The Scum of All Fears: Squeaky Clean Mysteries, Book 5 (2 page)

“Sure thing.” She bounced out and hurried toward the back of the van.

As soon as we had hauled everything in, a plan formed in my head.

I was going to freak this girl out so she never wanted to come to another crime scene with me again.
I knew just the way to do it.

Was my plan devious? Slightly. But it was otherwise brilliant and necessary. That would override the devious part, right?

I glanced at the ceiling, as if to get approval from God. I had a feeling He might not be so keen on this plan.

The homeowner was waiting on the porch. Actually, it was the homeowner’s mother-in-law. She seemed subdued and di
dn’t have much to say. She let us in and then drove away, probably not wanting to see the disaster inside. I couldn’t blame her.

I heard Clarice suck in a breath
as we stepped into the foyer. Bullet holes littered a wall. A table was smashed. A TV turned over.

And this wasn’t even the room where the real crime had occurred.

After we paused for a moment, I led Clarice to the bedroom. From what the mother-in-law had told me, the killer had tried to clean up all of the blood evidence, but the police had gotten here before he had a chance to finish. A neighbor had called 911 after he heard the gunshots. Still, there was enough blood to silence Clarice.

Her manicured fingers covered her mouth
, and her eyes widened. “Wow. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Count that as a blessing,” I muttered. “Put on this suit—don’t forget the mask or the gloves—and then we’ll get started.”

She nodded and wordlessly climbed into the Hazmat suit. I did the same. As soon as I was all protected—and Clarice was as well—I turned to my new, temporary employee. “I need you to start by scrubbing the blood off those baseboards over there.” I checked out her outfit. “And don’t forget your safety goggles.”

“Can I wear these instead?” She pulled out some trendy plastic framed glasses and slid them on her nose. “I’m nearsighted.”

“Whatever,” I muttered.

Suddenly, any hesitation Clarice had disappeared. She began chatting and chatting and chatting, scrubbing away without blinking an eye.
She worked more slowly than I would have liked and she talked way more than I wanted to hear. But she was working.

How could this be possible?
I thought she’d freeze up, shut down, freak out.

Instead, she was jumping in.

But I hadn’t used my wild card yet.

I pulled out some powder I just happened to have in my van. I mixed it with a liquid containing hydrogen peroxide and poured it into a spray
bottle.

“What are you doing?” Clarice rocked back on her heels.

“Spraying Luminol.” I took my first squirt, thankful that my mask concealed my grin. I was proud of myself for thinking of a way to use up this product finally. I had no need for it. Not anymore.

“Luminol? Isn’t that what those CSI guys always use?”
She almost looked alarmed with her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted.

“Absolutely.”

“It makes blood glow or something, right?”

“Actually, it detects iron in hemoglobin and creates a reaction, leaving the 3-aminophthalate in an energized state.”
I doused the mustard yellow wall. Normally, I’d turn the lights off before spraying the chemical. Any fluid detected wouldn’t be as bright with the brief time lapse, but I’d still be able to get my point across.

She stared at me blankly.

I shrugged. “Yeah, so it makes the blood—or other bodily fluids—glow.”

I
continued to spray it on a wall of the bedroom where the crime had occurred, watching as the liquid appeared in patches. I hadn’t actually used Luminol in my job with the Medical Examiner, but I’d learned to use it when I got my degree in forensics.

Just a couple of weeks ago,
I’d ordered some of the solution because I’d been asked to do a little talk with the teens at church. I’d decided to use the Luminol to demonstrate how Christ’s blood—shed on the cross—gave us even more reason to shine bright for Him. The talk had gone well, but I had some of the chemical left over. Now, I realized my over-order was like fate.

Clarice continued to stare at me.
“Why are you doing that exactly?”

“I’m trying to find the blood so I’ll know what to clean up.”

“But if you can’t see it, does it really matter?”

Normally, I’d just wipe all the surfaces down. But I wanted to make a point. Luminol would help me to do that. “When I do a job, I like to be thorough.”

Guilt pressed in on me. That hadn’t been totally honest. After I proved my point, I’d own up to what I’d done, I decided.

She shrugged and daintily began scrubbing another baseboard. We were going to be here all day if she kept cleaning at that pace. And she absolutely had to stop talking. I knew way more about the newest shows on MTV than I ever cared to.

I sprayed more furiously. Finally, I was satisfied that I’d soaked the wall. I
closed the shades, pleased that they were room-darkening variety. They made my job easier.

Then I
stepped back, feeling a little too giddy for my own good. “Check this out.”

I
flipped the lights, smugly thinking that I was about to shock her socks off.

Instead, w
hat I saw made my blood go cold.

It wasn’t just the amount of blood
glowing on the wall. No, it was also the message written there.

One, Two

I’m Coming for You

Clarice screamed.

I almost joined her.

“Why in the world were you carrying Luminol?” Riley turned away from the stove for long enough to give me a questioning look.

I paused from making a salad in order to face him better.
“Because . . . well, why not? That’s why. But that’s not the point.” I crossed my arms and watched as he flipped chicken thighs on his stovetop griddle. “The point is that there was a message on the wall of the home.”

He turned to face me, letting the chicken
sizzle for a moment. “So the police missed something. Or maybe they didn’t miss it. Maybe they just didn’t tell the homeowner the message was there and the homeowner, then in turn, couldn’t tell you.”

“It wasn’t there when the crime scene unit left,” I insisted.
The police had just questioned me for an hour or so. They’d made no mention of that. Not that they had to tell me everything—or anything. And they usually didn’t offer any information. I was flying solo when it came to gathering information on crime scenes.

