Live to Tell - Lisa Gardner [8]
“Yep. Had to suck.”
“So couple’s stressed.” D.D. straightened up. “What did she do?”
“Denise Harrington worked as a receptionist at a dentist’s office. Mrs. Nancy Seers, lives across the street, said Denise got off work by three each day so she could meet the kids’ bus. That was a priority.”
“Ages?”
“Ummm …” Phil flipped through his notes. “Nine, twelve, and fourteen. Boy, girl, boy.”
D.D. nodded, turned away from the table, and headed back into the kitchen. A frying pan remained on the stove. Smelled like olive oil and chicken grease. Next to it was a giant pot, like the kind used for corn on the cob or pounds of pasta. More signs of meal prep on the counters: a half-used head of lettuce, bag of carrots, partly sliced cucumber.
She looked for additional beer cans, finding three more in the trash. She opened the refrigerator, found it fairly loaded—proof of recent grocery shopping?—with the usual assortment of bread, eggs, lunch meat, produce, and mystery meals in Tupperware. The refrigerator door yielded two dozen condiments and a half-consumed bottle of Cavit pinot grigio. No more beer. So, assuming that a six-pack had been purchased, then all six beers had been consumed.
But six cans of Bud split between two grown adults? Or even mostly consumed by one? Not enough for a drunken rampage. She didn’t buy it.
Jack McCabe from the ID unit had entered. He looked at the food-covered counters, sighed heavily. “It’s been photographed?” he asked.
“It’s been photographed,” Phil assured him.
Jack sighed again. D.D. didn’t blame him. Processing this scene would be painstaking and, most likely, unproductive. But you had to do what you had to do.
“Start with the knife,” she told him.
“There isn’t a knife,” Jack said, staring at the counter.
“There has to be some kind of knife,” D.D. said, gesturing at the sliced cucumber.
“Oh, there’s a knife,” Phil said.
“Ah fuck,” D.D. said, and followed Phil into the hallway.
Halfway down the hall, they encountered the first sign of blood spatter. It started midway on the high-gloss floor, then continued toward the back of the house, presumably toward the bedrooms, in a mix of spots and streaks.
A man in a brown suit was standing farther down the hall, next to the blood trail. He appeared to be sketching the marks and the corresponding evidence placards.
“You should see this,” he said, so D.D. and Phil walked over. “Note that the droplets actually radiate in two different directions, plus the smear marks, here and here?”
D.D. crouched down, obediently peered at the spatter. True enough, half the droplets seemed to spray forward, the other half sprayed back, and yes, there were two distinct smear tracks, as if two items had been dragged through the bloody mess.
“He caught her first in the bedroom,” the man was saying conversationally. “Struck the first blow. She got around him, though, and ran this way. Unfortunately, she didn’t make it.”
“He stabbed her again?” D.D. asked, frowning.
“No. That’d give us spray arcing across the wall as well as castoff, most likely on the ceiling, depending on the direction of the blow. He just grabbed her. By the hair maybe. Then dragged her to the back of the house, with the others, where he finished her off. See, first pattern of droplets are from her running toward the door. Second set is from her traveling the opposite direction. While the smears—”
“Heels of her feet,” D.D. murmured.
“Yep. Helluva thing to do to your own stepdaughter.” The man finished up his sketch, stuck out his hand. “You must be Sergeant Warren. Alex Wilson. I’m Phil’s shadow for a month.”
D.D. glanced at Phil; he shrugged. “True, just heard it myself about thirty minutes ago. You know how it is: We’re always the last to know.”
D.D. took the man’s hand, but she was frowning. “And your affiliation is …?”
“Detective, back in the day. ’Bout eight years ago, I traded in fieldwork for teaching at the Academy. Been feeling a little rusty, however, so I asked permission to shadow a detective off and on for a month. Eight years is a long time in the biz. Between all the