CHAPTER 25.

Shrader picked up Sam at her apartment an hour after the Jeep was discovered, but the medical examiner and CSU were already at the scene when he and Sam arrived. He pulled to a stop behind several other vehicles parked on the main road and, with Sam in the lead, they made their way down the slippery path trampled into the snow by the parade of heavy, booted feet since Friday.

The cabin was tucked close against a high tree-covered hill at the rear, a position that gave it shelter from behind while allowing a spectacular, un.o.bstructed view of the mountain scenery from the front. The bomb shelter-garage was around the corner and on the back side of that same hill. "Who'd have thought there was a hole in the d.a.m.ned hill behind this place?" Shrader commented as they trudged past the cabin, following a fresh path of footprints around the hill to the back.

McCord was standing just outside the open garage doors watching an NYPD crime scene unit methodically going over the narrow interior, gathering samples and taking photographs. Two more members of the unit were standing outside with him, waiting to go inside when there was more room.

"What have we got?" Shrader asked McCord.

McCord started to answer, but the M.E., a heavyset man with red cheeks and blue earm.u.f.fs, walked past the doorway just then and a.s.sumed the question was directed at him. "We've got a corpse, Shrader," Herbert Niles said cheerfully. "A nice, perfectly preserved corpse, thanks to this underground freezer he's been sitting in. He's not as pretty now as he looked on his driver's license, but it's definitely Logan Manning."

As the M.E. spoke, he walked into the garage, leaned into the Jeep and carefully lifted first one wrist and then the other, swabbing each hand on the back, the fingers, and the palm with sticky pads used to pick up traces of nitrates found in gunpowder residue. "We've also got what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the right temple-"

Sam moved to the side and got a full view of the male body slumped partway between the steering wheel and driver's door, the window beside his head heavily splattered with blood and brain matter, the pa.s.senger's window partway open and unharmed.

"Weapon?" Shrader prodded.

"There's a recently fired thirty-eight special, with two empty cartridges in the chamber, lying near the victim's foot-" Niles paused to deposit the last sticky pad into an evidence bag and write down the part of the hand where he'd taken the swab. "One slug penetrated his skull and exited on the left side, traveling through the driver's side window and lodging in the left wall."

"What about the second one?" Shrader asked.

"I think we can reasonably conclude that he didn't fire the second one after he blew his brains out. That could mean he missed his own head the first time he aimed at it, or-more likely-and this is the theory I like-he fired the first shot a year ago at an empty beer can on a fence."

Since transferring to homicide, Sam had worked with only two other M.E.'s, both of them as humorless as the work they did. Herbert Niles was in charge of the M.E.'s office, and despite his glib remarks, he was reported to be even more conscientious than the more serious-minded M.E.'s who reported to him. She glanced at McCord, but he was watching one of the CSU people who'd stopped taking photographs and was using a flashlight to inspect the old cans and containers on the steel shelves. He was looking for that second slug.

Niles backed himself out of the Jeep and stripped off his rubber gloves. "The light is lousy in this cave, and the battery's dead on the Jeep, so we can't use its headlights. CSU has more lights with them, but there's no room for them in there until we get the vehicle out." He looked at the men waiting outside with McCord. "I'm done. Go ahead and push the vehicle out; then we'll bag and tag Mr. Manning and I'll take him back home. After that, this place is all yours."

He looked at McCord. "I suppose you'll want to know what's on those swabs first thing in the morning, Mack?"

Instead of replying, McCord lifted his brows.

Niles sighed. "Right-I'll let you know in about four hours. That gives me three and a half hours to make the drive back and a half hour to study the swabs under the microscope. a.s.suming your dead guy didn't warm up in there during the last week, any powder residue on his hands will still be there, and the swabs should have picked it up. You'll have to wait until tomorrow for us to match up prints and start the rest of the process. Don't expect much from me on a T.O.D."

he added. "Manning's body is perfectly preserved with no apparent signs of deterioration."

"Not a problem," McCord said. "Detective Littleton has already figured out when Manning died." It was the first time he'd actually looked at Sam since she arrived. "Haven't you?"

Sam slid her sungla.s.ses low on her nose and eyed him reproachfully above the frames for subjecting her to another pop quiz. "I'd put his time of death at last Sunday, between three P.M. and three A.M. the next morning-probably closer to three P.M. , Sunday."

"How did you arrive at that?" Niles asked.

