“Right,” Archie said slowly.
“It’s got a kick. With this sort of central nervous system injury, you expect to see one of two things. Either the gun’s a few feet away or your guy suffers a cadaveric spasm, right, and his hand’s frozen around the weapon.” He held a clenched latex-gloved hand out to demonstrate.
Archie turned and looked at where McCallum still lay facedown on the table. The gun was gone, already bagged. “A death grip.”
Robbins let his hand drop. “Yeah. If the body’s fresh, you can tell. The hand’s frozen. Body’s not. But when I got here, he was in full rigor. Maybe a cadaveric spasm kept that gun in his hand. It’s possible. Thing is, death grips are kinda rare. Something you see more in the movies.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Maybe nothing,” Robbins said. He started writing on the clipboard again. “He’s got a nice muzzle imprint, so the gun was definitely against his skin when it was fired.” He scribbled something else. “Then again, there wasn’t any blow-back on his hand. There was blow-back on the gun. But not on his hand.”
Archie reached out and plucked Robbins’s pen out of his fist. “Are you saying that this wasn’t suicide? That someone shot him and put the gun in his hand?”
“No,” Robbins said. He looked at where Archie held his pen out, then at Archie. “I’m saying that death grips are pretty rare and he didn’t have blow-back on his hand. It was probably suicide. We’ll cut him up and have a look-see. I’m just giving you a preview. Make it more exciting.”
“Shit,” Archie muttered, leaning his head back in frustration. The ceiling was white. A single globe light fixture hung over the middle of the room. The light was off. “Did you turn off the light?” Archie asked.
Robbins looked up at the light fixture. “Do I look like it’s my first day? ’Cause it’s not.”
Archie spun around and poked his head out the back door. “Anyone turn off the light in here?” he hollered. The cops in the backyard looked at one another. No one volunteered.
He shut the door and turned back to Robbins. “So if we accept the premise that no one fucked up and hit the switch—”
Robbins took his pen from Archie’s hand and casually slipped it behind his clipboard clamp. “He probably didn’t shoot himself in the dark. Sunset’s around six, six-thirty. Sorta indicates that he did it before then.” He looked down at the corpse. “But not by much.” He smiled. His brown skin made his teeth look especially white. “Or maybe one of the dozen cops who’ve been through here turned off the light.”
Archie could taste the sour burn of stomach acid on his tongue. Addy Jackson had gone to bed at ten.
“You feel okay?” Robbins asked.
“I feel terrific,” Archie said. “Never better.” He found an antacid loose in his pocket and put it in his mouth. Its sweet chalky taste was muted by the smell of rotting flesh.
CHAPTER
39
H ow does it feel?” Archie asks. The codeine had made things better. He is only barely present now. The wounds on his abdomen are red and hard with fluid. He can feel the burning pain of the infections, but he doesn’t mind it. He doesn’t even mind the heavy smell of decomposition that suffocates everything. Sweat clings to his clammy skin and his limbs lie lifeless, but to him, his body feels loose and warm, his blood gelatinous. There is Archie. And there is Gretchen. And there is the basement. It is like they are in a waiting room for death. So he makes conversation.
Gretchen sits in her chair next to his bed, her hand resting on his. “Were you there when your children were born?”
“Yes.”
Her look grows distant as she tries to articulate her thoughts. “I think it must be like that. Intense and beautiful and wretched.” She leans toward him, until he can feel her breath against his cheek, and then brings her lips to his ear. “You think they were random. But they weren’t. There was always a chemistry. I would feel it right away.” Her breath tickles his earlobe; her hand tightens around his. “A physical connection. A death spark.” She turns and looks at their hands folded together, his wrist still bound by the leather strap. “Like they wanted it. I would pluck them out of the universe. Hold their life in my hand. What astounds me is that people get up and go to work and come home and they don’t ever kill anyone. I feel sorry for them because they aren’t alive. They will never really know what it’s like to be human.”
“Why did you use the men?”
She gazes at him flirtatiously. “It was better when my lovers did it. I liked to watch them kill for me.”
“Because then you had power over two people.”
“Yes.”