TWO
“Detective Stevens, what do we have here?”
Collin McIntire, the Chief of Police for the city of Astoria, was a decisive figure. Armed with clever wit and a jovial personality, he had developed the reputation of cutting through the mundane clues at a crime scene to discover the essential elements, with only an occasional, unplanned constitutional violation. He presided over a city that had earned a strong reputation for alcohol induced violence, drunken mayhem, questionable assaults and intoxicated driving incidents, yet for all those crimes, murder was still rare. On this rainy morning, as the storm began to abate, the chief had a triple homicide to begin his day.
“That man over there is the truck driver who called us in this morning shortly before noon,” remarked Stevens, soundi
