Defensive Wounds
LISA BLACK
WILLIAM MORROW
An Imprint of
HarperCollins
Publishers
For Elaine
Author's Notes and Acknowledgments
M
ARIE
CHAPTER 1
W
EDNESDAY
The first volley came in the form of a text message.
CM QUIK. SUM
1
DED HERE
.
Standing on the twenty-third floor of the Justice Center with her cousin, Theresa MacLean translated slowly and aloud. “Â âCome quick. Someone dead here.'Â ”
“That from the lab?” Frank asked. He had met up with her after her testimony in an officer-involved shooting case, ostensibly to take her to lunch but more likely to get an update on the trial's progress.
“No,” she told him. “It's from my daughter.”
Now she and Frank pushed past the worn glass-and-brass doors into the vast lobby of the Terminal Tower, passing a microcosm of society on the way: panhandlers in ragged clothes with plastic cups, repeating “Got any spare change?” until the sound blended into the backdrop of bus engines and cooing pigeons; teenagers freed from home and school, dressed like gangsters-in-training regardless of socioeconomic background; sharp young men with crisply knotted ties and ladies arriving for lunch, armed with credit cards and fashionable scarves. Their voices bounced off the marble walls and echoed down the hallway before plunging into the cacophony of the Tower City Mall.
The Terminal Tower had been built in 1928 by the odd but quite brilliant Van Sweringen brothers. It remained the tallest building in the world for twenty-five years. Its 708 feet of height reached from the rapid-transit station in the basement to a glitzy shopping mall, two hotels, and floors and floors of offices topped off by an indoor/outdoor observation deck. This deck had been closed since the September 11 attacks, a policy considered extremely silly by localsâas if terrorists would target Cleveland. Clevelanders love their city but have no illusions as to its status per the rest of the planet.
Theresa entered the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton, the heavy glass door closing on its own. Any sound from the streets, the mall, the rest of the city was sliced off and left behind.
“How long has Rachael been working here?” Frank asked. He had called his partner in the homicide unit to learn that a person had indeed been found murdered at the hotel. Two other detectives had been assigned, but that would not dissuade him. From the body he kept in shape to the neatly trimmed mustache, Frank lived for his job; besides, with no children of his own, he took on the role of papa grizzly when it came to his “niece.” Rachael's own father checked in only between girlfriends.
“About two weeks. Front desk. She likes it, likes being downtown, says her boss is decent.” The lobby spread out around them in tasteful shades of cream and beige. A man with bulky leather bags waited without apparent patience to check in, and a lean young waiter served a Bloody Mary to an older woman in a pink twinset as she lounged in an overstuffed cream armchair. “Iâ”
“Mom!” Rachael appeared, long blond hair flying, torso encased in a tidy uniform that didn't quite disguise her curves. At eighteen she had her mother's height and lean build but her father's excitability. “Hi, Uncle Frank. What took you so long? You look nice,” she added, taking in Theresa's black skirt and somewhat styled hair.
“Court.” That allowed her to explain both. “What's going on?”
Showing a new sense of discretion along with her uniform, Theresa's daughter looked around and lowered her voice before speaking. “A guy called from the Presidential Suite and said there's a woman murdered there and that it's really gross and bizarre. She's all tied up, and there's blood everywhereâ”
“Did you see this body?” Theresa asked, dreading the answer. Dead bodies were her job, not her daughter's. Never her daughter's.
“No. I was going to go up, but Shawna was on break and I couldn't leave the deskâ”
Theresa felt herself making one of those “mother” faces. “Rachaelâ”
“I just thought I'd check it out! You know how you always say Dispatch calls you and tells you there's blood all over the place and then you get there and there's, like, three drops? So I wanted to go make sure it was really worth getting Karla out of the Housekeeping meeting, but like I said, I couldn't leave the desk alone, so I did get Karlaâshe's the GM, general managerâand she went up. Then I guess she called you guys, because she didn't call us back.” Rachael didn't seem upset or even shaken, only stirred by this great drama, her hands fluttering as she spoke. The guest had taken his bag and departed, while the other young woman at the front desk studied Rachel's mother with great intensity, no doubt having heard about her line of work. Rachael went on. “Karla said there's a ton of blood, and William says that they can't figure out how she got in there. And get thisâ”
“Theresa!” A Homicide detective she recognized crossed the heavy carpet toward them. John Powell had thinning black hair and a layer of doughy fat under the skin on his face, but his body looked tough enough. He carried a small camera and a notebook, which left no hands for shaking. He glanced at Frank without much welcome and at Rachael with more, taking her in from toe to chest so skillfully that Theresa might have missed the absently sweeping look. She didn't. “Thanks for coming,” he said to her. “We have a woman in the luxury suite. Sheâ” Another glance at Rachael. “I'll fill you in on the way.”
