Black Silk. Metsy Hingle

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ arched her brow.

      “The fiancé is J. P. Stratton.”

      “Stratton,” she repeated. “As in Stratton Real Estate?”

      Vince nodded. “And Stratton Hotels. The man also has an interest in two casinos and a professional football team. Our vic was supposed to become wife number five this evening.”

      Charlie conjured up a vague image of a gray-haired man with a George Hamilton tan. The guy was sixty if he was a day. “Apparently Stratton likes his brides young.”

      “Apparently,” Vince replied.

      “Where’s the body?”

      “In the bedroom.”

      “How’d she buy it?” Charlie asked.

      “We’re waiting for the M.E. to give the official cause of death,” he said, a troubled look coming into his eyes. “But it looks like she was strangled.”

      For a moment, everything inside Charlie froze. Murder investigations were never easy. But the ones where strangulation was the cause of death were the hardest for her because it always brought back thoughts of her sister’s death.

      “Listen, why don’t you stay out here and make sure the techies don’t screw up and I’ll handle things in there,” he offered and urged her away from the bedroom.

      Charlie narrowed her eyes. “All right, Kossak. What’s in that bedroom that you don’t want me to see?”

      Vince eyed his partner carefully, noting the shadows beneath her dark brown eyes. In the years they’d worked together he’d watched Charlie push herself, driven by demons to find justice for the victims. He knew from the countless hours she spent poring over case files that the demon that drove her hardest was finding her sister’s killer. It was the reason he was worried now about how she would respond to what was in the next room.

      It had nothing to do with her toughness. He’d seen Charlie hold it together at more than one bloody homicide scene when even a seasoned vet would have lost his lunch. As far as he was concerned, there wasn’t a better, smarter or more dedicated cop on the force than Charlie Le Blanc.

      But for all her smarts and toughness, Charlie Le Blanc had a heart, a heart that sometimes felt way too much. And her sister’s murder was like a wound with a bandage on it that had been pulled off too soon. It was painful. And it wouldn’t take much to reopen that wound again.

      “You going to answer me, Kossak?”

      “Come on, Le Blanc. We’ve got a female strangling victim. Give yourself a break. Let me handle this one.”

      “I can carry my end of the job, Kossak,” she informed him, her already husky voice dropping even lower.

      “Nobody said you couldn’t,” he said sharply and when he noted heads turn in their direction, Vince hustled her over near a window and out of earshot of the fingerprint team. Lowering his voice, he repeated, “I never said you couldn’t carry your end of the job. Hell, half the time you’d carry mine if I’d let you. But you are not personally responsible for solving every homicide in this city.”

      “I know that.”

      “Then act like it. Cut yourself some slack for once.”

      “I can’t,” she told him and looked away.

      “Why not?”

      “Because I can’t,” she insisted.

      “Why can’t you?” he pressed.

      She whipped her gaze back to him and spat out, “Because if I don’t stop him, he might kill another—” She paused, took a steadying breath. “He might kill someone else.”

      Vince said nothing. But he had no doubt that what she had been about to say was that he might kill another innocent girl like her sister.

      “I thought you said this one was high priority,” she said more calmly. “So are we going to process the scene or not?”

      Vince knew any further attempt on his part to dissuade her would be pointless. So he said, “Let’s do it.” He headed to the bedroom, knowing she was behind him. He paused at the door and donned gloves so as not to mar any evidence. “Ready?”

      “Ready,” she replied as she finished putting on her own gloves.

      They stepped into the room. It was huge, almost the size of his apartment, he noted as he surveyed the scene a second time. Only this room smelled of booze, perfume and sex. The virginal-white color scheme was only broken by the clothing that lay strewn on the carpet and the golden-blond hair of the woman who lay on the bed.

      “She’s beautiful.”

      “Yeah,” Vince replied. From a distance she did look beautiful, like something out of a painting, a siren draped in satin sheets. Her heart-shaped face looked as if it had been carved from ivory. It was smooth and perfect. The green eyes stared glassily up at the ceiling. The long, yellow-gold hair was spread out against the pillow and fell across pale shoulders. One hand rested near her face, the diamond ring on her finger catching the light. Only the marks across her throat marred the picture of beauty. He eyed Charlie, worried about the impact of the scene on her. But other than a momentary stiffening, she gave nothing away.

      “Judging by that rock on her finger, we either have ourselves a very dumb thief or robbery wasn’t the motive. The way she’s positioned on the sheets with her hair spread on the pillow and her hand near her face looks staged,” Charlie remarked. “Our killer is evidently into showmanship—which tells me this was no robbery turned homicide. And it was no act of passion either. It was planned.”

      He had reached the same conclusion himself. “Given the security in this place, I’d say our vic must have known her killer.”

      She glanced down at the discarded underwear. “I’d say she knew him well enough to go to bed with him,” Charlie added.

      “I figure they started off with drinks in the living room,” he began, mentally re-creating how the murder had gone down.

      “Then they decided to take the action into the bedroom,” she continued. She walked past the high heels that had been discarded a few feet from the door, then stopped in front of the black sequined dress that lay in a heap. “Pretty,” she said and stooped down to examine the dress. She checked the label and read, “Ricardo’s. I know this shop. It’s very expensive.”

      “Why, Le Blanc, I never would have guessed that you’d go in for this kind of number,” he said in an effort to distract her from what awaited.

      “Oh, I’d go for it all right. The problem is I’d never be able to conceal my gun in it or be able to afford it, which is exactly what I told my sister Anne when she dragged me into the place to see a skirt she’d been drooling over.”

      “Did she buy it?” The question was out before he’d been able to stop it and he could have kicked himself for the slip. Anne Le Blanc was little more than a kid, but for some reason she got under his skin.

      “No. I managed to talk СКАЧАТЬ