The Neighbor Read Online Free PDF Page B

them.
    Marge shrugged. “Some hits. We’ll test them, of course, but nothing glaring. I mean, every bedroom in the United States has bodily fluids somewhere.”
    D.D. nodded. When processing a room for bodily fluids there were two red flags: one, an obvious display such as spatter lighting up across a wall or a giant puddle illuminating the floor; two, the total lack of bodily fluids, which indicated someone had used chemicals for one helluva cleanup job. Like Marge said, every bedroom had something.
    “What about the broken lamp?” D.D. asked.
    “We recovered it from the floor,” Nick spoke up, “with all the shards in the immediate vicinity. At first glance, the lamp toppled and shattered against the floor, versus being used as a weapon. Visual inspection, at least, didn’t reveal any sign of blood on the lamp’s base.”
    D.D. nodded. “Bedding?”
    “Blue-and-green top quilt is missing, but the rest of the bedding appears intact.”
    “You process the bathroom?” D.D. asked.
    “Yep.”
    “Toothbrushes?”
    “Two were still damp when we got here. One a pink Barbie electric toothbrush belonging to the child. The second a Braun Oral-B electric toothbrush, which according to the husband belonged to his wife.”
    “Pajamas?”
    “Per the husband, wife wore a long purple T-shirt, sporting the graphic of a crowned baby chick on the front. Currently unaccounted for.”
    “Other clothing? Suitcase?”
    “Husband’s initial inventory revealed nothing missing.”
    “Jewelry?”
    “Biggest items are her watch and wedding ring, both gone. Also her favorite pair of gold hoops, which according to the husband she wore habitually. All we found in the jewelry box were some necklaces, and a couple of homemade bracelets apparently gifted by the child. Husband thought that looked about right.”
    D.D. turned to Miller. “No activity on her credit card, I assume?”
    Miller went back to his I’m-not-an-idiot stare. She figured that was answer enough.
    “So,” she mused out loud, “by all accounts, Sandra Jones came home from work yesterday afternoon, fixed dinner for her child, put her child to bed, then proceeded with her nightly chore of grading papers. At some point, she brushed her teeth, put on her nightshirt, and at least made it to the bedroom, where …”
    “Some kind of struggle broke a lamp?” Marge offered up with a shrug. “Maybe someone was already here, ambushed her. That would explain the lack of blood spatter.”
    “The subject manually subdued her,” Miller supplied. “Asphyxiation.”
    “Test the pillow cases,” D.D. said. “Could have suffocated her in her sleep.”
    “Suffocated, strangled. Something quiet and not too messy,” Nick agreed.
    “Then wrapped the body in the comforter and dragged it out of the house,” Miller concluded.
    D.D. shook her head. “No, no dragging. This is where things get complicated.”
    “What do you mean, no dragging?” Miller asked in confusion.
    “Look at the dusty hallway. I can see our footprints, which is a problem, because if someone dragged a corpse wrapped in a giant quilt, what I should be seeing is a long, clean smear from this bedroom to the top of the stairs. No clean streak. Meaning, the body wasn’t dragged.”
    Miller frowned. “Okay, so the subject carried her out.”
    “One man carried the burritoed body of an adult female through that narrow hallway?” D.D. arched a brow skeptically. “First off, that would have to be one strong man. Secondly, no way he could’ve made the corner of that staircase. We’d see evidence everywhere.”
    “Two men?” Margie ventured.
    “Twice as much noise, twice as much chance of being caught.”
    “Then what the hell happened with the comforter?” Miller demanded.
    “I don’t know,” D.D. said. “Unless … Unless she wasn’t killed in this room. Maybe she made it back downstairs. Maybe she was sitting on the sofa watching TV, then the doorbell rang. Or maybe the husband came home….”