LITMIR.BIZ

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at numerous points, getting shunted farther and farther back through the house and eventually into the yard at the rear.

      Where the total crime scene experience was in full swing.

      A guy in his early fifties was standing outside the hut and talking with a woman from the forensics squad. His suit was a stylish olive three-button number, but it was slightly wrinkled at the thighs. His hair, which was a speckled iron gray, looked freshly cut. Various people kept coming up to him to give brief reports. He didn’t say much. His face looked tired.

      “Lieutenant Strakowski?” Art asked. The man turned to look at us with a “what now” expression.

      “You the guys from Manhattan?” he asked. Micky and Art flashed their shields, introduced themselves, and shook hands. All part of one big happy club.

      Strakowski turned to look at me. “You are?” Cops don’t waste much energy with the niceties. Micky and Art tried to explain my presence as if subtly conscious of my shameful lack of an appropriate firearm.

      The Lieutenant nodded. “Oh, yeah. You’re the guy I read about. With the swords and all.” He turned to Micky. “He doesn’t look that dangerous.”

      My brother shrugged.

      “The Burkes are tricky that way,” Art chimed in. “I speak from experience.”

      You could see Strakowski making connections as we talked. He was the one who had asked for us to come over. I saw him glance once at Art’s hand. The one that had been reattached. But that was it. Strakowski was not easily distracted.

      “Lemme show you what we got,” he said and motioned us toward the hut. He trudged through the grass and we followed. “I gotta say,” he commented, “your Lieutenant was awful cooperative. Almost eager to send you here.”

      “That’s easily explained,” Art answered.

      “Yeah,” Micky concluded. “Lieutenant Colletti hates us.”

      Strakowski paused and turned his head slightly in our direction. But he didn’t say a word.

      I was pretty clear about my role in the crime scene investigation, since I’ve done this before. I was to avoid touching anything. To speak only when spoken to. In short, I was expected to avoid annoying the adults.

      It’s just as well. Crime scenes give me the creeps.

      First, there are all these cops stomping around with the heavy reinforced shoes they wear. You’d think a death scene would be quiet, reverential. It’s not. The little cop radios that are clipped to their shoulders squawk intermittently. The officers call loudly to one another about various things. The forensics people are quieter, but they add a sense of bustle to the whole thing that is unseemly. Particularly if the dead guy is present.

      Fortunately, he wasn’t.

      It was a relief. There’s something about the undignified postures and often messy conditions that are the frequent accompaniment to violent death that get to me. Besides, I was still feeling faintly nauseated from the car ride.

      The calligraphy hut wasn’t a large place. It was meant to be a solitary refuge. Now, it was crowded with cops. Life is full of irony. Strakowski paused at the door and took a deep breath. A Hispanic plainclothes detective was lounging against the doorjamb, watching the forensics team working intently inside, but he looked up almost immediately at the Lieutenant. “Pete, give us a minute, here, would ya?” Strakowski said.

      He gestured at the man with a thumb. “Sergeant Pete Ramirez.” Then he pointed at each of us in turn. “Detectives Burke, Pedersen from Manhattan PD. The other Burke.”

      “The sword guy?” Ramirez asked.

      I let out a long sigh. Some things are not worth getting into.

      Micky smirked. “Hey, Connor. You’re famous.”

      “Everyone’s famous for fifteen minutes, Mick,” I told him.

      “Yeah, well, time’s up,” Strakowski said. He was not a man with a high tolerance for banter. He gestured the forensics team out. “Give us a few minutes, people, OK?” Then he looked at Ramirez. “Fill us in, Pete.”

      Ramirez snapped back into focus and took a notepad from his jacket pocket. “Victim is Edward Sakura, fifty-eight. Works for Three Diamonds Productions, an entertainment agency or something.”

      We moved into the hut as he spoke. A taped outline was on the floor, showing the points of Sakura’s last living contact with the earth. It was well done and you got a good sense of the arrangement of limbs. The area where the head lay was a dark, smudgy stain. You could smell the blood in the close confines of the room.

      Art and Micky stopped once they were inside. They did it together, almost automatically, and slowly scanned the room as if imprinting it in their minds. Ramirez continued his briefing.

      “Victim was alone at the time of the shooting.”

      “You got a fix on the time of death, yet?” Art interrupted.

      Ramirez shook his head no. “Just a rough estimate from the coroner’s guys. I haven’t seen the paperwork yet.”

      “Get it as soon as you can, Pete,” Strakowski said tersely.

      “Wife?” Micky asked.

      “Yep,” Ramirez answered. “Gone all day. We’re checking it out.”

      “Where is she now?” Art asked.

      “She’s inside,” the Lieutenant said, “doped to the eyeballs. The doctor just left.”

      Ramirez went back to reading his notes. “Apparent cause of death was a large caliber bullet wound. Entered the left temple and blew out the other side of the head.”

      “Powder burns?” my brother asked.

      “None visible. No weapon at the scene. Suicide is probably out. We’ll do a paraffin check on the corpse anyway.”

      Micky and Art nodded their approval. “Do the wife, too,” Micky murmured.

      Then he turned to look around, and I did, too. It was a typical layout for Shodo practice. White walls, with natural wood trim. A low, wooden table where the paper, ink, and brushes were arranged. A small cushion for sitting on. There were some bookshelves and drawers behind the spot where Sakura had sat. It looked fairly tidy in there. But the white outline with the stain ruined the effect.

      A few calligraphy brushes lay on the floor, close to the tape outline of an arm. The cushion looked like it had been shoved around, probably by the movements of the body as Sakura took his last trip to the floor. Other than that, most things looked normal.

      “No sign of a struggle,” Art said, as if reading my mind.

      “Right,” Ramirez responded. “No real struggle. No evidence of forced entry.”

      “Anything disturbed at the house?”

      Strakowski let out a stream of air as if impatient with going over old ground. “No apparent breakin. Nothing taken. None of the neighbors saw anything. We’re checking the wife’s alibi. Looking for girlfriend trouble. Boyfriend trouble. Business trouble.”

      Art and Micky looked at him without expression as Strakowski went on. “Look, we know what we’re doing. We know what we’ve got on our hands here.”

      “Ya do, huh?” Micky asked.

      “Sure,” Ramirez said. “It’s a homicide, pure and simple. Clean, efficient. In and out. No fuss, no muss, no bother.”

      “Well, except for the floor…” Art commented. Strakowski looked pained.

      “OK, if you’re all so smart, then why are we here?” Micky asked.

      Strakowski looked at him, hard. My brother didn’t flinch. He saw the same look every morning in the mirror when he shaved. The

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