Strangled - Brian McGrory [64]
I came around the corner of Rodeo Road and blinked at what I saw: straight ahead, several blocks away, the pulse of red and blue police lights from squad cars idling in the otherwise empty street.
I reflexively hit the gas, which I suppose isn’t something you should do with cops around. As I got closer, my fears compounded with every passing house. The police cruisers were parked in front of Bob Walters’s house, and they were parked alongside an ambulance, which, in turn, was idling next to a black van. This was not good.
As I pulled up, I saw that there was no yellow police tape, meaning the authorities weren’t treating this as a crime scene, meaning, hopefully, that maybe this was merely a matter of the sickly Bob Walters suddenly needing some medical attention and now everything inside was just fine. Couple of aspirin, maybe a catheter, and the guys in rubber gloves are on their way out the door. Or better yet, and I should probably be embarrassed for even thinking this, but maybe it was his wife in physical distress. Slouched on the kitchen table amid a puddle of vodka and glass fragments, she was hardly the picture of long-term health.
But as I left the air-conditioning of my car for the growing heat of a late desert morning, I saw with a start that the black van had the words, in sterile type, COUNTY CORONER on the side. Still, I thought, maybe Mrs. Walters had killed herself or died of a heart attack or sudden liver failure.
There were a couple of uniformed Las Vegas cops chatting with each other on the front lawn. A team of paramedics came walking out of the front door of the house empty-handed. Well, not entirely empty-handed. They each carried what looked to be a briefcase in their hands.
By now, sweat was dripping down my forehead and across my cheeks, and not from the heat, either. I didn’t want to look panicked, but didn’t know how to stay cool. I noticed that a few neighbors were looking on from their respective yards. I saw through the glare of the front outer door that uniformed men were crouched over, tending to something inside the front hallway. A man in a suit with a stethoscope around his neck came walking silently out the front door, got in an unmarked Ford Expedition, and drove away.
I left my notebook behind in the car. I wiped the sweat off my face with my sleeve and walked across the lawn toward the cops, who kept talking to each other. As I got near I announced, “I’m a friend of the Walterses. Can I ask what’s going on here?” Easy does it, no panic, just projecting true, heartfelt concern.
Both cops, young guys, turned to me with casual, even friendly looks on their faces.
“What’s your name?” one of them asked, not accusatorily, but so he could have a point of reference as he gave me what was undoubtedly bad news.
I told him. Before he could say anything else, the front door opened again, and a man in a white lab coat backed out of it carrying the front end of a stretcher, another man in a white coat picking up the rear. They carefully descended the two front steps, pulled on a bar at the same time beneath the stretcher, and a set of poles and wheels protruded out. They dropped the stretcher with a bounce and rolled it toward the awaiting van.
On the stretcher was a long form wrapped in a black body bag, zipped from what I assumed was head to foot, shining in the midday sun. I watched in silence, as did the two cops, watched as they slid the bag into the back doors of the van and shut them with an aching thud. Still, some part of me thought that without Mrs. Walters around, maybe it was her in the bag. After all, if it was her husband, wouldn’t she be witnessing this scene, even if