Read Online The Mentor by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli - Free Book Online Page A

makes the victim lie down on the floor, and bang! ”—she raised her voice to imitate the shot—“he shoots him in the groin.”
    Without meaning to, Eric winced, instinctively moving his hands to cover his private parts. He caught ahold of himself in time, stopping his hands halfway there. The movement didn’t escape Adele, who shot him a malicious glance. He wondered for a moment if she’d done it on purpose to see his reaction.
    “Thompson wants to scream,” Adele continued. “But since he’s gagged, he can’t produce anything more than soft noises, something the neighbors can’t hear.”
    “But nobody heard the shots either,” said Eric. He was still her boss and had every right to test her a little when the opportunity arrived.
    “He used a silencer,” said Adele.
    Okay. That was easy enough. They’d decided as much back when they were examining the crime scene.
    “So . . . he shot him in the groin.” Eric tried to mimic the shot, holding his arm down and pointing at the floor. “The victim instinctively brought his hands to his groin, and in doing so curled up a little on one side.”
    Adele smiled, satisfied, and touched the tablet again, moving on to the next sequence. The body was now in a fetal position, curled up on one side. The assassin’s arm pointed downward, aiming at the victim’s neck. “Bang.” A single line united the pistol and the penetration wound on one side of the neck.
    The detective again examined the corpse stretched out on the table. The angle corresponded to the angle of the baton. But there was still something missing. “But that’s not how the body was when we found it.”
    Adele had an answer ready. “Because it was moved.”
    “How can you tell?”
    “The assassin waited until his victim was dead,” she said, apparently ignoring Eric’s question. “He struck the carotid artery in full, so he didn’t have to wait long. Thompson ran out of blood quickly and must have lost consciousness almost immediately.” She shifted her attention from the tablet to the corpse. “He pushed the body with one foot, shifting Thompson again onto his back.” The same sequence played out virtually on the screen, and Adele pointed to the side of the body where there was a bluish stain beneath the skin. “It wasn’t visible at first, but after a day in the fridge, this perimortem bruise showed up.”
    “He did it with his shoe.” They were dealing with the kind of revelations that—when all the clues began to line up one after the other, making it possible to see the threads connecting the whole—made Eric remember why he loved his job so deeply. He put on a pair of latex gloves and touched the flesh around the bruise. “It seems a lot more marked toward the center.”
    “As if it were the result of a kick made with a rigid, pointed shoe,” Adele suggested. They had both reached the same conclusion. “Like a woman’s shoe.”
    “Ah, a woman!” exclaimed the doctor from the other side of the room.
    “And once the body was stretched out on the floor,” said Eric, “the killer ripped off the tape.”
    “At that point there was no longer risk of him screaming,” Adele concluded, triumph in her eyes.
    Five minutes later they were standing in the atrium, waiting for the elevator. Adele was fingering her tablet again. Eric was watching her. At a certain point it seemed as if she was about to look up at him, and Eric quickly focused on his wristwatch. Exactly thirty seconds had passed since the last time he’d checked it.
    He snorted at his own stupidity, nearly certain he saw Adele stifle a laugh. He couldn’t be sure of it, but he also didn’t dare look in her direction.
    Suddenly he remembered the key. He patted his pants pockets, finally pulling out the long key. He held it out to her, ready to thank her again, when she abruptly interrupted him.
    “Did you enjoy snooping around my house, boss?”
    Eric was stunned. “What?” For a split second he was afraid