Officer Davila was on his back, his winter jacket unzipped, revealing the stiff shape of a bulletproof vest beneath a navy blue commando sweater. He had been shot between the eyes with the.38 revolver on top of his chest.
'Is this exactly as he was found?' I asked, stepping close.
'Exactly as we found him,' said a detective with NYPD.
'His jacket was unzipped and the revolver was just like that?'
'Just like that.' The detective's face was flushed and sweating, and he would not meet my eyes.
The medical examiner looked up. I could not make out the face behind the plastic hood. 'We can't rule out suicide here,' she said.
I leaned closer and directed my light at the dead man's face. His eyes were open, head turned a little to the right. Blood pooled beneath him was bright red and getting thick. He was short, with the muscular neck and lean face of someone who was seriously fit. My light traveled to his hands, which were bare, and I squatted to take a closer look.
'I see no gunshot residue,' I said.
'You don't always,' said the medical examiner.
'The wound to his forehead is not contact and looks to me as if it's slightly angled.'
'I would expect it to be slightly angled if he shot himself,' the medical examiner replied.
'It's angled down. I wouldn't expect that,' I said. 'And how did his gun come to rest so neatly on his chest?'
'One of the street people in here might have moved it.'
I was beginning to get annoyed. 'Why?'
'Maybe someone picked it up and then had second thoughts about keeping it. So he put it where it is.'
'We really should bag his hands,' I said.
'One thing at a time.'
'He didn't wear gloves?' I squinted up in the circle of bright light. 'It's very cold down here.'
'We haven't finished going through his pockets, ma'am,' said the woman medical examiner, who was the young, rigid sort I associated with anal-retentive autopsies that took half a day.
'What is your name?' I asked her.
'I'm Dr. Jonas. And I'm going to have to ask you to back away, ma'am. We're trying to preserve a crime scene here and it's best you don't touch or disturb anything in any way.' She held up a thermometer.
'Dr. Jonas' — and it was Commander Penn who spoke — 'this is Dr.
' She held up a thermometer.
'Dr. Jonas' — and it was Commander Penn who spoke — 'this is Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the chief medical examiner of Virginia and consulting forensic pathologist for the FBI. She is quite familiar with preserving crime scenes.'
Dr. Jonas looked up and I caught a glint of surprise behind her face shield. I detected embarrassment in the long moment it required her to read the chemical thermometer.
I leaned closer to the body, paying attention to the left side of his head.
'His left ear is lacerated,' I said.
'That probably happened when he fell,' said Dr. Jonas.
I scanned the surroundings. We were on a smooth concrete platform. There were no rails to strike. I shone my light over concrete supports and walls, scanning for blood on any structure that Davila might have hit.
Squatting near the body, I looked more closely at his injured ear and a reddish area below it. I began to see the class characteristics of a tread pattern that was wavy with small holes. Under his ear was the curve from the edge of a heel. I stood, sweat rolling down my face. Everyone was watching me as I stared down the dark corridor at a light getting closer.
'He was kicked in the side of the head,' I said.
'You don't know that he didn't hit his head,' Dr. Jonas said defensively.
I stared at her. 'I do know,' I asserted.
'How do we know he wasn't stomped?' an officer asked.
'His injuries are inconsistent with that,' I replied. 'People usually stomp more than once and in other areas of the body. I would also expect there to be injury to the other side of his face, which would have been against the concrete when the stomping occurred.'
A train blew by in a rush of warm, screeching air. Lights floated in the distant dark, the figures attached to them shadows with voices that faintly carried.
'He was disabled by a kick, then shot with his own gun,' I said.
'We need to get him to the morgue,' the medical examiner said.
Commander Penn's eyes were wide, her face upset and angry.
'It's him, isn't it?' she said to me as we began to walk.
'He's kicked people before,' I said.
'But why? He has a gun, a Clock. Why didn't he use his own gun?'
'The worst thing that can happen to a cop is to be shot with his own gun,' I said.
'So Gault would have done that deliberately because of how it would make the police… make us feel?'
'He would have thought it was funny,' I said.
We walked back over rails and through trash alive with rats. I sensed Commander Penn was crying. Minutes passed.