Murder at Union Station by Margaret Truman Read Free Book Online

and plenty of tin, brass, and copper badges being flashed.
    “Get these people outta here!”
    The order came from MPD detective Bret Mullin, a bulky, crusty twenty-nine-year veteran of the department, who’d been parked in an unmarked car around the corner from Union Station’s main entrance when the call went out from a police dispatcher. Two recent muggings outside the station had prompted increased police scrutiny, and intelligence sources indicated an increase in small-time drug dealing. Mullin had been assigned to a surveillance detail and wasn’t happy about it.
    There was a time earlier in his career that long stretches of surveillance didn’t bother him. He’d sit in a car and drink coffee and smoke and eat doughnuts and enjoy the parade of humanity. He’d watch men and women pass and wonder where they were going; where they lived; the sort of people they were close to—family, friends; the TV shows they enjoyed watching. Attractive women were mentally undressed as they moved by, and Mullin would speculate on the sort of men allowed to share their beds, starting with himself.
    But there were times, especially when surveillance had to be conducted on foot and the weather was bad, that the urge to abandon the assigned post for the warmth of a dry and convivial bar and restaurant was too compelling to ignore. That was the beginning of the corpulent Mullin’s troubles, succumbing on occasion—on too many occasions, according to his superiors—to the warm ambience of neighborhood bars and fast-food shops, and the pleasures they provided a footsore, bored, and gregarious detective.
    “Get ’em outta here,” Mullin repeated.
    He stood in front of the swinging yellow doors, now propped open by rubber wedges provided by the station’s maintenance crew. Beyond the door lay the lifeless body of the victim, a pool of blood surrounding his head. His toupee had been blown off and was against a wall a few feet from the body, looking very much like a dead red rodent. His splintered cane had been blown a dozen feet up the hallway; the small suitcase he carried had split open on impact with the floor, its contents scattered.
    The workers who’d been in the hallway at the time of the murder had been corralled at the far end.
    “Get their statements,” Mullin instructed another detective in plainclothes. He said to other officers: “Fan out through the station and see if anybody saw anything—the victim, maybe the shooter.”
    Evidence technicians in white lab coats entered the area, followed by a specialist from the medical examiner’s office. After conferring briefly with Mullin, they entered the hallway to begin the process of photographing the murder scene and identifying, documenting, collecting, and preserving what physical evidence might be present. Two empty shell casings between the body and the doors had already been noted and marked by small cards with numbers on them.
    “I hate scenes like this,” Mullin grumbled to Vince Accurso, a detective with whom he’d been paired for the past two years. He looked back at the crowd that was still gathered and shook his head. “Give me a nice, empty dark alley anytime,” he said. “What the hell do they expect to see, the victim get up and do a buck-and-wing?”
    Accurso laughed without a sound.
    Mullin belched and inhaled noisily. His sinuses had been particularly bad the past few weeks.
    “He got whacked by a black guy,” Accurso commented flatly.
    “What evidence?”
    “People,” Accurso said, nodding.
    Witnesses to the shooting in the hall had blurted out their recollections of the shooter’s appearance to the first cops on the scene.
    “Tall, thin, well dressed, brownish suit, carrying a raincoat,” Mullin said, reciting what he learned the workers had told the police. “Consistent.”
    “How about that? Good, huh? Nobody saw a short, fat white guy in a blue suit.”
    “Keep things going here, Vinny. I’m taking a walk.”
    Mullin hitched up