A Study in Sin Read Online Free PDF

answer, the thick black front door swung open. A well-built young man stood in the doorway. He had dark circles under his eyes and his expression said he could use some serious time off, both made him look older than he was. Still, there was no mistaking that he was the same guy I had watched Remy with weeks before.
    “Remy, what the hell are you doing?” Lambert said.
    “Something your men have already done apparently. One day, you guys miss the evidence right under your nose, the next you trample everything in sight looking for something that wasn’t there in the first place.” The sarcasm was heavy in Remy’s voice.
    “It’s been a long morning. One of the damn neighbors walked right through the front door as we were searching the place and screamed when she saw the body.”
    Remy burst into childish laughter. It was short lived, though, and I had a feeling she did it just to screw with Lambert.
    “After one of the officers took her home, she must have called everyone she knew because news vans and bloggers were showing up an hour later. We just got rid of the last one twenty minutes ago. Told them it was a squatter who OD’d. Shit, it might be true.”
    “Is the body inside?” I blurted out at the first opportunity. Remy and Lambert both looked back at me as if they just realized I was standing there.
    “Ian, this is my roommate Jacob Watts –”.
    “Don’t call me Ian. I hate that,” he interrupted.
    “Watts is ex-military. He’s helping me with a few cases.”
    Lambert peered down at me from the doorway of the brick house. His look was more than just pure acknowledgment.
    “No, they bagged it a few hours ago,” he said after the brief pause. “Come on, let me show you what we’ve got so far.”
    I had decided I wasn’t in the right mood to see a dead body at that exact moment so I breathed a silent sigh of relief.
    Remy and I were barely through the front door when a loud, deep voice came thundering from the next room.
    “Jesus, what the hell is she doing here?” the man bellowed. He was a short, squatty man that had wrinkles on top of his wrinkles.
    “Shut up, Arruda,” Lambert snapped back at his partner, “I asked her to come.”
    “Of course you did. Now you need help to ID a suicide?”
    “It’s not a suicide,” Lambert said.
    “Ridiculous. You know what, I’ll be in the car, you girls have fun,” he grumbled as he pushed past. Gary Arruda smelled like an ashtray that hadn’t been emptied in years.
    “Sorry about that,” Lambert said after Arruda had slammed the front door behind him.
    The interior of the house was completely destroyed. Multiple walls were stripped to the studs and debris was scattered in piles, strewn about wherever you looked. A layer of dirt and dust covered every surface that remained intact. 
    The room Lambert pointed us towards was situated in the front right corner of the house. The walls were covered in hideous red and gold filigree paper that someone had starting tearing off in large strips. Pieces and corners of the wallpaper hung off the wall exposing the faded drywall beneath. There was a hole in the ceiling with exposed wiring where an overhead fixture had once hung. The wooden floors bowed in spots and creaked with each footstep. In the middle of the room, directly in front of the fireplace, which appeared to be the only thing in good shape, was a large pool of blood, with smaller streaks and smudges that emanated out from its center.
    Lambert stood nearest to the gore and took out his camera.
    “Here are the pictures I took,” he said, holding the camera out towards Remy as her eyes darted back and forth across the room.
    Although the thoughts of a physical body threw me off my game a little, seeing one on a screen was something I was more than used to, something I had become numb to. It seemed less real, more cartoonish. Even so, the state of this particular body left an impression I found hard to shake. The man on the tiny screen lay upon