Dead Lies Read Online Free PDF Page A

suggested it would be perfect for a nursery. Recalling that the brother and sister hadn’t mentioned any kids, she wondered fleetingly if the couple had been planning to start a family.
    Leaving that thought at the door, she fixed her gaze at the final door down the hall. It had to be the master bedroom. Taking slow steps forward, she felt her pulse quicken. It was certainly possible they’d find the husband hiding in a closet somewhere behind that door, with his gun, ready to rush them when they entered.
    The door, a few inches ajar, beckoned them to enter. Light from the room spilled into the hallway, and Anna could hear the faint strains of classical music from inside. The Nutcracker Suite, she recalled with an involuntary shiver. The lilting waltz had an eerie effect in the home of a dead woman.
    She stopped short and pointed at a shadow on the door. A footprint created a depression in the carpet. It was large enough to be a man’s. She continued on, gripping her Glock tighter. Sweaty palms were making her hands slippery.
    With Anna still in the lead, the officers rushed the room, guns drawn, and quickly fanned out. Anna took the left side, Frank and Sanjay headed right, away from the bed. The air was still and quiet, but Anna detected a faint hint of cordite again. Stepping left along the end of the king-sized bed, she lowered her gaze.
    It was there she found the second body.
    Lying prone in front of her was a man—probably the husband—with a single bullet wound at the back of his head. Blood spatter decorated the wall above him, and fragments of hairy scalp from the wound created a soupy mess that was seeping into the rug. The victim was dressed in khaki pants and a dark brown sweater, and as she bent down to look closer for signs of life, Anna could see a red turtleneck peeking out beneath the collar. His nod to Christmas. She saw that the dead man’s right hand was stretched toward the night stand and assumed he’d been reaching for the phone.
    “Jesus…” said Frank, coming up behind her. It was the first time any of them had spoken since the kitchen. Looking grave, he reached for the radio at his belt. “Brenda, do you copy? We’ve got two aided cases now.” He added, “both likely,” by which he meant dead. “And call the Chief at home. He’s going to have to bring in the Counties.”
    The Bergen County Sheriff’s office would be called because the Avondale Police Department didn’t have a homicide unit. The Sheriff’s Office, located in Hackensack, was staffed with a dozen detectives.
    “The last murder in Avondale was—what, Frank, ten or eleven years ago?” squeaked Sanjay, his voice a higher pitch than usual. “Remember? The wife confessed.” He turned to Anna. “She killed her husband, rolled up his body in a rug, and stashed it in the basement. The cleaning lady found the body a few days later when she went downstairs to do laundry.” He tapped his nose. “It had started to smell.” He gave a nervous laugh and shook his head. “And all the wife got was a couple of years in a psychiatric hospital. Unbelievable.”
    “Sanjay, go check the closet,” said Frank impatiently, obviously giving Sanjay something to do in order to help him focus. “And remember, don’t touch anything.”
    Anna and Frank looked at each other, but neither of them said anything.
    “Frank, over here,” Sanjay called out a moment later. “You need to take a look at this.”
    Anna followed Frank to the closet. It was extremely neat. Shirts, jackets and dresses hung on satin hangers, and rows of sweaters were crisply folded on perfectly aligned shelves that looked like they, too, had been custom-built. Handbags wrapped in cloth pouches were lined up on the top shelf, while rows of men’s and women’s shoes occupied the lowest shelves, standing at attention as if waiting for inspection. The closet looked like it had been staged for an Elle magazine shoot.
    Anna had never before searched a house as