"Point-blank entry wound," Tillinghast said, pointing at the hole with a scalpel. "See the abrasion ring? The seared edges? And how much cordite and gunpowder residue-"
"Yeah, I see it." There was also an imprint from a pistol's barrel.
"Poor son of a bitch also took a couple to the belly, from farther away. But this is the shot killed him. It's a clean through-and-through."
"The exit wound?"
"Wanna see it?" Tillinghast asked, clearly eager to do just that. "I can roll him over. Or pull up the photos on the computer."
"You've got mustard on your chin," I told him, and I put the tip of my right index finger on the hole. I pushed it a little ways inside.
The doc leaned over and used one corner of the dead man's shroud to wipe his chin. "Well, okay. It's not an especially impressive exit. A bit disappointing, really."
"Doc, you are one sick-ass dude." I removed my finger from the hole in Shaker's face. "And the gun?"
"The cartridges I took out of his gut were both nine-by-nineteen-millimeter Parabellum."
I covered Shaker's face again, and stood there, massaging my temples a few moments. I was getting a headache, and I blamed B and the fluorescents. I wasn't going to learn anything here could have learned over the telephone.
"Do the lights have to be so bright?"
Tillinghast glanced towards the ceiling. "I've never thought about it," he said. "It's usually the cold bugs people."
"Nine-millimeter Parabellum," I sighed. "That so does not narrow it down."
"Sic vis pacem, para bellum. ‘If you seek peace, prepare for war.'"
"Listen, professor, it's been an especially shitty day, and I don't need a goddamn lesson in Greek. I need to know who killed him and why."
Tillinghast corrected. "It's Latin, Quinn. Not Greek."
I squinted at him over my shoulder. "I hit a defenseless goth chick this afternoon. So I got no problem whatsoever hitting a loud-mouth canoe maker."
He grinned. Hardly the reaction I'd expected.
"Canoe maker," he said, nodding his bald head. "You've been watching cop shows."
"Helps pass the time."
I turned back to the body beneath the sheet. I wondered if B would even pay for a decent funeral, or if the disposal of Shaker Lashly's cadaver had become the state's problem. Either way, not my goddamn problem. None of my business. For the time being, I'd done my duty. Time to go home and get some sleep, turn off my phone, and let B sit and spin until morning.
Now, right about here, someone might inquire why a gal in my position didn't just find a handy necromancer to wake the corpse up long enough to tell me whatever he knew about the identity of his murderer, or maybe a medium who could hold a séance and get him on the line that way. Fair enough. Another time, I might have done just that. I'm a big believer in shortcuts. Only, everyone had made it clear this mess was all hush-hush, top-secret, cloak-and-dagger shit. I start hauling in spiritualists and sorcerers and . . . did I mention how nasties and their buds gossip? Besides, the only decent necromancers in the neighborhood were the Maidstones. So, why didn't I just ask Berenice to give it a shot? Would have made sense, right? Right. Well, fuck me if I can remember. But I didn't.
"You've got B's number," I told Tillinghast.
"Maybe we'll get something useful from ballistics."
"Not gonna hold my breath. Finish your sandwich. I'm going home."
"You hold your breath?" he asked. "I mean-"
"Good-bye, Doc. I'll be sure to tell B you were lots more helpful than you were. Also, fuck that Tex Avery crap. Stick to Chuck Jones."
And then I showed myself out, same as I'd shown myself in. "I'm not a goddamn detective," I muttered to myself as I headed for the stairs.
• • •
Back in the apartment I shared with house centipedes and innumerable dust bunnies I couldn't be bothered to sweep up, I switched on the television. The channel didn't matter. Animal Planet and a pack of hyenas appeared on the screen, and that was fine by me. Just something, anything, for the comforting drone of background noise to keep me company. The visit to Tillinghast's morgue had left me jumpy, on edge. I went to the bathroom and removed the contacts from my aching eyes, glad to see those black amber-threaded eyes staring back at me from the medicine cabinet. A few drops of Visine took away most of the pain, and then I washed the makeup off my face, exposing the alabaster waxiness underneath. I washed the fake teeth and put them in a cup of the store-brand, overnight denture-cleaning crap I bought at Walgreens. The water fizzed and, from the front room, a pack of hyenas barked their weird, chirping bark that doesn't sound half as much like human laughter as some people seem to think it does.
