Murder at Ford's Theatre Read Free

The detectives moved quickly down an aisle, skirted the narrow orchestra pit, and bounded up onto the stage.
    “Police,” Klayman announced. “Where’s the victim?”
    The older stagehand’s nod indicated the door leading to Baptist Alley.
    Johnson went to it and stuck his head through the partial opening. He was faced with four uniformed MPD officers who’d driven into the alley from F Street. They were looking down. Johnson did, too, and saw the young woman whose lifeless, bloody body blocked the door. He turned to Johnny Wales sitting on a wooden chair, head in his hands. “Another way out there from here?”
    “Huh?” Wales’s head came up. “Yeah, over there.”
    Klayman beat Johnson to the second exit door and went through it, followed closely by his partner. A few people had walked up the alley from F but were kept away from the scene by one of the officers. Another uniform held a scruffy man against the brick wall with a straight-arm. The man’s advanced dishevelment made it hard to determine his age. Thirty? Seventy? His hair was a helmet of matted salt-and-pepper hair, his scraggly beard hanging far below his chin and cheeks. Large, dark circles on the crotch of filthy, baggy chinos testified to his not being housebroken. Klayman took special note of his eyes; they were large, wild, and watery, giving him the look of a crazed soldier who’d just emerged from behind enemy lines. He wore a dirty white sweatshirt with ARMANI written on it.
    “Cordon it off,” Johnson ordered a patrolman, who went to his car for a roll of yellow crime scene tape. Klayman turned at the sound of other vehicles coming up the alley. Both were white mini-vans; one had EVIDENCE TECHNICIAN written on it, the other OFFICE OF THE MEDICAL EXAMINER . The two detectives didn’t need to discuss what they would do next. Johnson returned inside the theatre to round up everyone who’d been there when the body was discovered, while Klayman took charge of the crime scene itself, making sure nothing was touched or moved, and working with the evidence technicians and ME as they went about their routines.
    Klayman went to where the uniformed cop held the vagrant at bay against the brick wall. “Who’s he?” Klayman asked.
    “An unemployed gentleman,” the cop said, grinning. “Claims he’s with the FBI.”
    “That so?” said Klayman. “What are you holding him for?”
    “Eyewitness. Says he saw who killed her.”
    “Ease up,” Klayman said. The cop released his grip. Klayman stepped closer to the bearded man. “You saw it happen, sir?”
    “You bet I did,” the man said, wiping spittle from his mouth and beard. “Saw it plain as day.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Joseph Patridge. That’s the name I use undercover.” His smile revealed missing teeth; the smell of whiskey curled Klayman’s nose.
    “What’s your real name, when you’re not undercover?”
    “John Partridge.”
    “I see.” To the uniformed officer: “Take him downtown, material witness.”
    “Okay.”
    The evidence technician took pictures of the deceased from many angles with a digital camera, then took positions from which he could photograph the surrounding area. Klayman crouched next to the ME, who was gently moving the girl’s jaw to determine the level of rigor mortis.
    “She’s dead,” Dr. Ong said. What was obvious to the casual observer didn’t become official until the ME had decreed it so.
    “What do you figure, time of death?” Klayman asked.
    “Not stiff as a board yet, Detective. Legs still flexible. Less than eight hours. Maybe six.”
    “She look like maybe she was moved here from where she was killed? Dumped here?”
    Ong pressed fingertips against the girl’s abdomen, exposed because her purple shirt had ridden up to her neck. Klayman observed that there was no discoloration from pooled blood, or livor mortis, on her stomach, indicating that she’d fallen on her back when struck and had stayed in that position. Ong