Read Online The Trophy Exchange by Diane Fanning - Free Book Online Page B

killer. Big doubt that her identification of the perpetrator was anywhere near correct.
    Lucinda knew there had to be some leads in these reports just the same. She poured through them again paying close attention to the most insignificant details about life in the Spencer household. As she worked, she made a list of people she wanted to personally interview for a second time and the questions she wanted to ask them.
    The phone on her desk rang interrupting her review. “ Pierce, ” she said. She stood as she listened to the dispatcher telling her about a possible homicide or suicide. “ I ’ m on my way, ” she said as she hung up and slid into her jacket in one fluid motion.
    She drove into a tired looking neighborhood where every house had sagging gutters, falling shingles or flaking paint, if not a combination of all three. She parked in front of a too-bright blue ranch house where a rusty chain-link fence surrounded a weedy front yard. Grass and unidentifiable foreign invaders , their heads top-heavy with seeds , bent over and brushed the sidewalk.
    The front door opened into the living room where the body lay half o ff a worn sofa. She smelled the lethal mix of spent gunpowder and blood under the dominant odor of stale beer and over-ripe tomato sauce. On the floor between the sofa and the coffee table, a scattered mound of crushed beer cans filled the space.
    On the table, an open pizza box held three slices of dried pizza, an open can of beer and a piece of paper. On the note, written in large letters, was a short message: “ I am a sorry son of a bitch. ”
    From down the hall, Lucinda heard the muffled rants of an hysterical woman and the low murmur of a soothing voice attempting to calm her distress. Lucinda approached the body as closely as she could without disrupting the scene. The bullet, it seemed, had entered straight into the victim ’ s mouth and blown out the back of his head. His death – in all likelihood – had been instantaneous. The only weapon Lucinda could see was a handgun across the room on top of a large screen television. She peered around the body seeking but not finding another weapon that might indicate the injury could be self-inflicted. She heard a thumping in the hall but ignored it until she heard a voice shout, “ Ma ’ am, you can ’ t go in there. ”
    Lucinda stood up straight and turned from the body. She saw a wild-eyed woman standing in the entrance to the hallway. “ I know who did it, ” she shrieked.
    A uniformed officer came up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “ Ma ’ am, you need to come back to the bedroom. ” Then he turned to Lucinda and said, “ Sorry, Lieutenant. She found the body. She ’ s the victim ’ s mother. ”
    The woman looked straight at Lucinda and shrieked again, “ I know who did it. ”
    “ Yes, ma ’ am. You want to tell me about it? ” Lucinda asked.
    The woman jerked a shapeless purse in front of her body and dug inside. Her impulsive, rapid movements sent a reflexive spasm of tension through Lucinda ’ s chest. In automatic response, her hand flew to the butt of her gun, but the woman ’ s hand emerged from her purse without a lethal object, just a harmless cassette. “ I ’ ve got the evidence, ” she said waving the tape in the air.
    Lucinda held up a paper bag beneath the cassette. “ Drop it in here, please. ”
    “ No. No. You ’ ve got to listen to it, ” the woman insisted.
    “ Ma ’ am, I don ’ t have a tape player with me. Please just drop it in the bag. ”
    “ But . . . ”
    “ Ma ’ am, just drop it in and we ’ ll go outside and you can tell me what it says. ”
    The woman cast an uncertain glance at Lucinda then released the tape. It landed with a thunk inside the paper sack. Lucinda handed it to an evidence tech, put her arm around the woman ’ s shoulder and led her outside.
    Lucinda slid behind the wheel of her car and looked over the crazed woman now seated on the passenger ’