Final judgment

SIX

Mason pulled up in front of Fish’s house. There were two police cars in the driveway and two more parked on the street. A contingent of cops waited at the front door. Neighbors watched from their windows, a few braving the cold for a better view from their front yards.

Fish quickly took in the scene, groaning as he got out of the car. “ Oy, the tsoris I’ve got!”

The detectives, uniformed cops, and forensics crew spent four hours combing through Fish’s house. They moved every piece of furniture, rolled up every rug, opened every cabinet, drawer, and closet. They unscrewed air-conditioning vents, poked their heads and shoulders into ventilation shafts, and swept the concrete basement floor for any sign of freshly poured cement. They rattled the radiators, jimmied the floorboards for loose panels, and crawled through the attic. They raked the dead leaves that had piled hard against the house and they wormed through the boxes, old clothes, and other leftovers crammed to the ceiling in the garage.

Griswold and Cates took turns glaring at Fish, who sat at the kitchen table reading a book whose cover promised that a short history of nearly everything lay within its pages, oblivious to the whirlwind around him. Mason had neither Fish’s patience nor his attention span and followed in the wake of the searchers, taking a silent delight in their growing frustration.

By mid-afternoon, the party was breaking up. The cops had bagged hairs, fibers, and threads so they wouldn’t go home empty handed, but they hadn’t carried out a head or hands packed in ice or buried in dirt. They hadn’t found any bloodied butcher knives or surgical instruments with bits of flesh and blood clinging to the sharp edges.

The search had been a bust, and Mason read the results in Griswold’s slumped shoulders and Cates’s pursed lips as he dragged on a cigarette, the two of them huddled at the curb next to their unmarked Crown Victoria.

Mason knew that it was a mistake to treat the detectives as interchangeable parts. Though they were partners and were cut from the same physical mold, there had to be differences between them, and Mason needed to know what they were beyond which one would play the good cop and which one the bad cop. Did one of them have a chip on his shoulder? Was one of them too lazy to dig out the facts? Could he trust either of them?

He hadn’t seen enough of them to know the answers to these questions. Griswold had given him a business card. His first name was Kevin. Cates hadn’t offered one, though Mason overheard someone use his first name-Tom. Griswold wanted to make an impression. Cates didn’t care. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

“All in and all done?” Mason asked them, the air frosting his breath.

“Yeah,” Griswold said.

“For now,” Cates added, the red tip of his smoke weaker than the threat he was trying to make.

“Don’t be so disappointed. There are lots of other places to look for the killer.”

“Maybe,” Griswold said. “But I’m still thinking this is a pretty good place.”

“Come back any time. We’re always open. Just call ahead and bring a warrant next time. Only the first search is free.”

Cates flicked the butt to the ground, grinding it with his heel and turning to his partner. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Hang on,” Mason said. “It’s my turn.”

“For what?” Griswold asked.

“I let you talk to my client. I let you march through his house without a warrant like Sherman marched through Georgia. The gate swings both ways. I want some information.”

Cates gave Griswold a look that said, Forget it. Griswold answered with a raised hand. “Gate swings both ways, Counselor. You remember that.”

“If I don’t, Detective, I’m sure you’ll remind me.”

“Okay,” Griswold said. “Ask.”

“Who found the body?”

“U.S. Marshals deputy patrolling the parking lot with a dog. The dog was trained to sniff out bombs but still had a nose for dead meat,” Griswold said.

Mason kept a poker face, not wanting to dip into Griswold’s callous pool. “Any blood in the trunk of the car?”

“Nothing obvious. Won’t know for certain until forensics gets their test results back.”

“Cut a guy’s head and hands off, the body is going to bleed until the heart stops. Make a hell of a mess. Which means he was killed somewhere else and his body dumped in the car,” Mason said.

Cates smiled. “You do brain surgery too?”

Mason ignored the dig. “Any signs of wounds to the body?”

“Nope,” Griswold answered.

“Rigor?”

“Full,” Griswold said.

“So the victim had been dead at least six to twelve hours. Maybe longer with the cold temperatures. The fatal wound was probably a gunshot or blow to the head, right?”

“Or broken neck, or strangled or poisoned or smothered or half a dozen other ways you can kill someone without leaving marks on the body, especially if you cut the head and hands off,” Griswold said.

Mason nodded. “Lot to think about.”

“You do that,” Cates told him. “Tell your client to think about it too and let us know what you come up with. Make it a lot easier on us cops if you lawyers and defendants would solve these murders for us. Make it even easier if your client just confesses.”

“Can’t do that,” Mason said. “Then you would have to go back to working the midnight security shift at Walmart.”

Cates took a step toward Mason, but Griswold cut him off. “Okay, kids. That’s enough for today.” He turned to Mason. “You want it this way, you can have it this way. We’ll be on you and your client twenty-four/seven. You want it the other way, remember how that gate swings.”