Supreme Justice

Chapter Thirty-one

The nature trails of Tryon Creek State Park run through a lush ravine inside the city limits of Portland. Homicide Detective Arnold Lasswell could appreciate the natural beauty of the place even with a team of forensic experts rooting around in the shrubbery and a dead man sprawled facedown on one of the trails.

“Hey, Arnie,” Dick Frazier said when he spotted Lasswell.

“What have we got?” the detective asked the forensic expert.

“Male, Caucasian, I’m guessing in his mid- to late thirties. Shot in the head and chest, but killed somewhere else and transported here. We’ve got almost no blood around or under the vic.”

“How long has he been out here?” the detective asked.

“I’m guessing a day or so. The ME will be able to give you a more accurate read.”

Frazier pointed at a blood/stained duffel bag that lay a few feet from the corpse. “We haven’t opened it yet, but there’s one thing I picked up on.”

Frazier led the detective over to the duffel. “See the bloodstains?”

Lasswell nodded.

“Notice anything about them?”

Lasswell studied the stains and was about to shake his head when he brightened.

“Some look darker than others.”

Frazier clapped the detective on the back with a hand sheathed in latex.

“Bravo. We’ll make a forensic expert out of you yet. There’s no chemical test that can determine the relative age of blood, but fresh blood is redder in color than older blood. Then you get brown and finally old dried-up blood that’s black. Now this isn’t super scientific, but just eyeballing the stains, I’d guess that some of them were put on the duffel bag at different times.”

Frazier signaled to a man with a video camera and the uniformed officer who had been assigned to collect evidence. When they were next to him, the lab tech squatted, unzipped the duffel bag, and pulled out some pants, underwear, socks, and shirts. The uniform put them in a large black plastic garbage bag.

“This is more interesting,” Frazier said as he held up a handgun. He checked it to see if it was loaded before handing it to the uniform. Then he dipped his hand back into the duffel bag.

“What have we got here?” he asked as he pulled out four passports and laid them on a section of the duffel that was not stained with blood. He picked up the top one and opened it. Lasswell bent down and looked over Frazier’s shoulder. The passport was in the name of John Finley. Lasswell stared at the picture and frowned.

Frazier thumbed through the passport, taking in the stamps from various nations in Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

“This guy was well traveled,” Frazier said as he handed the passport to the uniform, who put it in a plastic bag.

“Whoa,” Frazier said when he opened the next passport. It was identical to the first one except it was in the name of Orrin Hadley. The third and fourth passports were for Dennis Lang and Larry Kester but also had the same photograph.

“We’ve either got a spy or a drug dealer, but he’s definitely not your average citizen,” Frazier said as Lasswell wandered over to the corpse.

“Is there anything else?” the detective asked as he did a deep knee bend to get a better look at the dead man’s face.

Frazier ran his hand over the interior of the bag and came out with several pieces of ID in different names but with the dead man’s picture.

“Only this,” he said, turning to talk to Lasswell, who had pulled out his cell phone. The forensic expert did not catch the name of the person on the other end but he distinctly heard Lasswell say, “You remember that DVD of John Finley from Sarah Woodruff’s case? Yeah, it was about six months ago. Woodruff was indicted for murder, but the guy turned out to be alive. That’s the one. I want the DVD on my desk ASAP.”