Baltimore 03 - Did You Miss Me?

call,’ Dr Brodie said, appearing from behind the Dumpster.
    ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Lots of folks aren’t.’
    ‘You’ll find who did it,’ she said simply.
    ‘I know who did it. Stevie Mazzetti killed who did it.’
    ‘Was that person connected to this death?’
    ‘I’d say that’s a fair assumption. Exactly how, I’m not yet certain.’
    Brodie walked around the body, shining a UV light at the walls and pavement. ‘What’s missing?’ she asked and he felt like he was in her class at the academy again.
    ‘No spatter,’ Joseph said. ‘He was dead or close to it when his throat was slit. The taser wouldn’t have killed him, so something else did.’
    ‘Why slit his throat if he was already dead or close to it? Seems like wasted effort.’
    Joseph had been mulling over that point as he’d driven from the ER. ‘I figure his killer wanted to be sure Zacharias didn’t survive to talk.’
    ‘Or his killer was just a sick sonofabitch who liked slitting throats,’ she said.
    ‘That too.’ He pointed to the AFID tags, discharged with every fired taser cartridge. ‘There are enough tags here for him to have fired at least two or three times.’
    ‘Four, actually.’ Brodie swept her UV light over the scene, revealing dozens of round disks. ‘I found four sets of serial numbers. Sets one and two are consecutive. Three and four are also consecutive, but nowhere near the one/two range.’
    ‘Two different cartridge lots. Two different tasers?’
    ‘Sounds right,’ she said. ‘There’s a small pool of blood near the alley entrance, about ten feet from Kimberly’s Toyota. A set of smeared handprints lead away from it.’
    ‘Ending on the handle of the girl’s car,’ Joseph said. ‘I saw the blood on the car handle when I first arrived this morning.’
    ‘Agent Novak found the handprints,’ Brodie told him. ‘He’s got a good eye.’
    Joseph looked around. ‘Where is Agent Novak?’
    ‘He went into the office to run phone records. Said he’d be back when he could.’
    ‘Okay, what about Ford’s SUV?’
    ‘No blood on the outside. I had it towed to the lab to check the outside for prints and the inside for blood. Oh, and I found one of the sets of taser electrodes against the far wall.’
    Joseph frowned. ‘He missed one of his shots.’
    ‘That’s my take.’
    ‘So how did this go down?’ Joseph muttered to himself. ‘Four serials, two lots. Could have been four separate tasers were fired or two, if they were X2s.’
    ‘With the back-up shot feature.’
    ‘Two X2s makes sense, especially if there was only one attacker.’ He glanced over at her. ‘You find anything suggesting we had multiple attackers?’
    ‘No, but also nothing suggesting it was only one. Run scenarios for one and two attackers. Start with one attacker and we’ll list the assumptions that have to be made.’
    ‘Okay. Firing two tasers would take skill and coordination, but one person firing four as quickly as they needed to would require too much juggling to make sense. So for one attacker we’re talking two X2s.’
    ‘I’m with you.’
    ‘Ford and Kim leave the theater, walk this way. Ford didn’t know about Zacharias, so I assume he was keeping some distance, staying in the shadows.’
    ‘If Ford didn’t know about him, maybe the shooter didn’t either,’ she said.
    ‘Possibly. Probably, even.’ Joseph visualized the scenario in his mind. ‘Four cartridges fired, two hit Zacharias. One misses. Kimberly makes it as far as her car. Blond hair and blood in the middle of the alley are probably Ford’s, so he goes down.’
    ‘Still with you,’ Brodie said.
    ‘So, I’m the shooter. I target Ford first, because he’s a big guy and I want to eliminate his threat.’ He lifted his left hand, forefinger pointed like a gun. ‘Bang. Ford falls. Bang, same taser because they’re next to each other, but he misses. Kimberly runs. Then there’s Zacharias, exploding from the shadows. Not expecting him.’ He turned ninety degrees, lifting his right hand, forefinger extended. ‘Bang, bang with the second taser and Zacharias falls.’
    ‘Maybe. I reserve the right to change the order. But I agree that Kimberly runs.’
    ‘She leaves a bloody handprint on the car door handle, but she’s injured ten feet away, still in the alley. How much blood did you find?’
    ‘More than she would have bled by falling down. She was stabbed, struck, or shot.’
    ‘Shit. Why do you think it’s a different