Where the Blame Lies

Barry pointed to what looked like a kitchen towel partially balled up on the floor next to the body. “Might have been used as a gag. I’ll have it tested.”

Zach nodded, hardly wanting to picture Diana Stratton’s last moments. But it was his job. If he was going to do it well, he had no choice. The challenge was to move the images aside when he closed his eyes to sleep at night.

He glanced around. There was a full ashtray on the coffee table that he knew would be tested to determine if any of the cigarette butts had prints from someone other than Diana Stratton.

For some reason, Detective Pickering’s words about the profile of the killer came back to him: Know this, detectives—you will likely only find what he wants you to find.

Barry used his gloved hand to open Diana Stratton’s bathrobe. “It’s not just her face that’s burned either.” He bent, shooting the camera between her legs. “Same burns on her genitals.”

Zach felt ill. “Signs of sexual assault?”

Barry tilted his head, looking more closely. “It’s hard to tell with the burn trauma. Cathlyn will have to determine that.”

“Cause of death?”

Barry lowered the camera. “Wouldn’t have been the burns, as excruciating as those would have been.” He stepped forward, squatting next to her head, using a gloved finger to push her lower eyelid down. “Petechial hemorrhages and lots of them.” He then moved the high neck of her robe, exposing her throat. “There you go. Strangulation.” Zach peered at the angry red impressions. He knew Cathlyn would look at the bones in the neck and other factors before he’d have a definitive cause of death, but it sure the hell looked like Josie’s mother had been strangled.

Strangled.

Not starved. Not shackled.

“Can you check her right thigh?”

Barry pushed her robe aside to expose the top of her right thigh, Zach’s stomach dropping. Casus belli. The words were crusted with dried blood, an enraged declaration of guilt carved into the thin, wrinkled skin.

What the fuck did this mean?

Footsteps sounded behind him and he turned to see more criminalists entering the room. They’d be here for a while, going through this house that Josie had cleaned just that morning. The whole scene felt surreal in the aftermath of the time he’d spent sitting in the chair by the window as he’d listened to the old woman say cruel and insensitive things to her daughter.

He needed to interview the neighbor next door.

And then he needed to go tell Josie her mother was dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The pounding above her ceased and Josie went outside, putting her hands on her hips as she squinted up at Jimmy who was on her roof with a now-empty box of shingles.

He smiled down at her and then maneuvered his large body around, descending the ladder carefully, tool belt clanking gently with his movement. He hopped off the bottom rung and wiped his hands. “All done. You had some rotting wood that needed to be replaced.” He nodded his head t

o the box of shingles. “I added some new shingles and now you’re back in business. You can put those pots and pans away.” He turned toward the ladder and began lowering it, lifting it away from the house.

“I can’t thank you enough,” she said, gratitude making her chest feel tight. She didn’t need a new roof. This man had fixed it with only minimal materials and several hours of his labor. “What do I owe you?”

“Not a dime,” he said, holding the ladder beside him as he began walking toward her back shed. “I would have been here anyway. I was glad to keep busy.”

She hurried to catch up. “All right, but I insist on paying you for the shingles and the wood.”

He entered the shed, depositing the ladder on the hooks it had originally been hanging on. “Nah, I had that stuff lying around. Glad to get it off my hands.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “I thought you told me you were fixing up a boat.”

“I am.”

“Boats don’t have shingled roofs, Jimmy.”

He grinned. “See, totally useless to me.”

He turned and started walking toward the house. Josie huffed out a breath. She knew he was lying. He’d bought those shingles—the exact same ones that were already on the roof—before he’d gotten there and she knew it. Sunshine spread through her as she watched Jimmy amble toward her porch. He turned toward where she’d come to a stop. “Get inside now. I’m tasked with keeping you safe.”