Kyle Smith’s body lay sprawled along the gutter in front of Immune Corporation when I came out the front doors into the cold Seattle drizzle. Two cops, freshly arrived at the scene, had yet to cordon off the area or control anything. Blood running from Kyle’s cracked cranium mingled with the rainwater on the pavement and the sight of it oozing toward a storm drain made my stomach flip flop. I got on my cell as frantically as my worst day in Baghdad and phoned upstairs to Peyton McKean like I was calling for air support.
“Get down here, quick!” I shouted. “Smith’s been shot, just like he said would happen.”
McKean hurried down from the third floor, still in his white lab coat, arriving just as a second police car pulled up with its lights flashing. We got a close look at Smith before the officers pressed back the crowd, which at first was just us and the woman who made the 911 call but soon swelled to dozens of people attracted by the squad car lights. Tourists and businesspeople walking along the piers of the waterfront spilled across Alaskan Way, over the trolley tracks and under the concrete span of the viaduct with its roaring traffic overhead, drawn by morbid curiosity.
Kyle Smith had fallen facedown in a splayed-out posture like he was dead before he hit the ground. A small gunshot entry wound penetrated his skull behind his left ear. He lay in the gap between two parked cars, one of which was my Ford Mustang. The midnight blue paint on its right front fender and hood was spattered with Smith’s blood.
McKean approached a young female cop tying crime scene tape to a street tree and said, “I know this man.”
“Knew him,” the officer corrected tersely. She was a short woman with short brown hair and a nametag above a breast pocket that read STANWOOD. She tented up the tape, standing on tiptoes to allow McKean to duck his lanky six and a half foot frame under. I followed McKean, saying, “I knew him too,” though that stretched the truth as much as she was stretching the tape to let us through.
Two other cops were interviewing the female 911 caller, using the unsullied top of my Mustang’s trunk as a desk for their paperwork. She explained that she’d come out of a furniture store and heard a muffled shot and saw a heavyset man in a navy blue pea coat and dark stocking cap hurrying away.
Stanwood interrupted the interviewers. “These guys knew the victim.”
In a moment we were talking to three cops at once. McKean explained that Kyle Smith was a University of Washington Professor of Computer Science, and that he and McKean were collaborating on the molecular imaging of DNA and protein molecules in McKean’s biotechnology labs. “Smith was a top-flight imaging programmer,” McKean explained. “We hoped our collaboration would lead to medical breakthroughs.”
McKean tends to digress into scientific detail, so I cut to the point and said, “Dr. Smith just told us a short while ago that if he got killed, somebody ought to talk to Ali Yamani.” The officers barraged me with questions, and I explained that I was a medical news reporter covering the collaboration between McKean and Smith, until this horrific event terminated our tidy little undertaking.
“So, who’s this Yamani character?” asked Officer Stanwood.
I shrugged. “No idea.”
McKean said, “I’d never heard his name before Smith mentioned it today.”
“Did you ask what he meant by the remark?” Stanwood asked.
“He seemed to think better of it,” McKean replied. “Said he took it all back. Never should have brought it up. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Not a lot to go on,” said Stanwood.
After more questioning about our recollections of Smith’s remark, I asked when I could take my car out of their perimeter.
“Not any time soon,” Stanwood replied. “Ballistics and Evidence are going to want to go over it with a fine-toothed comb.”
Watching her colleagues cover Smith with a yellow plastic
“Get down here, quick!” I shouted. “Smith’s been shot, just like he said would happen.”
McKean hurried down from the third floor, still in his white lab coat, arriving just as a second police car pulled up with its lights flashing. We got a close look at Smith before the officers pressed back the crowd, which at first was just us and the woman who made the 911 call but soon swelled to dozens of people attracted by the squad car lights. Tourists and businesspeople walking along the piers of the waterfront spilled across Alaskan Way, over the trolley tracks and under the concrete span of the viaduct with its roaring traffic overhead, drawn by morbid curiosity.
Kyle Smith had fallen facedown in a splayed-out posture like he was dead before he hit the ground. A small gunshot entry wound penetrated his skull behind his left ear. He lay in the gap between two parked cars, one of which was my Ford Mustang. The midnight blue paint on its right front fender and hood was spattered with Smith’s blood.
McKean approached a young female cop tying crime scene tape to a street tree and said, “I know this man.”
“Knew him,” the officer corrected tersely. She was a short woman with short brown hair and a nametag above a breast pocket that read STANWOOD. She tented up the tape, standing on tiptoes to allow McKean to duck his lanky six and a half foot frame under. I followed McKean, saying, “I knew him too,” though that stretched the truth as much as she was stretching the tape to let us through.
Two other cops were interviewing the female 911 caller, using the unsullied top of my Mustang’s trunk as a desk for their paperwork. She explained that she’d come out of a furniture store and heard a muffled shot and saw a heavyset man in a navy blue pea coat and dark stocking cap hurrying away.
Stanwood interrupted the interviewers. “These guys knew the victim.”
In a moment we were talking to three cops at once. McKean explained that Kyle Smith was a University of Washington Professor of Computer Science, and that he and McKean were collaborating on the molecular imaging of DNA and protein molecules in McKean’s biotechnology labs. “Smith was a top-flight imaging programmer,” McKean explained. “We hoped our collaboration would lead to medical breakthroughs.”
McKean tends to digress into scientific detail, so I cut to the point and said, “Dr. Smith just told us a short while ago that if he got killed, somebody ought to talk to Ali Yamani.” The officers barraged me with questions, and I explained that I was a medical news reporter covering the collaboration between McKean and Smith, until this horrific event terminated our tidy little undertaking.
“So, who’s this Yamani character?” asked Officer Stanwood.
I shrugged. “No idea.”
McKean said, “I’d never heard his name before Smith mentioned it today.”
“Did you ask what he meant by the remark?” Stanwood asked.
“He seemed to think better of it,” McKean replied. “Said he took it all back. Never should have brought it up. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Not a lot to go on,” said Stanwood.
After more questioning about our recollections of Smith’s remark, I asked when I could take my car out of their perimeter.
“Not any time soon,” Stanwood replied. “Ballistics and Evidence are going to want to go over it with a fine-toothed comb.”
Watching her colleagues cover Smith with a yellow plastic
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