Pretty Dead (19 page)

Coretta, for all her tough exterior and ravenous sexual appetite, was pretty average when you took away her authority. David felt bad for even thinking such thoughts, but he couldn’t help it. Nothing about Coretta had been a surprise, other than how boring she was.

He circled the house. In the backyard, he looked in the garage window. Her car was there.

Now he was beginning to worry.

Up the sidewalk to an area of flowers. He searched, finally finding a rock with a fake bottom, just the way Coretta had done one night not long ago when she’d locked herself out.

He didn’t know the alarm code, but to hell with it.

He turned the key and opened the door.

No alarm sounded.

Trixie heard the door and came running, whimpering and whining in excitement. David bent down to pet her. “Hey, girl.”

Her white coat was dirty and matted in places. More disturbing—the matting appeared to be dried blood.

He scooped the dog under his arm and shot upright. “Coretta?” He shouted as he strode through the kitchen. Paw prints on the floor were the same shade of burgundy as the stains on Trixie’s white coat. Holding the dog like a football, David hurried down the narrow hall to the living room.

Lamp on the floor. Broken wine bottle.

And Coretta.

Lying on her back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, her throat sliced from ear to ear, a pool of coagulated blood around her.

It was easy to see where Trixie had been and what she’d been doing. She’d pawed at the unresponsive Coretta, trying to wake her up.

Coretta was never waking up.

David staggered back into the kitchen. Numbly, he reached for the blue leash Coretta kept at the back door. He snapped it to Trixie’s collar, carried the dog from the house, and put her down in the backyard. She immediately squatted. She’d probably been holding it for hours.

David tied the leash to a railing, then returned to the house and filled a metal bowl with dog food. Back outside, he untied the dog and sat on the step, watching her while she wolfed down the food.

It was strange how the mundane became a comfort in times like these. He’d forgotten about that. How when his son was murdered, it was the mundane that kept him going those first forty-eight hours. Just a simple human going through the motions of everyday life. Getting dressed. Taking a shower. Pouring coffee. Those things filled the space in a person’s head, pushing out the horror and pain. Feed the cat. Feed the dog. Don’t think about anything else.

Maybe he should take Trixie for a walk. She’d probably like that. But Trixie was evidence. He knew he shouldn’t have even carried her outside, should have shut her in a bedroom and kept her contained, but . . .

Dogs weren’t as ruthless as cats. That was what David found himself thinking. If David died in his apartment, he was pretty sure Isobel would eat him once she got hungry enough.

Where would she start? His face? His fingers?

But a dog . . . David was pretty sure most dogs wouldn’t resort to eating their masters.

He pulled out his phone and realized his fingers were sticky. He unlocked the screen, tapped the green and white receiver icon, and called Elise.

“You’d better get over here,” he said when she answered.

“Over where?”

It was good to hear her voice. “Coretta’s.”

“What’s wrong?” She sounded alert, concerned. That kinda killed him.

He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t tell her. His throat tightened as he thought about the words, and he might have made an odd, strangled sound of despair. “Just get over here, Elise. Come around back. I’m around back.”

“On my way.”

He blindly returned his phone to his pocket, let out a tremulous breath, braced his elbows on his knees, and looked up at the blue, blue sky.
Come on, Elise.

CHAPTER 29

W
here you off to?” Vic Lamont asked as Elise reached for her jacket.

“Forgot something from home.” She wasn’t exactly sure why she lied. Maybe because she didn’t want to share anything about her partner to the man partially responsible for getting David suspended, but the bigger reason was that she wanted to know what was going on before telling anyone else.

David was upset.

Hoffman was involved.

Lamont was already looking for the slightest infraction to make sure David never came back to Savannah PD. No need to give him any ammunition until she knew what they were dealing with.

Major Hoffman’s house was fifteen minutes from downtown if the traffic was decent. Elise had been there once a few years back, to attend a strange and uncomfortable Christmas party. It had been interesting to finally see Coretta in her element. Elise didn’t know what she’d expected, but a suburban-type house wasn’t it. The kind of place where families settled to raise their kids away from the heart of the city, out of danger. But Elise was fairly certain Coretta didn’t have kids.

