Kane Read Online Free PDF Page B

surrounding the entry lesion.
    Steel wool from a homemade silencer?
    Full rigor had stiffened the boy’s body.  Lifting the child’s arms by his pajama sleeves, I pulled back the covers.  Aside from the gunshot wound, the body seemed unmolested.  But as I replaced the covers, I noticed a smear of red marking the comforter where the boy’s hands had rested.  Again lifting the child’s stiffened arms, I inspected his palms.  Jagged slashes covered the pale tissue, many continuing to the fingertips.
    Not defense cuts.  Something else …
    I looked beneath the bed.  A smear of red trailed across the dusty floor.  The underside of the bed frame revealed more stains on the wire mesh supporting the mattress.
    Unsuccessfully struggling to pinch off my feelings, I stared at the grim testimonial to the boy’s battle to survive.  Without willing it, I pictured what must have happened.  Terrified by the sounds coming from his parent’s bedroom, the boy had hidden under the bunk.  Later, in the final moments of his life, he had cut his hands on the wire bed frame as he’d fought to keep from being pulled out.  I wondered how long the boy had hidden there in the darkness, waiting for the killer to come.
    After taking photos of the child’s body, I again attempted to disassociate myself from the brutality of the crime by concentrating on the investigation.  Prints :  Have SID check for latents on the electrical panel, wall switches, door knobs, knife, tourniquet pipe, candles, and the phone in the kitchen.  They might be able to lift a latent from the severed eyelids, too.  The killer did a neat job of it.  If he wore gloves, he might have removed them to perform the excisions.  Talk to the coroner about that.  Hair and fibers :  Take the bed sheets, sink traps and drains, and get comparison hairs and blood from the victims, the neighbor who entered, and anybody else who might have had a reason to come up here.  Blood and fluids :  Sample all areas.  Maybe some came from the killer.  And don’t forget the wet spot by the door.
    Later we would do a complete search of the house, the yard, and the adjacent street area.  It was a laborious procedure that often entailed getting down on one’s hands and knees and using magnifying devices, cameras, even a vacuum.  Although the results rarely helped, it had to be done.  As I finished my inventory, I realized something was bothering me. Everyone in Los Angeles locks the front door at night.
    Why had the Larsons left theirs open?  Or had they?
    I checked my watch.  Thirty minutes had elapsed since I had first arrived at the scene.  Glancing out a bedroom window, I noticed the SID crime wagon pulling to the curb.  Down the street I could still see the Channel Two news van I had noticed earlier.  With renewed exasperation, I also noticed that Lauren Van Owen, a reporter who’d made her mark by following the Los Angeles crime beat, had positioned herself outside the crime-scene tape.  Although granting that the attractive reporter was a competent journalist, possibly one of the best, I objected to Ms. Van Owen’s penchant for taking liberal, and in my opinion, unwarranted journalistic swipes at the LAPD whenever she got the chance.  She and I had locked horns more than once, with me usually winding up on the short end of the exchange—at least in the edited portion of her interviews that appeared on the five o’clock news.
    After reentering the hall, I descended the stairs and stepped out the front door.  The coastal fog had lowered even more, and a bone chilling mist now hung in the air.  As I reached the walkway, Van Owen, microphone in hand and cameraman in tow, made a beeline in my direction.
    “Detective Kane!”
    Ignoring her, I strode down the flagstones toward a group of men gathered beside the SID crime wagon.  As I drew nearer, I spotted the blocky outline of Frank Tremmel, the criminalist who would be responsible for the collection and