With Malice. Rachel Lee

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      “Afraid so, Detective. Black female, Tampa Palms.” Aranchez read off the address.

      Karen fought down the anger. Yes, College Hill was important, but so was the single white female, mid-to late-twenties, whose mutilated body lay ten yards away in an alley. “I’m still working this scene, Aranchez. Can’t they free up someone from the gang-banger?”

      “The lieutenant says you’re it,” Aranchez answered. “And he wants you there an hour ago.” There was a pause. “That address is Senator Lawrence’s house.”

      Well, shit, Karen thought. That explains a lot. “I’m on my way.”

      It was going to be a long night.

      Karen surveyed the bustle of activity with more than a bit of disgust. It had taken her ten minutes to reach the Tampa Palms address, and the crime scene techs were already unloading their van as she pulled in. Death might be the great equalizer, but the rank of the living still held sway in the passage of the dead.

      A middle-aged man in blue suit pants and a white dress shirt intercepted her on the way to the door and extended his hand. “Jerry Connally,” he said, as if the name ought to mean something.

      She shook his hand briefly and stepped aside. “Detective Sweeney, TPD. If you’ll excuse me.”

      He didn’t step into her path, didn’t move at all, yet his posture said I’m not finished with you yet. She met his eyes. “What is it you need, Mr. Connally?”

      “I’m special counsel to Senator Lawrence.” He nodded over his shoulder. “You’re aware this is his home.”

      Oh God, she thought. So it’s starting already.

      “Yes, I am. It’s also a crime scene, and I’m the lead detective. And I’ve just been yanked off another homicide scene because they wanted me here in a hurry. So again, if you’ll excuse me…”

      He moved aside, as if to give her entry, but his posture was such that she paused and looked at him again. He reminded her somehow of a broody hen protecting a chick. It was as if he wanted to tower over her, tower over everyone and everything to protect his charge. She wondered if Senator Lawrence liked that…or if he was even aware of it. But something clicked in her mind, making a note she was hardly aware of.

      Then she dismissed him with a glance and brushed past him into the foyer.

      These were the houses of the rich, out here, and space was generous. The foyer was large, tiled in green marble that framed the sweeping rise of a staircase. The activity she was interested in, however, was in a room off to the right. She could see the criminalists poring over the scene like a hive of ants with a fresh kill. The kill lay on the floor, covered by a sheet. Arterial spray across one wall and the sofa, along with the huge puddle on the floor around the covered corpse, told a great deal of the story.

      The room itself was very much not Florida. It might have been taken from the home of British nobility of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, except that it was dominated by cream and ecru. Cream everywhere. And blood. As least half the blood that filled an average human body. Red on cream. Screaming.

      With the criminalists all over everything, there wasn’t much she could do except ask to see the body and find out what they knew so far. She raised an eyebrow in the direction of Millie Freidman, the lead technician on the scene. Millie nodded, spoke a few words to one of her team members, and came over to her, taking care to stay within the taped-out pathway.

      “What have we got?” Karen asked.

      “Ugly. Very ugly. The senator’s seventy-five-year-old nanny had her throat slashed.”

      Karen winced. Violence against the elderly always seemed so inexcusable. How much more harmless could a human being be?

      “Yeah,” said Millie, reacting to Karen’s expression.

      “Robbery?”

      “It doesn’t look like anything else was disturbed. I have some people checking the rest of the house, though.”

      “Any other wounds on the body?”

      “None that I can find.”

      Karen nodded, feeling like a fifth wheel. “Who found the body?”

      Millie showed her teeth in an unpleasant smile. “The senator’s watchdog.”

      “Connally?”

      “You got it.”

      Karen glanced at her watch. “This early in the morning?” She hated the very idea, but it appeared she was going to have to go talk to Jerry Connally.

      One of the many reasons she was getting bone weary of this damn job.

      He was careful not to show it, but Jerry Connally was as nervous as he’d ever been in his life. He was a man totally in control of himself and most of the world around him, but at this moment he felt his control might be slipping.

      In law school he’d taken an advanced prosecution clinic. The professor had told him something he’d never forgotten. Criminals don’t get caught because cops are brilliant. Criminals get caught because they’re stupid. For every one thing they think of, the professor had said, they forget five others. And those five others bury them.

      Jerry had tried to think of as many things as he could in moving Stacy’s body. And he thought of himself as a smart guy. But that only meant that for every one thing he’d thought of, he’d probably forgotten two or three or four others.

      The bottom line, though, was that Grant Lawrence was worth the risk. And if Jerry’s neck ended up in the noose to save Grant’s…that was just how things would have to be. Grant deserved no less.

      He waited in the foyer for a few moments, glancing in the large, ornate mirror near the door to make sure he looked like himself and not like some criminal with something to hide.

      His open, Irish face looked back at him, unnaturally somber but otherwise normal. A little edginess, he assured himself, was okay under the circumstances. After all, he’d discovered a brutal murder. So it didn’t matter that his tie was loose or his remaining hair disheveled. It fit the moment.

      Then, shoving his hands in his pockets to still their sudden inclination to fidget, he stepped back outside. He didn’t want to hear what the crime scene people were telling that detective. What was her name? Swanson, Swenson, something. Sweeney, that was it. Someone he had a feeling he wasn’t going to be able to control all that easily. He might have to do something about that.

      Just then she appeared at his side. Damn, he hadn’t been paying attention. He offered a smile.

      “What can I do for you, Detective?”

      She regarded him with gray eyes that seemed devoid of any color whatever, save for the tiniest slivers of green around the pupils. Predatory eyes.

      “I understand you found the body?”

      He nodded.

      “It’s, what, 3:00 a.m.? What were you doing here?”

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