Harry Dolan by Bad Things Happen

Author:Bad Things Happen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Women Detectives, Murder, Mystery & Detective, Murder - Investigation, Michigan, Ann Arbor (Mich.), General, Women Detectives - Michigan, Investigation, Mystery Fiction, Women Sleuths, Crime, Periodical Editors, Fiction
ISBN: 9780425234402
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2009-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

ELIZABETH WAISHKEY HAD NEVER BEFORE BEEN INVOLVED IN THREE homicide investigations at the same time. And as she stood in the living room of David Loogan’s rented house on Tuesday afternoon, it occurred to her that she had never felt a personal connection to a crime scene before. Yet she had been here, in this room, little more than a week ago. She had sat on the sofa where Michael Beccanti’s blood had run out of him.

She was alone in the house now. It had seen a swarm of detectives overnight. Beccanti had died in the ambulance, two minutes out from University Hospital. Elizabeth heard the news from Carter Shan a little before three A.M. When she got to Loogan’s house, Shan was already there, along with Harvey Mitchum and Ron Wintergreen. Kim Reyes arrived a short time later. Then Owen McCaleb, in a dark blue tracksuit and white running shoes.

They had spoken right away to some of the neighbors, and McCaleb was quietly furious when he learned how casually Loogan had escaped the scene. He directed his anger at the two patrolmen who had responded, too slowly, to the 911 call. Elizabeth witnessed their encounter only from a distance—they were three dark figures on the lawn, beneath a barren elm tree. She couldn’t hear what McCaleb said, but the patrolmen sulked off afterward and went to linger timidly by their car, as if they didn’t know whether they should stay or leave.

Mitchum and Wintergreen had been the first detectives to arrive. McCaleb put them in charge of the crime scene. He sent Elizabeth and Shan to University Hospital to secure Beccanti’s personal effects and interview the EMTs who had answered the call at Loogan’s house. They spoke to the pair in the ER waiting room. Neither of the EMTs had seen Loogan in the house, but the woman said she had the feeling that someone might have been lurking upstairs. She went on to describe the efforts someone had made to stanch Beccanti’s wounds. “Do you suppose that was him?” she asked.

Afterward, Elizabeth and Shan learned that no one had contacted Michael Beccanti’s next of kin. They drove down to Saline to talk to Beccanti’s girlfriend, Karen Fenton. The woman’s expression darkened as soon as she saw them. She refused to sit, took the news standing in the doorway of her trailer in sweatpants and a long T-shirt, her arms crossed above her bulging stomach. When Elizabeth tried to take her arm, she jerked it away, staggered, then dropped to her knees and wailed. Shan was able to coax her into a chair, where she sat weeping, the heels of her hands pressed to her eyes. They did their best to console her until one of her neighbors appeared, an older woman who wore a woolen coat over a pale blue nightgown. The woman’s arrival seemed to calm her. They whispered to each other. The woman put water on for tea and shooed Elizabeth and Shan away.

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