We went through decontamination and changed into street clothes. Chunk was in a blue t-shirt and jeans. The t-shirt, skin tight, looked like it was about to split open across his biceps and at the huge wads of muscle packed onto his shoulders. I was in jeans, a ratty old red blouse, and white tennis shoes. By the end of that summer, Homicide detectives had stopped dressing for success.
We waited around for Dr. Laurent. Myers told us she was in a meeting with her counterpart at the Lockhill Station Morgue and wouldn't be back till at least eleven-thirty.
That was still an hour away.
“Okay,” Chunk said while we waited, “what about Cole?”
“Cole, eh?” I thought about him for a second. He had a lot of easy fits in our equation. “Okay,” I said, trying to get myself started, “Cole is upset because the WHO people won't take him seriously.”
“Right.”
“And then he comes across Bradley in the GZ, working on the same thing he's working on.”
“But that by itself wouldn't make him mad enough to kill her,” Chunk pointed out. “Wouldn't he feel vindicated they were looking into his theory?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“And wouldn't Bradley have mentioned him in her journal if she saw him?”
“Yeah.”
Chunk drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, thinking. “Okay, Cole comes across Bradley the morning she's killed, which we know is some time around eight forty-five. From that bit she wrote, we know she felt like she was on to something bad. Maybe she tells Cole about it, and he gets upset because he thinks she's going to steal his big discovery.”
I paused before I answered, adding it up in my head. “Okay.”
“And then he kills her.”
“No,” I said. “That doesn't work. She was shot with Wade's gun, remember? Cole carries that twenty-two.”
“So he kills Wade first, then Bradley.”
“That's the trouble, though. Wade was beat to death. How's a seventy year old man going to beat a thirty year old cop to death? A cop who nearly tore you up. And on top of that, why would Bradley talk to Cole about what she'd found in the first place? From everything Myers told us, it doesn't sound like anybody at WHO thinks very highly of him.”
Chunk's mouth worked under his mask. He looked like he was chewing on a big wad of gum, though I knew he was thinking about that fight with Wade all those years ago. Chunk doesn't let stuff like that go easily.
“I don't know,” Chunk said. “But let's say he does somehow. The rest of it fits, doesn't it?”
Most of it does fit. Though it doesn't make sense.
I said, “Let me see. There's a fight between Cole and Bradley. Wade jumps in. Cole kills Wade. Then Cole takes Wade's gun and shoots Bradley.”
“Right.”
“And then Cole does what?”
“He hides the van, strips Bradley naked, and dumps her onto Isaac Hernandez’ truck at the morgue while he's there to pick up more specimen samples from Myers.”
I mulled that over, not liking it.
“Why not?” Chunk asked.
“Why does he only strip Bradley? Why take only her back to the morgue? If he wanted to dispose of the bodies, why risk bringing even one of them onto the loading docks at Arsenal where any number of people could have seen him? An old man carrying a naked pretty girl is going to cause some eyebrows to go up, even in this place.”
Chunk frowned under his mask. “I don't know.”
“And how does he get her onto Isaac Hernandez’ truck without Hernandez knowing it?”
“Well, Hernandez is sleeping, right? So he doesn't notice.”
“Maybe.”
Chunk checked his watch. Still forty minutes till Laurent's due back.
“What about this one?” I asked. “Wade and Bradley are jumped by those looters in the GZ.”
“Maybe,” he said. I could tell he liked that one. A light switch turned on behind his eyes.
“A small group of them surprise Wade, and he shoots them,” I said. “Or at least two of them.”
“The two you found next to the garage?”
“Right.”
“And then there are more of them? Enough to beat up Wade and take his gun?”
“Right,” I said.
“Then they kill Bradley?”
“That would explain why she's naked.”
He frowned, doesn't get it. He looked at me. What are you talking about?
I said, “When they were chasing me they knew I was a woman. They said things. What they wanted to do when they caught me.”
“Oh,” he said. And then, as it hit him, “Oh. Lily, I'm sorry.”
“It didn't happen, Chunk. Thanks to you.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Of course the ME told us there was no sign of forced sexual activity, post-mortem or otherwise. And remember, she was shot while she was wearing her space suit. I think that kind of clouds up the looter theory.”
“True,” he said.
“And that still doesn't explain how Bradley's body ended up at the morgue. Those looters wouldn't have brought her here.”
“True.” Chunk leaned back in the seat and crossed his arms. I could see the muscles shifting beneath his shirt. “So where does that leave us?” he asked.
“I don't know,” I admitted. “Stuck, I guess.”
A few minutes later, Chunk's cell phone rang. He flipped it open, looked at the caller ID, and frowned.
“Treanor,” he said to me, and accepted the call.
Chunk didn't get to do a lot of talking. Most of what he said was “Yes, sir. Twenty minutes, maybe. Ten? Okay, well we're… Yes, sir. Ten minutes. Yes, sir.”
He hung up and dropped the car in gear.
“What's up?” I asked as he wheeled us toward the gates, mashing down on the gas hard enough to throw me back in the seat.
“The shit's hit the fan,” he said.