He stays slumped there, this dead weight in my office chair, then slowly he tips forward, he gains momentum, then his forehead
cracks heavily into the edge of the desk, jarring his head upright as his body falls, keeping him balanced for a moment longer, the back of his head almost touching his shoulders, his face exposed and his empty eyes staring at me, before he continues down to
the ground where he lies in a clump that five seconds ago was a person but is a person no more. He lies on the gun, and still I sit here, watching, waiting: perhaps someone will come along and
tell me that this is what I get for following up a line of questioning into an investigation that isn’t even mine.
The pink mist slowly settles; the smell of the gunshot starts to fade, replaced by urine and shit; and the ringing in my ears slowly dulls to a shrilling noise.
I stand up slowly, as if any sudden movement might cause him
to pick the gun back up and try prefixing his suicide with the word ‘murder’. I move around my desk to the body, careful not to step in any blood. I think of his last words. They deserved the dignity. He wanted me to take him seriously, and he succeeded. Only problem is I still don’t believe he’s innocent. Shooting himself in my office isn’t the action required to prove innocence over guilt; if anything, it helps suggest insanity over sanity. I’d have told him this if I’d been given the chance.
I crouch down and put a hand on his shoulder. Without rolling
him, barely without touching him, I go through his pockets.
There is a small envelope that has my name written on it, only he’s spelt it wrong. In the bottom of the envelope is a small key.
I’m about to sit it up on my desk when I see the blood mist has coated the surface. I fold the envelope in half and tuck it into my pocket. I go through the rest of his pockets. I find car keys and a wallet; I find tissues, two packets of antacids, a broken pencil and one of my business cards. I leave them where they are.
I use my cellphone to call the police because my office phone is covered in blood. I ask for Detective Schroder but get transferred through to Detective Inspector Landry. I’d rather not talk to him, but I’m not running high on options. I tell him the situation as if giving just any old police report. Before I finish I ask him to bring coffee.
‘Jesus, Tate, this isn’t my first homicide,’ he says.
‘You mean suicide.’
‘Yeah. Whatever.’ He hangs up.
I sit on the ground out in the corridor, putting a cushion
between me and the wall so as to not stain it with the blood
splatter on my jacket, and lean back. I think of what Bruce told me. Why kill yourself if you’re not admitting any guilt? How
could you possibly believe he buried those girls but had nothing to do with their deaths?
I pull the envelope out of my pocket. The key looks a little
different from others I’ve seen, and I can’t identify it. There are no marks on it, no numbers, no letters. It could be for a house, a lockbox, a safe, a boat — could be anything. It’s just one more item that I’ve taken from somebody today. The ring is still in my pocket, and the wristwatch is still on my desk. I head back into my office and slip it into a plastic bag before dropping it into my pocket. This whole area is a crime scene now and I don’t need
awkward questions.
I’m still in my office when I hear them arriving. The elevator pings, the doors open, and half a dozen police, including Landry, spill into the corridor. Soon there will be others as they come to
question and photograph and document and study. The cemetery
crime scene was taken away from me, but this one is mine.
I stand by the doorway and watch. I have worked with most
of these men and women in the past, but they look at me as if I’m a stranger. Their greetings are curt, and I am told to step into the corridor and wait.
chapter thirteen
The night drags on. My office is quarantined from me, and from the rest of the world, by yellow boundary tape with black lettering.
Forensic guys dressed in white nylon overalls move slowly around inside, searching every square centimetre in case the vital clue is a microscopic one. Nobody asks to search me, but my hands are tested for gunshot residue and my jacket is taken from me because of the blood dust that has settled on it. I’m not concerned at all, because the evidence will show that the shooting happened exactly as I said it did. It can’t go any other way. They can’t come back to me tomorrow and say they’ve weighed it all up and their conclusion is I put the gun into his chin and pulled the trigger.
Still, it’s a clear-cut case of suicide that can’t be that clear because of the time they’re taking to studying the angles and blood patterns. At least that’s how it feels. They’re taking this long to deal with it because they’re dealing with me. They don’t trust me the same way they trusted me when I was one of them.