Damage Control Read Online Free PDF

in my file about why the shareholders should fire me. Is that what you want, because—”
    “Dana, I have bad news. I think you should sit down.”
    “No, I’m not going to—” She caught herself. The tone of his voice was not demanding. It was not confrontational. He sounded passive, almost timid. A tremor had caused his voice to flutter.
I think you should sit down
. Her heart pounded with a jolt of adrenaline. Fear. “What’s wrong? It’s not Molly.”
    “No, Molly’s fine.” He paused.
    “What is it?”
    “It’s your brother.”
    “James?”
    “I’m afraid it’s bad, Dana. It’s very bad. The police caught me in the driveway. I’m still at home.”
    “Home? What are the police doing at our house?” She felt like she’d walked into the middle of a conversation. “Grant?”
    “Your brother is dead. He was murdered last night.”

7
    D ETECTIVE M ICHAEL L OGAN sipped a cherry-flavored Slurpee and carried a half-eaten foot-long hot dog topped with onions and relish. The top step sagged. Logan stepped off it, then reapplied his weight. The ends of the board lifted to catch the heads of the raised nails. Dry rot was prevalent in the older Northwest homes. The constant damp never gave things a chance to dry out. Wood wasn’t intended to last forever. The whole staircase would have to be ripped out and replaced, which was likely the reason for the lumber and construction materials in the driveway.
    Neighbors had gathered along the sidewalk, standing alongside television crews behind the police barricade. The reporters held microphones, rehearsing their stories for when the morning news anchor went live to the scene of what appeared to be a homicide in Green Lake. Murders in suburbia were always big news.
    A uniformed officer stood just inside the doorway of the home, holding a clipboard. Logan exchanged his Slurpee for a pen and signed his name to the log. It recorded the crime scene detail—who came in and out of the home. The list included the uniformed officers first on the scene; Henry Rodriguez, the evidence technician; Carole Nuchitelli, from the medical examiner’s office; the crime scene technicians who would remove the body; the crime scene photographer; and the forensics team. Logan took back his Slurpee and bit into the hot dog, working the flow of relish into his mouth as he stepped into the entry. Papers lay scattered on the floor next to a well-worn briefcase, the large kind that lawyers favored. The papers had apparently toppled from a stack on the table. A black leather jacket hung on a banister. Logan walked down the hall to a room at the back of the house, where the crime scene detail moved in a rehearsed dance around the victim—a man, judging from the khaki pants and brown loafers sticking out from behind the couch.
    “Oh, God,” Logan said, stepping farther into the room.
    Carole Nuchitelli looked up at him. “Welcome to the party.” She fitted the right hand of the victim with a plastic bag. She’d already tagged the ankle and placed the contents of the man’s pockets in Zip-loc bags next to her on the floor. Blood had puddled and rolled with the sag in the dark wood and matted the man’s hair a deep burgundy. His head was fractured and swollen. Nuchitelli pointed with a latex-gloved finger. “Nice breakfast. Don’t get any of that crap on my victim.”
    “Lunch. I’ve been up since five; it’s noon for me,” Logan said, studying the scene.
    “And you chose that?”
    He crumpled what was left of his hot dog in the plastic wrap and shoved it in his coat pocket, no longer hungry. “You know me, Nooch. I have to eat six times a day just to keep the weight on.”
    “Poor baby. Why couldn’t I get a metabolism like that?”
    Nuchitelli stood, and they stepped back to give the crime scene photographer room. Logan noted nothing wrong with her metabolism. At nearly six feet, with strawberry-blond hair that reached the middle of her back, and the legs of a college