Cut to the Bone(8)

“Totally by accident,” Annie said, kicking at the ragged hem of Emily’s robe.

“Still counts.”

“And your leg?” Annie pressed. “You can walk and kneel and perform crime-scene tasks?”

Probably not, Emily thought, feeling the lobster pinch when she put weight on it. But she wasn’t going to miss a homicide because of a stupid cramp.

“I’m fine,” she said, massaging her scalp with her hands. Mud flakes rained. Talk about a bad hair day. “Besides, I already talked to Branch. He’s inside with the victim.”

Annie’s faint smirk said she knew Emily was tap dancing - talking to Branch wasn’t the same as getting approval from Branch - but would ignore it because she’d do the same thing. “Well, hell, why didn’t you say so?” she said, aiming Emily at the spa. “Let’s find your clothes, so you can get right to work.”

She looked over her shoulder at Marty, cranked the smirk to full wattage. “You go finish your bubble bath, dear. You missed some dirt behind your ears.”

His reply was blacker than the mud.





12:38 p.m.

The Executioner slapped the turn signal so hard he bent the stick.

Cursing his adrenaline-fueled ham-handedness, he turned onto Royce Road on the Far South Side. Headed for the secluded split-level he’d purchased when Covington announced he was building the electric chair in Naperville. The radio squawked bare bones about the spa. Nothing about Seager Park.

Excellent.

He studied the rearview. Narrow, winding blacktop shaded by oaks and maples. Drainage gullies left and right, here and there. Kids running free in long, sloped yards. Cars going both ways. None ugly or plain enough to be unmarked police.

The DuPage River Park to his right was dotted with worn structures from century-old farmsteads. The land skidded hard to the water below, which twinkled blue-green in the merciless August sun. The cloudless sky held no helicopters or low-flying planes.

He drove slow and wide around the trucks idling on the shoulder. Checked peripherally to make sure no SWATs were hiding in the cab, waiting to attack. Nope. Just City of Naperville water crews, backs bent, elbows flying, digging up a main.

Bowie, waiting for him at the house, would chuckle at this excess of caution.

But he’d understand.





12:40 p.m.

Emily sniffed cautiously as she entered the lobby, wondering if she’d need the nose soap.

She sneezed, shuddered, sneezed again.

Yup.

Death had short-circuited the woman’s bowels and bladder. The smell mingled with the congealed blood, whirlpool chlorine, and jasmine from the mood candles. Fear-stink pulsed from employees and clients, who couldn’t leave till detectives took their statements.

Which Emily couldn’t do till she learned some basics.

“What’s her name, Captain?” she asked the big man over the little corpse.

Hercules Branch raised an index finger that said, “With you in a minute.”

“OK.” She turned to a uniformed patrol officer, whose fiercely jutting jaw reminded her of a sweet potato. “Please tell me you brought Vicks VapoRub.”

“Don’t leave home without it,” he said, pulling a tin from his pocket.

Emily thanked him and smeared a gob under each nostril. The stinging menthol fumes helped mask the stench of death. A cheap cigar was even more effective, but a year ago Chief Cross had banned smoking at crime scenes. Too much risk of contaminating evidence.

The building was an old Chinese buffet reincarnated as an elegant day spa. This was its lobby - what the foot-high calligraphy over the reception desk called the “client welcome center.” The thirty-foot ceiling came to a series of peaks, reminding Emily of the circus tents she’d adored as a little girl on Chicago’s Southwest Side. Fringed Oriental rugs softened the pearl granite floor. The walls were rag-rolled, navy blue with robin’s-egg highlights, and held a series of art prints that were as indefinite as jazz.

She took notes.

Champagne-colored curtains covered the tall, narrow windows. A dozen chairs, the same lacquer black as the frames of the art, surrounded a glass table filled with women’s magazines. The manicurist occupied the chair farthest from the main door. Next to her sat the woman who’d attended her and Marty. Her mud-streaked head rested on the manicurist’s bony shoulder. A cappuccino maker steamed in one corner. A water dispenser gurgled in another.

“Zabrina Reynolds,” Branch said. “With a Z.”

He flipped to the middle of his notebook.

“She was twenty-three, according to the manager,” he said. “She’s worked here a couple years. Lives with her boyfriend in a condo on Route 59.”