Kill and Tell Read Online Free Page B

eighty-five pounds. Age fifty to fifty-five. Gray hair, brown eyes. He lay twisted half onto his right side, his right arm having caught behind him when he fell; the arm braced him, kept him from falling over. There was a small, neat black hole in the center of his forehead but no corresponding wound in the back of his head, meaning the bullet hadn't exited. A .22, Marc thought. Without the power to punch through the skull twice, the lead had wallowed around in the brain, destroying tissue as it went. No blood to speak of, meaning the victim had died instantly. Professionals used .22s, but they were also the cheapest and most readily available handgun, making them the favorites, the "Saturday night specials" used by punk stickup kids. Despite all the outcry to ban guns completely, Marc figured he had a better chance against a poorly aimed .22 bullet than he would against an eight-inch blade or a studded baseball bat, because when a bad guy got close enough to use one of those, he was dead serious and the results far more brutal.
    He couldn't rule out drugs as the motive here, but generally pushers, whether individuals or gangs, preferred greater fire power. They liked street-sweepers because they thought it was impressive to throw out all that hot lead in a couple of seconds. A single neat round in the head wasn't their style, wasn't dramatic enough.
    Marc lifted his head and looked around. The blindingly bright lights of television cameras glared at him, and he narrowed his eyes to filter out the light as he surveyed the crowd that had gathered. Four young women, dressed for a night on the town, had been segregated from everyone else; one of the women was weeping hysterically, and a medic was trying to calm her. Those four had discovered the body. A patrolman was talking to the three who were coherent, getting names, taking notes. Marc would get to the witnesses in a few minutes.
    All the other people had been drawn by the screams of the young women, and the crowd had drawn the television cameras. He sighed. Usually, the murder of a homeless man barely rated a mention in the newspaper, much less television coverage. If a patrolman had discovered the body, there wouldn't be any circus. But New Orleans was a tourist town, and anything that involved tourists was news. Now the newspapers and television stations would be full of more stories about New Orleans's horrific murder rate.
    Never mind that most of the murders were in the drug community, that the average citizen was as safe in New Orleans as anywhere else, assuming said citizen had brains enough to stay out of certain neighborhoods; a statistic was a statistic and therefore worthy of being intoned again and again by solemn talking heads. Under pressure from a now-frightened citizenry, perhaps more frightened by the threat of losing tourist dollars than any perceived danger to their own lives, the mayor would come down hard on the police commissioner. The commissioner would then come down hard on the chief, and the shit would filter down to every detective and patrolman in the city.
    Wonderful.
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    He looked back down at the victim, committing every detail to memory. This time, he noticed a strange fold in the victim's shirt, a funny lump in the small of his back. Squatting beside the body, he used his pen to carefuly lift the shirt tail and expose the weapon tucked into the bum's waistband.
    "Jesus," Shannon said, standing beside him. "Looks like an awful expensive piece for a bum to be carryin' around. Wonder where he stole it."
    Marc shifted his body to block the television cameras. He took the evidence bag and, again using his pen, eased the pistol from the victim's waistband. "Glock 17," he murmured, studying the beautiful weapon. If a Glock had been stolen locally, the owner would have reported the theft, assuming he even knew one had occurred. A lot of people bought guns and put them up, and