"Barry B. Longyear - Murder in Parliment Street" - читать интересную книгу автора (Longyear Barry)

story alert.тАЭ

тАЬAny idea what the story concerned?тАЭ

тАЬI got the definite feeling everyone out there is expecting to catch
someone official with his pants down.тАЭ

тАЬReally.тАЭ I thought on that for a second then shrugged. тАЬShad, scan
the vic, get a liver temp, DNA, and ID while I set up a prang and fly the grid.
Analyze this spatter here, as well.тАЭ

While Shad got to work, I pulled away and up until I hovered
approximately ten meters away from the corpse toward the shopping center
end of the walk. Because of the narrowness of Parliament Street I couldnтАЩt
both get a good view and a solid fixed wall position upon which to mount
the Vader prangтАФcop slang for the high definition image marker used for
recording and analyzing the content of crime scenes. I attached one end of
a high-tension poly web to one building wall about four meters up, stretched
the web across the street, and attached it to the opposite wall. Mounting the
prang in the center of the web, I remotely activated it. Once it settled down
it began making a three-dimensional wideband record of the scene and I
began a grid search of the entire space between the walls.

The walkway was unobstructed relatively clean concrete, itтАЩs condition
making it more than fifty years old. Save for the images of a couple of false
doors imbedded in the glass below and images of a couple of false
windows and exhaust ports four stories above, the building walls were
simply two solid featureless slabs of poured glass: Modern, secure, low
maintenance. When I got to the High Street end I looked out at the crowd.
Although the curiosity seekers had thinned somewhat, the media reporters
were just as thick as before and not moving. Nothing to see at that end; no
one issuing statements. The tip they had gotten must have been made of
solid goldтАФor thatтАЩs the way they were regarding it. I returned to the grid.
 I noticed a small whitish feather stuck on the southwest wall
approximately three meters up from the corpse. I closed on the site and
hovered across from it. UV light showed a variety of organic materialsтАФbird
waste, skin cells, and a small amount of medium-velocity blood
spatterтАФsurrounding the feather in a vertically elongated impact pattern. In
normal light there were a few microscopic red fibers scattered through the
lower right portion of the pattern. I took images of the site, retrieved
samples of the fiber evidence, took DNAs from the skin cells, feather, and
blood, then measured the impact pattern to compare with the corpseтАЩs
particulars to calculate impact angle, force, and trajectory.

тАЬJaggs,тАЭ said Shad, тАЬThe spatter on the walk is medium-velocity
blood matching the vicтАЩs. Pattern is the result of ground impact on already
present surface blood. The vicтАЩs wound is on the side against the ground.
Scan shows several broken bones on the birdтАЩs right side: Two in the right
wing, five ribs on the right side of the breast. Wing and rib bones broke the
skin. Dead about four hours.тАЭ