Page 7 of Manner of Death
“Because otherwise I have to tell a little old lady that either her child or nephew has been murdered in the home she just recently moved out of,” Sawyer said.
“Oh shit, yeah. That would be terrible.” The younger man shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Do, um…should we talk to the neighbors?”
“We already have,” Sawyer pointed out. “There are only two close enough to have noticed anything, and members of both households have already stopped by. I’ll go again when it’s light, to make sure I get everyone and that nothing was left out, but there’s not a lot to do there.”
“Then…what do you do next?”
At least he was trying to learn. “Check the nursing home to see if talking to Edith is necessary. Check in with an employer, if he has one. See what I can dig up about him. Right now, it’s looking pretty thin.”
“What do you do when it looks thin?”
Sawyer sighed. “You look harder. There’s always a motive for murder.”
Officer Doran shook his head.
“You don’t think so?”
“I wish I did, but…sometimes people do awful things just because they can.”
Interesting. Sawyer might have to do some looking into Officer Doran’s history, find out what gave him this less-than-standard perspective. Sawyer, for his part, always believed in the existence of motive. It was one of the few places where the silver screen and real life overlapped. “I think, given the lengths that whoever killed Mr. Upworth went to to make it look like an accident, that whoever it was had a solid reason for doing so.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“You did a really good job here tonight,” Sawyer added, glancing at his phone. “And I believe you’re officially off the clock now.”
“I am?” The young man looked extremely relieved. “That’s great!”
“I’ll cover things until the scene is wrapped up.”
After Officer Doran handed over responsibility for the house to another officer—the one Sawyer had assigned to be scene commander—the kid left. Sawyer put on his don’t-fucking-disturb-me face and, in between making calls and looking for evidence, helped the scene commander handle another four hours of comings, goings, random interruptions, and one very cheeky raccoon who wandered right into the front yard, up to the stairs, and stood on his hind legs with his nose in the air, sniffing.
“Sorry,” Sawyer told the critter. “You don’t have clearance to go in there.”
The raccoon gave him a glare, shit in the middle of the walkway, then turned and waddled off insultingly slowly.
Finally, finally, at ten in the morning, CSI was done with the house. “For now,” Huerta added as he slapped another layer of CRIME SCENE DO NOT ENTER tape over the front door. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, still, but all in all I think we got a lot of great evidence!”
“Great, huh?”
“Oh yeah! Hair samples, questionable blood stains—”
“‘Questionable’?”
“I think there’s a fifty percent chance that at least some of the spatters I photographed on the countertop were actually marinara sauce,” Huerta said, not at all abashed as he stripped out of his gear and shoved it into a hazardous materials bag, “but better safe than sorry, right? And Jesus, I’ve seen bloody crime scenes, but this one?” He whistled. “This was almost a record for me when it comes to swabs! I used up an entire pack of two hundred all on my own, and I was one of three techs on the scene!”
Wow. “That’s a lot.”
“Right?” Huerta beamed at him as he carried the bag over to the van he’d come in and deposited it in a larger receptacle there. “We were so thorough! You’re going to get more leads than you know what to do with—but don’t quote me on that. I get in trouble when I tell people things that can’t yet be corroborated by the evidence, and I don’t want to get Doc in trouble because I couldn’t stop running my mouth.”
“That’s thoughtful of you.” Sawyer liked the thought of people going out of their way to make life a little easier on Dr Ramin. He looked like the kind of guy who was used to fending for himself.
“I learned it the hard way,” Huerta confessed. “Who knew that telling a reporter about the brand of lipstick you saw on a nightstand could be construed as leaking important information about a case?”
Sawyer blinked. “Was it actually important?”
“It turned out to be, yeah! The guy who was killed didn’t wear lipstick, and at first the killer was assumed to be his wife, but then the lipstick ended up belonging to his mistress! But that was a detail they didn’t want getting into the press because only the killer would know it, and it caused a big mess.” Huerta wrung his hands for a second. “Good thing the detectives had some more aces up their sleeves. Doc was actually a big help on that one, too.”
Sawyer saw his chance. “Mr. Huerta…”