On the phone, David had been distraught. Had Hoffman had a meltdown? That seemed the most likely scenario. Pressure from the mayor to find the killer, combined with her breakup with David.

Elise found David on the back steps of Major Hoffman’s house. Beside him was a poodle he petted with unawareness.

Her heart sank: she did not like what she was seeing.

She’d visited enough scenes of tragedy to recognize the absence of expression; the blanket of numbness that served as protection when reality was too much to bear.

“David?” She whispered his name.

He responded with a series of small jerks—that robotic reaction when the body can no longer move in one fluid motion because the brain is misfiring.

In this type of situation, calm was needed, because there was no telling how the victim, or relative of a victim, would respond. Whispers and short sentences and eye contact. That was what the situation called for. She thought these things while understanding that David wasn’t a victim of a crime, but instead he was the witness, the person who’d discovered the unbearable.

“Major Hoffman?” Elise asked.

David looked down at the dog leaning against his thigh, its tongue out, dark stains on its white coat. She was pretty sure what those stains were.

“Inside,” he said.

Elise went up the steps. David shifted slightly as her leg touched his arm. He didn’t follow her.

She remembered the kitchen. People drinking wine and eating cheese and crackers. Music playing from another room. A party with such a strange feel to it, almost as if the house had known this day was coming.

Through the kitchen, to the living room.

Signs of struggle. Broken lamp. Broken bottle.

And then Elise saw her.

Poor Coretta. Poor, poor Coretta.

Elise crouched and felt the dead woman’s arm. Cold as marble. And the smell. She’d never get used to the smell of so much blood. A person could almost taste it.

Elise straightened, unsnapped her shoulder holster, and pulled out her weapon. The killer was probably gone, but a sweep of the space was necessary.

Blood was everywhere, in every room.

The dog had gotten blood on its paws and tracked it through the house. There were paw prints on the white front door where the dog had scratched to get out. Paw prints on the floor. Paw prints down the hall and in the bedroom where the animal had repeatedly walked back and forth on a white duvet cover.

During Elise’s cursory inspection, she saw no signs of burglary. Hoffman’s laptop and cell phone were on the dresser, the clothes she’d worn that day tossed over a chair, as if Coretta had arrived home, dropped her things, and changed her clothes.

But it could have been staged.

Ten minutes later, once Elise was confident the house was empty, she visually examined the murder scene.

The killer most likely exited through the back, because the front dead bolt was locked. Elise’s sweep had revealed no broken windows or signs of forced entry.

Meaning Hoffman had most likely known her assailant.

Elise slipped her gun back into its holster, pulled out her phone, and dialed the Savannah PD. She gave them instructions, then finished with “No sirens. Come to the back door. It’s already been compromised.”

After that, she called John Casper and told him she needed him.

“Dead body?” he asked.

She stared at Coretta. Her red robe had come open in the struggle, or maybe she’d been sexually assaulted. Elise wanted to cover her. To find a sheet and cover her body before officers got there—before John Casper came and the crime team began snapping photos.

Something they did at every scene. But this was Coretta.

“Yes. A body.”

Elise couldn’t cover her. She couldn’t close eyes that were now dry and turning opaque. But the urge was so overwhelming that Elise walked away before she did what she couldn’t and shouldn’t do.

In the kitchen, on the refrigerator, was a photo of David, taken on the deck in the backyard. He was sitting near where he sat right now, but in the photo he was slouched in a chair, a smile on his face and a beer resting against his leg.

Careful not to touch anything, Elise looked out the window. David was still on the deck steps, the dog beside him. She thought about the sound David had made on the phone. A kind of choked sob. She felt the threat of that same sound welling up in her, tightening her throat.

She had to be strong.

One of them always had to be strong.

With the house still empty, she knew she should take this time to go through it again, looking for any missed detail, but she’d wait. Instead, she joined David, sitting down beside him on the steps and putting a hand on his leg.

