Read Online Dark Specter by Michael Dibdin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Dibdin
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limp slice inside, an open box of Cheerios, the unicorn spice rack, an empty plastic gallon milk container, the mock-crochet sign reading Bless This Mess…
His face sagged suddenly. He looked old and lost.
“Jesus Christ,” he said quietly. “What is this?”
A WEEK LATER , there was still no answer to this question.
By now the identity of all the victims had been established. Three were members of the Sullivan family: Dawn, thirty-three, a checker at the local Kmart, and two children, Kevin, eleven, and Samantha, fifteen months. The fourth was Ronald Ho, twelve, resident at 2337 Fourth Avenue, a classmate of Kevin Sullivan at Renton Heights School.
All had been killed with a single CCI Stinger .22 round fired at very close range. Such bullets break up on entry, splitting up to six times inside the body, and it was thus impossible to recover any further ballistics information. The mother and the two boys had been shot in the back of the head, the baby in the forehead. There was no sign that anything had been stolen from the house, and none of the victims had been sexually molested before or after death.
Three members of the family had survived. Megan, fourteen, had been spending the day with a friend, Nicole Pearson. Her brother Jamie, eight, had apparently been in the house at the time of the shootings. It was not clear why he had been spared, or whether he could identify the perpetrator. At present he was in foster care under the nominal supervision of social workers. Kristine Kjarstad had interviewed him on three occasions, without result. The boy now seemed to hear and understand her questions, but responded only by shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head. On each occasion the social worker had brought the interview to an end, indicating that further pressure could compromise the child’s eventual recovery.
The remaining survivor and primary suspect was the estranged husband, Wayne Sullivan, thirty-seven. The fact that the door had not been forced suggested that the perpetrator was either known to Mrs. Sullivan or possessed a key. The couple had a history of domestic violence, and the crime seemed to fit a pattern of cases in which depressive or vengeful spouses killed their entire families shortly after a separation or divorce.
Two factors weighed against this hypothesis. The first was that the spouses in question usually killed themselves at the same time, or gave themselves up to the police immediately afterward. The second emerged from the autopsy report on Mrs. Sullivan and the two boys, which revealed mild contusions and abrasions around the wrists and traces of adhesive on the lips and surrounding skin, suggesting that the victims had been bound and gagged before being shot. That, like the choice of weapon, seemed to indicate the work of a cold-blooded professional killer, not an emotionally wrought spouse, but no one had been able to come up with a convincing reason why such a killer should choose to execute a housewife, two schoolboys and a baby—unless of course it was a case of mistaken identity.
Police work is a percentage game, and at the moment the smart money was on the estranged husband.
If he hadn’t given himself up, Wayne Sullivan would have been a hard man to find. His driver’s license was still registered to the Renfrew Avenue address. He didn’t have a bank account or hold a regular job, and was staying at a semi-derelict house he shared with two other men in a forgotten patch of Renton blighted by the Burlington Northern tracks on one side and Highway 405 on the other.
Fortunately he made life easy for everyone by turning himself in just a few hours after the all-points bulletin went out.
Sullivan’s story was that he had spent the day painting an empty apartment in Bellevue, a subcontract he’d picked up from a friend in the construction business. It wasn’t much of an alibi, but Kristine Kjarstad didn’t get too excited about that. One look at Wayne, you knew this guy
His face sagged suddenly. He looked old and lost.
“Jesus Christ,” he said quietly. “What is this?”
A WEEK LATER , there was still no answer to this question.
By now the identity of all the victims had been established. Three were members of the Sullivan family: Dawn, thirty-three, a checker at the local Kmart, and two children, Kevin, eleven, and Samantha, fifteen months. The fourth was Ronald Ho, twelve, resident at 2337 Fourth Avenue, a classmate of Kevin Sullivan at Renton Heights School.
All had been killed with a single CCI Stinger .22 round fired at very close range. Such bullets break up on entry, splitting up to six times inside the body, and it was thus impossible to recover any further ballistics information. The mother and the two boys had been shot in the back of the head, the baby in the forehead. There was no sign that anything had been stolen from the house, and none of the victims had been sexually molested before or after death.
Three members of the family had survived. Megan, fourteen, had been spending the day with a friend, Nicole Pearson. Her brother Jamie, eight, had apparently been in the house at the time of the shootings. It was not clear why he had been spared, or whether he could identify the perpetrator. At present he was in foster care under the nominal supervision of social workers. Kristine Kjarstad had interviewed him on three occasions, without result. The boy now seemed to hear and understand her questions, but responded only by shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head. On each occasion the social worker had brought the interview to an end, indicating that further pressure could compromise the child’s eventual recovery.
The remaining survivor and primary suspect was the estranged husband, Wayne Sullivan, thirty-seven. The fact that the door had not been forced suggested that the perpetrator was either known to Mrs. Sullivan or possessed a key. The couple had a history of domestic violence, and the crime seemed to fit a pattern of cases in which depressive or vengeful spouses killed their entire families shortly after a separation or divorce.
Two factors weighed against this hypothesis. The first was that the spouses in question usually killed themselves at the same time, or gave themselves up to the police immediately afterward. The second emerged from the autopsy report on Mrs. Sullivan and the two boys, which revealed mild contusions and abrasions around the wrists and traces of adhesive on the lips and surrounding skin, suggesting that the victims had been bound and gagged before being shot. That, like the choice of weapon, seemed to indicate the work of a cold-blooded professional killer, not an emotionally wrought spouse, but no one had been able to come up with a convincing reason why such a killer should choose to execute a housewife, two schoolboys and a baby—unless of course it was a case of mistaken identity.
Police work is a percentage game, and at the moment the smart money was on the estranged husband.
If he hadn’t given himself up, Wayne Sullivan would have been a hard man to find. His driver’s license was still registered to the Renfrew Avenue address. He didn’t have a bank account or hold a regular job, and was staying at a semi-derelict house he shared with two other men in a forgotten patch of Renton blighted by the Burlington Northern tracks on one side and Highway 405 on the other.
Fortunately he made life easy for everyone by turning himself in just a few hours after the all-points bulletin went out.
Sullivan’s story was that he had spent the day painting an empty apartment in Bellevue, a subcontract he’d picked up from a friend in the construction business. It wasn’t much of an alibi, but Kristine Kjarstad didn’t get too excited about that. One look at Wayne, you knew this guy
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