Cooler Than Blood Read Online Free PDF

circulatory shock and emotional shock. McGlashan gave a smirk and settled back into his chair to enjoy the show. Susan gave me a look. We were all getting along just swell. Maybe before we parted, we’d draw names for Christmas.
    “I know,” she said in a tone that shut the door to further questions regarding her qualification to diagnose shock. “We sat for hours that night, right here. We talked through the night. Around four thirty, I suggested we call the police. I hadn’t wanted to do that before I felt she was composed.” She knifed McGlashan a look. I surmised that he had already drilled Susan regarding the long wait to contact the authorities. “I wanted to make sure her initial calm was real and not masking anything.”
    I glanced at McGlashan and asked, “How did it play out?”
    “When the call came in,” he started in a tone that adequately conveyed his impatience with having to rehash the night to me, “it was assigned to me and another detective. Goes by the name of Eric Rutledge.” He placed his elbows on the armrest of the chair and straightened himself up. “We arrived at the house, and Detective Rutledge did the interview. I went to the crime scene.”
    “Where exactly was that?”
    “Are you familiar with the beach?”
    “I am.”
    “South end, where the mangroves are. About a half mile from the end of the island. An inlet cuts in; evidently at high tide, the beach is gone, and there are paths and clearings in the mangroves. We found the victim in such a clearing.”
    “And the crime scene?”
    McGlashan leaned in a bit. “You walk the beach? See the birds attack a French fry or a dead fish?”
    “Ghoulish art.”
    “Mulched him over three square yards. We secured the crime scene, which at that point was a feast of the gulls.”
    I said, “Did you talk to Jenny?” But I was thinking, Did she do that to a man on her own? With no help?
    “I stayed at the scene, and Detective Rutledge conducted a recorded interview with Ms. Spencer until six seventeen a.m. His report indicates that Ms. Spencer did not know the assailant, Billy Ray Coleman. She’d seen him only once before the attack, and that was when he stopped earlier that afternoon to talk to Ms. Spencer and Ms. Blake while they were…sunbathing on the beach. Neither noticed anything unusual about the man other than he was about to forfeit a layer of skin to the sun.”
    “I said he hit his head,” Susan cut in.
    “That’s correct,” McGlashan said. “Ms. Blake does recall Coleman striking his own head, and Ms. Spencer did mention that in the interview.”
    I looked at Susan. “How was she during the interview?”
    “I was here for only the first ten minutes or so. Then I had to get to one of my bars. I returned a little before six thirty, just as they were finishing. Jenny said it went fine, but she didn’t really want to talk about it.”
    “You went to one of your bars?”
    “Someone broke into Water’s Edge and grabbed a case of liquor. Third time this year. The alarm went off.”
    “And you went?”
    Susan brought her legs up underneath her. “Jenny said she was fine. I didn’t plan to be gone as long as I was.”
    “Did Rutledge tell you anything about the conversation that took place in your absence?” I asked her.
    “No.” She gave a disgusted look and crossed her arms again. Half her chair held no purpose; she couldn’t possibly occupy a smaller space. “He asked me to follow him to his car. But then he hit on me. He’s one of those guys who won’t shut up about himself. I thought it was inappropriate. Yakked about how after his sister—she had been sick and never married—had recently died, and he had to get a fresh start. Said he was new to the area but had a house on the island, not far from me.” She shook her head. I shifted my gaze to McGlashan, but his face was stone. He made no attempt to defend his coworker.
    “Did her statements to Detective Rutledge differ in any manner from what you