He was shaking. Not a violent thing. Not a shaking you could see, but she felt it shuddering through him like an electrical current.

“They’re coming,” she said.

He nodded. “Good.”

She was sorry she’d called him. Sorry he’d been the one to find Coretta. It would have been better if he’d heard about it. It would have been better if he’d never seen her like that.

There was something about a sliced throat that was especially hard to get out of your head.

Did it have anything to do with the current rash of murders? Elise wondered. Not at all the same MO, but maybe someone, a relative of a victim, was angry that the case hadn’t been solved. Grief made people do strange things.

She’d told them no sirens, so the first thing she heard was the sound of engines, then footsteps and voices.

The dog barked a halfhearted bark, and David tensed.

“I don’t think I can be here,” he said.

“You were the first on the scene,” Elise reminded him. “Someone will have to question you.”

CHAPTER 30

S
omeone equipped with a lack of squeamishness and no emotional attachment to the victim might note a certain beauty in the precision and symmetry of movement that descended upon Major Hoffman’s house in the hours directly following David’s discovery of the body. Elise always thought of it as a dark dance. If someone were to overlay the scene with music, the sound would be soft and tender and haunting.

The lot upon which the house sat exuded a solemn funereal tone as yellow crime-scene tape was stretched from tree to tree, blocking off the front yard and creating a barrier for the people in the street who stood with hands pressed to their mouths in horror while at the same time hoping for a glimpse of something tantalizing.

The crime-scene team was on the property, and cops had begun their canvass of the neighborhood. Two of the teams were setting up a grid search. John Casper’s white van, with the words “Chatham County Medical Examiner”
on the side, waited patiently in the driveway.

The dead were in no hurry.

Vague and incorrect stories were already circulating. Thirty minutes after Elise placed the call to Savannah PD, discussion hit social media in 140 characters, and news reporters were now on-site, Jay Thomas Paul included. He seemed to have finally learned his lesson, though, and was hovering on the edge of the yellow tape with everyone else.

He spotted Elise and gave her a big “c’mere” wave.

Elise joined him at the perimeter, going so far as to lift the yellow tape—an invitation to join her. Surprised, Jay Thomas ducked under the tape and, side by side, they moved away from the watching and waiting crowd.

“Is it true?” he asked in a hushed voice. “Was Major Hoffman murdered?”

The day was bright and getting hot, the sun beating down on Elise’s head and bare arms. Earlier, she’d removed her jacket, exposing her shoulder holster and handgun.

She didn’t know much about the major’s personal life, but the woman surely had family out there somewhere. If so, it looked like they’d be hearing about this from the media. Not good.

Ordinarily Hoffman made decisions about press conferences, a job that would most likely fall to the mayor now. Elise couldn’t believe it, but she was actually considering giving Jay Thomas Paul the story to break before reports got out of hand. Jay Thomas was controllable, and she sensed he wanted to please her.

“I’ll give you the details for a piece,” Elise told him, coming to a decision. “Don’t go anywhere you aren’t invited, and don’t touch anything. I’ll let you know what you can and can’t take a photo of.”

He nodded and tucked a pen behind his ear and a tablet into a pocket of his vest. Clutching his camera with both hands, he asked, “How about you? Can I take a photo of you? Here? In front of the house?”

“Go ahead.” Her reply was distracted.

Two clicks later, he lowered the camera and asked, “Is it true Detective Gould found her?”

“I’ll fill you in later, but I want no slant to this story. No perspective. Just the facts.”

“Just the facts.”

A car pulled up in front of the house, parting the group of people in the street. The engine shut off, a door opened, and FBI Agent Lamont stepped out. Dark glasses and a dark coat, despite the warm day. He flashed his badge at the officer manning the perimeter. The cop stepped away. Lamont ducked under the tape and strode toward Elise.

He was pissed.

“We’ll talk later,” she told Jay Thomas. “I’ll give you preliminary details you can take to
Savannah Morning News
.”