"There were a couple inches of snow on the Jeep in the garage, which means Manning put the vehicle in there sometime after two P.M. , when the snow really started falling. By three A.M. , there was almost a foot and a half of snow on the ground, so the drifts down here would have barricaded the doors completely, preventing him from being able to move the vehicle in or out. The doors were still barricaded by snow this morning, which means he's been in there all this time."

"Sounds good to me," Niles said, jotting down notes about her timing.

McCord wanted to look around the inside of the house. "I've been over the photographs CSU took last week," he said to Littleton, "but I'd like you and Shrader to show me what you saw and point out where everything was."

They were standing in the main room a few minutes later, discussing the gla.s.ses in the kitchen sink and the presence of only one sleeping bag, when one of the CSU guys poked his head inside the open doorway. "We've got the second slug, Lieutenant."

All three of them turned at once. "Where was it?" McCord asked.

"Lodged in the timbers of the right-hand wall of the garage."

The Jeep had been pushed outdoors and was being dusted for prints and checked for fibers, which left room inside for CSU's battery-operated high-wattage lights. "We'd have spotted it sooner if we'd been able to get our lights in here earlier.'' He walked over to the wall on the right and pointed to a fresh hole in the timbers about four and a half feet up from the floor. "Was there anything in front of it on the shelf?" Sam asked.

"Nope. No one tried to hide it. We just couldn't see it until we lit the place up."

Silently, Sam gauged the height of the newly discovered hole and turned, comparing it to the height of the open window on the pa.s.senger door of the Jeep.

"Interesting, isn't it?" Shrader said, arriving at the same possibility Sam had reached.

"I a.s.sume the window on the pa.s.senger side was down when you got here?"

Shrader asked him.

"If it's down now, it was down when we got here."

"Was that a definite yes?" Shrader said impatiently. "Or was it 'I think so, it should have been, it probably was.' "

"The windows are electric and the battery is dead, so it had to have been down when they got here," Sam pointed out in a low voice.

"I know that," Shrader said irritably. "I just don't want to listen to any smart-a.s.s answers on my day off."

"It was definitely down when we got here, Detective," came the more respectful reply.

"Thank you," Shrader retorted.

An hour after Niles left with Manning's body, Sam and Shrader hiked back up to the main road behind McCord. "It's two-thirty," McCord said. "By the time we get back to the city, Niles should know whether or not Manning was holding that thirty-eight when it fired. Once we know that, we can call on his widow in person and watch how she takes the news."

"I'm going to let the two of you handle that yourself" Shrader told him. "I had to miss my granddaughter's birthday party today, and I'd like to go by and see her before she's in bed asleep. Is it okay if Sam rides back with you?"

"It's fine," McCord said.

Her unexpected attraction to McCord yesterday had surprised and concerned Sam so much that she'd made a very deliberate, and successful, effort to rationalize it out of existence by the time she went to bed. As a result, she was able to spend three and a half hours in the car with him, talking about nothing in particular, without experiencing so much as a tiny, inappropriate tremor of s.e.xual awareness. There was no more banter between them on the trip back to the city, no stimulating repartee or personal comments.

Only two things bothered Sam in that regard: One, she rather missed all that, and two, she didn't think McCord even noticed it was missing.

Shortly before six P.M. , McCord stopped at a convenience store to buy a sandwich, and while Sam waited in the car, Herbert Niles phoned. He was still reexamining the last swab under a scanning electron microscope, but he was eager to impart his findings to Sam the instant she picked up McCord's cell phone from the seat and answered it. "There was no residue on Manning's right palm," Niles told her, "so he wasn't holding up his hand in a defensive pose when the shot was fired. I got residue off the fingers of his right hand, so there's no doubt his hand was on the weapon when it fired at least one of those shots.

But you know where else I ought to find residue if he fired that weapon without any 'a.s.sistance'?"

Sam named the only other location he would have swabbed: "On the back of his hand."

"That's right. I'm looking at the swab of the back of his right hand right now, and it's perfectly clean. You've got yourself a homicide, not a suicide, Detective."

Sam tried not to sound as surprised as she felt when she relayed Nile's findings to McCord a few minutes later: "Niles called. Someone else's hand was covering Manning's and holding it on the thirty-eight when it fired."

"There was no powder residue on the back of his hand?" McCord's smile was slow and satisfied.

Sam shook her head. "No. The only residue was on the fingers of his right hand."

"I knew it," McCord said softly. "I knew it was going to play out this way as soon as CSU dug the second slug out of the wall. It always amazes me..."

"What does?"

"The stupid mistakes murderers make."

