Closer Than Blood

“Could you determine his ethnicity?” She looked at the reporting officer, almost blank eyed.

“Not really. He had on a mask.” This was the first time she’d mentioned a mask. Kaminski underlined that.

“Ski mask?” he repeated. The wheels were turning now. Tori was retrieving some information. A pause, then an answer.

“Not sure. More like a panty hose. I could see his face, but his features were smushed by the fabric.”

“Had you seen anyone in the area who matches—to the best of your recollection—what you saw that night?” The question was bait, and usually good bait. A suspect frequently takes the suggestion and runs with it.

“He looked like a gardener.”

“A man who delivers groceries.”

“A transient I’ve seen a time or two nearby.” Tori went limp. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“You’re going to have to give me a minute. This is extremely difficult.” Kaminski waited for her to collect herself. Her eyes were damp with tears, but none flowed down her cheeks. She was a coolheaded woman, a logical woman. She’d expected the worst and had prepared herself for the moment when she’d knew with certainty, with utter conviction, that she was alone in the world. What came from her lips next would have been stunning to the most veteran detective.

“I’ll need a lawyer,” she said.

“Won’t I?”

“Why would that be?” he asked.

“Just call it a hunch,” she said, this time looking directly at him.

“You’ll focus the investigation on me. I understand it. I know how things are done. In the end, you’ll have to look elsewhere because I had nothing to do with any of this.”

“No one is looking at you,” Kaminski said. She looked past him once more, breaking the gaze they’d held.

“Not now. But tomorrow somone will. Someone will say the ugliest things and your minions will circle me and my tragedy like a school of sharks. Each after a piece.” She stopped talking. Kaminski stood there in uncomfortable silence.

“Detective,” she finally said.

“I want to know one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“How am I supposed to live without him? He was my soul mate. I loved him.” Tears started rolling down her cheeks.

“Again, I’m truly sorry for your loss,” he said, taking a couple of steps backward before turning for the door. She looked back at the sky through the window, turning to the blush of a new day.

“Thank you, Detective,” she said.

The beige Princess phone next to Tori O’Neal Connelly’s bedside rang. She smoothed her covers and disregarded it for a moment. But the ring was persistent and altogether annoying. She reached for it, wincing with the pain that came with stretching skin that had been sutured. She assumed it was a nurse or, as she liked to call them, an attendant from the hospital. She planned on telling whoever it was that she would make an outgoing call if she wanted anything. Tori was never shy about indicating whatever it was she wanted. Her heart’s desire was hardwired to her mouth. As she clasped the receiver to her ear, nurse Diana Lowell entered the room.

“Hello,” Tori said into the mouthpiece. She shifted her body in the bed. Immediately, her face froze. She turned away from the nurse who was emptying a plastic bag liner brimming with used tissues and other nonsharps into a large disposal can.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was low. Not a whisper, but if Diana Lowell had actually tried to listen, it would have taken considerable effort.

“Understood,” she said, her eyes fixed on the nurse as she rolled the disposal can from the room to the bathroom. She turned away.

“Don’t ever call me here again,” she said, her voice, decidedly firm. She pressed the button to disconnect the call. The line went dead, but she didn’t put the phone down just yet.

“Don’t worry. I will be fine,” she said, her eyes purposefully catching the attention of the hospital worker.

“I miss you, too. I can’t wait to see you.” The nurse who frequently didn’t see a need to hold her tongue just looked at her. Tori shifted in the bed.

“My sister,” she said.

“She’s coming to see me.” Diana nodded and smiled, that practiced smile that didn’t really betray the fact that she thought the patient with the dead husband was a B.S. artist of the highest order.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tacoma

The Tacoma News Tribune ran a follow-up to the shooting in the morning’s paper:

Police Question Widow in North End Shooting

Tori Connelly, the wife of a Tacoma financial consultant, was questioned by police in conjunction with the shooting death of her husband, Alex.

“We’re satisfied that this case will reach a proper conclusion soon,” said lead investigator Edmund Kaminski.

“Ms. Connelly has been cooperative.”

A tech working in Tacoma Police Department’s state-of-the-art forensics lab had taken a swab of Tori Connelly’s hands for gunshot residue particles at the scene of her husband’s murder. An analyst at the lab compared the particles captured by the swab to determine if the woman who’d been injured was the shooter. Law enforcement in Tacoma and elsewhere had become wary of gunshot residue in the past few years. There were several instances on the law books in which men had been wrongfully convicted when they tested positive for GSR when they’d only handled a gun, or had recently been in the proximity of one that had been fired. There had also been a famous Northwest case that was botched when it was determined that the GSR found on a shooter’s jacket had been the result of contamination from a police detective who’d been at the firing range before going out to the murder scene. Tori Connelly’s white nightgown was next. It had been hanging in the biohazard room drying since the shooting. Specialist Cal Herzog spread out the garment on a table under fluorescent and ultraviolet lights to see what story it might tell. Eddie Kaminski stood over the garment next to the tech, a young man in his late twenties with hair heavy with product and teeth that appeared all the whiter as the ultraviolet light bounced off the fabric of the filmy nightgown. The blood had already dried to a dark wine, almost chestnut, color. The younger man, Rory, smoothed out the fabric, took a series of photos, and cut two small square patches from the bloodiest part of the material. He made a few remarks about the blood’s pooling and how gravity had dragged a pair of rivulets down to the hemline.

“Can’t be sure until we analyze it, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything here other than what we see. No semen. No other fluids,” he said.

“What’s interesting is right here,” Cal said. His hands were gloved, but he didn’t get close enough to the nightgown to really touch it. He motioned to the fabric, though his eyes stayed on the young man.

“What are you getting at?” Kaminski asked.

“Look closer.”

“I am looking closer,” Rory said, his teeth flashing like a cotton bale bound by steel wires.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Precisely. There’s nothing to see.”

“So? I’m not blind,” the young man said. Cal rolled his eyes, enjoying the moment. Kaminski held his tongue. What he wanted to say was something about the kid having earned his degree in a correspondence course or that whatever training he really had was B.S. He expressed his irritation because, well, it was fun to irritate the kid.

“If she was shot like she said she was, I’d expect a bullet hole, a tear, something in the nightgown, wouldn’t