Before I'd come up the stairs and through the front door, all I'd been able to think about was bed. Now I was too restless for sleep. I went to the kitchenette and got a Narragansett from the fridge, then collapsed into the recliner I'd scrounged off a sidewalk near Brown just before the holiday break. End of the semester rolls round and lots of students drop out-or get evicted-and leave all sorts of perfectly good shit behind. Since the summer, I'd scored a good mattress that way, and my dresser, too. The dresser had been painted so many times its original color was anyone's guess; the latest coat was a grody yellow, peeling to reveal patches of avocado green and carnation pink underneath. But, hey, it had drawers and held clothes and shit, which is what dressers do. No one needs them to win beauty pageants.
I sat in the recliner, drinking my beer and watching hyenas dismember a wildebeest carcass. But my head was still in the morgue, still on that hole between Shaker Lashly's eyebrows. Shaker hadn't been such a bad guy, decent enough I'd often wondered why the hell he'd ever gone to work for B. More than likely, blackmail was involved. Maybe B had paid off some debt or another and saved his skin from one of them fates worse than death. Sure, that might have been how it had gone. I never asked. None of my beeswax. Back in the '90s, he'd come up to Rhode Island from Mississippi and had carried the accent to prove it. He knew about a thousand dirty jokes. He was aces with a single-shot bolt-action rifle. I'd once seen him take down a troublesome night gaunt with a Mauser SR-93. From half a mile away. Without a scope.
"Fuck it," I mumbled at the TV and the squabbling hyenas. "Dude got sloppy. Was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Probably did something stupid, and it got him killed."
Give us enough time, we all make that sort of fatal, final mistake. He'd stood his ground when he shoulda run, or he'd ducked right when he shoulda dodged left. Or the sorta nasty had caught up to him ain't no dodging or ducking. Some monsters get your number, that's all she wrote.
I finished my Narragansett and set the bottle on the floor beside the chair, figuring I could at least doze awhile in the chair before Mean Mr. B called and sent me back out to chase after Amity fucking Maidstone and/or Shaker's murderer.
But . . . um . . . no. Wasn't gonna happen. Fuck all forbid.
I'd just shut my eyelids when the door burst open with enough force that the wood splintered straight down the middle and the damn thing was left hanging on its rusty hinges. And there was Rizzo, brandishing a new cross bow in one hand, and a big-ass, double-barrel shotgun in the other. By the way, all shotguns look big ass when someone's pointing them at you. That's some sort of universal law.
"Asshole, you broke my fucking front door!" I growled about half a second before he squeezed the triggers on both the bow and the shotgun. Made a shitload of noise, but, you'll remember, the downstairs neighbors were out of down. A fact of which I'm sure Rizzo was more than well aware. They'd only left the day before. Still, folks probably heard that shit over in Olneyville.
The bolt caught me in the left shoulder, just south of the clavicle, but far enough north of my heart I was in the clear. I was only hit by a dozen or so pellets of buckshot, mostly in the right cheek. The rest took out the window behind the easy chair.
"And my goddamn window! They make me pay for this shit, you know?" By that point, I was operating on pure indignant adrenaline.
The buckshot stung like I'd stuck my face in a wasp's nest. Still, I'd been in lots worse pain, so it wasn't that much of a distraction. Before he could pull the second trigger on the gun or reload the bow, I'd already yanked the bolt (which had very briefly pinned me to the chair) from my shoulder. I hit the floor and rolled to the my right, towards the bedroom. I had no plan in mind. Who has time for making getaway plans when she's just been caught off her guard by some crazy motherfucker crashing through the door, intent on doing her serious bodily harm all the way unto death?
I slammed into the wall beside the closed bedroom door, leaving a sizable dent in the sheetrock, and got a hand around the knob. I tore it free (well, half of it, the half facing the living room) and flung it straight at Rizzo. Maybe I didn't have a plan, but I was still capable of thinking fast. Also, might I add, I had considerably better aim than he did, and it caught him square between the eyes. The thing was made of cut glass, and it should have killed the bastard right then and there. But you know what they say: Some people are just too mean to die. Or too dumb. Like me and Rizzo.