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“Reports of shots?”
“No.”
Not unusual. Only a fraction of those within hearing distance actually called a report in. Why volunteer to report a person who was, obviously, armed with a deadly weapon?
“Nothing from ShotSpotter either.”
This, however, was odd. The gunshot detection system theNYPD used could triangulate on the sound of a gunshot, give the approximate location and tell if the shooter was in motion—sometimes even determine which direction he was headed in. The system was active in Manhattan, though it didn’t cover all neighborhoods with equal accuracy.
Pulaski reminded himself:Move. Fast.
He walked to the ECTs, a young pair, two men, with the short hair favored by techs of the male variety, in the belief there was less of a chance of shedding one of their own strands at a scene.
The latter seemed pleased to be working a case with Pulaski. His eyes radiated—what was it? Admiration?
Probably. And the source was because he worked with Lincoln Rhyme.
Here he was on their case, Lincoln’s protégé.
And successor?
Pulaski’s gut did a flip with this thought.
He put the subject aside and nodded his acknowledgment. “Let’s move.”
“Yessir.”
“I’m going to run the car and the corpse. You two take that path to the fence—and comb the fence real good. And then those two buildings there. Ground floors have views of the site.” They would have been perfect spots from which to stalk Gilligan.
Doing whatever it was he was doing.
The two donned their space suits and set to work, while Pulaski too garbed up. He had just started toward the corpse when Sanchez called, “Uh-oh.”
The detective nodded toward a shiny black sedan that had just parked nearby, the occupant of the backseat now climbing out. He was in his late fifties, in a nice-fitting charcoal suit. Silver-haired. A long, stern face. He looked over the crime scene and then scanned the press—a half-dozen reporters and camerapeople behind yet another line, some distance from the scene.
Sanchez said, “Everett Burdick. Dep inspector, One PP. You know him?”
“No.”
“We call him Anchor Amber.”
Pulaski chuckled. Cops’ irreverence was legendary. Amber Andrews was a popular newscaster for the local affiliate of a national network. Her broadcasts were always far more about her than the story. Ah, so Burdick was an airtime hound—the sort who ran unnecessary press conferences displaying stacks of cash and packages of drugs seized in raids.
Sanchez added, “Ego and talent, you know. They’re not—what do they say?—mutually exclusive. He’s not a bad cop. Was good on the street, and he’s good at One PP. He just has to let everybody know it.”
Burdick strode up to Sanchez, ignoring Pulaski.
Fine with him. He had work to do. He slipped through the gate and began vacuuming up trace on the way to the corpse and then started on the body, collecting from the victim’s clothing, scraping fingernails, taking a hair sample, looking for the slugs, which turned out to be still within the body. The autopsy doc would remove them and have them sent to ballistics in Queens. Aside from the huge Desert Eagle .50, or the tiny .17 HMR, it’s hard to tell the caliber of the slug from the wound. Most guns are in the 9mm, .380 or .38 range—all basically the same. And these rounds appeared around that size, but there are thousands of weapons with that caliber, so it was pointless to speculate what the make and model might be.
The absence of exit wounds was intriguing. The accuracy meant the shooter was not far away when he pulled the trigger. Normally at that range, the bullets would likely have penetrated the chest cavity, if not the skull, and exited. That this didn’t happen meant he’d possibly used a silencer, which dramatically reduces not only the sound but the velocity of the shot. This theory was born outtoo by the absence of 911 calls reporting gunshots or of ShotSpotter alerts. Despite what you see in the movies, silencers aren’t that common. Muggers and your average thieves rarely have access. Organized crime and professional triggermen, yes.
So, as Sanchez had speculated: the shooter was likely a pro.
No spent shells. The gun might have been a revolver, which would leave none—and despite the gap between chamber and barrel, it was somewhat quieted by a silencer. A semiauto, conversely, would have ejected brass. Then again, pros always took the empty shells with them. He found, however, where the brass would likely have ended up—to the right of where the shooter stood—and six to eight feet away he took samples of the dirt from where the flying shells would have landed.
Gilligan’s own weapon, a common Glock 17, was on his hip. No extra mag on the opposite side of his body, which told Pulaski that he didn’t do much fieldwork. You never ventured out of the office without at least one extra magazine.
Pulaski then began on the spiral ham. His comprehensive search.
