Blood and Bone Read online

  Her day would be consumed with a robbery/murder coming to trial. Madison and her partner, Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown, worked on the interviews and the details of the investigation. They grabbed a quick lunch at a diner close to the precinct—one chicken salad, one tuna sandwich—and were about to go back when Brown spoke.

  “What about Tweedledum and Tweedledee?” he said, balling up his napkin.

  Madison sat back on the leather banquette and sighed: she had managed not to think about her meeting with Parker and Guzman and the five cartel deaths for a couple of hours. “Cameron is going through the cartel, picking them off one by one. Five killed, including Salvo. Parker and his pal flew up here to tell me in person, and to make sure I knew that they don’t trust me. That was the cherry.”

  Brown shook his head. “They can choose how to waste their time, it’s their birthright. But I’m sorry they ruined your Saturday.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to come back anytime soon. Somehow I sense our acquaintance has run its course.”

  “I’m sure you’re heartbroken.”

  “How could I not be?” Madison stood up.

  “They’re just pissed they didn’t get to Salvo first.”

  “That’s what I told them.”

  “And you were as cool and composed as the circumstances called for.”

  “I was positively unperturbed.”

  “Good. I’d expect no less. They’re a lesser kind of dung beetle.”

  They made their way back to the precinct in the drizzle. And although Brown didn’t probe on the subject, he read Madison’s mood and what he saw concerned him.

  The call came in at the end of the shift. Lieutenant Fynn strode into the detectives’ room—an uneasy marriage of old and new with gray metal filing cabinets from the first Bush administration next to modern computers next to scarred desks and office chairs. Andy Dunne and Kyle Spencer were away on the fishing trip until tomorrow, but everyone else was there.

  “One DOA in a private residence off Fauntleroy Way SW. Who’s up?” the lieutenant asked.

  Madison grabbed her coat. “It’s mine.” It was her turn to be the primary on a case, with Brown as her backup.

  It never went away, she thought as she looked around the room: that spike of adrenaline as she took charge of an investigation. Two years in Homicide and it was still there and, as they quickly made their way out, she could see it in Brown’s eyes too. Each case was their own private little war against willful, sometimes random, evil.

  Brown drove into the early-evening rush hour and toward southwest Seattle—no one ever drove Brown around—and crossing the West Seattle Bridge their whole world became a line of flickering headlights, water above and water below.

  Madison settled into the seat and focused on what was coming: a crime scene. It wouldn’t be the first time she was the primary and Brown the backup. She threaded the slim chain with her badge around her neck and straightened her shoulder holster. All that mattered was to do well by the victims, by Brown, and by the shield she carried, she told herself.

  The road was parallel to Fauntleroy Way SW where Lincoln Park juts out into the waters of Puget Sound like a deep green triangle. The houses were large single-family units—mostly clapboard with some brick—almost hidden behind the greenery.

  Blue-and-whites were parked along the street with their lights flashing and the police tape flapped in the rain. Madison was glad to see the Crime Scene Unit van pulling in at the same time and sent a brief prayer that Special Investigator Amy Sorensen would be on duty. Brown was waved in by one of the uniformed officers guarding the perimeter.

  Outside the front door a young patrol officer was bending forward—hands on his knees, head low—and swaying slightly with his eyes closed. Another officer put a hand on his back, speaking words they could not hear. Both officers were pale.

  Brown and Madison left their car and ducked quickly out of the weather and into the hall. As they stepped in a wail rose and fell somewhere nearby. In the foyer they slipped on regulation full-body-protection paper suits and disposable overshoes.

  The foyer opened into a wide living room with a chimney set into a wall of exposed red brick. The opposite wall was glass; it looked onto a deck and a view of the trees rolling down toward Lincoln Park and the Sound, but now it was just tall shadows and darkness.

  “Detectives,” a man said behind them.

  “Officer Giordano,” Madison replied, turning around. There was no need for introductions. “What have you got? Were you the first to respond?”

  “Yes, I was the first on the scene. And this . . .” he hesitated. “This is what we have. Watch your step. I wouldn’t be telling you except it’s everywhere.”

  Giordano was an experienced officer who had known both Brown and Madison for years; he looked shaken and that was bad news. He picked his way toward one end of the room and the detectives realized what he had meant: the dark hardwood floor had been spattered with blood and droplets had hit the walls too. A sharp, ugly scent hit them and a brief thought about the quantity of blood loss barely had time to formulate itself before Madison turned the corner and everything else went away—except for what lay at her feet.

  Giordano let them look for a few moments then started his report. He spoke clearly, simply, knowing that they needed to retain the information he was giving them while standing next to something he didn’t have a name for.

  “His name is Matthew Duncan, thirty-seven years old. He was found by his wife, Kate Duncan, when she came back from her run in Lincoln Park. She left the house at 6:30 p.m. and he was fine, she came back at 7:25 p.m. and found him—she’s pretty sure of the times because she runs every day. She came in, she saw him, she called us. The French doors to the deck—it’s a wraparound deck—were open . . .”

  He pointed, they looked, then their gaze came back, inevitably, to the body.

