Standing up, he took out his Nikon D200 and started photographing the body from every angle. Once that was done, he took out an L-ruler and balanced it on Washburne's cheek, to record the size of the abrasion on his forehead.
Lying near the body was one of the free weights: a twenty-pound doughnut weight, based on the number stenciled into it. It had blood on one part of its edge.
Looking up, Hawkes saw that barely two feet from the body and the fallen weight was a bench press. One side of the barbell had three doughnut weights.
The other side had two. On the end with three doughnuts, the outermost weight was also a twenty-pounder.
Hawkes photographed the bench from as many angles as he could think of, then did the same for the doughnut free weight, both with and without the L-ruler.
"Jesus Christ," Ciccone muttered. "You need a freakin' diagram, Doc? The weight came off that barbell. Whoever wasted Washburne probably conked him on the head with it. Hell, one of the cons figured that out while lying on his belly. In case, y'know, it ain't obvious."
"It is obvious, but we still have to document it," Hawkes said, kneeling back down beside the body. "Prosecutors like it better when we're thorough. So do juries."
"I done jury duty, Doc. Only thing we liked was to go home fast."
Blood had pooled near the wound, but there was more blood on various parts of Washburne's body, all near the head or in spots where the gash could, conceivably, have dripped. Head wounds tended to gush, after all. Still, there was enough blood all over the place in here that it was best to collect as many samples as possible.
Reaching into his kit, Hawkes took out several Q-tips and meticulously swabbed blood from the head wound, from several other parts of the body, and also from the doughnut weight. Each swab went into a separate evidence bags, which Hawkes labeled with a Sharpie. Hawkes noticed that one area of blood was significantly drier than the others. He noted that that batch should be tested first-in both mathematics and forensics, the discrepant part of a set usually provided the most useful information.
As he was swabbing, he noticed a thread on the victim's shoulder. It looked like a green fiber. It probably belonged to Washburne's own prison outfit. Still, Hawkes grabbed his tweezers and pulled the fiber off, bagging and labeling that as well.
"Y'know, I thought the most boring thing in the world was the overnight shift, when the convicts are asleep," Ciccone said, shaking his head, his arms folded. "Looks like I was wrong, 'cause this is way more boring. Don't know how you do it, Doc, this is the boringest damn thing."
Hawkes didn't respond. Having established that Ciccone found what he did for a living dull, Hawkes found it easy to disregard the man and continue silently with his work.
Danny Messer had been surprised when Mac had tapped him to be on this detail, since Danny had some relatives who were incarcerated at RHCF. The Messer family had a significant number of members in the Tanglewood Boys. Danny had managed to stay out of that quagmire, graduating at the top of his class at the Academy, after which Mac had specifically requested him for his team.
Being in the crime lab was the best thing for him. While nobody had said anything-and several people, including Don Flack, had said it wouldn't matter-Danny didn't think he'd be entirely trusted on the street. He'd grown up with his family under surveillance by the feds, after all.
Besides, he liked working in the lab.
Still, he tried to avoid his home borough of Staten Island as much as possible. Danny hated coming back home, a feeling he seemed to share with most people who'd grown up on the island and left it.
Today, though, it wasn't possible. Stella and Lindsay were in the Bronx, and that left Danny and Sheldon to go with Mac-and all three of them would be needed. This was two bodies in a case that came down from on high: Albany to Deputy Inspector Scumbag Gerrard his own damn self.
At least he could take heart in the fact that the place was locked down. All the convicts were in their dorms. They had stopped calling them "cells" in medium-and minimum-security places a while ago, for no good reason that Danny could see. Probably for the same stupid reason they started calling them "corrections officers" instead of "prison guards," and "sanitation engineers" instead of "garbage men," and "flight attendants" instead of "stewardesses." And, for that matter, "crime scene investigators" instead of "police scientists." Danny thought it was stupid. He knew that the term corrections officer was created to apply to licensed state peace officers, as opposed to guards, who were minimum-wage hacks with no authority outside the prison-and, for that matter, that flight attendant was more accurate and non-gender-specific. He still thought it was stupid.
But he could do a George Carlin routine on the degradation of language on his own time. Right now, Mac trusted him on this case, and he would give it his best. Danny hadn't always given Mac good reason to trust him, so he appreciated those occasions when he did.
Of course, he gave Sheldon the whodunit. Nobody had seen Washburne get iced. Danny's guy, though, everyone saw what happened.
Still, people lied. Evidence didn't. That was why Danny rejected the life of lies that came with being a Tanglewood Boy and joined the crime lab.
So he worked the scene.
First was pictures. You had to record the scene as it was before you started touching things.
Once he got the full Vance Barker photo album, he looked more closely at the wound. Whoever did it nailed him right in the carotid. It was almost a perfect kill shot; anybody who got that artery sliced open would be dead in seconds. Whoever did this was professional or very lucky.
Since this place was medium security, Danny tended to think it was the latter. But that wasn't his problem right now.
Looking at the rest of the vic's face, he noticed that Barker had a split lip. Danny had almost missed it thanks to all the blood. Glancing up at the CO with him-Andros?-he asked, "When did our boy get into a fight?"
"What day is it?" Andros said with a snort. "I've only been here a month, and this guy's gotten into twelve fights."
"This one was recent."
"Oh, yeah-yesterday's ball game. There was a brawl after Barker did a takeout slide at second."
"Party never stops around here, huh?"
"Tell me about it."
Danny shook his head and stood up. He looked around at the chain-link fence, taking pictures of the blood spray on the metal.
From the other side of the fence, Mac was inspecting the outside. "Looks like our killer reached in here." He pointed with a gloved finger through one of the holes in the chain-link.
"Yeah," Danny said, "that tracks with the splatter I'm getting here."
Mac said, "There's blood smeared on the lower part of this hole. It's smeared moving outward, and that's consistent with a hand being yanked back. Probably rubbed against the chain-link with his pinkie." He looked at Sullivan. "I'm going to need to see your suspect. You haven't changed his clothes, have you?"
Sullivan shook his head. "Nah, they're all safe and sound and not moving."
"Good. Can you take me to him, and anybody who might've been standing around him?"
"Sure," Sullivan said. "They're all in Alpha Block."
"Good." He looked through the chain-link at the weight yard. Danny thought Mac's ultraserious face looked comical broken up by the metal. "Danny, Sheldon, you two finish up here. Once you've bagged and tagged everything, meet me back at the captain's office so we can arrange to have the bodies shipped to the morgue."
"Sure thing, Mac," Danny said.
8