Crime Scene Crew

Before long the stinging had completely faded from my eyes, without the help of milk, even. There was still a distant ringing in my ears, but it wasn't that bad.

Amy had apparently had the presence of mind to duck when she saw what she thought was a grenade fall to the ground, so the only hit she took was to her ears.

The both of us were still sitting on Comstock's couch. I was looking out the window at the tree-filtered moonlight. I didn't know if those were actual woods behind the house, or just a patch of trees. That guy, Shamus O'Flashbang , could have fled away under the cover of the trees, or he could just be hiding out there waiting for another chance to strike. For perhaps the fifth time I realized I had his gun in my hand, and felt better about my odds for a moment.

Still, I found my phone and dialed Rubino's number and told him that I had to reschedule our meeting, and that Comstock was dead and the guy who killed him was probably about to kill him so this girl I know stabbed him with my knife and he jumped out the window under cover of flashbang . Rubino had me repeat the sentence a few times as if I were speaking too quickly or reading a physics equation, then said he would be over with a crime scene crew.

While we waited patiently in the unlit living room of a dead guy, who was just in the other room, I asked out loud, "What was that?"
"What was what?" Amy replied, leaning against the arm of the couch and looking uncomfortable.
"That. You grabbed my knife and stabbed the guy," I said, looking for somewhere prudent to set the gun down.
"Oh, that. You're welcome."
"You don't think it was a little, I don't know, dangerous?"
"And grabbing a gun with your hand isn't?"
"That's different, I'm..."
"A guy?"
"Capable. But you're..."
"A girl?"
"Not."
"Not?"
"You know what I mean," I said, setting the gun on the floor.
"Yeah, there's something wrong with your brain and when you're in danger you turn into Batman. That doesn't mean I can't help out."
"By stabbing someone?"
"What were you going to do?"
"I don't know. Ask him questions."
"So I should have done nothing?"
"I don't know. I don't like my danger spilling over onto other people."
"It's spilled. I'm covered in it. I was there in Lorton, I was there at your house. I'm in this thing too."
"I wish you weren't."
"I wish none of this was happening, but here it is. I stabbed a guy and our principal is lying dead by the front door."
"My principal."
"No, I was assigned to him too. I just never saw him because I was never sent to him."
"Because you waited until now to start stabbing people."
"Something to tell my grandkids, I guess."

I didn't say so, but I wasn't sure if I was going to live that long.

Special Agents Bremer and Rubino soon showed up, along with their "crime scene crew" which, I found, was practically a small army. FBI forensic agents milled around the house, some uniformed police officers showed up to watch the outside of the house, and some detectives came and mostly stood around and waited for somebody to tell them what to do. It seemed on their end like another jurisdictional pissing match. Once again, the FBI calls dibs on a crime that the cops would love nothing better but to occupy themselves with. Once again, I was in the middle of said crime.

We two youngsters stayed in the living room mostly, and after ten minutes or so Bremer and Rubino came over to again go over what had happened.

I told about how we'd come over to talk with Comstock, how we'd found the door slightly open and his body blocking it. I told about walking through the kitchen and around to the living room, talking out loud about Dingan and all that, when Angus McHitman stepped from the shadows and confronted me about my involvement with Dingan's death.

"He referred to Dingan by name?" Bremer asked, looking a bit tired.
"Yeah," I said. "He said he thought that the police had killed him, not me."
"He seemed interested in him? Like he knew him, and this was personal?"
"Yeah, like they were friends or partners or... partners."
Bremer made a slight face. "Nothing we know about Dingan indicates that he worked with others," he said.
"Well this guy didn't seem too happy about Dingan being dead. He gave up his position just to confront be about it."
"He might have been planning to kill you two anyway," Rubino said.
"That's nice to know," Amy said with a nod.
"He wouldn't have expected us," I said. "We hadn't made plans to come here, it was last minute."
"Did you talk about it over the phone?" Bremer asked.
I thought for a moment, then said, "No, we talked about it in person. Do you think my phone is tapped?"
Bremer and Rubino both shrugged. I decided I needed a new phone, and a new account.
"We'll be able to figure more out once forensics determines a time of death," Rubino said.
"How?" I asked.
"If Comstock was killed just before you arrived, maybe you caught the killer in the middle of his escape," Bremer started, "or if he died hours ago, maybe he was waiting for you; or waiting for someone. Or maybe he was looking around the house for something."
I nodded, about to reply when two uniforms came through the back sliding glass doors. They each had flashlights and were switching them off.

