The Kept Woman Read online

  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?”

  Faith countered, “Strange place to meet up for a blow job.”

  “That’s a small tarp,” Will said, because Amanda didn’t spend her weekends strolling the tarp section at her local hardware store. “Standard would be a five by seven, six by twelve, but the package outside was for a three feet seven by five feet seven, which is forty-three inches by sixty-seven. Harding’s at least a forty-inch waist, and around six feet tall.”

  Amanda stared at him. “I need that in English.”

  “If the killer brought the tarp to the scene in order to dispose of a body, then the tarp he purchased was for a much smaller person.”

  “A woman-sized tarp,” Faith said. “Great.”

  Amanda was nodding. “Harding met the woman here to kill her, but she managed to get the upper hand.”

  “She’s injured.” Sara came up the stairs. Her glasses were hooked on her shirt collar. She used the back of her arm to wipe the sweat off her forehead. “There are bloody, bare footprints going up the left set of stairs. Likely a woman’s, probably size seven or eight, with a heavy strike that indicates she was running.” She pointed back at the stairs. “Second tread down, there’s an impact point that indicates she fell and hit her head, likely at the crown. We found some long, brown hair in the spatter, similar to what was found in the hairbrush.” She pointed to the other set of stairs. “On the right, we’ve got more footprints, walking, and passive spatter leaving a trail toward the emergency side exit, then it disappears on the metal stairs. Passive spatter indicates a weeping wound.”

  “Ran up and walked down?” Amanda guessed.

  “It’s possible.” Sara shrugged. “There have been hundreds of people in and out of this building. Someone could have made the footprints last week and someone else could’ve left the drops of blood last night. We’ll need to sequence DNA on every sample before we can definitively say what belongs to whom.”

  Amanda glowered. DNA could take weeks. She preferred her science more instantaneous.

  “Finished.” The photographer started peeling off his Tyvek suit. His clothes were soaking wet. His hair looked painted onto his head. He told Amanda, “You can have the room. I’ll get the photos processed and uploaded as soon as I get back.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  Sara pulled a fresh pair of gloves from her back pocket. “These shoe prints here—” She pointed to the floor, which looked like it belonged in an Arthur Murray studio. “They’re from the first responders. Two sets. One went into the room, probably to see the face. The treads for both are nearly identical. Haix Black Eagles. Police-issue.”

  Collier bristled. “They said in their statements that they didn’t enter the room.”

  “You might want to go back at them.” Sara slipped on a fresh pair of shoe protectors as she explained, “There’s a lot of blood. They recognized the victim. He’s a fellow officer. That’s a lot to—”

  “Hold on, Red.” Collier held up his hand like a traffic cop. “Don’t you think you should wait for the ME before you go traipsing in there?”

  Sara gave him a look that had once presaged the two most miserable hours of Will’s life. “I’m the medical examiner, and I would prefer that you call me Sara or Dr. Linton.”

  Faith barked a laugh that echoed through the building.

  Sara braced her hand against the wall as she walked into the room. Ripples spread through the pool of blood. She picked up the purse in the corner. The strap was broken. There was a long tear down the side. The bag was black textured leather with heavy brass zips and buckles and a padlock at the clasp, the kind of thing that could be very expensive or very cheap.

  “I don’t see a wallet.” Sara held up a gold tube of lipstick. “Sisley, rose cashmere. I’ve got the same at home.” Her eyebrows furrowed. “The gold is scratched off on the side, just like mine. Must be a manufacturing defect.” Sara dropped the lipstick back into the purse. She tested the weight. “This doesn’t feel like Dolce & Gabbana.”

  “No.” Amanda peered inside the bag. “It’s counterfeit. See the stitching?”

  “The ampersand is in the wrong font, too.” Faith spread plastic on the ground so they could do a more careful inventory. “Why buy a fake D&G when you can afford Sisley and La Mer?”

  Amanda said, “Twenty-five-hundred-dollar purse versus fifty-dollar lipstick?”

  Faith said, “You can palm the lipstick, but not the purse.”

