Hire a Hangman Read Free

medium-mod brown hair graying at the temples. The face had settled into peace; the eyes were open, rolled upward. The victim lay flat on his back, right arm crossed over the body at the waist, left arm flung wide. Beside the open left hand, a ring of keys lay on the sidewalk. The right hand was tightly closed. The body was angled so that the right foot hung off the curb. The torso was almost completely blood-soaked. Because of the steepness of the hill, the blood had run in three long rivulets down the sidewalk. Two of the rivulets ended about five feet from the body. The third rivulet, the center one, continued for several feet more. The blood was still viscous, just beginning to congeal. Probing, the pale yellow cone of light illuminated a tweed sport jacket, gray flannel trousers, brown loafers, argyle socks, a white button-down shirt, and an old school tie. Added up—the hair styling, the tweeds, the flannels, and the argyles—the effect was Brooks Brothers casual.
    Hastings straightened, handed back the flashlight, and gestured for Miller to come close enough to let them talk without being overheard by the onlookers.
    “So how’s it look? Anything?”
    “There’re two eyewitnesses,” Miller said. “And their stories are pretty consistent.” He pointed across the street. “One of them was delivering a pizza. That’s him, in that Honda, there.” Miller pointed to a white sedan illegally parked parallel to the curb on the far side of the street. As in most of Russian Hill, parking in the eleven-hundred block of Green Street was desperate. Because the hill was so steep, parking was perpendicular to the curb. Because the street was so narrow, parking was permitted only on the south side. Because they would have had to be blasted out of solid rock, there were no garages on the north side of the street. The upper half of Green Street’s south side was a stepped series of towering retaining walls, leaving only four garages for the entire eleven-hundred block. All of the buildings were more than fifty years old, almost all of them small apartment buildings. Like much of San Francisco’s premium real estate, they clung to the hills that offered the best views. And the views from Russian Hill were superb.
    “The other witness lives right here.” Miller pointed to a narrow, three-story building that had been built over a double garage. “His name is Bruce Taylor, and he lives on the second floor. There’re three flats in the building. Taylor was putting out the garbage.” Miller gestured to a trash container and two plastic garbage bags. “He saw it happen. He tried to help the victim, but it was too late. And by that time, according to the way I get the story, the perpetrator had disappeared. So then Taylor went inside his house and called nine-one-one.”
    “And you and your partner were the first ones on the scene?”
    “Right. We were only three blocks away when we got the call. If Taylor’s telling the truth, which I think he is, he called nine-one-one maybe two, three minutes after the shots were fired.”
    “So you were on the scene within five minutes.”
    “Give or take a minute. No more.”
    “Did you talk to both of them—Taylor and the pizza guy?”
    “Yessir. His name is Jeff Sheppard.”
    “And?”
    Miller pointed across the street to another three-story building, this one without a garage. “The victim came out of that building. The number is eleven-forty-eight. He crossed the street diagonally, uphill.” As Hastings followed Miller’s moving forefinger with his eyes, the finger traced a path across the street, coming toward them. “He got on the sidewalk here, at about Bruce Taylor’s garage. Then”—the finger continued to move—“then he started walking uphill.” Now the finger was pointing to a tree about ten feet uphill from the body. “At that point, as I understand it, the perpetrator stepped out from behind that tree, there. They were just a few feet apart. Five feet,