favorite site.”
“I understand the gun was found on the floor.”
“Right. Statistically, I think only in about a quarter of the cases is the gun found still in the victim’s hand. The bullet was recovered also. It was a .38 caliber semi-jacketed hollow point.”
“All right,” I said, “it sounds pretty cut and dried. All very scientific. But tell me this—would anything you found rule out the possibility of someone else firing the gun?”
He crossed his arms and thought a minute. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders. “I guess not. But consider the circumstances. The victim was obviously under a lot of stress, anguished over the accident that had killed two people at The Sand Castle. It appeared to have been his fault. Sergeant Payne of the sheriff’s office was a witness to his appearance and behavior. Videotapes from the ranger station showed only Mr. Gannon’s car going into the Seashore. All the findings were consistent with suicide. And absent any evidence that someone else had been on the scene at the time of the shooting, Dr. Crandall could reach no other conclusion than a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
Thanks to Sergeant Payne, I thought, no real search had been made for evidence of anyone else at the scene. “You do a pretty good job with the doctor talk yourself,” I said.
“Actually, that was my first choice. But in my second year of med school, I ran out of money. So I took paramedic training and worked with the Emergency Medical Service a couple of years. I’ve been here the past five. Did you say you have a condo on Perdido Key?”
“At Gulf Sands.”
“I live near Perdido Bay , not far from the key. We bought a little house there after our second son was born.”
“Tim Gannon had three boys,” I said.
He rubbed his chin. “That’s bad.”
“Very bad. What did Dr. Crandall come up with regarding the time of death?”
“He put it somewhere between one and three a.m.”
“If I turn up evidence that somebody besides Tim Gannon was likely there at that time, would he be open to a change in his ruling?”
“You’d have to ask him, and he isn’t in now. But I’d say he would be happy to consider any evidence you can develop. I’m sure the district attorney would, too.” He grinned. “I don’t know about the sheriff.”
Neither did I. And I was a long way from putting anyone else on that road at the National Seashore early Saturday morning.
17
When I met Jill back in the lobby, she had an appointment slip for Friday at
one P.M.
“Any chance you’ll have Tim’s death figured out by then?” she asked.
I mimicked her eye-rolling routine. “I’ll be lucky if I can figure out all the players by then.”
“Where do you plan to start looking?”
“Our best lead at the moment is Sherry Hoffman. But it would help to know a little more about her before we turn up on her doorstep.”
“Any ideas there?”
“Who do we know who keeps up with everything that goes on in the vicinity of Perdido Key?”
“Marilou?”
“She’s not bad. But I’m thinking about somebody else—our friend Charlie Brown.”
She nodded. “Charlie knows all.”
———
The Rev. Charles Brown was pastor of Lost Bay United Methodist Church , located on the mainland almost in sight of the key. Lost Bay was smaller than our church in Hermitage, with a few hundred members who met in an attractive one-story building with a high-pitched roof over the sanctuary. This was topped by a soaring steeple with a simple cross. I don’t know how the steeple managed to escape the wrath of hurricanes like the one that pummeled the area back in the summer, but it did.
Jill insisted we attend Sunday services at Lost Bay whenever we were in residence at the condo. By chance we happened to be there for Charlie’s first sermon in July. At the reception that followed, he got interested in my background—his son was an Air Force navigator—and we wound up visiting in the Brown home
“I understand the gun was found on the floor.”
“Right. Statistically, I think only in about a quarter of the cases is the gun found still in the victim’s hand. The bullet was recovered also. It was a .38 caliber semi-jacketed hollow point.”
“All right,” I said, “it sounds pretty cut and dried. All very scientific. But tell me this—would anything you found rule out the possibility of someone else firing the gun?”
He crossed his arms and thought a minute. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders. “I guess not. But consider the circumstances. The victim was obviously under a lot of stress, anguished over the accident that had killed two people at The Sand Castle. It appeared to have been his fault. Sergeant Payne of the sheriff’s office was a witness to his appearance and behavior. Videotapes from the ranger station showed only Mr. Gannon’s car going into the Seashore. All the findings were consistent with suicide. And absent any evidence that someone else had been on the scene at the time of the shooting, Dr. Crandall could reach no other conclusion than a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
Thanks to Sergeant Payne, I thought, no real search had been made for evidence of anyone else at the scene. “You do a pretty good job with the doctor talk yourself,” I said.
“Actually, that was my first choice. But in my second year of med school, I ran out of money. So I took paramedic training and worked with the Emergency Medical Service a couple of years. I’ve been here the past five. Did you say you have a condo on Perdido Key?”
“At Gulf Sands.”
“I live near Perdido Bay , not far from the key. We bought a little house there after our second son was born.”
“Tim Gannon had three boys,” I said.
He rubbed his chin. “That’s bad.”
“Very bad. What did Dr. Crandall come up with regarding the time of death?”
“He put it somewhere between one and three a.m.”
“If I turn up evidence that somebody besides Tim Gannon was likely there at that time, would he be open to a change in his ruling?”
“You’d have to ask him, and he isn’t in now. But I’d say he would be happy to consider any evidence you can develop. I’m sure the district attorney would, too.” He grinned. “I don’t know about the sheriff.”
Neither did I. And I was a long way from putting anyone else on that road at the National Seashore early Saturday morning.
17
When I met Jill back in the lobby, she had an appointment slip for Friday at
one P.M.
“Any chance you’ll have Tim’s death figured out by then?” she asked.
I mimicked her eye-rolling routine. “I’ll be lucky if I can figure out all the players by then.”
“Where do you plan to start looking?”
“Our best lead at the moment is Sherry Hoffman. But it would help to know a little more about her before we turn up on her doorstep.”
“Any ideas there?”
“Who do we know who keeps up with everything that goes on in the vicinity of Perdido Key?”
“Marilou?”
“She’s not bad. But I’m thinking about somebody else—our friend Charlie Brown.”
She nodded. “Charlie knows all.”
———
The Rev. Charles Brown was pastor of Lost Bay United Methodist Church , located on the mainland almost in sight of the key. Lost Bay was smaller than our church in Hermitage, with a few hundred members who met in an attractive one-story building with a high-pitched roof over the sanctuary. This was topped by a soaring steeple with a simple cross. I don’t know how the steeple managed to escape the wrath of hurricanes like the one that pummeled the area back in the summer, but it did.
Jill insisted we attend Sunday services at Lost Bay whenever we were in residence at the condo. By chance we happened to be there for Charlie’s first sermon in July. At the reception that followed, he got interested in my background—his son was an Air Force navigator—and we wound up visiting in the Brown home
Similar Books