"We've finished checking the perimeter," one of them said to Bremer or Rubino. "We found a trail of blood leading into the woods, but it ends a hundred feet or so in like he patched himself up. We could bring in K-9 and continue a foot search, or call in some choppers from State."
Both FBI men seemed to consider it. I said, "Couldn't hurt," feeling good about contributing, then Bremer said, "It's been over half an hour. If he's a pro, he should have disappeared by now. You can try the dogs but a chopper would be a waste of time. This isn't a manhunt."

The two cops nodded and went about their business. Over by the fireplace, some forensics people were poking at the drops of blood on the floor with cotton swabs or something. One of them was dropping my knife into a plastic evidence bag.

"Ah," I said, loudly, "do you have to take that?"
Everybody in the room stopped and looked at me, decided who I was talking to, and everybody but the forensics people went back to what they were doing.
"It has his blood on it," the woman holding the bag said.
"There's blood all over the place," I said.
"What, is it your knife?"
"I... maybe," I said, not sure if I should have admitted it or not. I just didn't want my knife to get taken and absorbed into the system.
The woman, on her knees, shook her head and tossed the bag across the room over to Rubino. He held the bag up, looked at my knife through the clear plastic, then handed it over to me, saying, "Happy birthday."
I took the bag, looked at the knife through it, and decided to wait until I could clean the blood off of it before taking it out.

"So, why isn't this a manhunt?" Amy asked.
Bremer and Rubino turned toward her, then looked at me and saw that my expression matched hers.
"Some guy gets drunk and shoots his wife," Bremer started, annoyed, "you have a manhunt. Someone breaks out of prison by shanking a guard and scaling a fence, you have a manhunt. Both of those people are scared, sloppy, untrained, and predictable. If this guy is a real hitter, he spends hours each day planning how to evade a manhunt. Someone like this, you have to track down with your brain, not a bunch of yokels with bloodhounds."

Over by the door, examiners in blue FBI jackets had finished fluttering around Comstock and were loading him onto a stretcher. Forensics people were coming out of the kitchen loaded with evidence bags full of various items. One of the medical people, another woman, came over to our little circle and snapped off her latex gloves.

"Cause of death?" Bremer asked.
"Unsure at the moment," the woman replied.
"Time of death?" Bremer asked.
"Also unsure," she said, hesitant.
Bremer lowered his head slightly to look at her from the top of his eyes.
"The problem is, external indicators all say he died no more than an hour ago. But, just looking at the body, it looks like three to four hours. His body is in mid-stage rigor mortis, which takes three or so hours to even begin; but the musculature is locked into the position it was in at the moment of death, while usually the body will relax into a more natural posture before going stiff. It looks like cadaveric spasm, or instant rigor. That almost only happens in drowning, but nothing indicates he was drowned and dumped here."
"Is there anything else that can cause that?" Rubino asked.
"Nerve gases like VX will do it, and a few glycine-antagonist poisons like strychnine can do it. Both of those usually cause death by spasming the skeletal muscles until the spinotrapezius and latissimus dorsi muscles work against each other and break the spine, but it doesn't seem like this guy's back is broken. It could also cause the diaphragm to displace itself, which may have happened. We'll know more once we pump the stomach and analyze some of the foods it looks like he's eaten."
"You said VX nerve gas?" Rubino said, concerned.
"Yes," the woman said, "though if it were in the air right now we'd all be on the floor dead. It's possible he was given a quick dose of it. Again, we'll know for sure once he's on the table."

Bremer thanked her, and she headed out the door with the rest of the science brigade. "You didn't eat anything while you were hear, did you?" Bremer asked me.
"No," I said, "and I didn't sniff anything, either."
"Me either," Amy chimed in.
Bremer nodded, then noticed the gun on the floor by where I'd been sitting before. It was partially knocked under the couch.

"That yours or his?" Bremer asked. I turned and looked at the gun. It seemed like a nice gun, and I rather liked the idea of keeping it.
"His," I said, unfortunately.
"Then that, I'm sorry, we will have to take."
Bremer pointed to it, and Rubino stepped over and picked the gun up by sticking a pen through the trigger guard.
"A Walther," he said, "a .22, with an AAC silencer."
Bremer chuckled and said, "Well there you go."

