CHAPTER ONE My first thought that night: I hate gunshot wounds to the head. I leaned forward, placing my right foot ahead of the other and bending my right knee so as to hover over the dead man''s face. This was uncomfortable. Still, I didn''t use my gloved hands to balance myself against the red Honda sedan that stood two feet from the body. An old rule from academy days marched through the rear of my memory: "Always keep your hands behind your back when first approaching the crime scene." I didn''t need to hear that. I knew it well enough. Still, the rule played along, reminding me that this was my first case in this new city that I barely called home.
Better to hear recordings out of the rule book. Rules helped me distance myself from the killing, but not for very long. This exit wound, right through the top of the skull, an inside-out, crumbly, bloody cradle cap topped with disintegrated brain tissue, shortened the distance between the victim and me real quick. But the killing didn''t let the pistol in the man''s hand escape my sight, the first thing that was wrong with this picture. "Carajo," I muttered, "what a mess." "What''s that you say?" the voice came from one side. It was a southern voice, one of the common twangs I heard throughout Nashville. I looked up at an older man.
He crouched next to me. He was the medical examiner. His name escaped me. I hadn''t worked any big case since arriving here from Atlanta four weeks earlier, and up to now had had no need to meet the examiner. The dead man''s doughnut head promised to bring that old guy and me together for a while. "Oh. Nothing. Just a Spanish word," I chuckled, tossing my hair over my shoulder as if catching it on a hook.
I sounded embarrassed. It wouldn''t do to translate carajo to a stranger. Bad manners, my mama would remind me with her scolding voice. He didn''t respond. For the moment he seemed too preoccupied for introductions. He had sliced a small opening into the victim''s abdomen and was now shoving a digital thermometer into the slit. Then he crouched there, holding the thermometer still. "Gonna be hard to get an accurate reading," he muttered.
"Too much blood gone from that head wound. The bullet must have sliced through the edge of the carotid. The blood pulls away the heat more quickly." He wrote a note in his pad regarding the incision. Bulbs burst about us from the two uniform cops who took pictures of the area. They lit up the early-morning darkness with their silent flashes. While the doctor pushed the thermometer deeper into the man''s gut, I walked away to look at the car. It was a small Honda, sporty red.
The driver''s door was open. The body itself lay in front of the car to the right side. The car straddled two parking places, covering one of the lines with its midsection. It appeared that the victim--if he had been the person driving--had pulled in quickly, paying little attention to the lines of an empty parking lot. The short, buzzing sounds of an unhooked telephone chirped in the grass. I was surprised no one had noticed that. Perhaps the scene-of-crime technicians had decided to leave the cellular phone there, waiting for Prints to come by and dust it. I shined my handlight into the grass.
The thin, new cellular was the type that fits easily in a breast pocket. Behind me, the M.E. pulled the tiny, thin rod away from the man''s abdomen. He had to stand to hold the thermometer up to a streetlight and read it. He turned away from me momentarily. The man was much taller than I, and skinny. I wasn''t sure if he wanted to know me or not.
He seemed busy, too busy to take time with me. Yet I walked as if I had no place here. I was one of two or three women in the area. Perhaps that was what made me hesitate to take my position--which was the main position--at the crime scene. Then there was the kill itself. I couldn''t keep my eyes on the wound too long. I had to stand again and take a couple of steps back. Beyond the Honda, in the background of my vision, a large riverboat floated in the Cumberland, its ornate bridge protruding above the flood wall.
On the other side of the river stood the black outline of old buildings, a small, antique skyline that had been overshadowed by the new skyscrapers standing on this side of the water. Two police officers wrapped the area with yellow tape. I kept my hands in the small of my back and walked toward them. They muttered to each other about how strange it was to find a suicide in this part of town. "Right downtown, on River Park, in the middle of the night. Can you figure that?" I introduced myself as the primary detective. Actually, I was the only detective, but I wasn''t about to tell the uniforms this. One of the cops turned and looked down at me.
