Red Man Down(4)

She walked over and stood beside the doctor, who was already hurling questions across the eight feet of space between him and the photographer. How come the scene was only just getting photographed? Greenberg wanted to know. Where were all the detectives who should be here by now? Had the photographer rolled the body yet? How much longer did the doctor have to wait? Moses Greenberg had a Type-A personality augmented by a fanatical fitness regimen. Running marathons, biking mountain trails and swimming a mile or two a day, he stayed fit and ready to cope with the next crisis, which as often as not he would create himself.

Dr Greenberg was not easy to be around. Sarah liked him anyway, because his standards for himself were even higher than for everybody else, and he had a nice, respectful way with bodies.

Buddy Norris flung back short answers without looking up, making it clear he didn’t give a crap about the doctor’s anxieties. ‘I’ll be done here in about five minutes,’ he said, ‘but then I gotta do all that junk in the pickup and a bunch more in the warehouse. Plenty of time for questions later, Doc.’

‘Good morning, Doctor,’ Sarah said, and waited through a couple of loud, well-phrased sentences describing everything that was wrong with the way this scene was being handled. His curls and high coloring grew more dramatic as he described the several catastrophic mistakes it was probably already too late to prevent.

When he paused for breath she said, ‘Yes, well, you know this is an officer-related shooting? So we’ll need detailed descriptions of the number and placement of bullet wounds.’

‘Ah. Yes, I suppose you will be quite anxious for that,’ Greenberg said, ‘considering how little blood I’m seeing. Looks like the poor sap died while he was still falling down.’ He looked at her sideways. ‘No witnesses, huh?’

‘No. Spurlock called for backup but everybody was on another call. It took a few minutes for anybody to get here.’

‘Well then,’ Greenberg said, ‘let’s hope all the entry wounds are at the front.’

Not needing any more of Greenberg’s black humor just then, Sarah walked quickly back to Spurlock and said, ‘Let’s take a hike.’

They started at the street. Standing in the driveway in front of Officer Garry’s makeshift check-in desk, Spurlock had distance from the body and better concentration. ‘Take it from the top,’ Sarah said. ‘You were on Flowing Wells when you got the call? Heading north or south?’

‘Just crossing Wetmore, headed south. Dispatch asked if there was anyone in the vicinity, said witnesses reported somebody burglarizing an abandoned warehouse on Flowing Wells. I called in, said that I was just north of there and I’d take it.’

‘So you were approaching from the north, you arrived at this address and turned in right away?’

‘No, I stopped right there at the curb’ – he pointed to a spot ten feet from his foot – ‘to eyeball it for a minute. I had a good view across the empty parking lot. I suppose that’s why he thought he could score some wire here today,’ Spurlock said, indicating the bleak, boarded-up windows and long-neglected parking spaces with their headers askew. ‘Christmas break, Saturday, the street is busy but all the action is at the malls. This is a pretty dead area normally. Today, you can see, there’s hardly anybody in the buildings on this side of the block.

‘The only vehicle in sight was that old Dodge pickup a few feet back from the power box. The driver’s-side door was open and the driver had the cover off the box. I didn’t have to get any closer to see what he was doing – he already had a small spool of wire started.

‘I got on the radio, told Dispatch what I was looking at and asked for backup ASAP. But then nobody came! All while I was on the radio, he had that auxiliary motor turned on and was rolling copper wire around the spool. There was one big shriek when the wire tore loose at the far end and then he just kept rolling it up, neat as can be.’

‘You were still paused on the street?’

‘I was right here in the driveway’ – he pointed to the ground by his feet – ‘pulling in. I wanted to wait for backup but I saw that wire coming out and I thought, I can’t just sit here like a doofus and watch taxpayers’ property being destroyed.’ The pulsing tic reappeared in his jaw as the stress of the decision replayed in his mind. ‘So I pulled into the lot—’

‘This way?’ She started them moving, under the tape, back toward the body. The rest of the detective crew began to arrive – all at once, it seemed. They all pulled up to the driveway, saw the tape and then backed out and pulled ahead to park at the curb. Soon there were three more Impalas lined up nose-to-tail in front of hers.