Scent of Evil Read Online Free PDF

back after death and covered with dirt, the lividity—the postmortem pooling of the blood—would be equally distributed along all the low points—the shoulder blades, the buttocks, the calves, the heels, and the undersides of both arms.”
    “And here they aren’t.”
    Gould rolled the body all the way over. “It’s not crystal clear, but I see most of the pooling having occurred in the buttocks, thighs, and feet, and not at all along the upper torso—”
    “As if he’d been sitting in a chair,” I finished for him.
    He returned his uncomplaining patient to its previous position. “Yup. Of course, it’s all conjectural, including the injection, which could indeed be an insect bite.”
    My fingers strayed to the blue pants we’d removed. “I better have the State Police Crime Lab check these for adhesive, too.”
    Gould looked puzzled for a moment and then nodded, understanding. We both shared the mental image of how this man had died, sitting in a chair, his hands taped behind his back, his legs taped to the chair legs. The man opposite him—his killer—must have carefully positioned his thumbs over the fat carotids, feeling the life blood pumping underneath just seconds before he pressed down with all his might, shutting off the flow, starving the brain, backing the blood up to the nearby heart, jamming it to a halt, forcing the blood back further to flood the lungs. I wondered what had killed him first—the brain, the heart, or had he drowned in his own blood?
    “You said the death was slow as well as painful. How long would this have taken?”
    “If I’m right on the cause of death, his assailant had to have kept his thumbs in position for almost five minutes to do the job right.”
    “Would a shot of something play in with that? He must’ve been flopping around like a landed fish, even tied down.”
    “You mean a sedative? That’s what I was thinking, actually. The killer gives this guy an injection to calm him down, maybe even knock him cold, and then goes to work without a struggle. The fact that the wrists show only adhesive and no abrasions or bruising indicate he didn’t put up a fight.” Gould made a sour face and shook his head. “But then, why bother cutting off the blood supply? Why not just overdose him and be done with it?”
    I looked at the body again, those questions and more running around my brain. He looked fine for a corpse—a little in need of the bottled tints lining the far wall, of course. I wished I could peel back his eyelid and see reflected there the last image of his life. “How long do you think he was in the chair after he died?”
    Gould stuck his lower lip out slightly. “Hard to say. Lividity generally becomes permanently fixed after eight to twelve hours, but that’s not set in stone—variations can be huge. Best I could say is that he sat for several hours after he died and before he was moved to a supine position.”
    So he was killed somewhere else, before being dumped behind the Canal Street retaining wall. “Can you tell if he was gagged?”
    Gould shook his head. “I looked. I don’t think so, but anything’s possible.” He glanced at his watch.
    “I know—you got to go.”
    “Well—he has to. I’m just going back to my office. But I don’t want to keep Hillstrom waiting.”
    I headed toward the door to arrange for a patrolman to accompany the body to Burlington. “I know, Al. Thanks for your help.”
    · · ·
    I paused at Tony Brandt’s open door, allowing some of the pipe smoke to filter out before I wandered blindly in, hoping I’d find his guest chair before falling over his desk in the smog. He glanced up from his computer keyboard and squinted at me as I settled down.
    “Why the hell don’t you open a window?” I asked him.
    “Wouldn’t make any difference.” He pulled the omnipresent pipe from his mouth to make sure it was still burning brightly.
    “Maybe not with the heat, but it might help with this stuff.” I waved my