Officer Garza, who stood in the kitchen, flipping the pages in his sketch pad.
“Let’s do the living room,” she said.
He took a second too long to nod, a flash of resentment on his face. She was getting used to those moments of spite. Of cops looking at her like she didn’t deserve to call herself a detective, or a cop, for that matter. And as if she definitely didn’t deserve to be calling the shots.
Well, she called the shots, deserve it or not. Garza would have to deal.
He entered the living room, sketchbook in hand, and waited for her. She hesitated for a moment, the large bloodstain on the floor frustrating her. For someone as tall as Garza, it posed no problem. But she couldn’t just step over the stain. She would have to jump over it, like she had twice before already. And with the shoe booties, which she had insisted everyone wear, she could easily slip and fall. Not to mention that in her own mind she looked ridiculous, hopping like a rabbit in a cheap suit.
She jumped over it and did in fact slip and almost fall. Then she straightened and eyed Garza, daring him to laugh. He didn’t.
Focusing on the job at hand, she began measuring the room with a tape, calling out the measurements to Garza, who jotted the details on the page. Garza and his partner had been first on the scene. When O’Donnell had shown up, she’d asked Garza to be the sketcher, while his partner was in charge of the scene perimeter. They’d already done the bathroom and the bedroom and had waited for the body to be removed before they started with the living room.
She placed an evidence marker numbered eight next to the victim’s phone, discarded on the floor. Evidence marker nine was placed by the torn bra. Evidence markers ten to fifteen next to the bloody footprints that covered the floor. On one of her first homicide trials, they’d almost lost the case because they had marked three footprints with only one marker, leading to shoddy photographs. Never again.
“Make sure to point out the direction of the footsteps in the sketch,” she said.
“I will.” Garza was measuring the distance of the victim’s phone to the room’s doorway.
“And triangulate the distance of each one separately.”
He shot her a disgusted look but said nothing. Of course, he knew how to do his job; there was no need to micromanage him. But it was better safe than sorry. O’Donnell had had enough sorry in the past months for a lifetime.
She paced around the room, careful to avoid the bloodstains, searching for anything she might have missed, but found nothing. Then she strode over to Garza and glanced at the sketch. She grudgingly had to admit to herself that the man did a good job. The sketch was tidy, the triangulations careful and methodical.
Loud voices caught her attention. The officer outside was arguing with someone, and the tone got more and more heated. Media already? Or a nosy neighbor?
She jumped over the bloodstain again, not slipping this time. Definitely getting better at bloodstain jumping. Then she marched out of the house, squinting as she adjusted to the sunlight.
They’d cordoned off Catherine Lamb’s house and tiny front yard as well as a patch of the sidewalk. Garza’s partner, a rookie fresh from the academy, stood on the sidewalk inside the perimeter, the crime scene logbook in his hand. On the other side of the yellow tape were a man and a woman. The woman wore a long beige trench coat, her hands in her pockets. She had a matching brown wool hat and scarf. The man had a black overcoat, which he wore over a gray suit.
The woman’s voice rose over the traffic noise as she berated the rookie. “We just need a few minutes. It’s in your best interest to—”
“Excuse me,” O’Donnell called, striding over, her breath clouding in the cold air. “Is there a problem?”
“Feds,” the rookie said. “They want to enter the crime scene.”
O’Donnell frowned and turned to face the two feds. The man was black haired, tall, with wide shoulders. His posture was ridiculously casual, almost slouching, like a high school student trying to seem cool. The woman was, to some extent, the complete opposite. She didn’t even reach the man’s shoulder, and wisps of auburn hair peeped from underneath her wool hat. Her delicate lips were pursed with displeasure, and her entire body seemed poised, as if she was