Without remorse - Tom Clancy [135]
'Four shots, early in the morning, you figure somebody might have heard?' The brick tunnel ought to have focused the sound like the lens of a telescope, Ryan thought, and the .22 had a loud, sharp bark. But how often had there been cases just like this one in which no one had heard a thing? Besides, the way this neighborhood was going, people divided into two classes: those who didn't look because they didn't care, and those who knew that looking merely increased the chance of catching a stray round.
'There's two officers knocking on doors now, Lieutenant. Nothing yet.'
'Not bad shooting, Em.' Douglas had his pencil out, pointing to the holes in the forehead of the unidentified victim. They were scarcely half an inch apart, just above the bridge of the nose. 'No powder marks. The killer must have been standing ... call it three, four feet, max.' Douglas stood back at the feet of the bodies and extended his arm. It was a natural shot, extending your arm and aiming down.
'I don't think so. Maybe there's powder marks we can't see, Tom. That's why we have medical examiners.' He meant that both men had dark complexions, and the light wasn't all that good. But if there was powder tattooing around the small entrance wounds, neither detective could see it. Douglas squatted back down to give the entrance wounds another look.
'Nice to know somebody appreciates us,' the coroner's representative said, ten feet away, scribbling his own notes.
'Either way, Em, our shooter has a real steady hand.' The pencil moved to the head of Maceo Donald. The two holes in his forehead, maybe a little higher on the forehead then the other man, were even closer together. 'That's unusual.'
Ryan shrugged and began his search of the bodies. Though the senior of the two, he preferred to do this himself while Douglas took the notes. He found no weapon on either man, and though both had wallets and ID, from which they identified the unknown as Charles Barker, age twenty, the amount of cash discovered wasn't nearly what men in their business would customarily have on their persons. Nor were there any drugs -
'Wait, here's something - three small glassine bags of white powdery substance,' Ryan said in the language of his profession. 'Pocket change, a dollar seventy-five; cigarette lighter, Zippo, brushed steel, the cheap one. Pack of Pall Malls from the shirt pocket - and another small glassine bag of white powdery substance.'
'A drug ripoff,' Douglas said, diagnosing the incident. It wasn't terribly professional but it was pretty obvious. 'Monroe?'
'Yes, sir?' The young officer would never stop being a Marine. Nearly everything he said, Douglas noted, had 'sir' attached to it.
'Our friends Barker and Donald - experienced pushers?'
'Ju-Ju's been around since I've been in the district, sir. I never heard of anybody messin' with him.'
'No signs of a fight on the hands,' Ryan said after turning them over. 'Hands are tied up with ... electrical wire, copper wire, white insulation, trademark on it, can't read it yet. No obvious signs of a struggle.'
'Somebody got Ju-Ju!' It was Mark Charon, who had just arrived. 'I had a case running on that fuck, too.'
'Two exit wounds, back of Mr Donald's head,' Ryan went on, annoyed at the interruption. 'I expect we'll find the bullets somewhere at the bottom of this lake,' he added sourly.
'Forget ballistics,' Douglas grunted. That wasn't unusual with the .22. First of all, the bullet was made of soft lead, and was so easily deformed that the striations imparted by the rifling of the gun barrel were most often impossible to identify. Second, the little ,22 had a lot of penetrating power, more even than a .45, and often ended up splattering itself on some object beyond the victim. In this case the cement of the walkway.
'Well, tell me about him,' Ryan ordered.
'Major street pusher, big clientele. Drives a nice red Caddy,' Charon added. 'Pretty smart one, too.'
'Not anymore. His brain got homogenized about six hours ago.'
'Rip?'