Read Online The Bellingham Bloodbath by Gregory Harris - Free Book Online

“This is between you and me.”
    A crooked smile snaked across his face. “And what’s in it for me?”
    â€œYou would be helping solve this terrible crime,” I answered.
    â€œThat’s Varcoe’s job and he’s already got a copy of my report.” He smiled gamely. “I’m afraid you have come all this way for nothing.”
    â€œIt would mean a great deal to me if you could find some way to help me out. I don’t want to compromise you with the inspector, but your help could make a great difference.” I held his gaze with what sincerity I could muster and, to be fair, attempted to infuse it with the slightest hint of something more.
    He eyed me for the longest time before abruptly pushing himself to his feet and sloughing over to his filing cabinet. “I keep it in here,” he said with little inflection, yanking open the uppermost drawer and leaving it agape. “You can see it, but I will not hand it to you.”
    â€œOf course,” I said quickly. “Would it be all right if I take a few notes?”
    â€œYou can copy the bloody thing verbatim for all I care, but if one of Varcoe’s men comes by while you’re pawing around in there, I will tell him you are doing so without my knowledge or consent.”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œOf course,” he mimicked snidely. “So agreeable, aren’t you, when you think you’re getting your way? But I think you know there is a price to pay for everything.” He dug his hand into the cabinet’s drawer and extracted a thick, scarred folder and then leaned over my shoulder, pressing himself against my side in a way that steeled my breath. “There it is,” he clucked, tossing it onto his desk. “Do what you will while I prepare his body.” He leaned farther, putting his lips close enough to my ear to assault me with his sour, oily breath. “You do mean to see the body, don’t you?”
    â€œCertainly,” I fired back, but it was hardly the truth and I suspect he knew it. Still, it got him out of the room. I sucked in a breath and my nose curled against the foul smell of putrefaction cloying like overused perfume. Everything here, including Denton, was saturated with it.
    I leaned forward and flipped open the Bellingham folder. I found myself staring at a grainy black-and-white photograph that showed Gwendolyn Bellingham lying on her left side facing away from the camera, her head held in place by her pillow. Behind her right ear was a single small entry wound from a gun that had clearly been fired at point-blank range. The front of her head, however, was burst like a melon; a hemorrhage of gray matter splattered across the whole of the bed in an uninterrupted pattern that assured me her husband had not been lying beside her at the moment of her death. The killing looked to have been committed quickly . . . thoughtlessly . . . and she had clearly been attacked with great stealth. She had most certainly never even realized that someone was coming up behind her. Her murder looked like a dutiful task completed with minimal fuss.
    I paused a moment before pulling the second photograph out, the one of Captain Bellingham. His wrists and ankles were bound to the chair and he was slumped forward, his head having dropped far enough for his chin to be resting on his sternum. His nightshirt had been ripped wide from the neckline to the hem, its jagged edges visible despite much of it having been crudely shoved into the crux of the chair.
    Small black dots were widely scattered across his abdomen, some of which oozed tiny black trails of blood, the result of the many spent matches tossed about the floor. The captain’s knees were agape and I could see an even greater conflagration of the black marks across the insides of his thighs. Here the wounds appeared deeper than those on his torso, as there were innumerable streaks of coagulated blood crisscrossing his