I looked from him to the gun, then said, "What?"
"Two types of people use .22s," he said, "target shooters that are just beginning, women mostly, and hitmen. Add a silencer, and it's pretty obvious. A .22 bullet is so small, it can barely pierce bone. Sometimes they get caught up in the abdominal muscles and don't even get through the gut. They're only any good at point blank range, but they're so quiet -- especially with a silencer -- that it's like a housefly's fart. Takes two or three shots to do any damage, but the noise is what people like about them. That, and their velocity is so low that they rarely exit the body."
"So there's no mess," Rubino added.

"Wow," Amy said, dryly, "this is all very fascinating and I'm sure I'll one day use that information in a novel, but I think a more relevant topic would be what is going on to catch this guy, and when can we go home?"

Rubino stood for a moment, holding the gun from his pen in silence. He pulled an evidence bag from his suit jacket and dropped the gun into the bag.

"Finding the guy isn't likely," Bremer said, "more feasible would be finding who hired him. If this was supposed to be retribution for something to do with you, or for screwing up by hiring Dingan, then there are few suspects."
"What, Schumer?"
"Probably."

I sighed, wishing I had some kind of clue as to what was going on.

"So there's nothing stopping this guy from coming after us now?" Amy asked.
"Coming after you? If he wasn't contracted to kill you, he's got no reason to bother," Bremer said.
"These types never go off-book, unless you really piss them off," Rubino then said.
"It's a good thing neither of us stabbed him in the leg, then," I said, looking at Amy.
She shrugged. "You grabbed his gun and hit him in the throat, I'm not the only one he'd be mad at."
Bremer looked at both of us, and asked, "Are you two in some kind of piss-off-hitmen contest or something?"
"We do have a knack for it," Amy said.
"Oh yeah," I said, "Dingan was supposed to be bringing me in, but I managed to coax him into wanting to kill me. How's that for off-book?"
"I don't understand this," Bremer said, "you want credit for annoying people into wanting to kill you?"
"I'm just saying, this new guy could still be a threat."
"I wouldn't worry about it," Bremer said.

"How about my house? Do you have any idea who came to my house and burned it down?"
"Blew it up," Rubino said.
"Huh?"
"It wasn't burned down, there was an explosion. If the house had just been set on fire, it would still be standing."
"Ok, so... wow. Um, do you know who blew up my house?"
"Nope," Bremer said.
"Awesome," I said, sarcastically. "Since I have little to no idea what the hell is happening in my life, could you perhaps provide some kind of list of people who might want to shoot me or blow me up?"
Bremer looked confused, "Well, it's a short list. It starts and ends with Schumer."

Why would Schumer want to kill me? If nothing else, it seems like he would want to strap me to a chair and have some hypnotist take a swan dive into my mind and undo his mistakes. I represent the last two decades of work for him, and probably millions of dollars were spent on the stupid program that produced me. There was no reason for him to want me dead, so why were my FBI stalkers saying he would?

I remembered something Schumer had said. "You won't know who to trust." At the time, I thought he was just trying to be mysterious. He implied it was the FBI who'd actually killed my dad, as little of a fan I was of him at the moment. Lately, it seemed as if all Bremer and Rubino cared about was using me to mole out as much information about the program as they wanted. Maybe the FBI cared more about the program than about me. Maybe the FBI is who my dad was trying to sell the program to, not a foreign government. Maybe the FBI double-crossed him, or he double-crossed the FBI, so they killed him, and are now pumping me for the information he couldn't get them. I supposed if that was their goal, they would want me to hate Schumer, wouldn't they?

My head was spinning and my stomach felt sick. I didn't like the thought of being used. I didn't like the thought of anything that was happening to me. I didn't like that my dad was dead, or that my house had exploded, or that I was wanted in Austria, or that for the last 17 years I'd been having my head screwed around with without knowing about it. I didn't like that I was still standing in my dead principal's living room, or even the fact that my principal was dead. I also didn't like the fact that wherever I went, I was putting my and Amy's life in danger. Once again, I was fed up. For all I know, Bremer and Rubino could have blasted Comstock with VX gas, or hired the .22-Caliber-Killer to "off" Comstock.

Wasn't VX gas the stuff in that movie, The Rock? The little, green, glass balls? Whatever.

I told Bremer and Rubino I'd call them later, grabbed Amy's hand, and left the building.