Reversible Errors Read Online Free PDF Page A

bunter marks. One shooter, almost for sure. Could be accomplices, but it doesn't seem to play that way.
    "Gus was killed right here, behind the register, going for the phone from the looks of it. One shot to the left rear of the cranium. Based on a preliminary exam, Painless is saying three to six feet, which means the triggerman was right near the cash register. Armed robbery gone bad," Greer repeated. From his inside pocket, Harold removed a sleek silver pen and pointed out the blood, a large pool dried on the dirty linoleum and spatters on the green wall phone. Then he continued.
    "Once our shooter takes down Gus, he has a serious problem because there are two customers in the restaurant. This is where we go from a felony-murder to brutal and heinous." The words were terms of art-'brutal and heinous' murders qualified, in this state, for capital punishment. "Instead of running for the door like your average punk, our guy decides to go after the witnesses. Ms. Remardi is killed right here, single shot through the abdomen."
    Harold had stepped clown twenty feet to a booth opposite the front door in the original section of the restaurant. When Gus bought the place, long before he expanded into the adjoining storefronts, it must have had a medieval theme. Two rows of booths, composed of heavy dark planks lumpy from the layers of urethane, were joined at the center panel. At each corner, a square coat stand arose like a turret.
    "Looks a lot like Ms. Remardi decided her best chance was to go for the gun. We have bruises on her arms and hands, one finger is broken. But that didn't work out for her. The fabric on her uniform around the wound is burned and the tissue is stippled, so the shot is point-blank. Judging from the exit wound, Painless is saying prelim that the bullet passed through her liver and her aorta, so she's dead in a few minutes."
    The slug had been removed by the techs from the center panel. An uneven ring of dried blood showed up where the wood had shattered, exposing the raw pine underneath. That meant that Luisa had died sitting up. A coffee cup, with a bright half-moon of her lipstick, still rested on the table as well as an ashtray full of butts.
    "If she's looking at an accomplice, it doesn't make much sense that she's fighting. So that's another reason we're figuring this was a one--
    man show." Under the table, where Harold pointed, a dinner plate, streaked with steak sauce, had shattered in the struggle. An inch of beef fat lay amid the fragments of crockery, as well as half a pack of cigarettes and a disposable lighter.
    "Mr. Judson was eating back in the corner by the window. Rafael cleaned up a plate, a glass, and a 7UP can from that table this morning. On the right side of Mr. Judson s suit there's a line of dust, suggesting he was probably under the table, maybe hiding from the gunfire. Maybe just hiding. But the shooter found him.
    "Judging from the shoe prints in the blood and the drag pattern, and the distribution of the postmortem lividity on Gus's and Luisa's corpses, Mr. Judson was forced at gunpoint to haul both bodies into the freezer in the basement."
    Harold led his detectives, like a grade-school class, past the counter, where Muriel still sat, and through a narrow door. The stairway was lit by a single bulb, beneath which the group clumped down the wooden steps. In the brick cellar, they found a significant encampment. Three wheeled stretchers were across the way awaiting the bodies, which had not yet been removed because they were frozen. The police pathologist, Painless Kumagai, had several tests and measurements to perform prior to allowing the corpses to thaw. As the group approached, Larry could hear Painless's sharp, accented voice issuing commands to his staff. Harold warned the cops behind him about the electrical cords bunched across the floor to light several halogen beacons Painless's team had set up in the freezer for photos.
    Using the pen, Harold opened the food locker