He turned and saw Vicky and Jim in the bedroom doorway. “He was watching a pay-per-view film and was halfway through it.”
Vicky nodded. “So that means he paused the film, got up, went into the living room, wrote out a confession, turned on the CD with the volume way up to cover the sound of a shot, and then sat down and blew his brains out. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”
“What do you mean?” Jim asked. “Nobody came in here during the six hours I was watching.”
“Well, about five-thirty I did drive up to that all-night gas station to take a pee.” She looked at Harry and Jim in turn. “Hey, I can’t pee in a bottle like you guys can.”
“So you were gone how long?” Harry asked.
“Fifteen, twenty minutes tops.”
Harry turned to Jim. “And you’re certain nobody could have gotten in while you were outside?”
“Sure, it’s possible if they came in and went out through a rear window. We were concerned about Nick leaving with evidence, so I was positioned where I could see his front door and his car. I wasn’t worried about anybody climbing in.”
“Did you talk to the neighbor who was knocking on the door?” he asked Vicky.
“No. There hasn’t been time.”
“Let’s do it now. Jim, you stay on the front door, make sure nobody comes inside except the CSI team. When the uniforms get here tell them to secure the scene, including Nick’s car in the parking lot. Show them which one it is.”
“You got it,” Jim said.
The neighbor’s door was answered by a woman in her mid-thirties, who looked as though she had not had a good night’s sleep. She was a tall, slender blonde with large, clearly augmented breasts, and Harry wondered how many times Nick had hit on her during the time they’d been neighbors. The woman gave her name as Terry Hogan and said she had lived in her condo for three years and had known Nick well.
“Yeah, that was me pounding on his door,” she said. “All of a sudden this music started, like real loud, you know. And it wasn’t even dawn yet. I tried calling him, I mean he’d given me his number and all, but I couldn’t get an answer.”
“What time was it when the music started?” Harry asked.
“It was like three a.m.,” she said. “I put up with it for a couple of hours, threw a pillow over my head, and went back to sleep, but it kept waking me up. Finally I just went over there and started pounding on the door, but he never answered.”
“Did you go outside, or look out the window when the music first woke you?” Vicky asked.
“No, should I have done that? I mean did Nick get robbed or something?”
Harry found Pete Rourke standing over Nick’s body when he returned to the apartment.
“This isn’t the way I wanted this case to end,” he said. “Not with a confession and suicide by one of my own men.”
“I’m not sure it’s a suicide, or that the confession is legit,” Harry said.
Rourke’s head gave a quick jerk and he threw a questioning look at Vicky.
“I’m not sure it’s legit either. I want to wait for CSI to have a look, but I agree with Harry. It just doesn’t smell right,” she said.
Rourke turned back to Harry. “Talk to me.”
Harry went through the evidence he’d found at the scene. Rourke nodded as Harry explained each contradictory piece. When he had finished Rourke shook his head.
“Harry, I’d give anything to have it not be one of my guys, but if we can’t prove this isn’t a suicide, we’re not going to be able to ignore a written confession found in a locked room with a cop who blew his own head off. Let’s see if CSI can come up with anything that will nail this down as a homicide.”
Marty LeBaron arrived with his CSI team a half hour later. He listened to Harry’s concerns, did a quick turn of all the rooms, and then motioned Harry to follow him outside.
“I see what you’re getting at, Harry. You’re right on every point, except one.”
“The surveillance,” Harry said.
“That’s it. Now unless Nick didn’t shoot himself until Vicky was on watch, and went off to have a piss, we’ve got a situation where a killer would have had to break in through a rear window. There is an open window in Nick’s bedroom, but I can’t imagine Nick laying there watching a movie and not doing anything when some asshole starts climbing in his window.”
“He could have been in the bathroom,” Harry said. “He could have gone into the kitchen for a beer. There are several viable scenarios.”
“Yeah, there are, Harry. But each one’s a stretch.” Marty rubbed his chin. “Nick was a cop and a good one. If some asshole climbed in his window, my bet is he’d either be in cuffs, or stretched out in a morgue wagon.”
Marty and his team spent the next two hours going over Nick’s condo and car. Mort Janlow arrived when they were halfway through the crime scene and began a thorough examination of the body. Harry decided to wait for preliminary results from each of them. Janlow finished first.
They left the body to the morgue attendants and went out to Harry’s car. Janlow rested his considerable bulk against the left front fender.
“I love being called out on a Saturday morning,” he groused. “I work sixteen hours a day, five days a week, and half the time I end up working part of the weekend.”
“Yeah, but you get the big bucks,” Harry said.
Janlow gave him a fish-eye. He toed the ground and began to study his shoe. “Harry, why do you think this isn’t a suicide?” He raised a hand. “I’m not rejecting the idea. I just want to hear your reasons.”
“You noticed the feather in his hair, right?”
“Yes, I did. But he was lying in bed watching a movie before he… died. We’ll have to compare that feather to the type of feathers in his pillows.”
“They’re foam pillows,” Harry said. “I already checked them.”
Janlow nodded, conceding the point.
“It also bothers me that the next-door neighbor, who was already awake because of the music, didn’t hear a shot,” Harry said. “A 9mm Glock is a noisy weapon. But if you place the barrel in somebody’s mouth and a pillow over the receiver, the noise can be reduced significantly.”
“Did you find a pillow with gunshot residue, or scorching?”
“No.”
“So you’re thinking the killer took it away with him-another assumption we can’t prove.”
“That’s right.”
“What else?”
“The neighbor was awakened by the loud music, that we assume was turned on to cover the sound of the shot. Why cover the sound of the shot if this was suicide?”
Janlow nodded, but said nothing.
“Nick had just ordered a movie on pay TV, so if we buy into a suicide scenario we have to assume that he reached a decision to kill himself in the middle of a movie he was watching, that he left his bedroom, turned on the CD player at high volume, and ate his gun.”
“It’s possible.”
“He paused the movie, Mort… just like someone would if they had to go to the bathroom, or to the kitchen to get themselves a beer.”
“It’s still possible he did it that way. I mean suicides can be irrational, but okay, that’s another point in your favor.”
“And finally there’s the confession. It’s too well written, Mort. I’ve read a lot of Nick’s reports over the years, and frankly, like a lot of cops, he wasn’t that articulate. The confession doesn’t say anything about the masks that were used to cover the faces of the victims, or the words carved into their foreheads. Nick was a homicide detective, Mort, and homicide cops don’t like loose ends. He would have told us why he did what he did; he would have told us all of it.”
Mort Janlow issued a heavy sigh. “Alright, you’ve made your point. There are some legitimate concerns so there won’t be any rush to judgment on my end. I’m scheduled to do Bobby Joe Waldo’s post early this afternoon, and I’ll do Nick’s right after that. You’re welcome to be there, or you can check in with me about four o’clock.”