Blood Ties Read Online Free PDF Page A

phoned in a missing persons report. He probably also got to thinking it wouldn’t be bad publicity.”
    They both stared down at the mess in the tub.
    â€œWell, the killer didn’t bring all that back here in his pocket,” Sam continued. “What do you suppose a full set of guts weighs? Twenty pounds? Maybe thirty? I suggest we look around for a garbage bag.”
    They found it in the toilet. All they had to do was lift the lid. The sides of the bowl were smeared with blood.
    â€œI suppose prints would be too much to hope for.”
    â€œProbably.”
    Sam made an impatient gesture with his left hand.
    â€œEnough is enough,” he said. “Let’s go back to the car and phone it in. Let Forensics take this place apart and, besides, I could use some fresh air.”
    Outside it was still Sunday morning. Their footfalls were reassuringly noisy on the wooden stairway. Across the street a lawn sprinkler was running.
    Ellen stayed outside while Sam got in the car to use the phone, which reminded her that she had to phone Mindy to tell her she couldn’t make it for lunch. Mindy would understand. Mindy was a lawyer in the district attorney’s office, so she had broken a few lunch dates herself.
    Listening to the sound of the lawn sprinkler, Ellen wondered why anyone would water their lawn when it had rained last night, and then it occurred to her that the system was probably controlled by a timer. The people who owned the house might even still be asleep, unaware that their sprinkler was running, or that it had rained last night or that their neighbor had been disemboweled. When they found out they would feel a thrill of fear and talk about it for a month, but it wouldn’t really touch them. Murder only existed in the newspapers.
    The art of modern living was not to care.
    Only, she didn’t want to learn to be that hard. In civilians it was just a species of emotional shallowness, but for cops it was an occupational disease. She didn’t want to become one of those for whom it was all just an intellectual game, who could look at a corpse like it was a gum wrapper someone had dropped on the sidewalk. Sally Wilkes might not have been every mother’s dream, but that didn’t entitle anybody to cut her up like a chicken. Sally Wilkes needed an avenger.
    That was stupid. Ellen knew it was stupid and still felt it and was ashamed of feeling it, but she had felt that way ever since finding Rita Blandish in a hotel bathtub. This particular series of murders had slowly evolved into her personal crusade, which was not only stupid but unprofessional. Ellen realized she was a little off the rails on this one, but it didn’t seem to matter. It came down to her gut feeling that it would be impossible for her to remain icily objective and still contrive to be a human being.
    Maybe after they caught their killer she would be entitled to feel any way she wanted. Maybe.
    She watched Sam through the windshield as he talked on the car phone, wondering if he really was unmoved by the sight of a woman’s insides lying at the bottom of her bathtub, knowing she would never find out.
    Finally he hung up and came outside again, slamming the driver’s side door with a trace more force than was absolutely required. He leaned against the hood and watched the sprinkler running on the other side of the street. Then, after maybe thirty seconds, he lit a cigarette.
    â€œOur man has made his first mistake,” he said finally. “The autopsy is still going on, but the word is they recovered semen samples from Sally Wilkes’ body.”
    â€œIt wasn’t a mistake.”
    â€œIt wasn’t a mistake? We can type him now. If we ever catch him, his DNA will buy him the Needle.”
    â€œWe were meant to find it, Sam. It was raining last night, remember? And she was wearing her panties. Which do you think is more likely, that our killer wanted to be sure the rain wouldn’t