The Law of Second Chances Read Online Free

was as it seemed. “It looks like death was caused by a single bullet to the brain. I don’t know if you have this yet, but the woman who called this in said she heard a noise that sounded like a gunshot a few minutes after ten. She looked out her window and saw the deceased there lying on the ground. She also saw a man—apparently the shooter—kneel over the deceased while he was on the ground, then get up and run away. She was too far away to give a description and she didn’t know if he took anything from the deceased or not.”
    “What about time of death?” Nick asked.
    “It’s a little early to say definitely”—it was a disclaimer Nick always expected and usually received—“but rigor mortis has not set in yet, and from the coagulation of the blood inthe ankles I’d say offhand that everything shut down about ten o’clock.”
    Coroners
, Nick thought.
They have such an interesting way of describing death
.
    “Thanks, Dan. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the next few days and weeks.”
    “Yeah,” Dan groaned. “You know, Nick, I was scheduled to be off tonight. Just my luck to get one of these high-profile cases where everybody is breathing down your neck.”
    “I’m with you,” Nick replied. “Who the fuck was this guy anyway?”
    “Some super-rich oil guy.”
    “Jesus. Let’s see if we can put this to bed as quickly as possible.”
    “Sure thing, Nick. Okay if I take the body? I want to get it out of here before the reporters start sticking their heads down his shorts looking for a scoop.”
    Nick laughed. It wasn’t far from the truth. “He’s all yours.”
    “Thanks, Nick.”
    As Nick watched Dan Jenkins assemble his people and equipment to transport the body to the morgue, the assistant chief, Ralph Hitchens, sidled up next to him.
    “Looks like a robbery gone bad,” he said, trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about. In twenty years in homicide, Nick had never seen Ralph Hitchens at a murder scene before.
    Nick stifled the urge to say,
No, Sherlock, it looks like a murder
. Instead, he just nodded in agreement as he watched Dan Jenkins’s young assistant load the body onto a stretcher. He didn’t like to miss any of the details, especially in a high-profile case like this.
    “Any thoughts so far, Detective?” Hitchens asked.
    Nick couldn’t bring himself to ignore the question. The assistant chief was nothing more than a glorified pencil pusher: they had entered the academy together and graduated at the same time, but while Nick went directly to the street, old Ralphie boy became some captain’s clerk. Nobody who knew Ralph Hitchens back then would ever have picked him as aleader of men. They might have picked him as the guy most likely to piss his pants in a gun battle, but that was about it. He rose in rank the way most of them did, sticking their nose up enough asses until they were rewarded for the endeavor.
Politics
, Nick thought with that exact picture in his mind.
No wonder it stinks!
    “Well, it’s definitely a homicide, Chief. Bullet wound to the head,” Nick deadpanned. Over to his left, Nick noticed that Tony Severino, recently returned from his crowd-management duties, was fighting to keep from laughing out loud.
    Ralph Hitchens’s jaw tensed. He clearly was not amused by the remark.
    “I want this case wrapped up quickly, Walsh. You’ve got an eyewitness.”
    Is this shithead for real?
Nick fumed to himself.
Yeah, Chief, there’s an eyewitness who saw someone next to the body. That narrows it down to eight million people, you schmuck!
He decided to pull the prick’s chain a little longer.
What the hell, I’m vested
.
    “I’ll get right on it, Chief. An unidentified male shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
    As he said the words, Nick realized all he needed was a description to solve the case. Whoever did this crime was probably in the system somewhere.
    Thanks, Chief!
he said to himself.
I wouldn’t have thought of that