Chapter 11 #3
“Oh, yes. Good work on that,” she says. “I’m Detective Leah Braunstein.”
“Detective.” I nod in greeting, my gaze dropping to the gun at her hip. She rests her hand on it, her thoughts scrolling across her face like a Times Square billboard: the touchy-feely talk-therapy man isn’t comfortable with firearms.
Well, she’s not wrong. Guns aren’t my style.
“Don’t worry,” Rue says. “He’s mine. I’m keeping an eye on him.”
He’s mine. Imagine if she actually meant that.
All business again, she gestures for me to follow her back to the corpse, and dammit, I cannot be sporting wood next to a dead guy. Talk about raising questions.
She smiles at me as she pulls out a long probe and slides it into McEwan’s abdomen. “Looks like TOD was around one a.m.”
Well, damn. That’s exactly what Quinn predicted it would be when she created a concoction to amplify the effects of minor amounts of CO in the blood. Now, if I can get Rue to share the rest of the toxicology findings with me, my partner in chemistry-based crimes will be elated.
“Take a look at this,” the tech working on the fireplace says, and Rue finishes repacking her probe before walking to the black marble column running from the floor to the ceiling.
It provides a dramatic container for the inset glass box with its ten black firestones arranged in a row on the bottom.
The setup is ostentatious as fuck and completely out of place in this otherwise modest home.
I shouldn’t involve myself. I should not involve myself.
“How much do you think a fireplace like that costs?”
Oops, I involved myself.
Rue hums. “Good question. Bart?”
“On it.” He bends over to look for a manufacturer’s name, then starts typing it into his phone, one heavy finger jab at a time.
His bushy salt-and-pepper brows lift when the page loads, and the figure he announces a few seconds later is so large that the room falls silent but for a low whistle from one of the uniformed officers.
If I needed more proof that I made the right call in killing McEwan, it’s right there on Rue’s disgusted face.
“This thing cost thirty-nine thousand dollars?” Braunstein asks.
“Before any remodeling and installation costs,” Bart confirms.
Rue turns a glare on the dead man in the chair. “And McEwan said he couldn’t afford the HVAC maintenance at his properties.”
“And this piece of shit skated by with nothing but a fine,” Braunstein mutters. “Let’s run down the contractor to see when and how it was installed.”
When Rue crouches in front of the fireplace, my palms start to sweat in the gloves she gave me to wear. Here we go.
“I’m going to guess the first problem is this big box of decorative firewood.” She snaps a photograph then nods at the crime-scene tech, who shifts the box out of the way. “Looks like it was blocking half the air intake vent.”
“So, uh.” I hunch my shoulders even more than usual, projecting both soft and useless. “Did the log basket cause… that?”
I slide a quick glance at McEwan’s body, then make a show of turning back with a shudder.
“Maybe not on its own,” the tech says. “But check this out.”
He’s been fishing around in the vent with a long pair of tongs and straightens triumphantly. Everyone in the room moves closer to see that he’s holding up an iridescent-blue rock the size of a marble.
“That’s not supposed to be in there,” the tech helpfully explains.
“And neither are its two buddies.” He pulls them out one by one and carefully places them into evidence bags.
I could save him some time by telling him I wore gloves when I stuck them in the vent, but some things a lab tech’s got to find out for himself. “Now let’s see about the rest of it.”
He gets to work unscrewing the vent cover and carefully works it free as I really start to sweat.
This is what could trip me up. McEwan actually kept the fireplace vent extremely clean; I’m the one who packed the inside with compacted lint and other debris three days ago to mimic natural sediment buildup and to start raising the overall CO levels in the house.
“Gross,” is the tech’s scientific assessment when he finally exposes the innards, and the police on the scene murmur their agreement. Rue fires off a few shots of the mess packed into the vent, and even Bart pushes himself off the wall to peer over her shoulder.
“Looks like his properties weren’t the only places he was skimping on maintenance,” he says.
Rue’s thoughtful gaze travels over the house around us. “It’s weird. The rest of his house is clean. Why would he let this go, especially since he paid so much for it?”
Her gaze travels up the marble obelisk, then cuts to the body on the chair before coming to rest on me. Her amber eyes go cold as they narrow on my face.
Oh fuck. I must’ve left something behind, something pointing to me like a flashing neon sign. Rue knows, and she’s about to announce it in the middle of a houseful of cops with guns.
Five hundred and eighty-four days later, here I am: the dumbass love-struck serial killer who happily followed his woman right into a trap.