“Hold off?” he asked and glanced at the Hamilton officer. “How do you mean, Detective?”
Tal said, “Get an autopsy?”
“Why?”
“Just wondering if we can.”
“You’re county,” the heavy-set cop said. “You’re the boss. Only, I mean, you know — you can’t do it halfway. Either you declare a twenty-one-twenty-four or you don’t.”
Oh, that. He wondered what exactly it was.
A glance at the sports car. “Okay, I’ll do that. I’m declaring a twenty-four-twenty-one.”
“You mean twenty-one-twenty-four... You sure about this?” the officer asked, looking uncertainly toward the funeral home assistant, who was frowning; even he apparently knew more about the mysterious 2124 than Tal did.
The statistician looked outside and saw the other man from the funeral home pull a stretcher out of the back of the hearse and walk toward the bodies.
“Yes,” he said firmly. “I’m sure.” And tapped loudly on the window, gesturing for the man to stop.
The next morning, Monday, Tal saw the head of the Crime Scene Unit walk into the Detective pen and head straight toward LaTour’s office. He was carrying a half dozen folders.
He had a gut feeling that this was the Whitley scene report and was out of his office fast to intercept him. “Hey, how you doing? That about the Whitley case?”
“Yeah. It’s just the preliminary. But there was an expedite on it. Is Greg in? LaTour?”
“I think it’s for me.”
“You’re...”
“Simms.”
“Oh, yeah,” the man said, looking at the request attached to the report. “I didn’t notice. I figured it was LaTour. Being head of Homicide, you know.” He handed the files to Tal.
A 2124, it turned out, was a declaration that a death was suspicious. Like hitting a fire alarm button, it set all kinds of activities in motion — getting Crime Scene to search the house, collect evidence, record friction-ridge prints and extensively photograph and video the scene; scheduling autopsies, and alerting the prosecutor’s office that a homicide investigation case file had been started. In his five years on the job Tal had never gotten so many calls before 10:00 as he had this morning.
Tal glanced into the captain’s office then LaTour’s. Nobody seemed to notice that a statistician who’d never issued a parking ticket in his life was clutching crime scene files.
Except Shellee, who subtly blessed herself and winked.
Tal asked the Crime Scene detective, “Preliminary, you said. What else’re you waiting for?”
“Phone records, handwriting confirmation of the note and autopsy results. Hey, I’m really curious. What’d you find that made you think this was suspicious? Fits the classic profile of every suicide I’ve ever worked.”
“Some things.”
“Things,” the seasoned cop said, nodding slowly. “Things. Ah. Got a suspect?”
“Not yet.”
“Ah. Well, good luck. You’ll need it.”
Back in his office Tal carefully filed away the spreadsheet he’d been working on then opened the CSU files. He spread the contents out on his desk.
We begin with inspiration, a theorem, an untested idea: There is a perfect odd number. There is a point at which pi repeats. The universe is infinite.
A mathematician then attempts to construct a proof that shows irrefutably that his position either is correct or cannot be correct.
Tal Simms knew how to create such proofs with numbers. But to prove the theorem that there was something suspicious about the deaths of the Bensons and the Whitleys? He had no idea how to do this and stared at the hieroglyphics of the crime scene reports, increasingly discouraged. He had basic academy training, of course, but, beyond that, no investigation skills or experience.
But then he realized that perhaps this wasn’t quite accurate. He did have one talent that might help: the cornerstone of his profession as a mathematician — logic.
He turned his analytical mind to the materials on his desk as he examined each item carefully. He first picked the photos of the Whitleys’ bodies. All in graphic, colorful detail. They troubled him a great deal. Still, he forced himself to examine them carefully, every inch. After some time he concluded that nothing suggested that the Whitleys had been forced into the car or had struggled with any assailants.
He set the photos aside and read the documents in the reports themselves. There were no signs of any break-in, though the front and back doors weren’t locked, so someone might have simply walked in. But with the absence of signs of physical assault an intrusion seemed unlikely. And their jewelry, cash, and other valuables were untouched.
One clue, though, suggested that all was not as it seemed. The Latents team found that both notes contained, in addition to Sam Whitley’s, Tal’s and the police officers’ prints, smudges that were probably from gloved hands or fingers protected by a cloth or tissue. The team had also found glove prints in the den where the couple had had their last drink, in the room where the note had been found, and in the garage.
Gloves? Tal wondered. Curious.
The team had also found fresh tire prints on the driveway. The prints didn’t match the MG, the other cars owned by the victims or the vehicles driven by the police, medical team, or the funeral home. The report concluded that the car had been there within the three hours prior to death. The tread marks were indistinct, so that the brand of tire couldn’t be determined, but the wheelbase meant the vehicle was a small one.
A search of the trace evidence revealed several off-white cotton fibers — one on the body of Elizabeth Whitley and one on the living room couch — that didn’t appear to match what the victims were wearing or any of the clothes in their closets. An inventory of drugs in the medicine cabinets and kitchen revealed no antidepressants, which suggested, even if tenuously, that mood problems and thoughts of suicide might not have occurred in the Whitley house recently.
He rose, walked to his doorway and called Shellee in.
“Hi, Boss. Havin’ an exciting morning, are we?”
He rolled his eyes. “I need you to do something for me.”
“Are you...? I mean, you look tired.”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine. It’s just about this case.”
“What case?”
“The suicide.”
“Oh.”
“I need to find out if anybody’s bought a book called Making the Final Journey. Then a subhead — something about suicide and euthanasia.”
“A book. Sure.”
“I don’t remember exactly. But Making the Journey or Making the Final Journey is the start of the title.”
“Okay. And I’m supposed to check on—?”
“If anybody bought it.”
“I mean, everywhere? There’re probably a lot of—”
“For now, just in Westbrook County. In the last couple of weeks. Bookstores. And that online place, the big one, Booksource dot com.”
“Hey, when I call, is it okay to play cop?”
Tal hesitated. But then he said, “Oh, hell, sure. You want, you can be a detective.”
“Yippee,” she said. “Detective Shellee Bingham.”
“And if they haven’t sold any, give them my name and tell them if they do, call us right away.”
“We need a warrant or anything?” Detective Shellee asked, thoughtful now.
Did they? he wondered.
“Hmm. I don’t know. Let’s just try it without and see what they say.”
Five minutes later Tal felt a shadow over him and he looked up to see Captain Ronald Dempsey’s six-foot-three form fill the doorway in his ubiquitous striped shirt, his sleeves ubiquitously rolled up.
The man’s round face smiled pleasantly. But Tal thought immediately: I’m busted.