Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(6)

“The contents of the filing cabinets?”

“Phil went through them. Seem to be customer files. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

D.D. nodded, returned to studying the damage. She should’ve brought Alex, she thought. This was how they’d met, analyzing spatter at the scene of a brutal family annihilation. What did it say about her life that studying a crime scene made her miss her husband?

“And Evie?” D.D. asked. “Her occupation?”

“Evelyn? She teaches algebra at the local high school.”

D.D. had to smile. “Her father was a prof at Harvard. Some kind of mathematical genius who taught classes where the names alone hurt my head.”

“She’s pregnant. Five months along.”

“Were they close to their neighbors? Get any good dirt?”

Carol shrugged. “People on the block had nothing bad to report. Couple bought the house four years ago. Been working on fixing it up as time allowed. Apparently in the summer, Evelyn liked to work in the yard. She’d wave when neighbors walked by but wasn’t exactly the chatty sort. Quiet was the word people used a lot. Conrad, on the other hand, was the social half of the pair. Much more likely to stop, hold court. But then again, uniforms couldn’t find any neighbors who’d been invited over for dinners, barbecues, drinks, whatever. Neighbors didn’t seem to take it personally as much as there was an assumption the Carters were a young, busy couple.”

“So by all appearances, a happy couple?”

“No reports of domestic disturbance calls or loud arguments.”

“And Evelyn, when she was arrested, bore no signs of a physical confrontation between her and the husband?”

“Not a mark on her.”

“Rules out self-defense.”

“But not battered woman’s syndrome,” Carol pointed out. “Some guys know how to hit where it doesn’t show, and if it was ongoing …”

“Never know what goes on behind closed doors,” D.D. agreed, thinking of that first crime scene, the stately Cambridge Colonial, the impeccably decorated front parlor. Again, had she, a rookie detective, let herself see only what outsiders were meant to see?

She gestured now to the gory wall before her. “Tell me about the husband’s body. Three shots fired?”

“Two to the chest, one to the head. Torso shots lodged somewhere inside, probably ricocheted around his ribs. Head shot was a through and through.”

Which would explain the far wall and the ongoing stench in the room.

“Close range?” D.D. asked.

“We’re still working on the trajectories, but yes, stipling around the entry wounds suggest a distance of less than two feet.”

D.D. considered the room, number of feet between the doorway and the desk chair. “Chair had to be facing the door, right?”

“Yep.”

“No defensive wounds on his hands, any sign of a previous altercation?”

“Negative.”

“Evelyn retrieves the gun from the bedroom,” D.D. thought out loud. “Loads it using the ammo from the closet.”

“We found the shoebox with ammo open on the bed, loose slugs next to it.”

“Walks into the office, maybe calls her husband’s name.”

“He turns around in his chair,” Carol filled in.

“She steps closer, opens fire. Quick. Has to be, for him to never even get a hand up. Just, ‘hey, honey,’ then, boom, boom, boom.”

“Or, ‘you bastard,’ boom, boom, boom.”

“Something like that,” D.D. agreed. “Three shots. Enough to make sure she definitely got the job done, but not so much that it’s a crime of passion. That, she saved for the laptop.” D.D. frowned. “I’d really like to know what was on that computer.”

Carol shrugged. “What would motivate a wife to kill her husband? Porn? E-mails from a girlfriend? Online gambling addiction? Plenty of things out there that would justify shooting up a husband and his laptop. Hell, maybe he was just that into video games, or she was just that hormonal from her pregnancy.”

D.D. gave the childless detective a look. “If pregnancy hormones led to homicide, there wouldn’t be a husband left alive. Plus, you said it yourself. Evelyn knew what she was doing during the shooting, and she was calm and cooperative afterwards. That’s not a woman on a rampage. There’s something else going on here. Something more.”

“How’d she look sixteen years ago?” Carol asked.

“Young and traumatized. I’m surprised, given that tragedy, she’d allow a gun in her home. You’d think she’d want to stay as far away from firearms as possible. And yet …” She glanced at Carol. “Two shots to the torso, one to the head, a dozen straight into the laptop. Even at such a close range, to never miss …”

“Sounds like a woman with some training,” Carol agreed. “Maybe the ol’ face-your-fears sort of thing? After the last shooting, she wanted to make sure she never had an ‘accident’ ever again. Took some classes, joined a local firing range?”

“Definitely worth pursuing. Her hands were tested for GSR?”

“Absolutely. Tested positive. Not to mention the flecks of blood we found on her clothes, more on her hands.”