The Calling Read Online Free PDF Page A

cut?”
    “A good question,” said Greene.
    “Should she be that pale?” asked Hazel. “Even if she’s dead?”
    Spere stood up and took a long look at Delia Chandler’s body. He snapped his latex gloves off and put them into his pocket. “Well, that’s the other thing. There’s not enough blood here.”
    “What?”
    Spere telescoped his pointer and touched it to the blood on Delia Chandler’s clothing. “The blood patterns are wrong. You cut a person’s carotids and you expect to see a burst pattern out vertically and laterally. There’s no jetting here at all.” Hazel and Ray Greene leaned in. “You know those old water fountains with the spigot in the middle that always had a burble of water flowing out of it? This is what happened here. Almost no pressure at all.”
    “She had cancer,” said Hazel.
    “Cancer doesn’t explain this. Bleeding gums wouldn’t explain this. There’s almost six liters of blood in a human being. A little old lady like this, somewhat less, like five, but in any case, it tends to shoot out when you slice a person’s throat.” He used the pointer to stroke the inside of Delia’s arms. “There are no cuts here, none on her wrists, and no blood anywhere else. So we won’t know exactly what happened here until they unzip her in Barrie.”
    Hazel stared at the wreck of her father’s old friend. What would he have said at this sight? She looked at the dead woman’s feet, clad in beige hose. She wore no shoes. “Lift her dress,” she said. Both men turned to look at her. “Pull her dress up, Detective Spere.”
    Spere tugged a latex glove back onto his right hand and crouched down for the hem of the dress. His discolored macintosh pooled over the dead woman’s feet. He folded the blue material upward, into Delia Chandler’s lap. Her legs were still covered in her pantyhose, but after a moment, Spere noticed a small tear at the very top of her right stocking, at her panty line.
    What is that?” said Greene.
    Spere leaned in between Delia’s legs and carefully pushed the fabric open. Her skin was bruised purple under it, a concentrated little bruise, like an insect bite. “It’s a needle site,” he said.
    “So she’s been injected?” asked Hazel.
    “It’s hard to tell if she’s been stuck in the saphenous vein or the femoral artery, so I don’t know if the killer was putting something in or taking something out. But given that she looks like a sheet, I’m going to guess femoral.” He ran his hands lightly down her legs. “I want to take these hose off.”
    “Do what you have to do, Howard.” She had the impulse to turn around, to give Delia Chandler her privacy. Spere gestured for help and two officers stepped forward and lifted Delia slightly off the couch so he could unroll her pantyhose and reveal the woman’s legs. The skin was almost translucent.
    “What do you notice about her feet?” said Spere, touching his pointer to one of Delia’s arches.
    They stared at the pale, bluish foot. “There’s almost no lividity,” said Sergeant Renald.
    “Two points, officer. You’d expect pooling along the whole perimeter of this woman’s foot. But there’s nothing here.” With his index finger, he traced back up to the needle site. “This is a venipuncture, like when you donate blood.” He looked up at them again. “He’s bled her.”
    Greene was shaking his head. “She
let
him do this?”
    Spere lowered the dead woman’s dress. “It’s impossible to say what she permitted or not at this stage. But from the look of things, there certainly appears to have been
some
cooperation.” He pulled off his glove and stuck a finger into his mouth, chewing the nail thoughtfully. “We’ll know more when she gets to Barrie.”
    “I don’t want her taken away from here,” said Hazel sharply.

“She was a citizen of this town for every minute of her eighty-odd years, and she’ll be treated that way. Not like any old victim to be stuck in a