Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [575]
From the doorway he could easily see what irritated him most, at least three different sets of footprints. One set trailed blood from inside the bathroom out into the hallway, leading all the way around the cleaning cart that had been parked in front of the doorway to block the entrance. The footprint’s owner had ignored the yellow plastic Out Of Order sign. From what Pakula had been told, the cart had been placed there after the stiff was found, so this set of tracks belonged to one of the sightseers. If all that wasn’t bad enough, the stiff just happened to be a priest, a monsignor, according to his driver’s license.
“Holy crap,” Pakula said to no one in particular. “My eighty-year-old mother can’t get past airport security without disrobing and being patted down, but every Tom, Dick and Harry can drop by to take a piss and see the dead guy on the bathroom floor.”
“Guy who found him said he asked a janitor to pull his cart in front of the doorway while he went to get help.” Pete Kasab consulted his two-by-four notebook, jotting down more chicken scratch.
Pakula tried not to roll his eyes at the wet-behind-the-ears junior detective and instead, watched the young black woman from the Douglas County Crime Lab. She hadn’t reacted or responded to any of their chatter. Instead, she had already finished with the video camera and was now starting to work her grid on gloved hands and padded knees, filling specimen bags and bottles with items at the end of her forceps, items that seemed invisible from where Pakula stood. He had never worked with her before, but he knew Terese Medina by reputation. If the killer left something behind, Medina would find it. He wished he could trade Pete Kasab for Medina.
“The guy said he may have bumped into the killer,” Kasab continued, reading it as if it were just another of his scribbles.
“He said what?” Pakula stopped him in midflip of his pages.
“The guy thinks he may have bumped into the perp on his way out of the bathroom.”
Pakula winced at his use of the term “perp.” Was this kid for real? “This guy have a name?”
“The guy he bumped into?’
“No.” Pakula shook his head, biting down on the word idiot before it escaped his lips. “The witness. The guy who found the body.”
“Oh, sure.” And the pages started flipping again. “It’s Scott…” Kasab squinted, trying to read his own notes. “Linquist. I’ve got his work phone, home phone, cell phone and home address.” He tapped the page, smiling, eager to please.
“Happen to have a description?”
“Of Linquist?”
“No, damn it. Of the supposed killer.”
Kasab’s face looked crushed, and he flipped more pages as he mumbled, “Of course I do.”
Now Pakula felt like the asshole. It was a little like stepping on a puppy. He rubbed his hand over his face, trying to get rid of the exhaustion and his impatience. Overdosing on caffeine only made him cranky.
“Linquist said he looked young, was shorter than him. I figured Linquist at about five-ten. He said he had on jeans and a baseball cap. Said the kid bumped into him, you know, in a hurry, on his way out of the bathroom just as Linquist came in. In fact, Linquist said he saw the body and the blood, turned around and raced back out to get help and the kid was nowhere in sight.”
“How young a kid?” Pakula doubted this was the killer. Probably a kid in shock, not knowing what to do or not wanting to get involved. Maybe even afraid he’d get blamed for it.
“He couldn’t say,” Kasab said, but he continued to check his notes. “Oh, here it is. He said he never got a look at the kid’s face.”
“Then how’d he know he was a kid?”
Kasab looked up at him as if checking to see if the question was a test. “I guess by his demeanor or maybe his stature.”
Great, Pakula thought. Now the rookie was guessing. Brilliant police work. Pakula wanted to groan,