  “Seems like that was the point of entry. Drawers have been searched in the bedroom upstairs and the study. A real mess. The intruder might have grabbed some valuables, but the wife was in no shape to check. I called Medic One too. She’s very distressed.”

  “Thanks, Giordano,” Madison said. “Open doors say B&E—and the intruder would have been covered in blood when he left. For what it’s worth we’d better put out a BOLO alert. The killer must have done something with his clothes: we need to check garbage cans and Dumpsters as soon as possible. And ask about any unfamiliar cars on the street in the last two hours. Let’s hit the neighbors quickly before they forget what they’ve seen.”

  The uniformed officer nodded and left them to it. A “Be on the Lookout” alert without a physical description was worth very little, but they needed to get it out there anyway.

  This is what we do, Madison thought, this is what we deal with. She didn’t need Brown’s “tell me what you see.” She took a deep breath and started.

  “Caucasian male,” she said, and she could be certain only because Matthew Duncan had been wearing a plaid cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up; his arms were unmarked and untouched.

  “No protective wounds, no tussle. He didn’t have a chance to defend himself,” she continued. “Extensive . . . extreme injuries to the head and the face caused by what seems to be a blunt object, something heavy, something that struck him many times.”

  His shirt was soaked in blood. Matthew Duncan lay on his back, his arms at his sides and his unblemished hands palms up. She didn’t need to add what they both knew: sudden brain injury and decease had caused the victim’s insides to let go and, mixed with the coppery scent of blood, there was the stench of every unlawful death.

  Madison turned to Brown and saw in his eyes what she was feeling: someone didn’t just want to get him out of the way of a burglary, someone had meant to erase Matthew Duncan from this world. His face had been destroyed—bone, cartilage, and tissue had caved in under the attack—and nothing was left except the horror of it. No other part of his body had been damaged. Madison looked over
the walls, seeing shapes of red everywhere around them.

  Brown followed her gaze. “The attack continued after he was incapacitated,” he said.

  She nodded. They were both staring at the blood spatter on the ceiling. The way the droplets had hit the wallpaper indicated that the killer had kept on hitting the victim when he was on the ground, unconscious and unable to protect himself.

  “When the ME gets here we’ll turn him,” Brown said.

  “You’re thinking first blow to the back of the head . . .”

  “. . . and the rest to the front, yes. He was surprised. It makes no sense otherwise—”

  Madison finished his thought. “You don’t just stand there while you’re being . . .” She couldn’t find the right word for what had happened to this man and let the sentence hang there.

  Muffled steps and the rustle of the protective suits told them they were not alone any longer. Dr. Ernie Fellman and Special Investigator Amy Sorensen rounded the corner. The former was the Medical Examiner for King County and the latter a Crime Scene Unit investigator whose skills Madison had come to rely on heavily ever since she had made plainclothes.

  Normally they would have greeted each other warmly, but today their reactions were the same as Brown’s and Madison’s: silence, the struggle to comprehend, and, finally, the ingrained habits of years kicking in.

  “I’m going to create a safe path so we don’t tread all over the evidence. We’ll work the other end of the room while you’re here with the body.”

  Madison nodded. “This seems to be the primary scene,” she said to no one in particular.

  The Crime Scene Unit photographer who had followed Sorensen started to take pictures of the victim’s body from every angle, the flash searing into their eyes the red and the white on the body.

  Dr. Fellman stood to one side patiently, waiting for the photographer to finish before he could move or even touch the victim. His eyes scanned the injuries and the position of the limbs. When the photographer had finished he knelt next to the body and tested the mobility of the hands and wrists, the feet and knees. He took the liver temperature and examined the victim’s clothing.

  “Rigor hasn’t started yet,” he said.

  Madison knew only too well that death is a process that follows its rules like any other process in nature: rigor mortis would steal over a dead body between three and four hours after the last heartbeat; it hadn’t visited Matthew Duncan yet.

  “It confirms what the wife said,” Brown commented.

  “Can we turn him over?” Madison crouched next to the medical examiner.

  “Yes,” the doctor said, and very gently they lifted one shoulder off the ground. “There, that’s your first blow. I’ll know for sure after the autopsy.” It was a sticky dark patch on the back of the victim’s head. “It doesn’t seem bad enough to kill him outright, but he was most probably concussed. Likely he would have dropped down on his knees and never managed to get up again.”

  “He was a tall guy,” Brown said.

  The implications were clear: whoever had taken him on had to be sure he could stop him with a single blow.

  The doctor continued with his assessment while Brown and Madison took notes. Around them the small, organized army of Crime Scene Unit officers had gone to work: sifting, identifying, and preserving evidence. Somewhere behind her Madison heard voices and police radio crackle and out of the blue she realized that she didn’t know what Matthew Duncan had looked like. It seemed obscene to stand over his dead body and not know that. Almost like not caring what his name had been.

  Her gaze traveled over the room and the furnishings while the doctor continued his checks until she found what she was looking for above the mantelpiece: a wedding picture. A blond woman in a slim, elegant silk gown and a tall, wide-shouldered man in black tie. His hair was light brown and his eyes pale blue. Boyish features with an impish grin, and a deep sky behind them.