  “Maybe a tester. The scratch could be from peeling off the label.”

  Will tried to give Collier a conspiratorial “us manly men have no idea what they’re talking about” look, but Collier was already giving him an “I want to shoot you in the face” look.

  Sara went back into the room. This was her first opportunity to really examine the murder scene. Will had caught glimpses of this side of her before, but never in an official capacity. She took her time exploring the room, silently studying the blood patterns, the spray on the ceiling. The graffiti did not make her job easy. The walls were painted black in places from oversprayed logos and tags. She got close to everything, putting on her glasses so she could differentiate between the spray paint and the blood evidence. She walked around the perimeter of the room twice before beginning her examination of the body.

  She couldn’t kneel in the blood, so she squatted down at Harding’s thick waist. She searched his front pants pockets, handing Faith a melted Three Musketeers, an opened pack of Skittles, a wad of cash strapped by a green rubber band, and some loose change. Next, she checked Harding’s suit jacket. There was a folded sheet of paper inside the breast pocket. Sara unfolded the page. “Racing form. Online betting.”

  “Dogs?” Amanda guessed.

  “Horses.” Sara handed the form to Faith, who set it on the plastic alongside the other items.

  “No cell phones,” Faith noted. “Not on Harding. Not in the purse. Not in the building.”

  Sara patted down the body, checking to see if she’d missed anything obvious in his clothes. She pushed open Harding’s eyelids. She used both hands to force open his jaw so she could look inside the mouth. She unbuttoned his shirt and pants. She studied every inch of his bloated abdomen. She pulled back the unbuttoned cuffs of his shirtsleeves and looked at his forearms. She lifted his pant legs and pushed down his socks.

  Finally, she said, “Livor mortis indicates the body hasn’t been moved, so he died here, in this position, on his back. I’ll need to get ambient and liver temp, but he’s in full rigor, which means he’s been dead for more than four but less than eight hours.”

  “So we’re talking a timeline of Sunday night into Monday morning,” Faith said. “The fire department estimates the car was set on fire four to five hours ago, which brings us to three a.m., today. The 9-1-1 came in at five a.m.”

  “Sorry, but can I ask a question about that?” Collier was obviously still licking his wounds, but he just as obviously wanted to prove his usefulness. “He’s got mold around his mouth and nose. Wouldn’t that take a lot longer than five hours to grow?”

  “It would, but it’s not mold.” Sara asked, “Can you help me roll the body onto the side? I don’t want him falling forward.”

  Collier pulled two shoe protectors out of the box. He gave Sara a lopsided grin as he slid the booties over the old protectors he’d put on when he entered the building. “I’m Holden, by the way. Like in the book. My parents were hoping for a disaffected loner.”

  Sara smiled at the stupid joke,
and Will wanted to kill himself.

  Collier kept grinning, taking the gloves Sara offered, making a show of stretching out the fingers with his child-sized hands. “How do you want to do this?”

  “On my three.” Sara counted down. Collier grunted as he lifted Harding’s shoulders and tried to roll him onto his side. The body was stiff and tilted like a hinge. The weight wouldn’t transfer without sending Harding facedown into a pool of blood, so Collier had to brace his elbows against his knees to keep the body raised.

  Sara peeled up Harding’s jacket and shirt so she could examine his back. Will gathered she was looking for punctures. She pressed her gloved fingers into the skin, testing for open wounds and finding nothing. The dark blood on the floor had made Harding look like he’d been dipped into a pan of motor oil.

  She asked Collier, “You okay for another minute?”

  “Sure.” The word got mangled in his throat. Will could see the veins in his neck popping out. Harding was at least two-fifty, maybe more. Collier’s arms were shaking from the effort of keeping him tilted up.

  Sara changed into a fresh pair of gloves. She reached into Harding’s back pocket and pulled out a thick, nylon wallet. The Velcro made a ripping sound when she opened it. She called out her findings. “Ticket stubs, receipts for fast-food places, betting slips, two different photographs of a naked blonde courtesy of BackDoorMan.com. Some business cards.” She looked at Collier. “You can put him down, but be careful.”

