Cooler Than Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

and she discussed?”
    “I haven’t listened to the recording of the conversation she had that night with Detective Rutledge.”
    I shot McGlashan a glance. Certainly he would want to compare notes as to what Jenny had said immediately following the incident versus what she recited hours later.
    “We planned to do a follow-up interview with Ms. Spencer,” McGlashan said as if reading my mind, “and then have Ms. Blake listen. Ms. Blake had already indicated to us that she and Ms. Spencer discussed very little of the incident that evening.”
    I asked Susan, “What did you discuss?”
    “Her life.” It came out defiant, as if I’d attacked her and she’d victoriously countered. An osprey’s call pierced the silence. I caught a glimpse of a Fountain speedboat slinking out of the canal. The name on the side was Seaduction.
    McGlashan cleared his throat. “Detective Rutledge,” he said, “stated that Ms. Spencer informed him that she and Ms. Blake reviewed the incident only briefly then talked for hours, without, apparently”—he cut Susan a look—“further discussion of the attempted rape and murder.”
    “Anything else that night?” My question went to McGlashan.
    “Nothing.” He shifted his gaze to me. “The following morning we received a lead on a deceased girl in Kentucky and a possible tie-in to a rape-murder in Georgia. Our break was the guy in the Peach State did it at a storage unit.”
    “Cameras?”
    “Seven. Three busted, two with nothing, and one just fuzz.”
    I waited, but he was done. He wasn’t under any obligation to pass the pipe with me. I asked, “And the seventh?”
    He smiled. He knew he’d made me earn it.
    “He slowed down going over a pothole. Good enough to put an alert out on the car. We found Coleman’s Honda around ten the following morning, but there was little of interest inside it. The trunk had been jimmied with a crowbar and was open. Nothing but fast-food debris and fifty-three cents. Wiped clean around the trunk.”
    It was my turn to lean in and drill him. “Clean? As in no prints?”
    “Not around the trunk.”
    “Why a crowbar? Why not break the glass and hit the trunk release lever?”
    McGlashan seemed to consider that, or me, for a moment. “The lever was inoperable. We checked it. Busted on the floor of the driver’s side. It had nothing to do with the damage caused by the break-in. A preexisting condition.”
    “Where was the car?”
    “Few hundred feet from the scene. A little parking area that only holds a handful of cars.”
    I knew the area. Heavy oleander bushes draped the beach access lot like a vaudeville stage curtain. Except for a few units in an apartment complex directly across the street, the parking spot was barely visible.
    Susan said, “Tell him about the…about her T-shirt.”
    McGlashan gave a slight shake of his head, as if he had no defense. “Ms. Spencer,” he started in, “said her T-shirt was left on a branch. We found the rest of her clothing but not that. She insisted it wasn’t ripped—she wasn’t sure how he’d gotten it off her—but she was adamant that she’d left it hanging on a mangrove branch.”
    “And?” Susan asked, without letting air in between McGlashan’s last word and her question.
    “Her name was on the shirt.”
    “Someone beat you to it,” I said. “Both the crime scene and the victim’s car.”
    McGlashan leaned with his elbows on his knees, as if he were trying to restrain himself from vaulting out of his chair. A vein on the left side of his forehead came to attention, as if it also wanted to get in on the action. “We talked before you came. Ms. Blake said you served?” He asked it like a command.
    I stayed with my back rested against the wicker chair but kept my eyes straight on his. “Five years. Rangers.”
    The vein backed down, but not McGlashan. “My son’s there now. Final tour and due home in little over a week. Been working with the British SAS. Know anything about