LITMIR.BIZ

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Murray sucked in another breath and rushed at it a second time. As his boot made contact, the wooden doorjamb cracked and splintered around the lock.

      The instant the door slammed open, the officers tore inside, hollering, “Police!” with their guns pointed in three different directions. The lights were off in the apartment, but the afterglow from the setting sun glimmered through three huge, multi-paned windows, casting broken shadows across the room.

      Their eyes swept the cavernous loft that was still hazy with gunsmoke.

      Then they froze.

      Even for experienced officers, the sight of a little barefoot girl lying on her stomach only twelve feet from the door was shocking. Her arms were stretched out toward them. She had obviously been trying to reach the door. She had to have known what was happening in the last few moments of her life.

      The child’s hair haloed around her head just as she had fallen, and blood puddled on the cold, brown painted concrete in a two-foot-diameter circle. A piece of a copper bullet jacket glinted in the pool of blood. Her light blue shorts were intact but her pink-and-blue floral T-shirt was riddled with bullet holes. One shot had entered and exited her arm. Another had ripped her side, and an additional shot had hit her back. The officers were sickened to see the hair on the back of her head parted by a shot that had been obviously fired at close range, execution style. That bullet had exited through a gaping hole by her nose.

      What kind of man could have done this?

      Thornton knew that there was no chance that she could be alive, not with such heavy blood loss. From working traffic wrecks, he was used to seeing dead people. He’d come to accept that when someone had already expired, there was nothing you could do for them and you just had to get on with the investigation. But this was different. This was no accident. He’d be seeing that little body again when he shut his eyes tonight and tried to sleep.

      He picked up his walkie-talkie and demanded, “Get homicide over here right now!” At this point, his reactions were automatic: shotgun in one hand, radio in the other.

      Mary Jean Pearle had said there were two girls. They’d found one. Where was the other?

      The officers turned to their right. They saw a closed door, and gripped their guns more tightly. Then Thornton grabbed the door handle, threw it open, and switched on a light. It was a large walk-in closet. Before they did anything else, it had to be secured. They moved methodically, quickly, as they had been taught. Thornton entered the closet, stepped to his right, and kept his back flat to the wall. Murray squatted down and covered him, while Officer Rojas took the left-hand side.

      Using their guns, they poked through closely packed, hanging clothes and stacked boxes. They found five long guns leaning against the back wall behind the clothes in addition to a couple of pistols that sat on white, plastic-coated wire shelves.

      The next door led to the bathroom, where they found two more rifles. They quickly secured that area and moved to the first bedroom.

      The room was small and partially walled off from the rest of the loft. Two stacked metal bunk beds, probably for the children, were pushed against one wall. The beds were neatly made up. A soft pastel coverlet with dainty flowers and ribbons covered the bottom bunk. It contrasted sharply with the top bunk’s spread of bold red and blue, splashed with big white stars. There was little else in the room, except two packing boxes stuffed with toys and children’s books.

      Stepping further into the loft, they came upon the master bedroom to their left. A double bed covered with a shiny purple spread sat across from a gun rack that held three rifles in plain view. So far, they had seen at least a dozen long guns. On a nearby nightstand sat a Glock, a semiautomatic handgun similar to police issue. It had probably been used for that last shot to the little girl’s head, because the tip of the muzzle still held a few strands of hair and bits of flesh. They were careful not to touch anything. Headquarters was probably looking for a judge to sign a search warrant right now.

      They reluctantly left the loaded Glock where it sat. If Battaglia were hiding in the hall, all he had to do was rush in, pick up the gun, and the officers would be sitting ducks. When they had stormed through the entrance, they had left the loft door open. Right now they didn’t want to waste time to retrace their steps to close it.

      The huge number of guns made them apprehensive. If they did encounter Battaglia, what kind of a hell would they face? The two younger officers wore bulletproof vests, but Thornton never did. He found the vests hot and confining; he’d just as soon take his chances.

      It was obvious that Battaglia had only recently moved in. Packing boxes were stacked six feet high in the back of the loft. They provided a perfect hiding place for someone watching the officers, waiting for them to get closer, waiting for them to be easy targets. The place was disorganized but not disheveled. The bedroom furniture was arranged in place, and Oriental rugs gave further definition to room areas. The loft’s living room was so large it echoed. The ceilings rose about fourteen feet and were supported by three-foot-thick concrete columns, ribbed in Romanesque style.

      The officers’ eyes continuously scanned the packing boxes for movement. They still didn’t know if Battaglia were hiding there or in some other dimly lit corner of the loft.

      Tightly clutching their guns, they systematically cleared each area. The officers examined a large black sound system that sat behind two huge speakers. CDs and tapes cluttered the floor, and several spent bullet casings littered the area. Gun drawn, Officer Thornton stood in front of the sound system while Officer Murray checked behind it.

      Stacks of books leaned against every wall and crowded each room while bare bookshelves stood ready to house them. The books defined Battaglia. One pile held Hangover Soup, appropriate for a man they later learned had addictions. That lay on top of The Bell Curve, a controversial book with racial overtones suggesting that blacks performed lower on IQ tests. There was Neo-Conservatism balanced above A History of Western Morals, and, under that, a copy of The Art of War by Sun Tzu. What kind of problems had sent Battaglia in search of answers in books like these?

      With guns still drawn, the police covered the areas in front of, behind, and inside the boxes. When they had satisfied themselves that those areas were secure, they turned toward the kitchen. Seconds later, they stopped.

      A speakerphone and a pistol sat on the countertop. On the floor directly beneath them, an older girl lay on her side. Her left arm was tucked under her chin as if she had fallen asleep, and a tiny gold earring glistened in her lobe. A bow held her ponytail in place, and a blue Band-Aid circled her middle finger. Her red shorts were clean, but her white Highland Park hockey T-shirt was splashed with blood. A stylized cartoon hockey player, stenciled in yellow-and-blue plaid on the back of her shirt, wore a determined look with his hockey stick raised high. Two bullet holes marred her back, and she too had suffered that final execution-style shot to the back of her head. The blackened, powder-burned flesh around the wound indicated that the gun had been shoved into her scalp. That bullet had exited through an open starburst gash in her forehead. There was way too much blood on the floor to hope that any life still clung to that little body.

      Officer Thornton needed a flashlight to look under beds and around darker areas. He left Murray and Rojas at the scene. When he entered the hall outside the loft, he noticed a closed door that wasn’t an entrance to any apartment.

      He jerked open the door and pointed his revolver into the dark interior. It was a janitor’s closet. Even filled with brooms, mops, and other cleaning equipment, it was definitely large enough to hide a man. He made a mental note to check that closet on each floor. Then he hurried to the elevator and rode down to the lobby on his way to get a flashlight from his squad car.

      As he stepped outside on the sidewalk, he almost collided with Mary Jean Pearle. She had been talking on her cell phone. Her face was deathly white and her brown eyes puffy from crying.

      “Are they there?” she asked.

      “Yes, ma’am, they are,” he replied gravely.

      “Are they . . . ?” she asked, unable to utter the unspeakable word.

      “Yes,

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