The 5th Horseman - James Patterson [88]
Bile climbed into my throat as I imagined the fury and the terror that had filled this room only a short time ago. Who was involved?
I was locked in a vacant stare until Jacobi broke the spell for me.
“Boxer. Let’s do it,” he said.
We swept the downstairs rooms, covering each other. Blood smears on the dining-room walls led us to the kitchen sink, where an eight-inch Chicago Cutlery meat knife rested in the watery blood rimming the drain.
We climbed the stairs to the second and third floors, clearing the rooms, throwing open the closets and shower-stall doors, checking under the beds.
“Nobody. Nothing.” Jacobi grunted.
The master bedroom was furnished in heavy mahogany furniture, navy-blue carpet and curtains, pale-blue sheets. But the blankets had been stripped off the bed and removed from the room.
We holstered our guns and headed back downstairs to the living room.
That’s when I saw the heavy crystal vase lying on its side in the niche of the fireplace.
“Jacobi. Come here and look at this.”
He stepped heavily across the room, put his hands on his knees, then bent down and examined the vase.
“It wouldn’t take much to clobber someone with that thing. Take a nice chunk out of their skull,” Jacobi said.
“Look here,” I said, feeling a chill as I pointed to the hairs sticking to the bloody, sawtoothed lip of the vase. The strands were black, about five inches in length. It would take days of lab work to confirm what I already knew.
“Jacobi—this is Dennis Garza’s hair.”
Chapter 126
SIRENS SCREAMED UP Leavenworth, the swooping wail getting louder as the line of patrol cars turned onto Filbert.
“I’ll be outside,” Jacobi told me.
We’d only been in the house for a few minutes, but I felt time whizzing past. I took up a position in the foyer that gave me a full view of the living room. I ran the scene through my mind again, trying to make sense of evidence that didn’t want to make any sense.
It didn’t look like a robbery gone bad. The doors were all locked, and the only sign of forced entry was what Jacobi had done to the front door.
I imagined someone ringing the doorbell as we had done, Garza letting in a person he knew. But who was it?
The overturned club chair, the broken lamp, the whatnots scattered on the floor made me think that an argument had turned physical, had spun completely out of control.
I imagined this unknown assailant conking Garza on the head with that vase, Garza’s skull splitting, the wound spewing blood as only a head wound can do.
I could see Garza falling by the fireplace, pulling himself up using the ornate wood carvings as a handhold. The attacker must’ve panicked that Garza was badly injured but still alive, going from a terrified “Oh, shit, I didn’t mean to go this far” to a determined “This prick’s got to die.”
There were bloody handprints on the door frame leading to the kitchen, where the killer had gotten the knife.
The castoff blood on the ceiling could only mean that Garza had been stabbed repeatedly while he was alive.
Then the attacker had taken Garza from behind and slashed his throat. That would explain the arterial spray across the walls.
The trail of blood seeping into the carpet made me think that Garza hadn’t stayed down. He had tried to reach the front door, his will to survive propelling him forward, his mortal wounds slowing him down. He’d finally collapsed in front of the sofa, where he’d bled out and died.
Someone hated Garza enough to attack with such incredible violence. Someone he’d trusted enough to let inside the house. The same person who’d then removed Garza’s body and locked the door.
Who?
Sirens cut out as the squad cars pulled up on the lawn. I walked out to the front steps and was calling the DA’s office for a Mincy warrant to secure the scene, when Charlie Clapper came