“This is my daughter,” Theresa said.
He nodded without interestâapparently, scanning the teenager was simple male reflexâand then spoke to Frank, “What are you doing here, Patrick? Doesn't she go anywhere without you?”
“Good morning to you too, Powell. I'm just tagging along,” Frank said, controlling the bristle. He and Theresa had worked a lot of cases together, and those cases always seemed to be the insane ones; it had become a stereotype. Each detective in the homicide unit had a theory about this: that they were unlucky, or lucky, cursed, or somehow cheating. “Anything to get out of court,” he told Powell now.
“Well, you need to stay outside the tape unless you're assigned. No sense cluttering up the contamination checklist with rubberneckersâand there's going to be a lot of them,” Powell added with a sigh. The mild belligerence leaked out of him, deflating his shoulders. “This is going to be a cluster.”
“Stay here,” Theresa told Rachael, eliciting a groan of protest, and followed Powell to the elevators. But two hotel guests got into the car with them, precluding conversation during the trip. Instead Theresa's introduction came about in the form of an array of bright halogen lights set up outside the double doors to the tastefully marked Presidential Suite and a small army of policemen, hotel managers, and two EMS responders. They were not needed but lingered anyway, and no one wanted to create the bad blood that would surely result from kicking them out. Frank remained with them, firmly on the civilian side of the crime-scene tape, no doubt gnashing his teeth.
Theresa stepped into the Presidential Suite behind Detective Powell.
The trail began inside the double doors, only a few scattered stains across the fawn carpet. They could have been mistaken for dirt by someone not so familiar as she was with the black-red color of dried blood. Powell stopped to talk to another man, but she ignored them and continued past a small kitchen with granite countertops and a conversation area furnished with heavy armchairs, watching for any tiny scattered bits of evidence before she placed each foot. Thick drapes had been pulled back, and privacy sheers let the room fill with softened light. All seemed tidy. But through another set of double doors she could see the blood trail pick up.
A bedroom, large enough for a king-size four-poster, a desk and more armchairs. The requisite fluffy comforter was turned down, the exposed sheets smooth and snow white. The room was crisp and perfect, but with enough touches of old money, enough sconces and carved details and deep wood to make it seem worth the price. Theresa wondered what the room had smelled like before it took on the scent of raw meat that had been left in the refrigerator a little too long.
Against the opposite wall sat an end table and two armchairs; one cushion had been shoved out of place, and a drinking glass and a magazine lay on the floor. Blood drops increased now, accompanied by splotches, smears, and vague suggestions of footprints. A man with a detective's badge stood to her left, jotting notes to himself.
Theresa stared, as the sounds of activity and voices around her faded to a vague hum. She saw death every day, and murder many days, but thisâthis was the sort of thing one should see only on television, and really not even then.
Thank God it wasn't Rachael who found this.
The victim was stretched across the middle of the carpet, almost equidistant from the foot of the bed, the armchairs and end table, and the bathroom. She lay on her stomach, head turned, right cheek resting on the floor with her hands stretched back to her ankles and tied there. She wore no clothes, and her bare skin had been spattered with blood. Long black hair obscured part of her face, and blood obscured the rest, soaking her hair and spilling onto the carpeting. Except for two red slashes across the right shoulder blade, all of the killer's fury had been visited on the victim's head, the scalp split by at least three heavy blows. Theresa crouched downâsomething that would have been a lot easier in her usual working uniform of khakis and Reeboksâto get a look at the face, with its pale skin and already clouding brown eyes. And then she looked again. “She ⦠I ⦔