Scottoline, Lisa - Dead Ringer by Scottoline Lisa

Author:Scottoline, Lisa [Scottoline, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-12-31T16:26:03+00:00

18

Boxy TV news vans littered Walnut Street, their tall microwave towers cutting into the night sky, with their logos, painted in cheery colors, incongruous in the grim scene. Red lights arched through the darkness, flashing from the bubble tops of white police cruisers that blocked the street, and a uniformed cop directed traffic away from the number street and kept it moving up Walnut. Onlookers gathered behind splintered blue-and-white sawhorses that cordoned off the area, mostly teenage boys with backward baseball caps. They tried to get on camera, waving, jumping, and flashing peace signs behind TV reporters talking into black foam microphones in pools of fake light, softened to a more flattering level by wiggly circular reflector screens held up by assistants with aching arms.

Bennie had seen it all before, but it seemed oddly new as she hurried through the commotion, her heart in her throat, hustling in her running shoes over thick rubbery TV cables stretched like trip wires across the street. She ignored the reporters dogging her with tape recorders and microphones, tuning out their questions in her pain, and she didn’t stop moving forward until a uniformed cop halted her in the middle of the street, at a sawhorse wreathed with yellow plastic tape.

“You can’t pass, here, miss,” the cop said tiredly. He was heavyset and he’d said it thirty times already tonight. “This is a crime scene.”

“I know, I’m a lawyer. My name is Bennie Rosato, and the victim was my client.” Bennie couldn’t believe she was saying these words. Her mouth could barely form them. Her mind couldn’t process it. Robert. Dead. Murdered. “His name is Robert St. Amien.”

“Sorry, Ms. Rosato, I can’t let you through.” The cop shook his head, his eyes shaded and barely visible under the shiny patent brim of his cap. “Only police personnel. If you’re a lawyer, you should know that. You could contaminate the scene.”

“Come on, please.” Bennie peered over his shoulder and across the street. Between a florist’s shop and an old-fashioned shoe-repair store lay an alley whose entrance was completely obstructed by police personnel and vehicles. The murder had happened right in Center City, the business district, and it was the second murder here in as many months. The press had flocked to the scene, spinning a story they’d already tagged The Tourist Murders, like a miniseries.

Bennie stood on tiptoe to get a better look. Between the light cast by the streetlights and the ritzy storefronts, still lit for window-shopping, she could pick out the chrome grille of the sober black Econoline that read OFFICE OF THE MEDICAL EXAMINER in yellow block letters. It was parked askew, across the two-lane number street, and its double doors at the back lay undoubtedly open. So the body hadn’t been taken yet. Robert. He is lying there, dead. “I have to get in there! I am a lawyer, I’m his lawyer. I was with him in court today, I swear it.”

“No can do. Now back off. Step away from the-”

“Who’s been assigned to the case from Homicide? I know some of those guys.

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