The Long Count Read Online Free PDF

fixed the piece in his hand and I imagine they wiped their prints. From what I can see, they sat him a little more upright in that chair.’ He pointed. ‘That’s post-mortem lividity you can see there at the base of his neck.’
    Back at the desk the deputy stared.
    ‘Those purple marks,’ Quarrie said. ‘What looks like bruising, that’s where blood settled after he was dead.’ He glanced towards the basement stairs. ‘It doesn’t look like they disturbed a whole lot, but there was someone here all right, and when they left the kitchen door wasn’t closed. This ain’t a suicide. It’s is a homicide, so be careful where you put your hands.’
    The deputy had an uncertain expression on his face. ‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘I ain’t about to argue with you, you being a Ranger and all. But are you sure? It looks for all the world like he took that piece to himself.’
    ‘Course it does.’ Quarrie crossed to the desk where he dropped to his haunches. ‘That’s how it’s meant to look but that’s not how it was. Come over here and I’ll show you.’
    Pacing around the desk the deputy crouched down next to him.
    ‘Hand me your flashlight,’ Quarrie said.
    The deputy unhooked it from his belt.
    ‘All right then.’ Quarrie shone the beam across the dead man’s skin. ‘Take a look at that bullet wound right there and you’ll see how the skin is lifted but only a fraction. You can see the pinpricks of powder where it burned.’
    ‘Got it,’ the deputy said.
    ‘That ain’t a contact wound,’ Quarrie told him. ‘That’s a shot been fired from a couple of inches away at least. Deputy, when somebody takes a gun to their head they press the barrel right upto the skin. They do it because they’re scared they’ll miss and wind up still alive but with half a face. Happens every time and you get a star shaped wound on account of it with four or five points and each of the points is flared. When you look real close you see that the skin is pressed inwards ever so slightly, as if somebody kneaded it a little with their fingers.’
    Rising to his full height he passed the flashlight back to the deputy. ‘It’s caused by gases from the cartridge spreading between the bone and subcutaneous tissue. What the coroner would call an overpressure.’ Taking off his hat he worked a hand through his hair. ‘You got yourself a homicide all right, so best you secure this room.’

Six
    Leaving him to call it in, Quarrie returned to his car and drove back to the highway once more. He kept his foot down hard, travelling east towards Paris before heading through Mount Pleasant, making for Winfield in Marion County.
    It was not a place he had been to before and the rain arrived long before he pulled up where the railroad crossed at the bottom of Main Street. It was dark now, and after all day in the car he was stiff in the back as he waited for the freight train to pass.
    A sheet of lying water on the street, it flared indigo under the lamps. All the stores were closed and few vehicles filled the spots between the twin rows of parking meters. Unsure where the police department was, he pulled up outside the pool room and asked a young man for directions. The man sent him another couple of blocks, then he made a right and a left before coming up on a station house that looked underfunded and rundown. A squat, flat-roofed building cast in old brick, it was hunched between two much smarter offices and that only added to the air of decay.
    Parking the Riviera, Quarrie tickled the throttle one last time and the V8 shuddered into silence. He sat there yawning, then reached for his pack of Camels on the dashboard and stuffed it in his breast pocket. On the sidewalk he shook out a leg where cramping had set in and worked at the toe of his boot. The sign above the station house door was painted rather than electronic, and even the paint seemed a little weary. The rain still fell and with his hat at an angle he pushed open the