Read Online Winter House by Carol O'Connell - Free Book Online

standing when she stabbed him.“
    And blood ran down, not sideways. „So, either the law of gravity has changed or the old woman lied.“
    „No, I believed that part. He was on his feet when she stabbed him the first time. But he was down and dead when she pulled out the pick. And that explains the drop of blood in a horizontal streak.“
    The doctor nodded. „And then the shears were pushed into a prone corpse.“ He smiled. „Congratulations. Now you can nail an old lady for mutilating a corpse, but he’s just as dead either way, and hardly worth the trouble of – “
    „I want that autopsy. I need proof that the ice pick killed him.“
    „Any idea why this woman would go to the trouble of planting a second weapon?“
    „Yes.“
    „But you’re not going to share. No, of course not. What was I thinking? So, obviously, you want evidence to dispute her claim of self-defense.“
    „No, that holds up,“ she said. „Willy Roy Boyd was a one-trick pony. He was in that house last night to kill a woman.“
    Though Edward Slope’s brain had stripped a few gears, he was damned if he would let it show. The doctor stared at her with his best poker face, but hers was better.
    Endgame.
    Kathy Mallory had won a full autopsy by the chief medical examiner, for now that he had been suckered in – what were the odds that he would let anyone else touch this corpse?
    W aiting for the explosion, boys? The upper half of the wall was a wide window on the squad room, and, with the blinds open, Lieutenant Coffey’s private office was a damned goldfish bowl on view for fifteen pairs of eyes. He pretended not to notice the men beyond the glass as they covertly looked his way.
    The lieutenant was young for a command position, only thirty-six, but he was aging fast to fit the job. Stress had chiseled new lines into his face, giving him an expression of constant pain, and, just now, it was a fight to bite back a scream as three detectives brazenly walked up to the glass, the better to observe their boss, the poor bastard with the thinning brown hair, the tension headaches and a knotted-up gut.
    The case load for Special Crimes Unit had spiraled out of control. And the new mayor, a man with the soul of a corporate raider, was planning to cut the department’s allotment in manpower and funds. Every day was run at a heart-attack pace, and yet, Jack Coffey was showing no early warning signs that this was the worst possible time to jerk him around, nor had he raised his voice to Mallory and Riker, who sat unmolested on the other side of his desk. He was not even holding a gun on them, and the other detectives must find that odd.
    When he glanced at the glass wall again, he saw money flashing out there in the squad room. Bastards, they were making book on this meeting.
    Never let the troops see you crying like a little girl.
    That was his mantra today.
    Riker and Mallory were on their best behavior this morning, quietly waiting for him to finish scanning another precinct’s report on a common burglary gone awry. He crumpled the cover sheet in one hand. Well, this was just great, this crap. Why would these two detectives drag this case home to an elite squad of firstgrade gold shields?
    „Mallory, close the blinds!“
    This was a test, and he was gratified to see her do it, and so quickly, not even dragging it out to jack up his frenzy.
    Big mistake, Mallory.
    Now he knew that all the leverage in this room belonged to him. Better than that – with the blinds drawn and no witnesses, he could do whatever he liked with these two. He leaned forward and gave them his most benign smile to knock them off balance. The partners exchanged looks that clearly said, Oh, shit.
    So they wanted this case really bad.
    Well, tough.
    But he just had to know why.
    He pulled one sheet out of the pile of paperwork, the results of the fingerprint search they had requested. „You’ll be happy to know that neither one of your socialites has a criminal record. What