Like No One Else. Maureen Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ the direction of his gaze, O’Connor said, “We’ve already taken a sample of the blood to determine whether it belongs to the victim. But I think we can assume it will be a match.”

      Paulo nodded in agreement. “Looks like the blood was brushed on the wall. No visible fingerprints.”

      “None that I can tell,” O’Connor said.

      “How’d the perp get inside?”

      Donovan answered, “Phillips said the front door was unlocked when she arrived. No sign of forced entry. No indication that the lock was jimmied or that any of the windows had been tampered with. But they’re still checking around the house, going over the backyard.”

      “No security alarm?”

      “She never had it activated.”

      Paulo frowned. “How long had she been living here?”

      “Phillips said Maribel bought the house three years ago. She remembers because she attended the housewarming party.”

      Paulo nodded, his gaze shifting back to the body. “She must’ve put up a fight,” he muttered. “Defensive injuries on her hands and wrists.”

      “I noticed those, too.” Donovan hitched his chin toward the dried blood on the wall nearest to where he stood. “I figured the perp made the first cut around this area. After that the blade was bloody, and when he swung again drops flew off and hit the wall.”

      Nodding, Paulo added, “She turned, trying to run or avoid another blow. He pursues, stabs her from another angle. And that’s how the blood spatter ends up on the bedspread.”

      “Sounds about right to me,” O’Connor murmured.

      Rising to his feet, Paulo looked around the large room, mentally cataloging every detail. It was clear that Maribel Cruz had spared no expense when it came to decorating her bedroom. The terra-cotta walls were trimmed with fancy crown molding and appeared to have been professionally painted. The polished furnishings were made of carved cherry, the kind that had to be specially ordered and took weeks to be delivered: a huge armoire that looked antique, a dresser, a pair of matching nightstands, and a four-poster bed covered with a cream-and-chocolate satin spread, now bloodstained. Two thick pillows were bunched together against the headboard; the top pillow still bore the indentation made by the victim’s head overnight. Other than the bloody, rumpled bed, the room was meticulously neat.

      “Anything missing?” Paulo asked, though he already suspected the answer.

      “Not that we can tell,” Donovan confirmed. “If robbery were the motive, the perp left behind a lot of expensive items. A flat-screen television. A stereo system, computer, laptop, iPod, and some other electronic gadgets. And those paintings in the living room look like originals.”

      O’Connor shook her head. “Santiago and Associates must pay its secretaries very well. Clearly I’m in the wrong line of work.”

      Paulo knew for a fact that the employees at his family’s law firm were generously compensated, but of course he didn’t mention that.

      Donovan continued. “Her purse is still here. ID, credit cards, cell phone, seventy dollars in the wallet—everything seems to be accounted for. For now, anyway.”

      Watching where he walked, Paulo made his way across the room and stepped through an open doorway that led into the master bathroom. The marble countertops were lined with cosmetics and hair and facial products. A pink nightgown lay in a puddle of silk near the shower. Paulo peered inside the glass stall. It was bone dry.

      He turned as Donovan appeared in the doorway. “Does the coworker know what time Maribel Cruz called in sick to the office this morning?” he asked.

      Donovan flipped through the pages of his notepad. “It was around seven-thirty. Phillips says Maribel called her right after leaving a voice mail message for their supervisor. Maribel told her she was coming down with a bad cold and planned to spend the day in bed resting. Phillips said she sounded terrible, so she decided to check up on her when she got off from work.”

      “She live nearby?”

      “About fifteen minutes away.”

      “That her Beemer in the driveway?”

      “Yeah. Maribel always parked in the garage.”

      Paulo nodded, glancing inside the bathroom again. After several moments he murmured, almost to himself, “She was about to take a shower. She’d just removed her nightgown when she heard a noise in the other room. She poked her head around the bathroom door, then took a few steps out. And that’s when he pounced.”

      “That would explain why she was nude,” Donovan said. “Unless, of course, the killer intended to undress her anyway.”

      “The ME will determine whether or not she was sexually assaulted,” O’Connor said, glancing up from the sketch she was drawing. “If I had to venture a guess, based on lividity and the stage of rigor mortis, I would place the time of death between eight and ten a.m.”

      Donovan hummed a thoughtful note. “So after calling in sick,” he mused, “she decided to take a shower.”

      “So?” O’Connor prompted.

      The detective shrugged. “Just wondering why she’d bother showering first thing in the morning if she were that sick. Who does that? I know I wouldn’t have. I’d have kept my black ass in bed and watched TV all day.”

      “Maybe she felt icky,” O’Connor suggested. “Maybe she had a fever, and it gave her night sweats. She wanted to wash off the grime.”

      “Or maybe she had an overnight guest,” Donovan countered.

      “You think this was a crime of passion?” Paulo asked, his gaze returning to Maribel Cruz’s brutalized corpse.

      “It would explain why there’s no sign of forced entry,” Donovan said. “Maybe she played hooky from work to spend the day with her lover. They argued, things got out of hand. He snapped and killed her, then wrote stuff on the wall to make it look like some nut job butchered her.”

      Paulo lifted his gaze from the dead woman to look at his partner. “Did the coworker tell you that Maribel had a boyfriend?”

      “No. To her knowledge, Maribel wasn’t seeing anyone. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t.”

      “True.” Although Paulo’s gut instincts told him that Maribel Cruz had not been killed by an enraged lover, he kept the thought to himself. For now.

      Absently he watched as an evidence technician opened one of the nightstand drawers and carefully sifted through the contents. Paulo glimpsed a Bible, a checkbook, and some fashion magazines before the officer opened another drawer and pulled out the only item: a glossy brochure. The man stared at the cover for several moments, then showed it to the officer standing nearest to him. “Hey, didn’t I read somewhere that she moved to Houston earlier this year?”

      The other man looked at the brochure cover and nodded. “Yeah, the story was in the Chronicle a while back. She used to be with some big dance company in New York.” He gave СКАЧАТЬ