I could feel his eyes float quickly down my body, which made no sense, considering I wore a long black trench coat that covered me from my neck to my ankles. These cold November days demanded such protection. The cop seemed familiar. Then I realized it was his eyes. They had floated over me before, in the hallways of the Main Police Squad downtown. One day the previous week I had walked by. He had looked me up and down, then had whispered to his partner, "Check out the lady in red." My mother would not have liked that statement.
Yet she would not have scolded the officer for his soft, lewd comment, but would have berated me instead for wearing my favorite color. "Demasiado sexy, hija," she would have said. "You are giving messages that do not befit a lady." As always, she was right. And yet I never had the desire to send ladylike messages. I was a homicide detective, not a damned debutante who waited on her fifteenth birthday at the church doors for the perfect man to come by and sweep her away. I''m Latina, but damned if I''ll be that Latina. "I''m Detective Romilia Chacon, officer.
And you''re ." I looked down at his nameplate and almost chuckled, "Officer Beaver. First name?" "Henry." "Mind if I call you that?" He didn''t answer. "One of the other blues tells me you''ve got the notes on this. What can you give me?" The beaver walked away from me and the tree branch where he had been tying the yellow tape. He approached the car. "Pretty cut and dry.
Suicide." "Why do you say that?" "Because of the gun in the man''s hand, Detective." Beaver looked at me with that Some-things-are-just-too-obvious-look. I wanted to give him my Go-screw-yourself-up-the-ass-with-your-own-nightstick look, but decided to turn my attention to the body. He continued, "It''s a forty-five caliber. Once we lift it, we''ll check the numbers to see if he owned it. I got his wallet from him, got his name and address. That''s why they called you, Detective.
" His voice was deadpan. "What''s his name?" I asked, knowing that it was a Spanish name, and ready to see how this gringo cop was going to butcher its pronunciation. He had to flip through his notebook to read it phonetically. "Diego . uh . Diego Sinus, something like that." "Saenz," I corrected, looking over his shoulder at the spelling. "Diego Saenz.
" My clipped Salvadoran accent made his very voice sound stupid. "Yeah. Whatever. Not like we need to practice our Spanish here in Nashville." He closed his notebook. "Anyway, Prints will dust the weapon and lift it in a minute." "His name sounds familiar. What about legal time of death?" "It''s 3:11 a.
m. I arrived here at that time and called it in. I had driven through here an hour earlier, but hadn''t seen the car, so he killed himself sometime after I moved on. I came back around, and here he was." "You got an estimated time?" "You''ll have to ask Doc about that." "Right. By the way, what''s Doc''s name?" "Jacob Callahan." Before dismissing him, I asked Beaver for any other information on the victim.
He gave me the rundown: Name: Diego Saenz. Age: twenty-four. Weight: one hundred sixty-five pounds. Race: Hispanic. Height: five feet, nine inches. Eyes: brown. All of this was from his driver''s license, of course. It told me very little.
"I also found two credit cards on him. VISA Gold and MasterCard Platinum. Oh yeah, also a press card." So Saenz was a reporter. "May I see the card?" I asked Beaver. He handed it to me. It seemed legit: Saenz worked for The Cumberland Journal, the second-largest paper in Nashville and the surrounding areas. This wasn''t going to be a commonplace killing among a few drunk migrant workers.
I bet my boss McCabe didn''t expect my first case to be a victim who carried around ten grand in plastic money. I gave the press card back to Beaver. He took a step away, blatantly ignoring any chance of my dismissal, not even remaining by my side for a "Thank you, Officer Beaver." Maybe he would appreciate "Up yours, Officer Beaver" more. He angered me. But he also emptied a hole in me. I had a sudden urge to call home, wake my mother, and ask her how my son, Sergio, was. She would tell me, of course, that he was asleep, he was fine.
Yet she would understand the lack of logic in my phone call, and would assure me that my hijo, my querido, was safe. It would be enough to fill the edges of this hole. Beaver walked back to his tree branch. He said nothing, though I could hear the other uniform walk up to Beaver and whisper something through a barely controlled, manly giggle. Something about ladies wearing red, perhaps? I had spiked platform shoes back home that could slice their quick erections righ.