Damage Control Read Online Free PDF Page B

volleyball player, the King County medical examiner was a sharp contrast to the brutally ugly crime scenes where she and Logan met.
    “Bad one,” he said.
    “Aren’t they all?”
    “Scale of one to ten.”
    Nuchitelli considered the body and sighed. “Beatings are always the worst. With gunshots and knife wounds, it can be pretty clean. But beatings…” She paused. “It’s the savagery. It’s the thought that someone stood here and administered each blow. It’s sick. I’d give it an eight.”
    “How many blows you estimate?”
    “More than ten. Twelve to thirteen.”
    “Fear or rage,” he said.
    Nuchitelli nodded. “We haven’t been out here much.” She was referring to Green Lake. “Can’t remember the last time. But it didn’t take you long to find the fast food.”
    Logan had been reassigned to the North Precinct six months earlier. Normally, he worked with a partner, but his was in New Jersey for a son’s wedding. The North Precinct wasn’t as busy as the South Precinct. Logan had been transferred when he was promoted to homicide, after working eight years with the robbery and sexual assault units.
    He shrugged. “All I had time for.”
    “You’re breaking my heart.”
    “Breaking it? Hell, I’ve been trying for three years to capture it.”
    Nuchitelli smiled and shook her head. “Right. Talk about taking work home with you.”
    Their flirtation was innocent. Logan wasn’t looking to complicate his life by dating a professional acquaintance. He just liked to make Nooch smile. Smiles were rare for the men and women working homicides.
    “Besides, you’re too old for me,” she said.
    “Easy. I hit forty last week, and I’m sensitive about it.”
    “You’re not sensitive about anything.”
    “Ouch again.”
    She considered him. “Forty? You don’t look that old.”
    “Are you trying to be nice or mean?”
    “I meant it as a compliment. I would have guessed thirty-five. You’d probably look even younger if you didn’t put that crap in your system. You must have the metabolism of a jackrabbit.” She picked up a plastic bag and handed the object to Logan.
    He weighed it in his hand. “Marble. Solid. Probably six pounds.”
    “Definitely the murder weapon.”
    The statue was carved with the face of an African tribal warrior. It had no flat surfaces. Pulling a print would be impossible. Logan considered the rest of the room. Blood-splattered wooden masks and tapestries hung on the walls. On a table below them, stone carvings of elephants, lions, zebras, and giraffes had toppled over. They, too, were spotted with blood. Logan took out a handkerchief and picked up a marble statue similar to the one in his hand. It had the carved face of a female. A matched set.
    “Get pictures of this wall, Jerry,” he instructed the photographer before turning back to Nuchitelli. “So what do we know?”
    She took another breath and let out a burst of air like a broken steam pipe. “The initial blow appears to be across the face, but the majority were administered to the back of the head. Given the savagery of the beating, I’d say someone came here with the intent to kill and surprised him in the dark.”
    “Good guess,” he said. “But I don’t think so.”
    She shrugged. “Okay, Sherlock, go ahead, give me your best shot.”
    Logan always professed to be able to figure out a crime scene in five minutes. “The perp didn’t come here intending to kill him. The victim surprised him, and he panicked. That’s why the perp hit him so many times. It was fear.” He walked back into the hallway, toward the front door. Nuchitelli followed. He pointed at the stack of papers. “He comes home, drops that stack of papers on the table, and puts down his briefcase. That tells me he didn’t hear anything until he got back there, and since the killer didn’t just run out the back door, either he didn’t hear the victim come home or he wasn’t in that back room.” He pointed to a room next to the