Read Online Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent by Judith Reeves-Stevens - Free Book Online Page B

breath. He was just about to put his hands on the car’s window frame to steady himself when he saw the dull white powder from the technician’s attempts to dust for prints in the same location. Of course, Sikes thought. If the killer steadied himself when he leaned in, that’s where he would have put his hands, too. And he had seen enough to know what kind of crime had been committed here.
    “It’s a murder,” Sikes said. “And going by the way the blood’s coagulated, it happened at least eight hours ago.”
    “How do you know it’s murder, Sherlock?”
    Sikes glanced back at the victim. He still wore his seat belt. “Powder burns on the forehead,” he said. If the victim had killed himself by holding a gun to his forehead—right between the eyes, Sikes noted—the small black spray pattern of burning gunpowder would be tightly grouped around the entrance wound made by the bullet, a .45, from the size of it. But the powder-burn pattern that did appear was sparse, almost nonexistent. Sikes guessed the killer had stood about five, maybe even six feet away. “Unless the stiffs got arms like an orangutan, someone else pulled the trigger.”
    “Two points,” Angie said. “What else?”
    Sikes bent down, held his nose again, and looked back inside the car. The driver’s window was down, and the passenger-side window was open as well. But he could see the irregular fragments of segmented safety glass just where the window went inside the door. The other window had been shattered by the bullet after it had taken off the back of the victim’s skull. “Okay. A murder. Gunshot wound to the head is the cause of dea—” He caught himself again. “Is the probable cause of death.” Only the M.E. could rule on the cause of death. Detectives were only to state what they observed, not draw medical conclusions.
    “Three points,” Angie said.
    Sikes began reciting from the procedural checklists he’d had to memorize. “I’d run the registration, check the roof and doorframe for the killer’s prints in case he touched anything when he leaned inside, and check out the asphalt in that direction”—he waved to the other side of the car—“for bullet fragments.”
    Angie joined him beside the car. Sikes realized he almost didn’t notice the smell anymore. “We ran the registration. Car belongs to one Randolph Petty. Address in Westwood.”
    “Did you run the victim’s license?” Sikes asked.
    Angie looked over the top of her frames again. “Randolph Petty. Male, Cauc. White hair. Hundred forty pounds. Age seventy-two.”
    Sikes nodded. That fit the description of the body in the car.
    Angie had another question for him. “What makes you think the killer might have leaned into the car?”
    Sikes shrugged. “I’m guessing robbery, so . . . he reached in to take something. Right?”
    Angie slapped a pair of surgical gloves into Sikes’s hand, and when he realized what that meant he wished he had called in sick after all.
    Within twenty minutes the late Randolph Petty was lying stiffly on a meat-wagon gurney, still more or less in a sitting position. His head was encased in a plastic bag, just in case any bullet fragments seeped out with what was left of his brains. His pants pockets had held a grand total of $1.27 in change and no wallet. There was nothing in the glove compartment, in the front-seat storage console, or on the floor, either.
    “Four points for the rook,” Angie said as she peeled off her gloves. Sikes didn’t know why she had bothered putting them on, considering she had made him move the body and pat it down. “No wallet equals robbery.”
    But Sikes was a dogged student. “Maybe he didn’t need to carry his wallet.”
    “How was he going to pay for parking?” Angie asked.
    “They validate here.” Sikes nodded at Angie’s skeptical frown. “I bought my daughter a Nintendo at the Good Guys. For her birthday, just a couple of weeks ago.” The big electronics store was three levels