CHAPTER 26.

Courtney glanced at the clock in the kitchen. "It's almost six, and I've got a lot of work to do for cla.s.s tomorrow."

"You're calling it quits?" O'Hara said with relief, tallying up the score. "Why stop now, when I've still got some money left in my pension fund?"

"Call me softhearted."

"You're a cardsharp. Do you fleece those people you're staying with out of their money, too?"

She grinned as she slid the cards back into their box. "The Donnellys are either out, or they're sleeping-" The telephone rang, and since Hilda had gone to a movie, O'Hara got up to answer it. When he hung up a moment later, he was frowning.

"Was that about Mr. Manning?" Courtney asked worriedly.

"No. It's Michael Valente. He's in the lobby. Mrs. Manning is expecting him."

"What's he like?"

"All I know is that he's big trouble for Mrs. Manning. You saw what happened when the reporters found out she'd been with him on Friday in the mountains. You'd have thought she was sleepin' with the devil or something, just for being in his helicopter. I was with the two of them every second, and nothing happened. Nothing. Mrs. Manning doesn't even call him by his first name."

"I'd never heard of him until I saw all that stuff about him on the news this week," Courtney admitted. "I guess he's really famous, though."

"Yeah, for a whole lot of bad stuff. I owe you sixteen dollars." He dug the money out of his pocket and put it on the table.

" Did he seem like a bad guy the day you were with him? "

"Let me put it this way-I wouldn't like to be around if he ever loses his temper. The cops were needling him that day, especially a cop named Harwell, and Valente didn't like it. He got real, real quiet... And his eyes got real, real cold... Know what I mean?"

Courtney was intrigued. "He looked like... what... murderous?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

"Maybe I should stay while he's here, just to make sure Leigh is all right?"

The buzzer at the front door sounded, and O'Hara dismissed her suggestion.

"I'll be close by while he's here, but I don't think there's anything to worry about.

From what I've read over the years, he's involved in a lot of shady business deals, but he hasn't done anything violent in a long time."

"How rea.s.suring," Courtney said sarcastically.

"Well, maybe this will be more rea.s.suring..." he said with a confiding wink.

"That day in the mountains, the cops told Mrs. Manning to wait up at the road while they checked out the cabin. When n.o.body came back up to tell us anything, Valente picked Mrs. Manning up and carried her in his arms through the snow, down to the cabin. Then he carried her all the way back up to the road.

He turns into a real Sir Galahad when he's around her."

"Really?" Courtney breathed. "How... interesting."

"I'll call you when we hear anything about Mr. Manning," O'Hara promised on his way toward the living room.

Instead of letting herself out the service door to the kitchen, Courtney strolled quietly over to the doorway into the dining room. Leaning her shoulder against the doorframe, she peered thoughtfully at the tall, broad-shouldered man walking down the foyer steps into the living room. According to what she'd read and heard about him this week, Michael Valente was as adept at eluding reporters as he was at eluding attempts to put him in prison.

He was certainly "high-profile," especially right now.

She already had access to some "new and unusual" facts about him.

As an interview subject, he could prove to be a lot more intriguing than the pope or the president.

She studied his solemn smile as he held out both hands to Leigh and said, "I've been worried about you."

His voice gave Courtney a jolt. He had an amazing voice, deep and distinctive. If he hadn't chosen to be a criminal, he could have used that voice to great advantage on the radio or television.

She stepped out of O'Hara's way, her gaze shifting to the large flat white box that Valente had handed him when he walked in. Tucked under O'Hara's arm was a brown bag, twisted at the top, which Courtney a.s.sumed contained a bottle of something with an alcohol content.

"You still here?" Joe asked her in surprise.

"I'm leaving, but I wanted to get a look at Valente in person," she replied, following him into the kitchen. "What's in the box?"

"I don't know," he said, putting it on the island. "But if I had to guess, I'd say it's a pizza."

"He brought her a pizza?" Courtney exclaimed with a m.u.f.fled laugh. "A pizza? He owns a helicopter and entire blocks of buildings in New York City-I'd have figured him for a seven-course take-out meal from Le Cirque, with maybe a gaudy diamond bracelet as a napkin ring."

"Really? I guess you know more about him than I do."

"I don't know much of anything about him, but I'm going to do some research." She lifted the cover of the flat white box and shuddered with revulsion. "Oh, yuk!"

In the midst of trying to figure out how to turn one of the ovens on, O'Hara looked over his shoulder to see what her exclamation was about.