The Beast in the Bone by Blair Lindsay

Author:Blair Lindsay [Lindsay, Blair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Desperado Media
Published: 2019-12-01T22:00:00+00:00

Forty-Three

Decker armed himself with two coffees and headed back into the main observation room.

“Where the hell’ve you been?” Sanders sat on one side of the long conference table that was sometimes packed if something big was going down, watching Keller on the large monitor at the end of the room.

“On the phone, catching up.” He handed her a mug.

She sipped from it and frowned. “This sugar?”

“You’re going to be a great detective one day, Renée. Two, right?”

“Two Stevia, not sugar. You’re going to ruin my girlish figure.”

Decker laughed. Sanders was lean, with a runner’s physique. She and her girlfriend had raced each other to a near tie in an Ironman two years before.

“What’s our girl up to?” Decker nodded at the camera.

“She finished her coffee and looked at her phone for a couple of minutes. Put it away afterward.” Sanders grimaced. “You sure a ‘soft’ interview’s the way to go?”

Keller was in the kind of room usually reserved for witnesses. Suspects were placed in more spartan accommodations—rooms with doors that could be locked from the outside, furniture that was bolted to the floor—and before being secured, they were deprived of jackets, shoes, cellphones and anything that could conceivably be used as a weapon.

Decker pursed his lips. “Doesn’t feel like she was in on this, but we can always get her phone later, if we need it. Anyway, her dad was in homicide about fifteen years ago. Probably told her stories. Best that she at least feels like a witness right now.”

“Wonder what good old Dad told her about wandering around crime scenes?” Sanders sipped at her coffee again and then surrendered to the sugar and drank deep. “Any news?”

Decker sat beside her, eyeing Keller, still trying to decide how much she knew, despite what he’d said to Sanders. Herzog’s dismembered fingers all pointing in the same direction might mean anything… or nothing. But putting it together like that? She was either brilliant or had inside knowledge, which didn’t feel right but Decker had been wrong before. Still, at her house she’d seemed smart and intuitive, and rightly irate when she ought to have been. He hadn’t gotten any kind of vibe that she was concealing something.

“Coroner says Herzog died about four hours before the ambulance arrived. Fingers were probably removed with a pair of bolt cutters, post-mortem.”

Sanders nodded, impatient. Her expression told him she’d guessed that and he should’ve known she would. Removing the fingers before death would’ve meant restraining the man, and the amount of blood splatter left behind would’ve been much greater.

She looked at Keller. “Think she’s stewed long enough?”

It was common practice to let suspects sit alone for twenty or thirty minutes in an interview room to allow small insecurities to grow larger in the silence. If evidence turned up later suggesting Keller was involved in this in some way other than as a victim, the room would be decorated the next time she saw it—covered with detailed crime scene photos to further unsettle her.

“Hey, is that

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