The Medical Examiner (Women's Murder Club 16.50)

Conklin came through the door. He pushed his hair out of his eyes, then checked out the room and the body. Then he said to her, “Don’t commit yourself, but what are your thoughts?”

She said, “I’ll send out the blood sample in the morning and do the post, but he’s cold. On the face of it, he OD’d and I’d say he’s been dead at least twenty-four hours.”

Claire lifted up the dead man’s shirt and pushed a thermometer into the skin above his liver. Then she waited a minute before reading it.

She said, “I’d estimate that this man’s death occurred more than thirty hours ago. That means it happened early Monday morning.”

“The wallet’s over there,” Welky told Conklin, pointing toward the dresser opposite the bed. Conklin walked over, picked it up, and took a look at its contents. Claire had already seen the wallet. It was good quality and was made from tan-colored calf’s skin. The initials SJA were embossed in one corner.

Inside was Samuel Alton’s driver’s license. The photo on the identification card matched the face of the man who had been found dead in Joan Murphy’s embrace.

“One twenty in cash in the billfold,” said Welky, “along with four credit cards and a dozen business cards. Everything seems to belong to Samuel Alton, Avantra Insurance, San Bernardino. Inspector, there’s also a backpack you’ll want to see here.”

Brown picked up the backpack that had been leaning against the wall and set it down on the desk. Claire left the deceased and went over to watch Conklin go through the contents of the bag.

He hefted it, undid the zipper, and said, “Call me crazy, but I’m feeling lucky.”

Conklin put his hand into the backpack and removed the first item: a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson, small, what was known as a .38 Special. It held six bullets. He showed Claire the chamber. There was only one bullet left inside.

She thought, The first three went into Alton’s back and arm, and the last two went into Joan Murphy’s shoulder and hip. That adds up.

Conklin handed the weapon off to a CSI, saying, “That goes to ballistics right away, Boyd. It looks like it could be evidence in an active homicide case.”

A few more items came out of the backpack, including a bag of chocolate chip cookies and an empty liter-sized Coke bottle with a hole in the bottom. Conklin held up the plastic bottle. He knew that on the street, this sort of thing was used as a suppressor. If a killer screwed the gun into the mouth of the bottle and fired, the bottle would silence the gunshot.

The next item in the bag was a gray T-shirt. Richie sniffed it and said, “Gunpowder.”

He handed the shirt and the bottle off to Boyd. Then he put both hands into the bag and took out a red-patterned kerchief that was neatly folded into a bundle. He said, “This is so heavy, it almost feels like it’s alive.”

Claire saw that the object inside that kerchief was jointed and pointy. Maybe it wasn’t one item, but a number of many small pieces wrapped up together. Conklin set the makeshift package down on the desk and turned to Wallace, the CSI who was holding the camera, saying, “Please shoot the hell out of this.”

Rich opened the kerchief one fold at a time, exposing a pair of very sparkly earrings, two chunky rings, three diamond-encrusted cuff-style bracelets, and a twenty-two-inch white metal chain necklace with a large diamond pendant.

He stared at the glittering array for a long moment. Maybe he was dazzled, thought Claire. Because it was dazzling.

“What do you think of this?” he said to her. “Is it a million dollars’ worth of diamonds?”

Claire said, “If it all came from Cartier or Harry Winston, that batch could be worth multiples of that. But I know one thing for sure: those are Joan’s jewels. I recognize most of it from that second honeymoon photo that was in her wallet. I’ll bet she never expected to see these pieces again.”

Conklin dug around in the main section of the backpack some more but came up empty-handed. Then he opened a zippered pocket in the front and took out a wallet. This one was slim, holding only one credit card and a driver’s license. He showed Claire the photo on the license. It belonged to the man on the bed, Arthur O’Brien.

Claire said, “There’s another pocket on the side there, Richie.”

The pocket was tight and the fabric seemed to resist the insertion of his gloved fingers. Conklin persisted. At last, he pulled out a green plastic hotel key card.

He showed it to Claire and put it down on a corner of the desk. He asked Wallace to take a couple of shots of the card. On the center of the card were the words Warwick Hotel.

“Beautiful,” he said to Claire. “Assuming the gun in the backpack killed Sam Alton, Arthur O’Brien has tied up all the loose ends and wrapped up the case against himself.”

Claire nodded curtly as she handed off the pillowcase with the vomit on it. That’s when she found the cell phone in the bedding. She held it up to Rich and said, “He might have even tied up that package with a bow on top,” she said. “I wonder who Mr. O’Brien had been calling in the weeks before he died.”

Chapter 21

Conklin made phone calls from his car as Claire supervised the transport of Arthur O’Brien’s body and belongings into her van.

First he called John Sackowitz, and then he patched Brady into the call and told both of them what he knew.

He said, “It looks like O’Brien died from an accidental drug overdose. The deceased was in possession of a backpack that was a forensic lab’s dream. There’s a recently fired .38 with one slug left in the six-chamber cylinder and a street suppressor. Also, get this, we found a key card from the Warwick. I’m going to take a wild guess and say it opens room three twenty-one.”