Will didn’t want to think about all the body fluids they’d find.
Faith stood at the far end of the balcony, her head back as she drank from a bottle of water. She was wearing a white Tyvek suit. The zip was undone. The arms were tied around her waist. She had obviously passed herself off as a tech so she could get up to the crime scene without having to wait for the scissor lift. Sealed evidence bags were piled in front of her, alongside neatly stacked boxes of gloves, evidence bags and protective clothing. The murder room was a few feet away, the wooden door opened out. Light strobed as the position and state of the body were documented by the crime scene photographer. They wouldn’t be allowed inside until every inch was recorded.
Amanda pulled out her phone and read her new messages as she walked toward the kill room. ‘CNN is here. I’m going to have to update the governor and the mayor. Will, you’ll take point on this while I’m hand-holding. Collier, I need you to see if Harding has any family. My recollection is that there’s an aunt on the father’s side.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Collier’s shoulder rubbed the wall as he followed at a distance.
‘Take off that hard hat. You look like one of the Village People.’ She checked her phone again. Obviously a new piece of information had come in. ‘Harding has four ex-wives. Two are still on the force, both in records. Track them down and find out if there’s a bookie or pimp whose name kept coming up.’
Collier stumbled to keep up as he left the hat on the floor. ‘You think his exes were still talking to him?’
‘Am I really getting that question from you?’ Her words obviously hit their mark because Collier responded with a quick nod. She dropped her phone back into her pocket. ‘Faith, run it down for me.’
‘Doorknob to the neck.’ Faith pointed to the side of her own neck. ‘It matches the other doorknobs up here, so we can assume the killer didn’t bring it for the purpose of murder. They found a G43 by the car. The action is jammed, but at least one round was fired. Charlie is running the serial number through the system right now.’
‘That’s the new Glock,’ Collier said. ‘What’s it look like?’
‘Lightweight, slim profile. The grip is rough, but it’s pretty impressive for concealed carry.’
Collier asked another question about the gun, which was manufactured specifically for government use. Will tuned him out. The gun wasn’t going to solve this case.
He stepped around some marked bloody shoeprints and bent down to get a closer look at the lockset in the door. The backplate was rectangular, about three-by-six inches and screwed to the door. It was cast, plated in polished brass with a heavily detailed raised design featuring a cursive R at the center. Rippy’s logo. Will had seen it all over the man’s house. He squinted at the latchbolt, the long metal cylinder that kept the door closed or, when turned, allowed it to open. He saw scrapes around the hollow square where the doorknob spindle was supposed to go. And then he looked down at the floor and saw the long screwdriver with the numbered yellow card beside it.
Someone had been shut inside the room, and someone else had used the screwdriver to gain entry.
Will stood back up to look at the kill scene. The photographer stepped across the body, trying not to slip in the blood.
There was a lot of blood.
Sprayed on the ceiling, spattered and splattered on walls, glistening against the nearly black criss-cross of competing graffiti. The floor was flooded, like someone had opened the spigot on Harding’s carotid and let it run dry. Light danced off the dark, congealing liquid. Will could taste metal in his mouth as oxygen hit iron. Underneath it all he caught a whiff of piss that for some reason made him feel sorrier for the guy than the doorknob sticking Frankenstein-like out of the meaty hambone of his neck.
In policing, there wasn’t a lot of dignity in death.
Dale Harding’s body was in the center of the room, which was about fifteen feet square with a vaulted ceiling. He was flat on his back, a big, bald guy wearing a cheap, shiny suit that wouldn’t close around his ample gut, more like a cop of his father’s generation than his own. His shirt had come untucked on one side. His red and blue striped tie was split like the legs of a hurdler. The waistband of his pants was rolled over. His stainless-steel TAG Heuer had turned into a tourniquet on his wrist because his body was swelling with the various juices of decay. A gold diamond ring cut into his pinky finger. Black dress socks stretched around his waxy yellow ankles. His mouth was open. His eyes were closed. He obviously had some kind of eczema. The dry skin around his mouth and nose looked like it was speckled with sugar.
Weirdly, there was only a slash of blood on the front of his body, like a painter had flicked a brush at him. There were a few drops on his face, but nothing else, especially where you’d expect it, around the too-tight collar of his shirt.
‘These were found on the stairs.’
Will turned back around.
Faith was rolling the evidence bag in her hands so that she could read the labels on the contents. ‘BareMinerals. Mac. Light browns in the eyeshadows. Espresso-brown mascara. Chocolate eyeliner. The foundation and powder are a light medium.’
Amanda said, ‘So, probably a white woman.’
‘There’s also a tin of lip balm. La Mer.’
‘Rich white woman,’ Amanda amended. Will knew the brand, but only because Sara wore it. He’d accidentally seen the receipt and nearly had a heart attack. The balm cost more per ounce than a brick of heroin.
Amanda said, ‘So, we can assume a woman was here with Harding.’
‘And now she’s not,’ Faith said. ‘Doorknob to the neck sounds like something a woman would do.’
Amanda asked, ‘Where’s the purse?’
‘Inside the room. It looks torn, like it got caught on something.’
‘And only the make-up fell out?’
Faith picked up the other evidence bags and listed off the contents. ‘One car key, Chevy, model unknown, no keychain. A hairbrush with long brown hair in the bristles—they’ll get that to the lab ASAP. Tin of Altoids, spearmint. Various coins with purse fuzz. Pack of Puffs tissue. Plastic contact lens case. A tube of ChapStick, the poor woman’s La Mer.’
‘No wallet?’
Faith shook her head. ‘The photographer says he didn’t see one in the purse either, but we’ll look when he’s finished.’
‘So, we have a dead cop and a missing woman.’ Amanda read Will’s expression. ‘She hasn’t left the house. I talked to her an hour ago and checked in with the sheriff’s deputy who’s parked outside.’
Keisha Miscavage, Marcus Rippy’s accuser. Her name hadn’t been released to the press, but nobody stayed anonymous with the internet. Keisha had been forced into hiding three months ago, and she still had twenty-four-hour police protection because of credible death threats from several of Rippy’s fans.
Collier said, ‘What about all these gang tags? I’m counting two up here, at least four downstairs. We should get the gang taskforce on this, round up some bangers.’
Faith asked, ‘Should we round up all the unicorns, too?’
Amanda shook her head. ‘This is about the woman. Let’s assume that she was in this room. Let’s also assume she had something to do with the disposition of the victim, if we can call Harding the victim.’ She looked down at the contents from the purse. ‘This is a white, fairly wealthy woman meeting a dirty cop in a bad part of town in the middle of the night. Why? What was she doing here?’
Collier said, ‘Paying for it’s easier than marrying it. Maybe she was an escort, only he didn’t wanna or couldn’t pay and she got mad?’