Blood Always Tells, Hilary Davidson [good book club books .txt] 📗

doors on a car, gave him a faintly comic aspect. But Desmond realized the young man actually gave a damn about what had happened. In his estimation, that was more important than Westergren’s youth and inexperience.

“What I need to know is this,” Desmond said. “Is there any way that house could be a crime scene?”

Westergren’s eyebrows rose. “You think this was foul play?”

“Yes. And at the hospital last night, I got the impression there’s something that makes you think twice about this being an accident.”

“Why’re you asking me? I’m new on the job.”

“You didn’t say much at the hospital, and maybe I was a little out of it, but you were the one taking notes. A couple times, when Tyson said something, you looked like you wanted to put your two cents in, but you held back.”

“I’ve been here four months. This is my first real job in the field. I’m still learning.” Westergren drank some coffee. “Tyson’s gone over the scene and put together a working theory of what happened, and he’s positive the deaths were an accident.”

“What do you think?”

Westergren gave him an earnest look. “I think Tyson’s decent at what he does, and his theory holds together. I mean, look at the facts. Your sister and her boyfriend came out to the house, which the boyfriend rented for them. They’re having an affair and they want privacy. Maybe a car dropped them off—that part isn’t clear right now. But we know they turned the furnace on, and it’s faulty and it fills the house with carbon monoxide. Within a few hours, they’re dead, and they probably never knew what hit them. It all hangs together.”

“But?”

Westergren’s eyes were wary. “But nothing. You probably think we’re country mice who don’t know how to do our jobs. Or we’re too lazy to open a homicide investigation, so we’re sticking with the accident.”

“I don’t think that.” Desmond kept his voice even.

Westergren leaned forward. “The PMRPD is responsible for an area over two hundred square miles. You know how many officers we have? Thirty-eight.” He let that sink in. “It’s a great force. Professional. Organized. But we’re stretched thin. We have to ask for donations on our website.”

“I’d be willing to donate,” Desmond said. “How much?”

The young cop looked horrified. “No! I’m not trying to shake you down for money. I just want you to understand. We have seriously limited resources. We can’t do what police in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia or New York would do.”

Desmond thought about that. “To turn that around, if someone were planning a crime and they wanted to boost their chances of getting away with it, they might pick an area with a police force that’s underfunded and shorthanded. Hard to go over a crime scene with a fine-toothed comb if you don’t have the manpower.”

“Why do you think it could be a crime scene?” Westergren leaned closer. As much as he claimed he didn’t want to get involved, he seemed drawn to the idea that they were dealing with more than an accident.

“First of all, someone locked me in the basement. Given that the house was filled with carbon monoxide, I think he wanted to kill me.”

Westergren shook his head. “I talked to a couple of doctors at the hospital. They said inhaling all that CO might’ve made you delusional. Maybe when you went down to the basement, the door shut and you panicked.”

“That’s not what happened.” Desmond paused for a moment. “I broke through the door. Was the bolt still on when you saw it?”

“Part of it was torn off the wall when you broke down the door. The bolt was pointing down, like it had been shut, but could have been gravity. It just wasn’t clear.” He cocked his head. “Did you see anyone at the house besides your sister and her boyfriend?”

“I saw a car parked out front…”

“There were tracks from a few different cars in front of the house,” Westergren said. “Did you see another person in the house, or creeping around it?”

“No.” Desmond reached into his coat pocket. “This was in my sister’s hands when I found her body.” He opened the crumpled tissue to reveal the two-inch-long nail. “I think there’s blood on it. You could do a DNA analysis.”

“You really shouldn’t have taken that from the scene. It’s going to make it pretty much impossible to process as evidence.”

“I should’ve thought of that, but I didn’t.” Desmond set the nail in its frail white shroud on the table between them. “I wasn’t thinking straight. When I realized my sister was dead, I… It was such a shock. I’d just talked to Dominique a few hours before. It still doesn’t seem real.”

“I don’t think it ever does.” Westergren sounded older than his years.

Desmond paused and weighed his words. In the hyperbaric chamber, and late Saturday night, he’d had time to think about what he wanted to say. “The thing you need to know is that my sister was scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“There was a man named Max who drove them to the house. He took off, and he never came back. Now, maybe Max got into an accident. Maybe he got a call from home, saying he was needed. But don’t you think it’s strange that Max drove away from the house, never returned, and the two people he left behind ended up dead?”

A pen mysteriously appeared in Westergren’s hand while Desmond was speaking. “Max,” he wrote on a fresh page. “What do you know about him?”

“Dominique said there was something strange going on with Gary, but she didn’t know what. She said Max was at the house, and he was working for Gary, but he seemed like a thug.”

“Did she describe what he looked like?”

“Not really.” Desmond cursed himself for not asking Dominique to describe the man. He’d been so overwhelmed by the crazy story she spun on the phone that he hadn’t even thought of it at the time. “Max showed up at Gary’s house in the Hudson Valley. Dominique