The Reveal: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 6) Read Online Free PDF Page A

nodded. The buzz I had felt about a new case was
starting to wear off. I was ninety percent sure it was homicide, with the mess on
the kitchen floor and the anonymous phone call early this morning. And the
unlocked front door wasn’t right.
    “Let’s hang around here, wait for Harold.” I
didn’t want to drive to headquarters and then have to come back here if he had
a question or something for us to look at in the house. “I’m gonna grab a cup
of coffee, okay?” I gestured toward a place a few doors down, on the other side
of the street. “You want something? Water?”
    “No, I’m good.” He turned to talk to Truman.
    I was almost inside Jitterz when I saw Harold pulling up in his minivan at about two miles per hour. I knew
he would need five minutes to park the thing, extract his enormous body from
it, and lumber his way up the steps and into the vic’s house. I ran into the coffee place and grabbed a cup. By the time I made it
back, he was just disappearing into the house.
    He’s pretty easy to identify, even from a
distance. He’s somewhere between three-fifty and four-hundred pounds, with a
shiny scalp, no matter the temperature. Due to all the blubber, he rarely wears
a coat. Today he was sporting a short-sleeve plaid shirt, shiny-ass brown
polyester pants, and his black shoes with the Velcro straps and the soles worn
down on the outsides.
    When I got in the house, Harold was breathing
heavily and holding onto one of the balusters on the staircase. He gave off a
scent of baby powder. “Good morning, beautiful,” he said to me, with a smile
that wrinkled up his whole face. Tiny dots of perspiration covered his face. Ryan
was standing there, looking concerned, as if he thought Harold’s heart was
going to explode any minute. I wasn’t sure what Ryan thought he was going to do
about it.
    “Sorry to drag you in early, Harold.” I pointed to
the woman on the stairs. “We’re right on the edge about Virginia Rinaldi here.”
I wanted him to be able to look at the body and explain how it could’ve been
something other than homicide.
    “She took a nasty tumble, I see.” He looked at the
body for a few seconds. “I’d like to get a little closer.” He shook his head in
frustration, then walked around the staircase so that he was next to the fourth
step. But with the wide staircase and her being up close to the wall, he
couldn’t reach far enough through the balusters and touch her arm. He glanced
over at Ryan. “You see her right wrist, where it’s swollen?”
    “Yep.”
    “Climb up there, would you? Get right up close to
the wrist. Tell me what you see.” Harold reached into his shirt pocket and
pulled out a penlight, which he handed to Ryan. “Take this.”
    Ryan climbed up the stairs, turned on the
penlight, and leaned in close to her arm. He looked at it, then lifted it
carefully with his gloved hand and studied the underside of the wrist. He put
it down gently and worked his way down the steps backwards. He handed Harold
his penlight. “Little red and purple dots. About fifty of them.”
    Harold nodded.
    “What is it?” I said.
    “They’re called petechiae .
She’s got petechial hemorrhage.”
    “From the fall?”
    Harold shook his head. “More likely, it’s what we
used to call an Indian burn. Someone grabbed her wrist, twisted it pretty hard,
broke the little blood vessels. But there’s all kinds of tendons and ligaments
in there. When I open it up, I’m going to see some damage.”
    “That’s the swelling?” I said.
    “Yeah.” He nodded. “I vote for homicide.”
    “Ryan, call Robin, would ya ?”
I turned back to Harold. “Thanks, handsome.” I walked out the front door.
“Truman, put up the tape.”

 
    Chapter 3
    The sun was breaking free
of the foothills as I drove my Honda toward headquarters from the victim’s
house in the North End. I shielded my eyes with one hand and fished around with
my other one for the sunglasses that had burrowed to the bottom of