She snapped on some gloves at the entrance, where a wire basket offered two-for-one on rubber-soled deck shoes. When she started as a police officer, putting on latex gloves was a cop or a medical thing: now everyone did it, even if they were only heating a pastry. She checked her boots, tapping off some mud from her waterfall visit, and covered them with plastic booties that swished as she crossed the aisle. Reflexively, she looked for cameras: one over the checkout counter, and that seemed it for the interior. Maybe there were others hidden.
The police incident code had been ‘response to silent alarm’, so she knew that much. Little else. The alarm was one of those that covered the perimeter of the building, not internal movement. By the first aisle was a pinboard of local notices – grass-cutting services, a wooden aviary free to a good home and a ratty-looking old Ford Falcon to be gutted for spares. Above this, a gallery of the regular staff, who were all ‘looking forward to helping you’.
As she reached the third aisle, staff from the medical examiner’s office came into view, holding the stretcher. The two bearers had the same red hair and freckled faces, similar bloodless lips and consumptive countenance. She thought they might be twins and considered this an odd kind of family occupation. They paused automatically when they reached her, looking stoically up and forward to nowhere while she peeled back the zip on the body bag.
The victim’s face was puffy but looked oddly contented. The serenity of dead people never ceased to amaze Dana. Even those who’d suffered violent, lingering or painful demises: they all took on a repose of quiet satisfaction, as if a job well done. Somehow, in a small way, it gave her hope. They usually looked… pleasantly asleep.
The victim was maybe late thirties, and shaven-headed. His skull was broad at the forehead, giving him a massive and tipped-forward look even when horizontal. He was absurdly tall, with a large, bear-like jaw, and the collar of his T-shirt was ripped on one shoulder. With the body bag zip further back, Dana could see the entry wound. Just one, it looked like. No hesitation marks she could see, no splatter. The bleeding would all be internal. A smallish rose of dried blood on the T-shirt surrounding it and some smeared and bloody finger marks. Maybe a palm, too.
She guessed a blade of fifteen centimetres – it would need to be that long to pass the ribs and enter a major organ. Sometimes, only one wound spoke to expertise but frequently it was blind luck. In a melee of two people grappling for their lives there was little time or space to be forensic. The attacker might have stabbed purely to get the victim off them, or get away, or make them stop. Few people wielded a knife accurately – their efforts were often wild and desperate.
She zipped up carefully. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. The ‘twins’ headed for the door in lockstep.
Around the corner, Bill crouched by some blood droplets. There were several packets of rice behind him which had dropped from a shelf without breaking open. That appeared to be the extent of the physical evidence. A minor clean-up in aisle three: on a par with a kid spilling some chocolate milk. Even one pint of blood looked like a serial-killer rampage if it was sprayed around in a struggle; this was maybe ten drops.
Because of the solitary stab wound, Dana had expected the knife to be on the floor. A single stab in panic, in the midst of a scuffle, usually prompted the stabber to drop the blade and flee. At the very least, they let go in shock at what they’d done, or in disbelief that the person in front of them was dying. That didn’t seem to have happened here.
Bill glanced up. He would have been handsome when younger. In fact, she’d seen pictures of him up to his forties when he was exactly that. It was as if he’d signed a Faustian pact: breath-taking until mid-life, then your face will collapse. He looked almost a travesty of what he once was and she sometimes wondered – as someone who’d never experienced one – what it was like to have a definable golden era behind you, a period when your whole life glowed and others basked in it. Perhaps the juxtaposition was painful, or maybe it was comforting to have been something significant, once.
‘Hey, Dana. Sorry to take your day off you.’
She nodded non-committally, unsure exactly how much Bill knew about her motivation for taking this day off work each year. He knew it was an important date – half the station knew that much – but she didn’t know if his knowledge went beyond that.
Best not to ask. Best to avoid.
‘One stab wound,’ she noted.
‘Suspect is headed to the station. Knife is still someplace unknown – we’ll need a detailed finger search of the store, and maybe the undergrowth within throwing range. Unless the killer departed and took it with them. Patrol responded to a silent alarm linked to the station.’
‘A professional?’
Bill hefted himself up and rubbed the base of his spine. ‘I only saw our suspect briefly. No ID, nothing obviously incriminating. Couldn’t get a word out of him except his name. Nathan Whittler? Ring any bells for you? Nah, me neither. But, uh, dishevelled and disorganised at best. Could be a serial killer, for all we know. But no, I doubt he’s a hitman.’
‘Hmmm.’ Having nailed one last year, she didn’t believe professional killer meant anything beyond financial payment. That hitman had been an idiot, in a dozen different ways. But he’d been paid to do it.
Bill stretched out a kink in his back. ‘Dead man is Lou Cassavette, the store owner. There’s a sleeping bag, a home-electronics mag and some Chiko Rolls in the storeroom by the freezer section. Looks like he was waiting up for someone.’
‘Hmmm, breakfast of champions. CCTV? I saw the camera by the checkout, but’ – she glanced up and down the aisle – ‘I’m guessing we’re out of luck here.’
‘Yeah, only one other camera, in the storeroom. Overlooks the food-prep area out the back.’ Bill schlepped off a glove and scratched his forehead.
Dana took out a torch to see the blood drops more clearly. There was no way her kneecap would let her crouch down. ‘Mr Cassavette didn’t trust his own staff. He watched if they were dipping the till; he watched if they were spitting in the food. So maybe the suspect is an employee, or ex-employee?’
Bill nodded. ‘Way ahead of ya. I’ve got Luce checking for employment records as we speak. See these?’ He pointed at the bloodspot trail and she swung the torchlight back on them.
She followed the pathway with a silver beam. ‘Half of them in one place – where he was stabbed? Then he fell, or staggered, back a couple of paces, then they stop.’
‘That’s how I see it,’ Bill replied. ‘Stabbed here… fell back to here… and either he or someone else clamped something on the wound to stop the flow.’
‘Does our suspect have any blood on him?’
Bill stood again and smiled. ‘Oh, yeah. He has blood on his hands. Bent over the guy, hand pushed against the wound.’
‘Burglary gone wrong?’
Bill waved at a corner of the store. ‘Looks like he climbed in through that window over there. Professional, too. Put a bag on the windowsill so there’d be no marks, and bags on his shoes, too. He had a rucksack full of loot, but…’
Dana had reached the end of the aisle and could see the entry point. She scanned the floor less for prints, more for detritus like leaves or burrs; but there was nothing. The guy had entered smoothly and professionally, like he’d done it a hundred times before.