Darker Than Any Shadow - By Tina Whittle Page 0,27

read the lines and whorls of it and make a story—force, trajectory, flow—but I couldn’t. The stains matched Rico’s story, but I could think of other scenarios where the splotches weren’t proof of his innocence. Where they were evidence of his guilt.

I stood as Trey approached. He saw me staring and cocked his head quizzically. I shook my head and turned my back. Whatever emotion was written on my face, I didn’t want to share it.

***

Back at the apartment, I opened a bottle of wine and sat drinking and pondering while Trey fixed dinner. It had been a revelation the first time I’d seen him in the kitchen, the startling domesticity of whisks and measuring cups and cutting boards. And he was an excellent cook, even if his knife skills came from Krav Maga training instead of culinary school.

I topped off my wine. “So what did Cummings say about the blood?”

“He said he’d send a team.” He pulled down a copper-bottomed skillet and put it on the stove eye. “But the sample is certainly compromised.”

“Like the one on Rico’s shoes?”

“Probably worse.”

He got a knife from the block, a big one, and sliced open a red bell pepper in a single deliberate stroke. He had a stack of vegetables that he’d washed—green onions, bok choy, tiny beige mushrooms—and as I watched, he chopped them into matchstick-sized pieces.

He indicated a bottle of olive oil. “Would you put some oil in the pan, please? A tablespoon.”

I did as he asked, stealing a piece of pepper in the process. “So I was right about Cricket and Lex communicating last night?”

“Based on Cricket’s words, yes. But remember—”

“You’re not infallible, I know. But my gut and your frontal lobe agree—Cricket’s hiding something.”

He kept his eyes on his work, on the rhythmic chop-chop-chop. “My overall impression was evasion. Most of the time she told the truth, but not the whole truth.”

“Technically true but deliberately evasive.”

“Yes.”

Boy, did I know something about that. I was the queen of Technically True But Deliberately Evasive. Choose the words carefully enough and you could spin facts into a cover-up that would hide all manner of unsavoriness. Trey pegged it every time, but that didn’t mean he could penetrate it. That really would have required psychic abilities and not just a heightened sensitivity to micro-emotive expressions.

I turned the pan on high. “So what about the blood? Chances are good it’s Lex’s, from where Rico punched him. Wouldn’t that support his story?”

Trey turned the heat to medium. “It depends. It provides an explanation for the blood on his shoes, but it could be used to prove that Rico had motive. That if he were angry enough to punch Lex—”

“But Cricket had motive too! We know she talked to him, probably went out back to meet him—you caught that lie. That would make her a prime suspect, wouldn’t it?”

“It’s circumstantial.”

“Oh, come on!”

He tossed the vegetables into the pan, and they hissed in the hot oil. “It’s a valid theory. But you can’t decide it’s fact yet.”

I hated it when he was right. “So we’re back to figuring out who else might have had a motive for killing Lex.”

Trey moved to the refrigerator. “As information comes to your attention, open up new lines of connection. But focus first on what you can factually prove.”

I started to argue, but realized it was pointless. And also—grudgingly—that he was right. Again. Score one for linear thinking. Still, as good as he was at the straight line, I was equally as adept at the periphery.

I got the salt and pepper from the cabinet and lined them up next to the rice wine vinegar and sesame oil. Trey returned to the counter with a piece of salmon, pink and glistening underneath plastic wrap.

“So the APD is collecting the evidence,” I said. “What’s the next thing that happens?”

“Analysis of the blood.” Trey put the pepper back and got down a bottle of red chili oil. “If both samples are indeed blood.”

“Then they do the genetic profile, right? See if it matches any victims or suspects?”

“Correct. But that requires more advanced testing.”

“How long does it take to get those kind of results?”

“Usually five to seven days minimum, although I’ve seen it go longer for compromised samples.”

So Rico had about a week before the damning truth of the blood turned against him. Trey’s knife flashed deftly, slicing the fish into translucent slivers. Knives were elegant tools, singular in their purpose, and yet killing with one required brutality and force. The human body resisted, with