“Was he kneeling?”
“The angle is right for it.”
They rolled the corpse onto its back again, and Holly examined the wrists. “No ligature marks,” she said. “He wasn’t tied up at the time.”
“A gun pointed at the head is enough to get a man on his knees,” the ME said. “He didn’t need to be tied.”
“Anybody go through his pockets?”
“No,” the officer replied. “We were waiting for the ME.”
“I’ll do it at the morgue,” the ME said. “Three to one he won’t have any ready ID.”
“I agree,” Holly said. “Do what you can with his clothes.”
“We always do,” the ME replied. “Okay, fellas, I’ll meet you at the morgue.”
The EMTs loaded the corpse into their wagon and drove away, with the ME right behind. Holly looked around. Nice spot, she thought. Nice house, nice dock, nice boat tied up to it. She heard a screen door slam and turned to see a man coming out of the house.
“Good morning,” she said. “Sorry to disturb you.”
“Thanks for hauling that thing away,” the man said.
“All part of the service. Did you hear anything last night? Anything like a gunshot?”
The man shook his head. “Nah. I reckon it happened upriver, probably at the bridge, and the tide brought him down here.”
“You should be a cop,” Holly said, trying not to sound sarcastic, since it was what she thought, too. “Did you get a good look at him?”
“Yep.”
“Ever seen him before?”
“Nope. Looks Cuban to me.”
“Maybe.”
“He just floated down here and came to rest against one of the piers of my dock. I guess the barnacles snagged some of his clothing. I was going fishing.” He pointed at his tackle beside the boat. “You going to be able to identify him?”
“Maybe. The body will be searched for ID, and we’ll take his fingerprints and check them with the state and the Feds. We’ll check the missing persons reports for somebody resembling him, too.”
“How did he die?”
“The medical examiner will have to determine that, officially.”
“Unofficially, my guess would be a bullet,” the man said.
“Could be. Or he could have been fishing off the bridge last night, fell off and drowned, maybe hit his head on something. We won’t jump to conclusions.” Even if she had already jumped.
“I guess you know your job,” the man said.
“Thanks, yes, I do.”
“What are your chances of finding out who he is and what happened to him?”
“Better than fifty-fifty,” she said, though she didn’t really feel that confident.
“It’s organized crime,” the man said.
Holly held back a laugh. “We don’t have all that much organized crime around here.”
“You got a murder on your hands, Chief,” the man said.
When a citizen was right, he was right, Holly thought.
“I’d like to know how it comes out.”
“Watch the papers,” Holly said. She shook his hand, went back to her car, and headed for the morgue. Something had struck her about this corpse, and she wanted her curiosity satisfied.
19
Holly gave the medical examiner a couple of hours’ head start, then went to his office. She had seen more than one autopsy, and more than one was enough. When she walked into his lab, the ME was just finishing.
“Hey,” he said.
“What’s the story?” she asked, nodding at the corpse on the table under the sheet.
The ME consulted his notes on a clipboard. “Well-developed male, closer to thirty than forty, Hispanic, very probably Cuban. Death was from a single gunshot to the back of the head, probably while kneeling, hard-nosed bullet, forty-caliber, went through intact, took out the front teeth.”
“Anything I don’t already know?”
“Did you know he was Cuban?”
“The man who owned the dock where he was found thought so. Why do you?”
“Amalgam fillings,” the ME replied. “They still do them in Cuba, but not here so much. He had a mouth full of socialist-era dentistry.”
“Would that indicate that he was somebody special, having access to dental care?”
“Nah. The Cubans pride themselves on their medical system.”
“Did you find any other marks on the body?” She didn’t want to lead him.
“Bruised knuckles on the right hand; he might have taken a swing at whoever shot him.”
“Anything else?”
The ME peered at her. “Sounds like you have something in mind.”
“I do, but I’d rather you told me.”
“Come on, Chief, tell me.”
She walked over to the table and hoisted the cloth covering the body above the knees. “Take a look at that,” she said, pointing at the left knee.
The doctor looked at it. “Oh,” he said. “All right.” He began writing on his clipboard. “Severe bruising of the left knee.” He made a note of it.
“How old?” Holly asked.
“Hard to say: a few days, I guess.”
Holly parted the hair on her left temple. “Take a look at this.”
The ME looked at her head. “You’ve got severe bruising, too; are you and the deceased related?”
“It’s the age of the bruise I’m talking about,” she said.
“You think you and the deceased heal at the same rate, and in different parts of the body?”
“Come on, Doctor, could the two bruises have occurred at the same time?”
“You mean, you think the deceased might have bruised his knee while applying it to your temple?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. Answer my question, please.”
“Well, yes, his bruise and yours could have occurred on the same day. I wouldn’t want to put my professional weight behind that in court, if it came to that.”
“Thank you,” she said. Like pulling teeth. “How long has he been dead?”
“Since the wee hours of this morning,” the ME replied. “That’s my best guess; his being in the water most of the night screwed up body temperature as a way of determining time of death more precisely. He would have cooled off faster.”
“What else can you tell me about him?”
“He’s very well built, probably works out on a regular basis. His clothes were expensive-Italian labels-and he had a good manicure. If you blow-dried his hair, he’d probably have a good haircut, too, but river water doesn’t improve the look.”
“Any jewelry?”
“He’s got a whiter band on his left wrist, indicating that he or somebody else removed a wristwatch. And there’s this.” The doctor walked to a counter, picked up a plastic container, and emptied it into Holly’s hand. The contents consisted of a small gold locket on a light, matching chain, and a diamond stud earring of about half a carat.
“Looks like something a girl would wear,” she said, examining the stud.
“A lot of men wear earrings these days,” the doctor replied. “I can’t imagine why.”
Holly picked up the locket and opened it. A little Indian River water drained out. Inside was a photograph of a pretty Latino girl, perhaps in her early twenties. Holly dug out the photograph with a fingernail and looked on the back. Nothing. “Looks like a Polaroid, trimmed to fit the locket.”
“Well, somebody loved him, then,” the doctor sighed.
“Where are his clothes?” she asked.
The doctor pointed to another counter.
Holly walked over to the pile and went through them. Everything was black, the shirt silk and the trousers cotton. He had worn briefs, bikini cut, also black. The socks were cotton, the shoes Italian, Bruno Magli. They were moccasin-like, soft with rubber studs on the soles. “Driving shoes,” Holly said aloud. Also good cat-burglar shoes; they wouldn’t make much noise against a floor. “No wallet?”
“Nope, though there was some money and some car keys. In the container there.” He pointed to the counter.
Holly found a thick wad of bills, a set of keys to a Chrysler product, and some change. “Twelve hundred and eight dollars,” she said, counting the damp currency.