Fear Nothing (Detective D.D. Warren #7) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,12
only difference was that this time, her husband was already standing before the murdered woman’s home, and he didn’t appear surprised to see his wife approach.
“Doctor’s appointment okay?” Alex asked, lifting the bright-yellow tape so she could pass beneath it, onto the covered porch.
“I’m supposed to talk to my pain. What the hell do you think?”
“Does your pain speak back?”
“Apparently, that’s the nature of pain.”
“Interesting,” he said.
“Bullshit,” she declared.
She came to a halt beside him. Alex’s gaze was as calm as always, his face inscrutable. She felt her own heart race unsteadily, her breathing shallow. The pain, she told herself. Her own physical healing that depleted so much energy, even climbing up three damn steps required massive effort.
“They call you out?” she asked finally. “Require your expertise?” Alex spent most of his time teaching crime scene analysis at the police academy. He also served as a private consultant. And on occasion, to keep his skills current, he liked to work in the field, which was how they had met, so many years ago. At another townhome, not unlike this one, except there, it had appeared that a man had killed his entire family before turning the gun on himself.
D.D. still remembered walking that scene, following the trails of blood as Alex recited the story he saw written in each pool and spatter, of a wife, spinal column brutally severed from behind, an athletic teenage son, ambushed with a single thrust of a blade between the ribs, then the two younger kids, making their last stand in a back bedroom. The one who never made it out of that room. And the unluckier one who did.
“I knew you would come,” Alex said simply.
“Gonna wave me off? Put me back in my car where I belong?”
Her husband merely smiled. He reached out and tucked an errant blond curl behind her ear. “Might as well tell the wind not to blow. Come on, D.D. As it turns out, Boston PD would like some help on this one. As long as I’m here, why don’t we both take a tour?”
“This is why I didn’t name my pain Wilson,” she told him honestly.
Alex’s expression, however, had already turned somber. “Oh, I wouldn’t thank me just yet.”
Stepping into the shadowed foyer, D.D. was struck first by the smell. Which set off another bout of déjà vu. She could picture herself entering Christine Ryan’s apartment, inhaling this same pungent scent, and knowing, before ever laying eyes on the body, that this would be a bad one. Then, that first, shuddering moment when she realized she was staring down at the remains of a young woman, skin peeled in long, curling ribbons and mounded next to her body.
Alex was studying her. Not the floor, the walls or the rising staircase, all valid elements for a criminalist’s analysis. He stared at her, and that, as much as anything, forced her to pull it together.
She took a deep breath, through her mouth this time, and got her game face on.
Alex pointed to a bin next to the wall. It contained shoe booties and hairnets for all attending investigators, an extra precaution generally taken when a crime scene was deemed especially involved, or the evidence particularly vulnerable.
Different protocol from the first murder victim, then. That scene had been horrific but mostly contained to the victim’s blood-soaked mattress. This one . . .
D.D. pulled the blue booties over her low-heeled boots. The booties were large and elastic, not too hard to manage with one hand. The hair covering proved more challenging. She couldn’t figure out how to pull it into place, while simultaneously gathering up her wayward curls. Alex had to help, his fingers skimming along her hairline, corralling her blond ringlets and tucking them in. She held still, letting him work his magic, as his breath whispered across her cheek. Outside of him assisting her in the shower, it was the most they’d touched each other in weeks.
“Look,” Alex murmured, and pointed to the wall adjacent to the staircase.
She followed his finger and immediately spotted it, just above the lowest riser, a dark smudge against the lighter paint. The first smear of blood.
“And again.” He indicated a spot on the floor now, six inches from her left foot. In the dimming light, it was hard to see, but this mark was larger, more distinct.
D.D. dropped down for closer examination, while Alex snapped on his high-intensity light. He illuminated the mark, and D.D. couldn’t help the small gasp that escaped.