He grinned at her again before turning and walking down the hall. Breath rushed into her lungs, almost as if he had created a vacuum by moving away from her. She shook her head, dazed, and caught a glimpse of herself in a hall mirror. Her face glowed with a light pink flush, her eyes were shining, and a thin film of perspiration was visible above her upper lip and on her neck. My God, she thought in surprise, I look as if I’ve been making love!
She stripped off her gloves and ran her hands across her neck and above her lip. The talcum from the gloves blotted the shine. She glared at herself in the mirror.
That is enough, she admonished her reflection. You are a thirty-four-year-old police detective, and you’re acting like a kid. There is a woman dead in the other room. You’ve got work to do. So do it.
As she walked down the hall to the living room, she wondered if the insane carnage in the bedroom behind her had something to do with her reaction to the federal agent. Maybe her mind and body were flooding her with hormones in an attempt to distract her from the horror she had witnessed. Maybe it was the same sort of reaction experienced by people who were thrown together in a dangerous situation. That’s all it was, she told herself. Nothing to worry about.
CHAPTER 5
As Jen stepped into the living room, the front door opened. The coroner, Dr. Follett, had arrived with two of his people. Larry Adams was around thirty and tall, muscular but going to flab. Jen didn’t know much about him except that he had joined the coroner’s office six months before and had briefly dated one of the department’s dispatchers.
Madeline Ross was a tall willowy brunette with a medical degree who had been the coroner’s assistant for several years. Jen knew her from work, and they were both members of the Professional Women’s Association. Although they weren’t close friends, Jen had learned from her that she had worked as a hospitalist for three years before deciding she preferred dead patients to live ones. When Jen introduced Will, she saw Madeline direct an appreciative look Will’s way, and she felt a disturbing pang of possessiveness. She quickly subjected it to an unmerciful death.
The next hour and a half moved slowly while the coroner and his people, assisted by Pat, examined every corner of the bedroom. The detectives and the federal agents made a quick and fruitless initial canvas of the neighborhood to see if anyone had seen or heard anything. Then they gathered on the small front porch and waited by the open front door, listening to the murmur of voices and the sound of the vacuum coming from the direction of the bedroom.
Finally, a few minutes after noon, Follett came to the door and motioned to them.
“I’m going to start with the body now,” he said. “I’d prefer you stay out of the room, but you can watch from the hall, if you like.”
As Jen, Al, Lonnie, and the two federal agents crowded around the bedroom door, Jen wished she were any place other than where she was. The main reason was the dead woman. Another was Will Anderson.
With so many people crowded into such a small space, she was pressed against the door frame. Will was next to her, his side lightly touching hers, his arm propped against the wall for stability. In effect, she was enclosed in the crook of his arm, and there was nothing she could do about it without making a scene.
Follett carefully pulled back the blood-soaked sheet that covered the body from shoulders to calves, and Jen forgot about the man next to her. There was a sudden intake of breath from everyone except the coroner and his people. The dead woman’s back was covered with ugly lacerations and purple and red bruises. They had been expecting evidence of the same kind of beating as the other victims had experienced, but that expectation had not prepared them for the shock of it.
The defenseless woman on the bed was naked. Jen suddenly wanted to shout at Follett to put the sheet back, that it wasn’t right for them to violate Victoria this way, that she’d already been violated enough. But she kept silent.
She glanced sideways at Will. He was staring at the nude form on the bed, his eyes filled with such sadness that she felt tears sting at the backs of her own. She looked away quickly, scolding herself mentally for her lack of professional detachment. Then again, she would have been more worried about herself if she had been able to look at such an awful sight without feeling the way she did.
Follett removed the satin ribbon, dropping it carefully into a paper evidence bag held by Madeline. He then removed the pillowcase and placed it in a separate bag. He nodded to Adams, who had moved to the opposite side of the bed, and the two of them turned the body over, Madeline carefully holding the head in place.
Victoria Kaufman’s eyes were shut, and Jen was glad of that. But the terror and bewilderment were still there, etched in the frozen muscles. Her lips were cut and swollen, and an ugly purple bruise covered the lower left side of her face. Her neck had been slashed from one side to the other, slashed deeply.
The front of the body was also badly bruised. Except for the bruised areas, the body was almost chalk white, the bruises having formed before death while there was still blood to drain from the broken capillaries. The effect was a garish contrast of colors, a blend of raw reds and ugly purples on pristine white. She could be a painting, Jen reflected, drawn from the depths of a surrealist’s nightmare.
Follett cleared his throat.
“I’d say
