Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle (87 page)

Rouleau filled her in as they walked. The house was divided into apartments and rented as student housing. The woman’s body was found in the basement by the upstairs tenant. Apparently there was a lot of blood. They passed a couple of beat cops in navy uniforms on their way inside the limestone house. The officers appeared to know Rouleau and let her inside only because she was with him. One cop directed them to the basement.

Rouleau introduced Paul Gundersund, who met them at the bottom of the stairs. She felt dwarfed by the size of the man. He was over six foot, close to two hundred pounds, and appeared slightly out of shape. A scar marked the left side of his face, giving him the look of a street fighter. His blue-grey eyes were surprisingly pretty for a guy with a face like his. She shook his outstretched hand, his fingers long and slender.

“It’s not good, boss,” he said as he led them down the dark hallway. Kala’s eyes lifted to the unlit bulb hanging from the ceiling socket, obviously not working. It would have given the attacker cover as they waited, if that’s what they’d done. She made out the squat shapes of a washer and dryer angled deeper into the gloom. Gundersund stopped and handed them white suits and covers for their shoes. Kala stepped into the suit and shivered as the cool dampness seeping from the basement’s concrete walls wrapped itself around her bare arms. She quickly pulled the suit up over her shirt.

The apartment door stood open, the putrid smell of death getting stronger as they approached. Down the length of the hallway, the forensics team in white suits worked in the bedroom. She could see a trail of dark blood on the floor, pooled in spots, where the woman looked to have dragged herself toward the apartment door.

Kala stepped closer and saw that the blood trail detoured left. She carefully negotiated the blood splatter as she followed behind Rouleau and Gundersund into the living room. They stepped aside to make some space for her. She looked from their grim faces to the floor near the coffee table where the coroner kneeled next to a woman lying face down, one of her arms stretched in front of her as if she’d been trying to swim away using the front crawl. A purse had spewed its contents onto the carpet; a blood-covered cellphone lay near the woman’s curled fingers.

Kala swallowed back the urge to gag. Congealed blood covered the woman’s face and matted the long, dark hair on the back of her head. It had seeped from her body and surrounded her in sticky globs. It had spread from her midsection in a circular pool. The smell of rotting flesh and blood and feces was overpowering.

Rouleau touched Kala’s shoulder and motioned her to take a few steps closer. A photographer who’d been taking pictures of the body signalled that she’d gotten enough. The coroner looked from her to Rouleau.

“I’m ready to turn the body,” he said.

Rouleau’s eyes swept the scene, ending with a long study of the woman. Finally, he nodded and the coroner rolled the woman onto her back, her one arm remaining awkwardly extended above her head. Kala looked past the bruising, discoloured skin and dried blood and saw that the girl had been attractive: late twenties, masses of black hair, medium height, with a muscular physique. Someone had gone to great lengths to disfigure her beauty. The coroner held up the palm of one hand.

“Her fingers are broken.” He traced upward along the underside of her arm. “Cigarette burns.” He turned to the photographer.

“Make sure you get close ups.”

“How long…?” asked Rouleau.

“It’s a guess, but I’d say twenty-four hours based on the rigor mortis. I couldn’t say how long she was tortured in the bedroom, but I think it went on a while, judging by the burns and wounds. Her attacker used a knife.”

Kala saw Rouleau’s jaw clench. Her own felt as tight as a fist.

“Can you isolate the wound that killed her?” he asked.

The coroner pointed to her stomach where blood had stained her shirt almost black. “The assailant drove a weapon into her mid-section. I can’t say with complete certainty until we do the autopsy, but she almost definitely bled out from there.”

They stood quietly for a moment, contemplating the strength of will it had taken for the dying woman to drag herself this far. Kala glanced at Rouleau. His eyes were hard, unflinching. She lowered hers to search for clues in the carpet and the woman who’d died while reaching for her phone.

Rouleau said, “Have you got her name?”

Gundersund nodded. “Yeah. Leah Sampson. I’ve got somebody checking for her next of kin. We should find out more about her within the hour.”