  Collier groaned as he settled the body back to the floor.

  “You’re going to want to see this.” Sara passed one of the business cards to Faith. Will recognized the full-color logo. He had seen it countless times on documents turned over by Marcus Rippy’s sports management team.

  “Motherfuck,” Faith muttered. “Kip Kilpatrick. He’s Rippy’s manager, right? I saw him on TV.”

  Will looked at Amanda. She had her eyes closed like she wished she could wipe the man’s name from her mind. Will felt the same way. Kip Kilpatrick was Marcus Rippy’s manager, head lawyer, best friend, and all-around fixer. There was no legal proof, but Will was certain Kilpatrick had used his thugs to pay off two witnesses from the New Year’s Eve party and intimidated a third into silence.

  Sara said, “I hate to make things worse, but the doorknob missed Harding’s jugulars and carotids. And his esophagus. And pretty much anything that matters. There’s no blood in his mouth or nose. There was very little bleeding from the spindle, just a trickle that’s dried down the side of his neck. He doesn’t have any other significant injuries. This blood, or at least this volume of blood, isn’t from him.”

  “What?” Amanda sounded more exasperated than shocked. “Are you certain?”

  “Positive. The back of his clothes wicked up blood from the floor, and the swipe of blood on his shirt is clearly from someone else. His major arteries are intact. There are no significant wounds in his head, torso, arms, or legs. The blood you see in this room is not from Dale Harding.”

  Will felt surprised, and then he felt stupid for being surprised. Sara had read the scene better than he had.

  “So, whose blood is it?” Faith asked. “Ms. La Mer?”

  “It seems likely.” Sara stood up carefully so she wouldn’t lose her balance.

  Amanda tried to make sense of the information. “Our missing woman hit her head on the stairs, then she left her bloody footprints as she ran across the balcony, and then what?”

  “There was a violent struggle between two people in this room. There are signs of high-velocity spatter on the ceiling, which suggests that an artery was punctured, and as I said, it wasn’t Harding’s.” Sara walked over to the far corner. “We’re going to need some alternate light sources because the graffiti is so dark, but can you see this swipe along the wall? That’s from someone’s hand, and the hand was covered in blood. The shape and span are small, more like a woman’s.”

  Will had noticed the smeared line of blood before, but not that it ended with a visible set of fingers. They reminded him of the finger-shaped bruises on Keisha Miscavage’s neck.

  Amanda told Sara, “There were no unsolved shootings last night. Are we talking stabbing, then?”

  Sara shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe,” Amanda repeated. “Wonderful. I’ll tell the hospitals to maybe look out for an unexplained stabbing with a serious head injury.”

  “I can do that.” Collier started typing into his phone. “I got a buddy works the precinct at Grady Hospital. He can check with the ER pronto.”

  “We’ll need Atlanta Medical and Piedmont, too.”

  Collier nodded as he typed.

  Faith said, “Sara, back up a minute for me. The doorknob didn’t kill Harding, but he’s obviously dead. So, what happened?”

  “His bad choices happened. He’s morbidly obese. He’s unusually bloated. His eyes show signs of conjunctival erythema. I’m guessing he has an enlarged heart, hypertension. There are needle marks on his abdomen and thighs that indicate he’s an insulin-dependent diabetic. His diet was fast food and Skittles. Whether it was from depression or self-harm or for some other reason, he wasn’t managing his condition.”

  Collier looked skeptical. “So Harding conveniently slipped into a diabetic coma during the middle of a death match?”

  “It’s more complicated than that.” Sara indicated the area around her own mouth. “Harding’s face. You thought it was mold, but mold usually grows in a colony or clump. Think about bread when it goes bad. My first guess was seborrheic dermatitis, but now I’m fairly certain it’s uremic frost.”

  Will said, “I thought I smelled urine.”