  “I’m going to bag the hands before I take him, but it doesn’t look like there was much of a scuffle between them. I don’t know what we’ll find, but I’ll try anyway.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  The body of the victim had sucked all the energy out of the room; now they needed to concentrate on their surroundings, see what the attacker had seen and begin to follow the trail left for them.

  As the ME started to place plastic bags over the hands of the victim, one of his assistants unrolled a body bag and another snapped open a gurney.

  The low rattle of a helicopter engine swooping above the house startled Madison. She exchanged a look with Brown. The press had found them already and the only thing they could be grateful for was that the crime had happened behind closed doors.

  A beam of light swept over the tops of the trees and she hoped the pilot and the cameraman weren’t bold enough to try to get a shot inside the living room. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

  She turned to Brown. “The wife,” she said.

  He nodded and they followed the thin path that Sorensen had cordoned off for them.

  Kate Duncan was shaking uncontrollably in the red and white Medic One van; she was wrapped in a blanket and her cheeks were streaked with mascara. Her eyes shone, glazed and unfocused; she had been mildly sedated. The wedding photograph had not revealed just how tiny she was—and how nature had taken its time to draw her features with a very fine pencil.

  “I’m Detective Madison and this is Detective Sergeant Brown. I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Duncan. May we speak with you for a moment?”

  She nodded.

  “A girlfriend is on her way,” the paramedic said.

  “Where’s Matt?” Kate Duncan asked. Her accent was delicately Southern smoothed out by a few years of Pacific Northwest. Her wide blue eyes found Madison through the haze of shock and grief. “Where’s Matt?”

  “Mrs. Duncan, your husband is with the medical examiner.”

  The woman nodded. “When can I see him?”

  “I’m terribly sorry but—”

  “I understand he’s . . .” she said. “I’m asking you, when will I be able to see my husband?” Her gaze was steady now and she demanded an answer.

  “We can take you to him later,” Madison replied softly. “Would you be able to tell us what happened?”

  Brown stood quietly to one side. People who didn’t know him well missed that about him: where other cops pecked at witnesses and gained little, his attention was a gentle instrument that missed nothing. Madison was a note-taker, while Brown often wrote things down a few minutes after a conversation. But he could have recounted how many times the witness blinked, and whether he or she had blinked at the wrong time.

  Kate Duncan began to speak. And what she said was surprisingly clear and to the point.

  “It was a completely normal day. I work for a pharmaceutical company and I got home at six p.m., changed to go for my run, and said good-bye to Matt—he was in the kitchen, he’s a very good cook . . .” She gathered herself for a moment, then continued. “I did my usual route around Lincoln Park and then I came back.” She paused.

  The memory of the moment she arrived at the house was all there—Brown and Madison could see that—and it unspooled behind her eyes as she spoke.

  “I unlocked the door and called out to Matt, he didn’t answer, I called again, and by then I saw . . . I saw the blood on the floor. And then I saw him, and I knew that he was dead.”

  In the street outside, Sorensen’s army clattered about doing their job and the uniformed officers guarding the perimeter fought the good fight against the gathering crowd with their cell-phone cameras. However, inside the ambulance no one moved, made a sound, or even seemed to breathe as Kate Duncan spoke.

  “I couldn’t understand what had happened to him, what . . . had done that. I dialed 911 from my cell phone and sat down next to him. I don’t know how long it took for the officers to arrive. They were suddenly there and they saw Matt too and searched around. It hadn’t even occurred to me
that someone might still be in the house.” She wiped her cheeks; fresh tears were spilling out and wouldn’t stop. “And now we’re here . . .”

  The paramedic—a man in his early twenties—passed her some tissues. She thanked him with a small nod. She wasn’t sobbing, but the tears kept coming.

  “When you went for your run, did you see anything or anyone unusual in the street?” Madison asked her.

  “No, there wasn’t anybody else in the street.”

  “Do you run every day, even in this weather?”

  “Every day. I don’t mind the rain.”

  “When you first walked into the house . . . you said you unlocked the door. So the front door was definitely closed and locked.”

  She nodded.

  “Did you pick up on anything odd just before or just after? A sound, footsteps, a car engine starting?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see a car driving away as you were coming close to the house? Maybe a person on foot?”

  “No.”

  “Mrs. Duncan, do you know of anyone who might want to harm your husband?”

  The woman squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. Madison felt the inadequacy of her words under the circumstances. They were not dealing with harm here, they were dealing with the malevolent destruction of a human being, and these were the bullet points of the investigation.

  “Do you think you would be able to come inside and tell us if the intruder has taken any valuables?”

  For a moment it seemed as if Kate Duncan wouldn’t answer, then she straightened up on the seat. “Let’s do it now.”

  They trailed her from room to room as time after time she repeated that nothing had been taken, nothing had been touched. It was a neat, carefully decorated upper-middle-class home where even the flowers in the vases matched the fabric of the sofas, the curtains, and the rugs.