Kala looked around the stifling living room. She already knew a lot about Leah Sampson. She was a struggling student who lived alone, although she was close to her sister and parents. Their faces smiled at her from two framed photos on a table next to the couch. Horses were a passion, judging from the other photos. Leah read murder mysteries when she should be studying. The stack of paperbacks next to her unopened textbooks was a giveaway. What secrets had she kept that were worth dying over?

“I’m going to look in the bedroom,” Kala said abruptly.

“I’ll come with you,” Gundersund said.

Rouleau didn’t turn or look away from Leah’s body. “I’ll stay with her until she’s ready to be moved.”

“Okay boss,” Gundersund said.

He and Kala walked sideways down the narrow hallway, stepping on their toes past pools of congealed blood. Kala made a cursory check of the bathroom and galley kitchen off to the right. Neither room appeared to be part of the crime scene. The bedroom was another story. Three officers from forensics noted their entry and carried on with their work. Two were dusting for prints and the other was taking samples from the chair where Leah Sampson had been tied.

Kala lifted her eyes from the pink rosebud-patterned duvet in a heap next to the bed to the one-eyed stuffed teddy bear leaning against the mirror. Silver and gold costume jewellery lay in front of the bear, scattered in shiny heaps across the top of the dresser. A silky blue housecoat hung on a hook next to the closet door. The bed was rumpled, unmade. A spray of blood crossed the sheets as if from a garden hose. Nobody had mentioned sexual assault yet, but the coroner would be looking for signs. Gundersund broke into her thoughts.

“We can’t do anything here until forensics is finished. I’m going to talk to the person who found her. Maybe they heard something. Coming?”

“Sure.” Her eyes fixated on the bloody chair for a moment before she turned to follow him.

They retraced their steps down the hallway. Rouleau was still with the coroner and Leah Sampson’s body. They let him know they’d be upstairs starting interviews.

“Hell of a welcome to the team,” Gundersund said with his foot on the bottom step. “Rouleau speaks highly of you, by the way. He wasn’t sure you’d be coming to Kingston though. Glad you changed your mind.”

“I just dropped in for a visit,” said Kala. She gave Gundersund a quick sideways grin. “Guess I’ll be sticking around for a few days.”

Chapter Seven

 B
obby Hamilton sat in a chair in front of a giant television, his face ashen in the pooled light from the table lamp. A Blue Jays game was playing on the screen with the sound off. Bobby sucked on the end of a cigarette while avoiding looking directly at Kala and Gundersund as they lowered themselves kitty corner to him on the stained green couch, the only other place to sit. Bobby had shot them a darting look when they entered the room, then fixed his unblinking eyes on the screen.

Kala sat on the edge of the couch and tried not to think about what had made it so filthy or what could be crawling underneath her. She forced down her revulsion and angled herself to get a clear view of Bobby. His shoulder-length blond hair was already giving way to baldness — the hairline had receded with a circle of thinning noticeable on top — and his eyes were pale blue in his bony face. His hollow cheeks and pointed jaw hinted at malnourishment. Someone who’d rather spend their money on drugs than food. A smell of pot hovered in the room, filming the walls and ceiling, giving silent confirmation of her assessment.

Gundersund coughed as if his throat was constricting. “So you found Leah’s body,” he said when he caught his breath. He coughed again and his face turned a deep red. He glared at Hamilton as the choking came to an end.

Bobby chanced a glance at him before nodding. He pulled on the cigarette like he was sucking on a straw.

“Do you mind putting that thing out?” Gundersund asked, pointing at the smoke rising from Bobby’s fingers.

“What, this?” Bobby shrugged and dropped the cigarette into a beer bottle on the table next to him. It hissed and sputtered, then went out. He spread his legs wider and sunk deeper into his chair.

“You found Leah Sampson’s body.” Gundersund had pulled out his notebook.

“So it was her.”

“Can you tell us what you saw?”

“I went downstairs to do some laundry after supper. Around eight o’clock. I smelled something stinkin’ and followed it over to her apartment. I knocked but the door was open a bit so I yelled to see if she was okay.”

“Did you go in?”

“No way.” Bobby shook his head and looked at them for the first time. “I just looked down the hall and saw blood and combined with the smell … I hightailed it back upstairs and called 911.”

“Did you hear anything coming from Leah Sampson’s apartment the last few days? Anything unusual that you can remember?”

