A Clean Kill

and she knew why.

The last two murders in this precinct had been solved by Mike and detectives under his old command at the Homicide Task Force. Now that he was no longer in the Detective Bureau, he couldn't call on Homicide Task Force detectives without messing up protocol. If he didn't trust the detectives in' his own precinct to get the job done, he couldn't disrespect them by bringing in his old people. Furthermore he couldn't take on the task himself. Precinct captains did not investigate homicides. They were supposed to walk in, look around, and walk out just like the other brass.

Good going, Mike—just call in the little woman to take care of things. April kept a straight face and let the former boss and his underling figure it out. Mike and Chief Avise were pack leaders with the same goal but different teams and agendas. One of them had to back down. Finally the chief shrugged. 'Fine, let her take a look. Then she goes home.' He moved away.

That's how it was done. Although it didn't appear as if the chief had given in, Mike clearly thought she was in on the case. 'Sorry, querida,' he mumbled.

'Who's the victim?' she asked, getting to the point.

'Madeleine Wilson, wife of Wayne Wilson. Remember him?'

Oh, God. Suddenly it all clicked. That explained the kitchen and Mike calling her. 'Oh, that's terrible. Where is she?' April felt bad for Wayne Wilson. He was such a nice guy and had a great young family. And, it was going to be a big circus.

'We better go this way.'

Mike opened a door that led into an exceptionally neat garage, where no fancy car was parked at the moment. Right away April noticed the little blue bicycle and the even smaller tricycle up against the back wall. Two expensive mountain bikes hung on a hook above them. Leaning against the far wall was an assortment of skis in various sizes. Oh, God, these were rich people. Really rich people who had a house in the middle of Manhattan with a garage all its own, and they skied down mountains. She hated this already. Not that rich made any difference to her at all. Any family with little kids mattered. But it always bothered her that money never saved anybody. It never really helped, and surprisingly often money made things worse.

Holding her breath, April followed him into a gym that looked new. The floor was polished wood, a light color. Exercise machines filled the space. She didn't recognize some of them. Pilates was the brand on the side. She looked up. This room was obviously an addition. The ceiling was made of slanted glass. Billows of white linen, like upside-down umbrellas, shielded the room from the sun and people looking in from the windows in the apartments above.

'She's in there.' Mike stopped short at the door to the shower and moved aside.

April looked in, and her eyes flickered as she adjusted to a horrific scene. Even after years of experience, she never expected to see a mutilated person in a serene setting, a rich setting like this. Or indeed any setting at all. Violent death was always a surprise, but the remains of Madeleine Wilson were particularly shocking. April had seen her photo in the social columns of the newspapers, in an oil painting on the wall in the living room. She knew the woman had been beautiful and those were the images she held in her mind. Mrs. Wilson had been the American ideal, tall, blond, well built. The machines in the gym indicated that she cared about her body.

That was what made it so difficult to look at her now. Naked and sitting on the teak bench of her shower, Madeleine Wilson was as spooky a ghost as April had ever seen. Her long hair was plastered on her neck and shoulders, darker than in her photos and soaking wet. Her skin looked waxy and gray, and was just beginning to pucker. One of her eyes was open, the other a pulpy mess. A gash had opened her forehead, and there were stab wounds all over her chest. It wasn't clear whether she had been sexually assaulted or not. The ME would have to determine that.

And there was more. The perpetrator hadn't just run amok and then split. He'd handled the body. From the number of wounds, it didn't seem likely that the victim had died sitting up. The killer must have picked her up, arranged her on the bench, and then turned on the shower to wash all the blood down the drain. The lack of blood was the eeriest thing. Not a drop was visible in the shower, on the victim's body, or on the floor of the gym. Mrs. Wilson had defense wounds on her arms and face and hands, even on her feet. She'd fought for her life. April guessed she might have kicked at the knife, but all traces of the fight had been washed away. The bathroom floor was clean. The sink was clean. The blond wood floor in the gym seemed unmarked. Crime Scene was going to have a lot of work to do. They'd have to take the place apart, open up the drains, to find anything.

She swallowed and turned away. 'She was attacked in the shower and arranged that way after she was dead, right?'

Mike nodded. 'Looks that way.'

'Was the floor dry when you got here?'

'Yes.'

'What about towels? Someone must have mopped up.'

'Querida, we just started,' Mike said.

'Did you find the murder weapons?' She went on as if he hadn't spoken.

'Weapons?'

'Looks like more than one size wound to me,' April murmured. She couldn't see the woman's back but didn't want to get any closer. The CSU team would scream if she touched anything. They were going to scream anyway. A lot of people had been in here.

'Maybe, maybe not.'

April squinted at the eye and the chest wounds. One wound seemed bigger than the others. There wasn't that much damage to the face, if you didn't count the forehead and eye. It looked as if a thinner blade had done that damage. Maybe a boning knife or an ice pick. Certainly not a butcher knifee. April's father was a chef. Her first important gift had been a cleaver. She knew her knives.

'I'm guessing two,' she said.

'Perpetrators?' Mike looked surprised.

'No, knives. What have you got on the knives?'

'Nothing yet. We're checking with the nanny to see if any are missing from the kitchen.'

'Is she the young woman in the living room?'

Mike nodded a third time.

'Who found the body?'

'She did. The nanny. Name's Remy Banks.'

The girl in the living room might be the killer. Was she big enough to attack a larger woman, then move the body? April wondered about that, then told herself not to jump to conclusions. Everybody at a crime scene looked guilty. She backed out into the area, studying the floor. Not a footprint, not a gum wrapper. Nothing. Except a purple iris lying on the table. April's glance swept over it out to the garden, where other irises were growing in a patch. Someone had come in here from the garden. Maybe the victim, maybe someone else.

'Where's the husband?' she asked.'

'He's on his way.'

'From where?'

'One of his restaurants. I don't know which one. He has an alibi. He was with a chef.'

April didn't respond to that. She knew chefs were notorious for saying anything that came to their heads. Her father and his cronies could lie like rugs. 'Mike, I don't want to start anything I can't finish,' she said slowly.

'Look, just help me out for an hour or so. Talk to the nanny and check back with me, okay. I won't embroil you, I promise.'

April shook her head. They both knew that wasn't the way it worked. 'Okay, I'll talk with the nanny,' she said.

Six

Remy Banks was still shaking. She'd seen plenty of dead people and dead animals in her time, especially in her childhood in Wyoming. Gruesome things. Cattle and dogs that had their intestines ripped out by wolves. Once she'd seen a video of a grizzly bear mauling a human being. The whole thing had been caught on tape. A stupid tourist had thought he could chase a huge bear away from his campsite with some pot-banging, and then a few