night,” said the patrolman. “Grabbed his wallet and took off.”
“Why in here?”
“They were probably just hanging out, and he picked the wrong night to take a shortcut.”
“Is he stiff yet?”
“Getting there,” said Kestrel. “There’s no dew under him. He’s been here since midnight anyway.”
“Did you see any blood anywhere except right by the body?”
“Zero.”
Auburn followed the path beyond the body for a couple of hundred yards. Owing to the curve of the highway, he was out of sight of the others by the time he reached the point where the path petered out under the Slade Street overpass. He made his way thoughtfully back. The patrolman on the hill was having a rough time struggling through tangles of wild honeysuckle and brushwood, and finding nothing but litter for his pains.
Kestrel and Stamaty were going over the body together, the blanket now draped over the fence to screen them from the passing cars. “The sooner we get him downtown and roll some prints,” said Stamaty, “the closer we’ll be to an I.D.” He made an entry in his notebook.
“Let me see that bunch of keys,” said Auburn. Legally the dead man’s personal effects belonged to the coroner until identity and cause of death had been established. Without getting up from his squatting position, Stamaty twisted on his heels and passed the plastic bag up to Auburn. Auburn fished out the keys.
“The knockout plugs are gone,” said Kestrel without looking up.
“I’ll bet this car is parked less than a quarter of a mile from here,” said Auburn “He didn’t live around here. Not if he made a living working with his hands.”
“What would he be doing around here at night?” asked Stamaty.
Auburn shrugged. “Probably not selling Bibles. Maybe a drug deal that went sour. While you guys are finding the square of his hypotenuse, I’m going to find his car.”
He went on foot because Stamaty’s van had his car blocked. It took him less than fifteen minutes to find the car that went with the keys — an economy sport coupe parked in conspicuous isolation on a residential cul-de-sac. He unlocked the passenger door and locked it again without opening it or touching the car. The interior looked empty except for the typical scattering of sunglasses, coins, odd scraps of paper, and beer cans. He hiked back to his car and called in the license number of the dead man’s car.
When he rejoined the others, they were packing up. “So what’s his blood type?” asked Kestrel, whose hawk’s eye had caught the slip of paper in Auburn’s hand.
“Lee Dana Brendel. His car is parked at the north end of Wilcox.”
“Have they got anything on him downtown?”
“Bunch of speeding tickets. No arrests.”
“Where’d he live?”
“In an apartment on Whatman.”
“Family?”
“Not at that address, according to the city directory.” They moved back along the path in single file toward their cars, leaving one patrolman to watch the body.
“I’m heading for his apartment now,” said Auburn. “You coming, Stamaty?” It was understood that Kestrel would be going over the dead man’s car for latent prints and other trace evidence.
“I better hang around till the mortuary squad gets here. I don’t want to tie up these uniform guys any more.”
“Okay. His place’ll keep. I’ll go around to those houses up on the hill first and see if anybody heard anything last night. When your people come, give a couple of honks and I’ll catch up with you, and we can run over to his place together.”
“Together but separately,” Stamaty agreed.
The tract of land that sloped down to end at the curving fence along Route 5 consisted of three residential lots, all facing away from the highway toward Roseland Court and each “improved” with a house in the three-hundred-thousand-dollar range. Auburn had to negotiate a steep path over rough terrain to reach Roseland Court without making a wide detour.