Читать книгу Closer Than Blood - Gregg Olsen - Страница 15

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 you?”

Point made.

“Yeah, I guess I would.”

With the new widow still in the hospital, Eddie Kaminski returned to the scene of the shooting on North Junett. He’d noticed a koi pond near the walk up to the Connellys’ front door the night of the shooting, but it wasn’t because it was sinister. His former wife, Maria, had wanted to have a goldfish pond installed in their backyard early in their marriage. When they couldn’t afford a landscaper, she dug the pond herself, shovel by shovel. Kaminski remembered coming home from a long day on patrol, and how happy she was that the inexpensive feeder goldfish she’d bought by the bucket had laid eggs. It wasn’t the only news she had to share. She was pregnant. It was the happiest day of his life.

The last time he saw the pond was moving day, when all the happiness had literally drained from the Kaminskis’ life. The pond had turned green and was full of Douglas fir needles, a decaying symbol of their dying marriage.

He walked up the pathway to the door of the stately Victorian and the koi pond. Just below the surface a fragment of red and white caught his attention. Kaminski bent down to get a better look. It was the edge of a plastic bag. The red, a half circle filled with another, smaller one, appeared to be the familiar logo of Target. He wondered what was more incongruent—a Target bag in that neighborhood or the presence of plastic refuse in a pristine pond.

He looked around for something to help retrieve the bag. The yard was perfectly landscaped with not a tool lying around, not even a garden shed. Nothing was handy, so the detective did his best to wrestle with some bamboo that had been artfully planted along the pond’s farthest edge.

Another reason to hate this annoyingly invasive plant, he thought.

A piece snapped in his hands, and he poked the end through a small void in the lily pad–studded surface. It took some finessing, and he figured ice fishing north of Spokane with his dad had served him well when he snagged the bag and managed to pull it out.

It was heavy.

It didn’t belong there.

He knew what he had. The bag conformed to the shape of its contents.

A gun.

“Not just any gun,” Kaminski said to himself, his heart pumping with a little more vigor. “The murder weapon.”

It had started in the kitchen with his back to the soapstone island. Tori wore a thin blouse that allowed her nipples to show. She opened the refrigerator and let the cold air pour over her body.

As if she needed to call attention to what she was selling and how good it would be.

Is there a more beautiful woman on the face of the earth? Not in magazines. Not on TV. The movies. Nowhere, she thought, always the best marketer of her own charms. She spun around and latched her hands around the small of his back, pulling gently, teasingly.

“You seem a little excited,” she said, looking at her lover.

“That’s lovely.”

He wanted to speak, but he didn’t want to say the wrong thing. She was in control and he was going along for the ride, happily, hungrily.

Her fingertips slipped under his shirt and caressed his chest.

He leaned backward, pushing his pelvis toward her.

“I know what you want,” she said. Her voice was soft, yet playful.

“Yes, I know you do,” he said.

She undid his belt, then his jeans. Her fingers found his zipper and she pulled.

“A little tight,” she said. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

“Yes, it is,” she said, dropping to her knees.

He was breathing heavy by then. He closed his eyes and she put her mouth on him.

She stopped.

“Keep going,” he said.

“I will. I’ll get you there. Just let me do what I do best.”

And she did.