Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

bathroom,” I said and got up.
    Greg gave me a look that indicated that might not be such a good idea. But what was I going to do? Walk around avoiding mirrors? No time like the present. I went back to the unisex bathroom and turned on the forty-watt bare bulb that hung over the toilet and took a good look at myself in the ancient mirror.
    “That’ll leave a mark,” I said to myself and the red welt on my face. I washed up and dried my face on some scratchy paper towels and returned to the coffee shop, where Greg was continuing to clean up the debris that was littered around the front counter. I offered to give him a hand but he declined.
    “The place will be fine once I get it cleaned up,” he said. The bell on the door jingled and we turned to find Carter Wilmott making his way back into the shop. Greg shook his head. “You know what, Wilmott? You’re not welcome here anymore. You are banned from Beans, Beans,” he said, albeit in the kindest way one could communicate another’s persona non grata status.
    Wilmott swayed a bit on his feet, and grabbed his throat. He looked at me and I could see a thick sheen of sweat on his brow. “I just wanted to say …” he started, but began coughing violently. Even Greg, who was as mad as I had ever seen him, stopped what he was doing and leaned across the counter.
    “Do you need some water, Carter?” Greg asked.
    Before Wilmott could answer, George Miller burst through the door of the shop, his feet falling heavily on the broken glass, making a noise not unlike my cereal makes when I pour in the milk. Miller drew a fist back, and with a forceful roundhouse punch, landed a blow to Wilmott’s head. I cried out just as the police followed Miller inside.
    Wilmott went to his knees. I got up from my seat, in that weird position of feeling as if I should do something yet not knowing what that might be. I took one step toward Wilmott as Greg made his way from around the counter, moving faster than I was.
    Wilmott rocked from one side to the other, and caught my eye once more. “… to say that I am sorry,” he said, and fell facefirst into the pile of dirt and glass that Greg had swept into a tidy mound. I made a tiny sound while Trixie moved behind the counter, terrified of what had just transpired.
    Greg knelt beside Wilmott, Larry the cop doing the same. The other cop grabbed Miller in a chokehold, using his free hand to handcuff him. Greg moved to the side, worriedly knitting his hands together in front of the counter, while Larry the cop expertly flipped Carter’s body over and began CPR. He pounded on the man’s chest, sweat beginning to roll down his cheeks. He continued for two or three minutes and then checked Wilmott’s neck for a pulse.
    He rocked back on his heels, his face a mask of sadness and incomprehension. For some reason, he looked at me and said, “He’s dead.”

Two
     
    “If I had to guess, and guessing certainly isn’t encouraged in our profession, I would say that Mr. Wilmott expired from …”
    The Westchester County Medical Examiner, one John “call me Mac” McVeigh, paused in mid-sentence, leaving me and Greg and all other interested parties on the proverbial edge of our seats. Having spent the last two hours in the company of the ME, I knew that he was prone to these little lapses in conversational fluidity. In the space of the last few hours, he had gone into one of these semicomas at least four or five times, looking up to the heavens with his pale blue eyes, searching for the right word or the answer to his own question. Finally, he brought his eyes back down and finished his sentence.
    “… blunt force trauma to the head.”
    The group—comprised of me, Greg, a bunch of cops, and a couple of crime scene technicians—let out a collective sigh, all relieved that the question had been answered even if we had all come to the same conclusion long ago. It was almost as if the ME were a magician and we were waiting for the “reveal,” the suspense was so great. I thought it was a bit unorthodox for the county medical examiner to determine cause of death without an examination, but McVeigh struck me as an inordinately unorthodox kind of guy.
    Larry the cop whispered to me, “They call him ‘Mac the knife,’ you know.”
    Of course they do, I thought.
    It was close to two o’clock, the time that Crawford and I were to leave for the family gathering. I checked the clock on the wall behind the counter nervously, knowing