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

mean, aside from the nice rose-smelling stuff upstairs, it’s pretty gross.” He pointed to the stairs. “But these are sparkling clean. Not the ones at the top, but the others.”

Desmond gazed up and down. The young cop had a point. The stairs had been freshly polished. He remembered smelling a lemony cleanser when he’d walked into the house. “Look at the floor in the foyer. The part nearest the stairs has been scrubbed down.”

“Why would somebody only clean that part of the house?” Westergren asked.

They both stared at the broken railing.

“I know you don’t have a lot of resources, but you think someone can get their hands on any luminol?” Desmond asked. “I think I interrupted someone cleaning up a crime scene yesterday.”

Chapter 24

By the time a real CSI tech showed up to take samples, it was one o’clock Sunday afternoon, and Desmond was exhausted. He and Westergren had to wait outside. It was cold, but the sun was shining hard.

“Can I ask you something? If you wanted to be a pilot, how come you joined the Army instead of the Air Force?” Westergren asked.

“You have any idea how tough it is to get into the Air Force?”

Westergren shook his head.

“If you’ve already got four years of college under your belt and a pilot’s license, the Air Force might take a look at you,” Desmond explained. “They’re flooded with applications. If there’s any reason to turn you down, they’ll find it. They’ve been known to reject recruits for hay fever.”

“They turned you down?”

“Yeah. They had a great time laughing at my application. Stupid inner-city kid who’d never even been on a plane wanted to fly.” The memory still stung, but with less force than it used to. “I felt like a total fool. But one recruiter pointed me to the Army. They needed chopper pilots.”

“It still sounds amazing.”

“It was. I loved the service. Don’t think I realized how hard it would be to retire from it.”

“You’re retired? But aren’t you only forty?”

“You can retire after twenty years. I got in at eighteen, so I got out at thirty-eight. I figured I’d had enough of deployments. I was looking forward to civilian life.”

Westergren cocked his head, his wide-set ears giving him a faintly comical appearance. “Now that you’re out, how do you feel about it?”

“I miss the sense of purpose I had in the service,” Desmond admitted. “You ever think about joining?”

“That was my dream. But my parents were terrified I’d get sent overseas and blown up. So I’m doing this.” He sighed. “I thought I’d be making a difference. Catching bad guys and all that. But… well, things never turn out the way you think they will.” Westergren had a strange habit of seeming very young at one moment, then transforming into an old soul, Desmond noted.

They were quiet for a while, pulling out phones and checking messages. Desmond found it hard to think about anything but the CSI tech inside the house, and what he was finding there.

“You said you were going to drive to New York tonight. What are you going to do there?” Westergren asked.

“There are some people I need to talk to. I think they might be able to shine a light on what happened here.”

“You think this was planned by someone in New York? We can liaise with the NYPD if we need to.”

Desmond gave him a sidelong look. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but there are two dead bodies here and getting anyone to look at them is like pulling teeth. What are the odds the NYPD wants to question folks about two mysterious deaths that didn’t happen in their jurisdiction?”

Westergren sighed. “Are you sure you’re in any shape to drive?”

“I’d rather fly,” Desmond admitted, “but I’ll be okay driving.”

“You look ready to fall over.”

Desmond was sure it was an aftereffect of being in the death house. The more distance there was between himself and that hellhole, the better he would feel.

They were quiet until the tech came out of the house. He was a short, paunchy man in his late forties with a big mustache. “I’ve got bad news,” he said. “Whoever cleaned this place up knew what they were doing.”

“What does that mean?”

“Thanks to TV, most people think luminol can find blood even if the site has been cleaned with bleach.”

“That’s true, isn’t it?” asked Westergren.

“Sometimes. But there’s a type of cleanser that messes with luminol. It makes the whole area light up like it’s washed in blood. It looks like that’s what happened here. Otherwise, there was a bloodbath in there.”

“It was a bloodbath,” Desmond said, so softly the tech didn’t understand.

“Nah,” the tech said. “No matter how much blood there is, it doesn’t go everywhere. There would be spots where it didn’t hit. In this case, every clean surface looks like it had blood on it, but that stops abruptly where the floor hasn’t been cleaned. There’s a line of demarcation. It’s the cleanser.”

Desmond hung his head. It was hopeless.

“We found a nail inside the house,” Westergren said, pulling the tissue out of his pocket and unfurling its corners. “It looks like it could have blood on it.”

Desmond stared at him. Hadn’t Westergren said, back at the diner, that it couldn’t be used as evidence, since Desmond had removed it from the crime scene? There the young cop was, putting it into evidence himself.

The tech examined it. “Some specks on that. It’s worth a try.”

“Could you get DNA from it?” Desmond’s mouth was dry.

“Possibly. We’ll need to treat the samples with luminol reagent, but that’s doable.” He nodded at Westergren. “I’ll let you know what I find.” He gave Desmond a polite nod, before turning and heading for his truck.

“I appreciate what you did. All of it. Thanks for coming out here with me.” Desmond shook hands with Westergren.

“I… I haven’t worked a case like this before, but I’m going to do everything I can,” Westergren said. “We don’t have much in the way of resources, but