Killing Zone by Rex Burns Read Free Book Online

bullet?”
    “Again, that’s just a guess because the skull shattered at the point of impact. A .44 or .45. Anything smaller wouldn’t be likely to exit the skull in a single piece.”
    “Magnum?”
    “Possibly. I can’t say. It was close-range—you saw that note about powder burns on the scalp?”
    “I saw it.” Wager asked, “You think the round hit him with full velocity?”
    “What are you getting at?”
    “A silencer. It slows the bullet a lot. Would it have come out the face like that going slower?”
    Again the doc dragged his fingernails across the bristles. “I don’t know, Wager. That’s interesting, but there are too many variables, so I just don’t know. That’s a pretty big slug, silencer or not, and I don’t really know what the impact might have been.” He drained his coffee as the orderly shoved another sheeted bundle through the double doors. “I’ll get the summary done tonight and over there in the morning. Good enough?”
2137 Hours
    It would have to be good enough, of course. Wager, feeling the numbness of the day’s pummeling events begin to invade his mind as well as his body, guided the Trans-Am the dozen or so blocks up Sixth toward Downing and over to his apartment. Despite the welcome blur to his thoughts, questions began to arrange themselves like entries in his notebook: Why was the body dumped in a place as public as that? What happened to Green’s car? Green’s valuables were still on him, so more likely, it wasn’t a robbery-homicide; the killer just needed wheels to put quick distance between himself and his victim. That fit with the big chance he took in dumping the body there instead of out in the country. Frightened? Was that the reason for the rush to get rid of the body? Green is shot in the back of the head and, within forty-five minutes, transported from X, dumped in that lot, and then the murderer, or murderers, drives off without bothering to make it look like a robbery. Just anxious to get rid of the body and be away from the scene. Anxious to get back to an alibi. Unplanned. That was the word Wager tentatively thought of: It looked like a hastily planned homicide, maybe even an impulse shooting—though it took a hell of an impulse to carry a heavy forty-five around before suddenly deciding to use it. Rage? Fear? Threat? A weapon that big, handy for use, but a rush to kill so that all the actions following the death—secrecy, escape, alibi—had not been clearly thought out.
    He unlocked the door to his silent and dark apartment; the red gleam of his answering machine’s light caught his eye. Before flipping the tape on, he went past the refrigerator for a beer and then into the bedroom to take off his tie and shirt and slip out of his hot shoes. Then, cooling feet splayed in the short nap of the carpet, he screened the message tape.
    Most of it was blank, the caller hanging up without leaving word. Finally, a garbled voice stopped him and he reversed to get it from the start: “Wager, you know who this is. Call me now.”
    He knew who it was, but he finished the tape first, finding the same voice two more times. Then he dialed a number from the back page of his little green notebook. As expected, a different voice answered, giving the name of the bar.
    “Is Fat Willy there?”
    “Who wants him?”
    “Gabe.”
    “I’ll see.”
    A minute later the lurch of the big man’s breath came over the wire. “Wager, I hate that fucking answering machine of yours.”
    “It got your message to me, Willy. What’s the problem this time?”
    “The problem is I need to collect.”
    “Collect what?”
    “What you owe me, Wager: a favor.”
    He didn’t deny that he owed, but his question was, how much. “What kind of favor?”
    “A couple of my people. They been busted. I want them out.”
    What Willy wanted and what he got were two different things. “Who’s got them and what’s the charge?”
    “That Nick-the-Greek, son of a bitch. Papalopoulos, or