Read Last Man's Head for Free Online

of a hundred, the killer will never be found, and the Department does not have the resources to work such cases. So they stay on the books as an unsolved case, unless someone confesses later.
    In most homicides, unless there is a reliable witness who is prepared to testify, one of the first areas the investigators look at is motive. Robbery was clearly discounted: he had no ID on him, and only a folded $5 bill in a back pocket. Leroy and Quinn canvassed the people using the park, and those living in a two block radius, but without success. The body was found early on a Sunday morning: the place would have been in use all day Saturday, so it must have occurred sometime Saturday night. The medical examiner confirmed this. But there was still the mystery of how this street person came to be there.
    One theory that Leroy and Quinn had was that he originated from Santa Monica, and had migrated eastwards.  The night in question was unseasonably chilly - around 37 degrees – and he had sought shelter in the building. In any case, Clover Park is quite open, and he would have been hard pressed to find natural shelter for the night. He was sitting in a stall, but fully dressed, so was not using the toilet. Quinn suggested he might have been witness to some kind of encounter, maybe two gay men, and shot by one of them. Leroy felt the idea was not without merit, but he felt it unlikely he would be killed just because he saw two guys humping. In any case, whether it was that, or something like a drug transaction, even if he did report it, who would believe the word of a homeless old guy?
    It was all academic, however; after two days, Leroy and Quinn were ordered by Patterson to leave the case as pending, and move on to the next case, where there was a better chance of finding the culprit.
    ‘Street guy shot in the middle of a park middle of the night,’ he had said. ‘Chances of finding who did it – zero. Unless someone calls in and makes a confession, you’re wasting the department’s time and resources.’
    So the Clover Park murder remained unsolved, and untouched.
    Until this morning.
    Leroy thought he would take the Captain at his word and focus on his twelve unsolveds.  Clover Park began with a C, and was on the top of his list. He had decided he would spend one day on the case, to see if he could dig up anything more.  Fresh pair of eyes syndrome.  In any case, he was still uneasy about the guy being shot almost execution style just for witnessing something going on in a bathroom. Unless the killer did it because he felt like it.
    Leroy parked on 25 th , and wandered through the park, over to the bathrooms. He wandered around the buildings, then walked around the partition. The women’s bathroom was to the left; the men’s to the right. First of all he stepped over to the women’s door, took out his badge, and then knocked on the wooden doorway.
    ‘Hello? Anyone in there? Police,’ he called out. There was no answer. He stepped in, and just as he got over the threshold, he heard a flush. He stepped back outside and momentarily a plump middle aged woman stepped out.  She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Leroy, but relaxed when she noticed the badge he was holding out.
    ‘Police. Sorry. Didn’t mean to alarm you,’ he said.
    She muttered something, went over to the washbasin, washed and dried her hands and bustled past him. Once she had gone, Leroy looked around inside, pushed open the three stall doors with his foot. Looked around each stall. There was nothing of any interest here.
    Then he went into the men’s room. It was exactly as he had remembered it from before. A touch shabby, but generally clean, although with a slight odour of urine. Again, he pushed open the doors to the two stalls and looked around. Looking around the right hand stall, he remembered the day when the body was found. He recalled that the bullet passed right through the victim’s head. He had been shot at almost point blank