The Good Neighbor. Sharon Mignerey

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СКАЧАТЬ EMTs, a couple of guys from the funeral home, and the county coroner were the only other people left inside the perimeter that Officer Udell had blocked off with crime-scene tape. “Talk to the folks standing around,” Wade told him, “and see what they saw or heard. Find out who belongs on this street and who doesn’t.”

      “I’m on it,” Udell said.

      Doc Wagner, a family practitioner who had first been elected as the county coroner close to forty years ago, came toward him. Since there wasn’t much crime in Natchez, there was no medical examiner to help investigate and make sure evidence was preserved—just this family doctor who was a fixture in the community.

      “Just need your okay to hand the body over to the mortuary and I’ll get out of your hair,” Doc Wagner said, smiling as if it was already a done deal.

      “Can you hang around for another minute?” Wade asked, doing his level best to hide his irritation. How could the man not know to leave the body alone?

      Without waiting for an answer, he headed for the firemen. “Are you guys finished up here?” he said, instead of demanding that they get out of his crime scene.

      “Who are you?” one of them asked.

      “Detective Wade Prescott,” he answered, flashing his badge. “Clearing the crime scene so I can start my work.”

      “I know this guy,” the fireman said, pointing at the body bag. “We went to school together.”

      “Yeah?” Wade reached for the notebook in the pocket of his jacket. “What’s your name?”

      “Brian Davis.” The firefighter stuck out his hand. “You’re the new guy on the force.”

      “I am.” That came up daily. “What can you tell me about Mr. Russell?”

      “Robby?”

      Wade looked at the name he’d written down when the chief had called him. “That’s right.”

      “Haven’t seen much of him lately, but he grew up right here in that house. His grandmother raised him.”

      “When was the last time you spoke to him?”

      Davis stared at the ground a moment before answering. “Couldn’t tell you for sure. Probably a couple of years. I’d heard he was back in town, but our paths hadn’t crossed, you know?”

      Which meant this witness couldn’t help nail down the events leading up to the murder. Wade took down the phone number and other contact information, aware that Doc Wagner was calling to him.

      Turning back to the coroner, Wade led him toward the body bag. “You couldn’t wait until I got here before you moved the body?” Wade knew his tone was too sharp, but didn’t care. Bodies didn’t go anywhere, and you got only one chance at the physical evidence. This crime scene was so contaminated, he didn’t know how he was going to figure out what had happened, much less make a case.

      “I couldn’t leave him out here in plain sight of his grandmother,” the doctor responded, clearly irritated. “Dead or not—”

      “This is your first murder?”

      Doc Wagner was long past seventy and was exactly what you’d expect a family doctor of his generation to look like. “No,” he said. “The last one was five years ago. Hasn’t been one inside the Natchez city limits, though, in a long time.”

      “The crime scene is mine,” Wade said. “Nothing gets moved until I clear it.”

      “And the body is mine,” the doctor said. “I’d be happy to show you the state statute that says it is.”

      “Maybe. But where I come from, we don’t move anything until we’re sure the evidence is preserved.”

      Wagner’s eyes glinted and he straightened to his full height. “I determined the cause of death.”

      Wade knew he wouldn’t have that for sure until after the autopsy, but there was no point in arguing right now, especially when he looked toward the backyard and saw his witness watching them. “Which was?”

      “Blunt-force trauma to the head.” The doctor waved in the direction of the half-open gate and the overturned trash cans. “Looks like a garden spade back there was the murder weapon.” He took a breath then continued, “I might not be some young, big-city detective who’s up on all the latest. But I know you can’t leave a dead man around for all the gawkers. And, I couldn’t stand that Helen was so upset.”

      “Next time, move the gawkers, not the body,” Wade said, figuring this would be only the beginning of the criticism. He was bound to step on a lot of toes before the day was over. “I don’t suppose you thought to take any pictures.”

      Looking baffled, Doc Wagner shook his head, making Wade wonder if he had ever attended any continuing-education classes in forensic science since being elected. Murder 101. Do not move the body. Even one of the bad police dramas on television ought to have clued him in.

      At the moment, Wade wished this really was one of those dramas. Give him an hour, and he would have corralled all the witnesses, uncovered all the evidence, foiled the killer before he made his escape or killed again, and kissed his pretty witness, all before heading home for a good night’s sleep. Yeah. And pigs could fly.

      From her seat at the patio table, Megan watched the detective take charge and thin out the throng of people that had shown up after she had called 9-1-1.

      Megan’s regret was that Helen had seen, and she kept wishing that she had thought to cover the body. Megan knew from personal experience how devastating losing a family member in a violent death was. There was no erasing that image, no matter how much time passed. She knew because she’d been carrying one for nearly twenty years. Sometimes it was so vivid that it might have been yesterday.

      Don’t go there, she warned herself, focusing on the detective as he talked to Doc Wagner. She vaguely remembered reading an article about him in the Gazette when he had been hired last spring. He wasn’t as old as she had imagined someone with his experience would be, though he certainly had a hard-edged look. His piercing gaze roved constantly over the yard as though he was memorizing the scene in addition to listening to Doc. She couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other, but from the set of the detective’s jaw and shoulders, she suspected that he was irritated.

      Megan knew from her own training that Robby’s body shouldn’t have been moved, though at the time, helping Doc had seemed the sensible thing to do. She wasn’t sure how she was going to explain that to the detective. Actually, there were a lot of things she wasn’t sure how to explain to the detective.

      “God help me,” she whispered under her breath as he came toward her, unsure whether it was prayer or lament. As for the prayers, she knew she’d have a lot of those later.

      He smiled when he reached her. “I’m Detective Wade Prescott,” he said. “You’re Mrs. Russell’s neighbor?”

      “Yes. Megan Burke.”

      “Do you mind if I sit down?”

      She shook her head, and he settled into the chair next to her, taking in СКАЧАТЬ