“Like what?”

“Like noises or raised voices; anything at all unusual.”

“Nope.”

“Did you see anybody coming or going?”

“I’m not her bloody keeper.”

Interesting choice of adjective. “What do you do for a living, Bobby?” Kala interrupted.

“I work for the city. Garbage collection.”

“So you’re not home during the day.”

He looked in her direction, his eyes assessing her like a woman he’d just met standing on a street corner. “That’s right. I leave for work around five a.m. and get home mid-afternoon, unless I go to the bar when I’m done.”

Kala ignored the suggestion in his weasely eyes. “Did you do that last week, say on Friday after work?”

“Yup.”

“You said that without thinking about it,” said Gundersund.

“That’s cause I go to the bar every night after work. It takes a while to get the taste of garbage out of my throat.” He smiled, showing yellowish teeth. One of the bottom front ones was missing.

“We’ll need details and names of the people who might have seen you,” said Gundersund.

“Why? I didn’t have nuttin’ to do with what happened to her. I was the good corporate citizen that reported it, remember?”

“We know that,” said Kala, cutting off his sudden burst of anger. “We just need to find out where everybody was.”

“Yeah, right,” said Bobby. “I got an idea how this works.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He handed Gundersund a card with the phone number of his supervisor. “Wayne was at the bar with me Friday and tonight.” His eyes went back to the television screen.

“Did you know Leah at all?” asked Kala.

“Nope. I keep to myself.”

“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Gunder-sund asked.

“Such as?”

“Who might have killed Leah.”

“I ain’t got absolutely no idea. A guy does his civic duty and all of a sudden you’re checking out his whereabouts and asking if he knew her killer. I think I’m all done talking.”

“Thanks for your time,” said Kala. “We appreciate your assistance.” She kept her voice flat, hiding any trace of sarcasm.

Out in the hall, Gundersund snapped his notebook shut and tucked it into his pocket. “Think the guy’s done time?”

“It’s not a question of if, but how much and for what,” Kala said, starting down the stairs.

She looked through the screen door at the bottom. A red-haired girl carrying a gym bag stood outside talking to one of the officers. As Kala reached the bottom of the stairwell, the gym bag hit the sidewalk with a
thunk
and the girl covered her mouth with both hands. Her scream filled the hallway.

Kala turned to Gundersund. “Looks like the second floor tenant just arrived home.”

The girl’s name was Becky Pringle and she’d been living in the top floor apartment for three years, two years longer than Leah Sampson had lived in the basement. They’d walked Becky upstairs into her apartment after rescuing her from a near collapse on the front steps. Kala sat with her on the couch while she cried. Gundersund signalled to Kala before leaving the room, and she soon heard the kettle boiling. He returned with a cup of tea that he placed into Becky’s shaking hands. She sipped it in choking slurps. Eventually her sobbing subsided.

“I just can’t believe it. Anybody but Leah.”

How many times had Kala heard these same words come out of victims’ mouths? Anybody but their loved one.

“We know it’s been a terrible shock, but if you can tell us about Leah, it might help us to find out who did this to her.”

“This is just unbelievable,” Becky repeated. “Leah and I liked to get together after work and have tea or something harder to drink. She was warm and funny. She was the kind of person who would do anything for you.”

“Could you tell us where Leah worked?” asked Kala.

“She was finishing up her Master’s thesis in psychology and just completed her last exam. She worked part-time at the crisis hotline on Queen’s campus.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

Becky paused. “They broke up about a month ago.”

“What was his name?”

“She called him Wolf. I don’t know his real name. He worked with her at the help line. I think they grew up in the same town. Do you think he…?”

“We won’t jump to any conclusions. Do you know where her parents live?”

“A little town near here, but I don’t know which one. Oh wait, she told me they sold their house and moved to Montreal. She was going to visit them at the end of the semester.”

“Was Leah worried about anything or anybody recently?”

“Yes. No. I’m sorry. My thoughts are all jumbled. She seemed lonelier after she broke up with Wolf and distracted the last few times we talked, but I wouldn’t say she was worried. She went away for a weekend last month for a break but she didn’t tell me where. We haven’t had a real chance to talk since she got back because of schoolwork or I would have asked her about her trip.”