Derek Hammond’s eyes were open.He looked up at the ceiling with a resigned expression, almost as though he saw his death coming and believed he deserved it.On the left side of his chest, just below his sternum, a wide mouth opened, liver-red with blood.
And on the desk, a series of symbols had been scrawled.Judging by the flecks of blood visible in the symbols, the same knife that was used to kill Hammond was used to write the message.
Her heartbeat quickened.Her throat went dry.This was him.This was one of Cox’s disciples.
“Looks like a single stab wound,” Marcus said.“Went up the sternum into the heart.”He lifted Hammond’s hands one at a time and observed, “No defensive wounds.Nothing under the fingernails.Doesn’t look like he fought back.”
“You think he suffered?”Whitaker asked.
Kate looked at Hammond’s eyes.“Not from the murder, but he suffered.”
“Deep,” Whitaker said.
His tone wasn’t insulting, but it was clear he dismissed Kate’s observation out of hand.She couldn’t blame him.It was hard to convince locals that the emotional aspect of these cases mattered.
She looked at the large panel window that faced Lake Michigan.“This is the one you closed?”she asked Whitaker.
“Yeah, that’s the one.I used gloves, and I just put my fingertips right here.”He pointed at the corners of a small handle.“Did my best not to mess anything up.”
“Did you take pictures before you closed the window?”
Whitaker looked stricken.“Ah, shit.No.I usually do, but… Sorry.”
Kate looked at him.“You usually do, but…”
He shifted his feet uncomfortably.“Well… I mean, the guy was a murderer.”
“He was acquitted, right?”Marcus asked.
“Yeah, he was, but so was OJ.He clearly did it.He only got off because his lawyer convinced a judge that we sweated him too hard in interrogation.”
“I thought you said you weren’t involved with the case,” Kate said.
"I wasn't, but I know the people who were.They were good people.They followed the rules.They did everything right.They were screwed because he was rich.You know, at the time."
“Any of them suffer career consequences?”Kate asked.
"What?No, no, nothing… no one in the police department had a motive to commit this murder.It's part of the game.You win some, you lose some.Sucks, but it's the way it is.You can't hold grudges."
“Some people still do,” Marcus pointed out.
“Sure, but not these guys.They weren’t happy about it, but they let it go.And the department didn’t punish them for doing their job and losing to a nine-hundred-dollar-an-hour hotshot from Columbia Law School.We all moved on.”
“Well, someone didn’t.”
“Why don’t you pass along the names of ‘these guys?’”Kate suggested.
Whitaker frowned and replied coldly.“Sure.I’ll email them to you.”
He was upset now.Kate didn’t blame him, but she wasn’t just going to take his word for it that the detectives who came out on the wrong end of the case three years ago didn’t hold a grudge.She’d met a lot of detectives during her career.They all held grudges.
“What do you make of these symbols, Kate?”
She returned to the desk and studied them more closely.To her surprise, the symbols were clearly recognizable English letters.Most were arranged in no pattern Kate recognized, and the gaps between the words varied in size as much as the length of the words themselves.Punctuation appeared to be limited to occasional dashes, forward slashes, and asterisks.The individual characters were small, and the overall message was unusually long.That didn’t necessarily mean the translated message would also be long, but it definitely meant the killer had spent some time up here after they killed Derek Hammond.
Most of it was impossible to decipher at first glance, but the top row was fairly clear.
THO*U SHAULT TPHOT KEUL.