Still, t
he detectives with the Norfolk Police Department didn’t look at me with the same disdain that they used to, back when I’d first started out. I’d solved a couple of cases and then been hired by the Medical Examiner for a whole month, so that had gained me some credibility.

Despite that
, it had been a little hard to explain why I’d brought Luminol to a crime scene. It wasn’t my usual M.O., but I’d just happened to have some on hand. And then there had been Clarice . . . one thing had led to another.

I tapped my finger against my cheek, the crime scene igniting something in me, a kind of primal need I had for answers to life’s pressing questions. Thankfully, most of the time
those questions went deeper than the “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” variety.

I gave up on trying to make a salad in order to fully concentrate on this conversation.
“Something doesn’t feel right. Someone left that message in blood—or some other bodily fluid—then cleaned it up some, but not enough that it wouldn’t show up under the right chemicals.” If only I had access to a lab. I could have taken a sample and tested it to find out if it had been blood. Or some other fluid. But I was not officially a part of this case.

I was certain the criminal had left that message after the crime scene techs had come. That meant the bad guy had come back and risked getting caught just to leave that message.
Why would someone take that chance?

Riley crossed his arms. The top two buttons of his white dress shirt were undone and his sleeves rolled up. He’d offered to cook dinner tonight
at his apartment, and I was never one to turn down free dinner. In reality, I should be at another scene cleaning. But a girl had to eat. No one could fault me for that.

Riley
looked all serious and lawyer-like as he stood there discussing the scene with me. He’d finally shaved off his scruffy beard that he’d let grow out while he was on a once-every-decade vacation last week. His dark hair remained just a touch too long, but I liked that. It let people know that he wasn’t all about the rules; he was just
mostly
about the rules.

Our wedding was coming up in four months, two days, and 56 minutes.

Not that I was counting.

He stepped closer, his
blue eyes sparkling. “The message was for the police, not you.”

“But it said,
‘I’m coming for you,’ and it was left after the fact. Isn’t that strange?”

“
I wouldn’t worry about it. What I would worry about is that poor innocent girl who had to see it. She’s probably traumatized.”

I put my hand on his chest and nudged him playfully.
“Poor innocent girl? She was driving me nuts! You have no idea.”

Riley shook his head, a grin tugging at his lips. “You were trying to freak her out.”

He knew me too well. Yet he still wanted to marry me. I still pinched myself sometimes.

I cocked a shoulder, trying to look innocent.
“Okay, maybe I was trying to freak Clarice out. Just a little. Not
that
bad, though.”

“Uh huh.” Riley didn’t sound convinced.

“You don’t understand my dilemma. There’s no way I could handle Clarice working for me every day until Chad gets back. I would go crazy. But if I fired her, Sharon would never speak to me again. In the very least, she wouldn’t give me free coffee anymore. And you know how much I love my lattes.”

Halfway through my diatribe, I realized Riley wasn’t listening. His gaze was fastened on the TV
blaring from the living room behind me.

I turned around to see what could possibly be distracting him from my engaging story
and latte confessions. I squinted as I saw the news banner stretched beneath a serious looking brunette news anchor. “Scum River Killer Escapes From Prison, Kills Two.”

I glanced back up at my fiancé.
“Riley?”

He still didn’t hear me. H
e moved toward the TV, almost like he was in a trance.

I moved b
ehind him, curious to listen in and maybe get a clue as to why Riley was so fascinated with this story. I’d heard about the Scum River Killer. He’d been all over the news when he was first captured. But Riley seemed a little too interested.

Even Lucky, Riley’s parrot, seemed to catch on to Riley’s total and complete focus on the TV. He squawked across the room.

Riley turned up the TV volume, and a newscaster’s voice blared into the room. “Milton Jones killed thirteen women before his murderous rampage ended nearly three years ago. He was put away for life without possibility for parole. While being transferred from the high security prison where he’d been for two years to a supermax prison, he obtained a gun from one of the guards and escaped.”

“I can’t believe it . . .” Riley muttered. He plopped on
the couch and rubbed his cheek.

I put my hand on his back and massaged his taut
muscles, trying for the life of me to figure out why he was reacting this way. Serial killers were bad. I got that. But Riley didn’t generally have this reaction to them. It wasn’t like either of us lived in a bubble. No, we dealt with scum every day; Riley, as a lawyer, and me as a crime scene cleaner.

When the news
report was over, Riley fell back against the couch and stared at the ceiling. “I can’t believe it,” he repeated. He blinked as if absorbing life-altering news.

“I’m
so
not following a single thing that is happening right now. This Jones guy escaped from a prison in California. We’re in Virginia—” I stopped myself. Riley had moved here from California. A year ago. There was no possible way that . . .

He closed his eyes.
“I put him behind bars.”

My hand dropped from Riley’s back. “What?”

“He was the big case that made my career. I put him away and became a bit of a hero in the region when I nailed his conviction. The case consumed me. It was all I wanted to eat, drink, and breathe for months.”

Some of this was coming back to me. I knew he’d been involved in some big cases, but his time as a prosecutor in California seemed like another lifetime ago.
“I still don’t understand why you look so shocked. I realize this is a big deal, but—”

H
e leaned toward me and grabbed my hand. “I don’t think you realize just how huge this is, Gabby.”

“Explain it to me then.”
I braced myself for whatever he might have to say. The only time Riley overreacted was when it came to my safety, and my safety wasn’t in play right now. I had nothing to do with this case.

For once.

“As Jones was led out of the courtroom, he vowed that he would get out and that he’d get even. He said he’d pay me back for putting him behind bars and that he would make everyone in my life pay.”

“Make them pay?” My throat felt dry.

“Make them pay just like he made those women he killed pay.”

His words caused something ice cold to course through my blood. I barely even smelled the chicken burning
in the next room over.