Winter House Read Online Free PDF Page B

the same father.“
    „So now you look after your aunt, is that right?“ He wondered if she had forgotten to breathe for a moment. Why should her aunt’s health be a touchy subject? „I’m told there’s a lot of medication in Miss Winter’s room. I assumed you were – “
    „Yes, you must have been talking to the medical examiner. He wanted to give me a sedative, but I can’t swallow pills. Now what was I – Oh, Aunt Nedda. Yes. Endstage cancer.“
    „But she appeared to be in rather good health.“
    Bitty lowered her eyes with a modest smile, as if taking this as a personal compliment. „You should have seen her six months ago. Her skin was all yellow.“
    „So she had a successful surgery, something like that?“
    „No.“
    And now he noticed something new in her eyes: the pupils were dilating. This was the unconscious tactic of a small child anxious to curry favor with an adult, and it usually worked, enhancing the unwitting adult’s concern and affection. It was a child’s act of self-preservation carried into adulthood. He wondered what other tactics she might have, both instinctive and deliberate ones for negotiating her way through a forest of taller beings.
    „How do you account for your aunt’s recovery? A miracle? Or the wrong diagnosis?“ This was a trick question, a trap, and he wondered if she had guessed that.
    She was staring at her Bible, reaching toward it and its pious explanations for all things miraculous, but then she pushed it away, electing not to play the Bible-thumping zealot, not with him.
    It occurred to him, in that moment, that the Bible and the journals were props for an illusion, rather like the trick of the eyes. More survival tactics? This intuition posed an ethical dilemma: either this woman was more vulnerable than anyone imagined, or she was a worthy adversary for Mallory. He decided to keep his silence. If he guessed wrong, Mallory might shred this woman into pieces.
    Ah, but what if he was right about Bitty? Well, in that event, Mallory would certainly shred her.
    P olice from the West Side precinct had gone, and so had Charles Butler. After Bitty Smyth had been shepherded off to the dining room, only the CSU technicians and their boss remained at the crime scene with Mallory and the dead man.
    The young detective looked past the foyer to the open door. The assistant medical examiner stood on the front steps smoking a cigarette. He looked her way, then tapped his watch to remind her that his people were still waiting to collect the corpse. She turned her back on him to make it clear that this was her dead body, not his.
    And now, not hurrying any, she strolled over to the foot of the stairs and slowly paced out the movements of Nedda Winter and her victim, guided by the old woman’s statement. Mallory ended her pantomime of a killing by hunkering down at the dead man’s side and running her fingers through his hair. She waved to a technician standing by the foyer entrance. „Kill the lights!“
    He did, and now, in the etiquette of sudden darkness, no one moved or spoke. Streetlights glowed dully behind the drapes, only silhouetting the technician standing before them. All else was pitch black. She could not even see the face of the man nearest her, the dead man on the floor.
    Mallory smiled.
    Heller’s voice boomed across the void. „I know what you’re thinking, kid. She couldn’t have done it in the dark.“
    „Yes, she could – and she did. It was dark when she stabbed him the first time, but not the second time.“
    „But he was only stabbed one time.“ Dr. Morgan, the medical examiner, had come stealing back into the house, and there was exasperation in every word. „There’s only one entry wound, one – “
    „Stabbed twice,“ she said. And now they had a game. „Lights!“ yelled Mallory. And there was light.
    H eller entered the kitchen carrying a fingerprint kit and settled his massive bulk into a chair beside Nedda Winter. After introducing