  “Good catch.” Sara handed Collier a bag for his gloves and shoe protectors. “Urea is one of the toxins that’s supposed to be filtered out through the kidneys. If the kidneys don’t work for some reason—diabetes and hypertension are good reasons—then the body tries to excrete the urea through sweat. The sweat evaporates, the urea crystallizes, and that leads to uremic frost.”

  Collier nodded like he understood. “How long does that take?”

  “Not long. He’s been living with chronic end-stage renal disease. He was getting treatment at some point. He has a graft for vascular access in his arm. Uremic frost is very rare, but it tells us that for whatever reason, he stopped getting dialysis, probably within the last week to ten days.”

  “Jesus,” Faith said. “So is this a murder or not?”

  Amanda said, “It seems they both tried to kill each other and both likely succeeded.” She told Sara, “Let’s focus on the missing woman. You said there was a violent struggle in this room that Harding obviously lost, but not before he managed to do quite a bit of damage to his opponent, as evidenced by the blood. Given her wounds, could the woman walk out of here and drive herself away?” She amended, “No maybes or possiblies. You’re not speaking to the court, Dr. Linton.”

  Sara still hedged. “Let’s start with the impact on the stairs. If it’s from the missing woman’s head, then she took a pretty hard blow. Her skull was probably fractured. At the very least, she’s concussed.” Sara looked back over the kill room. “The volume of blood loss is the real danger. I’d estimate this is just over two liters, maybe a thirty- to thirty-five percent loss. That’s a borderline Class III hemorrhage. In addition to stopping the bleed, she’d need fluids, probably a transfusion.”

  “She could use the tarp,” Will said. “To stop the bleeding. The tarp is missing. There was a roll of duct tape found in the parking lot.”

  “Possible,” Sara agreed. “But let’s talk about the nature of the injury. If the blood came from the chest or neck, she would be dead. It can’t be from the belly, because the blood would stay in the belly. So, that leaves the limbs. A good gash in the groin could do this. She would likely be able to walk, but not without difficulty. Same with the medial malleolus, the inside of the ankle. She could still drag or crawl her way out. There’s also this—” Sara held up her arms to protect her face, palms out.
“A horizontal cut to the radial or ulnar arteries, then the arms flail and blood sprays around the room like a garden hose, which is basically what the artery would be at that point.” She looked back at Harding. “I’d expect him to have more blood on him if that was the case.”

  Amanda said, “Thank you, doctor, for that litany of multiple choices. How much time do we have to find this woman?”

  Sara took the dig in stride. “None of those injuries are the type that can go untreated, even if she manages to stop the bleeding. Given the four-to-five-hour window on time of death and the volume of blood loss, I’d say without medical intervention, she might have two to three more hours before her organs start shutting down.”

  “You work the dead, we’ll find the living.” Amanda turned to Will and Faith. “We’ve got a clock ticking. Our number one goal is to locate this woman, get her medical help, then find out what the hell she was doing here in the first place.”

  Collier asked, “What about BackDoorMan.com? Does that bring in Rippy?”

  “That’ll be Harding’s kink,” Will said. “Rippy has a definite type.”

  Faith supplied, “Dark hair, smart mouth, killer body.”

  Collier said, “His wife is a blonde.”

  Faith rolled her eyes. “I’m a blonde. She’s a bottle.”

  “You can discuss hair color after we find the woman.” Amanda told Collier, “Get that partner of yours to run missing persons reports submitted within the last forty-eight hours. Women, young, Rippy’s type.” Collier nodded, but she wasn’t finished. “I need at least ten uniforms to check both warehouses and the office building. Call in a structural engineer on the building; it looks iffy. I want feet, not just eyeballs, on every single floor, every nook and cranny, no stone unturned. Our victim-slash-murderer could be bleeding out or hiding right under our noses. None of us wants to read that headline in the paper tomorrow morning.”

  She turned to Faith. “Go to Harding’s place of residence. I’ll have the warrant signed by the time you get there. Harding called himself a private investigator. It makes sense that he was investigating a woman, possibly for Rippy. She could be another victim or she could’ve been blackmailing him for money, or both. Harding will have a file, photographs, notes, hopefully a home address for the girl.”