Without remorse - Tom Clancy [162]
'Whoa,' Douglas said, getting out first. One did not often see a knife sticking in the back of a head, up in the air like a fence post. 'They weren't kidding.'
The average murder in this part of the city, or any part of any city for that matter, was some sort of domestic argument. People killed other family members, or close friends, over the most trivial disputes. The previous Thanksgiving a father had killed his son over a turkey leg. Ryan's personal 'favorite' was a homicide over a crab cake - not so much a matter of amusement as hyperbole. In all such cases the contributing factors were usually alcohol and a bleak life that transformed ordinarily petty disputes into matters of great import. I didn't mean it was the phrase most often heard afterwards, followed by some variation of why didn't he just back off a little?The sadness of such events was like a slow-acting acid on Ryan's soul. The sameness of those murders was the worst part of all. Human life ought not to end like variations of a single theme. It was too precious for that, a lesson learned in the bocage country of Normandy and the snowy forests around Bastogne when he'd been a young paratrooper in the 101st Airborne. The typical murderer claimed not to have meant it, and frequently copped to the crime immediately, as remorseful as he or she could be over the loss of a friend or loved one by his or her own hand, and so two lives were often destroyed by the crime. Those were crimes of passion and poor judgment, and that's what murder was, for the most part. But not this one.
'What the hell's the matter with the arm?' he asked the medical examiner. Aside from the needle tracks the arm was twisted around so much that he realized he was looking at the wrong side of it.
'The victim's shoulder appears to be dislocated. Make that wrecked,' the ME added after a second's consideration. 'We have bruising around the wrist from the force of the grip. Somebody held the arm with two hands and damned near tore the arm off, like taking a branch off a tree.'
'Karate move?' Douglas asked.
'Something like that. That sure slowed him down some. You can see the cause of death.'
'Lieutenant, over here,' a uniformed sergeant called. 'This is Virginia Charles, she lives a block over. She reported the crime.'
'Are you okay, Miss Charles?' Ryan asked. A fireman-paramedic was checking the bandage she's placed on her own arm, and her son, a senior at Dunbar High School, stood by her side, looking down at the murder victim without a trace of sympathy. Within four minutes Ryan had a goodly quantity of information.
'A bum, you say?'
'Wino— that's the bottle he dropped.' She pointed. Douglas picked it up with the greatest care.
'Can you describe him?' Lieutenant Ryan asked.
The routine was so exactingly normal that they might have been at any Marine base from Lejeune to Okinawa. The daily-dozen exercises followed by a run, everyone in step, the senior NCO calling cadence. They took particular pleasure in passing formations of new second lieutenants in the Basic Officers Course, or even more wimpy examples of officer-wannabes doing their summer school at Quantico. Five miles, passing the five-hundred-yard KD range and various other teaching facilities, all of them named for dead Marines, approaching the FBI Academy, but turning back off the main road then, into the woods towards their training site. The morning routine merely reminded them that they were Marines, and the length of the run made them Recon Marines, for whom Olympic-class fitness was the norm. They were surprised to see a general officer waiting for them. Not to mention a sandbox and a swing set.
'Welcome to Quantico, Marines,' Marty Young told them after they'd had a chance to cool down and been told to stand at ease. Off to the side, they saw two naval officers in