Evidence of Guilt Read Online Free PDF Page B

you could put your finger on, and although I was sure we both felt it, we'd done our best to pretend we didn't.
    Freeing myself from the canine welcoming committee, I kicked off my clothes and took a long, hot shower, scrubbing away the fine layer of dust and cobwebs from my visit to the barn. The mental picture of Lisa and Amy was not so easily washed away.
    I slipped into old jeans and a T-shirt, then made myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the dining room table with Wes Harding's case file.
    What it was, actually, was a thick accordion envelope containing several folders, all a bit dog-eared, and a sizable number of loose papers in an equally poor state. Only one of the folders was labeled, and it was empty.
    The first thing Sam and I were going to have to settle on was a filing system that made sense. I'm no neatness freak, believe me. My underpants and bras get tossed together in the drawer with my running shorts; my makeup
    bin looks like it ought to go out with the trash; and the stack of clean laundry in the corner doesn't look much different from the stack of dirty stuff. But I like my paperwork organized. My brain requires all the assistance it can get
    I started with the police report, which was not labeled as such, but appeared to be largely intact. The basic story wasn't much different than what I'd gleaned from news accounts at the time of the crime. Lisa's and Amy's bodies had been discovered on a Sunday afternoon by thirteen-year-old Emmett Langley. What with the rats and the natural process of decomposition, it had been difficult to gauge the time of death with precision. Based on extrinsic evidence, however, the police were able to estimate that the deaths occurred somewhere between seven o'clock and midnight Friday evening.
    Apparently a neighbor had seen Lisa watering her yard at about six. The condition of the kitchen indicated that Lisa and Amy had eaten dinner, although Lisa had not yet done the dishes. Her answering machine logged two calls during the evening, one at eight-thirty, the other around ten. Both were apparently hang-ups since the machine had recorded static but no message. In the background of the first call there'd been muffled music and conversation reminiscent of a social gathering.
    Lisa never retrieved Saturday morning's newspaper or mail, and she hadn't shown up for her Saturday afternoon shift at the restaurant. Velma had assumed Lisa was suffering from one of her headaches and had decided not to bother her by calling.
    Lisa and Amy had both died of wounds to the throat, although in Lisa's case there were multiple stab wounds in the chest area as well. There was a full paragraph describing the length and depth of the cuts, and the mus-
    cles and tendons severed, but I skipped over it, knowing that if those details became important to the case, I'd go back and wade through it There was also a gash on Lisa's left hand that was relatively fresh but appeared to have been sustained sometime before her attack.
    Both bodies were found face up, and both were partially disrobed. Lisa's blouse had been ripped open, her denim skirt pushed up around her middle. Amy's shorts were lying in the dirt near her head. There was no sign that either of them had been raped, but both were naked from the waist down. Neither pair of undergarments had been found in the barn or on the surrounding property.
    I put the report aside for a moment and took a couple of deep breaths. The images were vivid and unsettling, as was the picture taking shape in my mind. This was an assailant who not only killed in cold blood but seemed to take a certain perverse pleasure in demeaning his victims.
    After a moment I shoved emotion aside and thought about the implications for our case. If the attack was an act of deviant behavior rather than clear-cut motive, did that help or hurt our position? It was hard to say at that point, but I thought it probably cut against us. Wes was, after all, a man with a less than upstanding