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

arguing about what a good man should be; be one, as Marcus Aurelius wrote. That was almost, word for word, what his mother had told him when he was fourteen.

“Basically, we’re mapping the scene,” Desmond explained. “Taking pictures, looking for anything that seems strange or out of place. In CSI terms, it’s a second walk-through.” Desmond was making it up as he went along. His military experience flying helicopters in Afghanistan wasn’t relevant here, but his soldierly bearing was. He could convince Westergren to follow his lead without revealing he was following crime scene investigation tips he’d picked up on television and online. “Remember, we want to make sure we don’t add anything to the scene. That just confuses things later.”

“Got it. Where do we start?”

Desmond felt the first stirrings of nausea whirling around him as he considered walking into the house again. “Let’s walk the perimeter. That’s what I did when I first arrived.”

“Some of these windows are boarded up,” Westergren observed. “Makes the place extra-creepy. You kind of wonder why your sister and her boyfriend didn’t just turn around and go home.”

“I wonder if they had a choice.” Desmond stared into a window. “Somehow, I doubt it.” The room he was peering into was one he’d seen the day before. Now that he knew there’d been someone else in the house, he wondered where that person had been when he entered. There wasn’t much furniture to hide behind, but there were so many nooks and crannies.

He and Westergren continued to the back of the house. “That’s a weird choice for a kitchen window,” Westergren observed. “The thick glass makes it hard to see inside or out. Everything would be kind of warped.”

What caught Desmond’s eye was the caulking around the window. It was a pristine white, and it looked new. “Did you notice anything around those other windows?” Desmond asked. He took a few steps back and stared up at the house. Every window had that same thick white caulking around it.

Westergren moved to stand beside him. “The weatherproofing.” He let out a low whistle. “Somebody sure went to a lot of trouble to make sure the windows were sealed. It looks weird. The caulking really stands out.”

“Except at the front of the house, where it’s boarded up.” Desmond snapped some photos and Westergren followed suit. He pointed at one window, noticing it was broken. “Was it like that yesterday? I don’t remember noticing any broken windows or a draft.”

“Tyson did that,” Westergren explained. “We had trouble airing the house, because none of the windows would open. We didn’t want to risk anyone else getting carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“I would’ve done that yesterday if I’d had the presence of mind.” Desmond took a deep breath, remembering how stuffy and hot the house had been when he walked in, and how despair had made him overlook that. “Let’s take a look at those boards over the windows.”

They circled around to the front. Desmond put his hand on one of the wooden planks. “Just so you know, this isn’t exactly standard CSI. But we need to check this out.”

He tugged at the board, and it gave way easily. Underneath was a perfectly fine window that had heavy sealant around its border.

“A perfectly good window was boarded up?” Westergren said.

“Makes the house look creepy, which might have been the point. But it also keeps anyone from wondering why there are rings of caulking around each window.”

When they finally trooped inside, the first thing they checked was that the furnace was off. Desmond braced the front door so it would remain open, just in case. He wasn’t taking any chances.

“We saw the broken railing.” Westergren pointed to the staircase. “There are some splintery bits around, so it looks like it happened recently, but neither your sister or Gary had any bruising. Maybe it happened before they got here.”

Desmond hadn’t really noticed the railing before. The house was such a ramshackle, crumbling mess he’d assumed it was part of the eerie setting. Now, he regarded it with fresh eyes. “It looks like someone might have fallen near the top of the stairs, and they grabbed it. That would be quite a fall, though.” He walked up the stairs. Westergren followed.

“We found a couple of guns,” the young cop said. “They were both unloaded, and we didn’t find any bullets. The big bedroom is kind of interesting.”

The door was open and they entered, Desmond haltingly, the memory of his sister painfully fresh. This was where he’d found her. He knew that moment would haunt him in dreams for the rest of his life.

“There was a shirt with blood on it soaking in the sink in the bathroom.” Westergren interrupted his thoughts. “It didn’t look like a big deal yesterday, but…”

“Take note of everything. Maybe it was a nosebleed. But you never know.” Desmond sniffed the air. “Roses. It smells kind of like my sister’s place. She loves roses.” He realized he’d used the present tense, but Westergren didn’t correct him.

“That’s partly why people think it was a romantic weekend away. There’s all kinds of expensive stuff, like bath oil. Rose-scented everything.”

They went from room to room, then down to the first floor, and finally to the basement. Aside from the obsessively weatherproofed windows that refused to open, there wasn’t anything that seemed suspicious. Sure, it was odd that there were only a couple of habitable rooms, but that didn’t make it a crime scene.

Westergren stopped to tie his shoe on the way out. “I’m glad we did this,” he said. “Even if it didn’t pan out, it’ll put your mind at rest.”

Desmond was still looking around, catching a faint glimmer at the edge of his peripheral vision. In the light, they didn’t register, but in dark spaces, they became apparent. He thought of Dr. Torres’s warning in the hospital about the fallout from CO poisoning, but he kept that to himself.

“You know what’s strange?” Westergren asked.

“What?”

“This house is kind of disgusting and musty, right? I