Whisper of Bones (Widow's Island #3)(8)

Logan was waiting for her. “No prints on my side, but I found a shed. Did you find footprints?”

“Not exactly. Some crushed vegetation in the best place to hurl a flaming bottle through the kitchen window. Unfortunately, the grass is too thick for tread impressions. I can’t even tell what size the shoe is.”

“We just left Sarah.” Logan frowned. “She didn’t set the house on fire.”

“We don’t know where her mother went when she left the house.”

“You think they’re working together?”

“I have no idea yet, but we need to keep an open mind.” Tessa didn’t want to limit herself to any preconceived theories this early in the investigation. Her job was to gather facts and see where they led.

Logan’s gaze shifted to the bay. “His boat is tied up at the dock. I’d wondered if it would be missing.”

Tessa nodded. “Because he was dumped in the water somehow. Is there any possibility he went into the water here, and the current picked him up?”

Logan cocked his head. “If he was tossed off his own dock, the current would have probably carried him to the opposite shore of the bay. His body might have eventually been washed out to sea, but I believe it would have taken a few turns of the tide. It’s not impossible, but things tend to wash into the bay, not out.”

A siren approached.

“Here comes the fire truck,” Tessa said.

The truck arrived with a blare of sirens and a swirl of lights. The firemen checked out the kitchen, walked through the rest of the house, and proclaimed the structure safe.

After they left, Tessa and Logan returned to the kitchen and scanned the grimy, soggy mess.

“I hope there’s still evidence here,” she said.

Logan turned in a slow circle. “If I wanted to destroy the evidence, I’d start the fire where most of the evidence was located.”

“Me too.” Tessa squatted and scanned the floor. “As Henry said, head wounds bleed copiously, and it’s all but impossible to remove all traces of blood. If he was killed here, there will be traces, but we have to find them.”

“I smell something.” Logan crouched next to her. “Not just smoke. Something with a caustic odor.”

Tessa sniffed. “I don’t smell any sort of fuel. Alcohol?”

“That would explain the fire not catching well. Alcohol has a short burn time. But this is something else.” He leaned closer.

Tessa inhaled more deeply and caught the scent. It was sharp enough that the smoke and foam hadn’t destroyed it. “Bleach.”

“As if someone tried to clean up a mess.”

“Yep.” She pulled the flashlight off her duty belt and shone it on the wet floor. “Blood would wipe off the tiles easily, but grout is trickier to clean.” She followed the grout lines with the beam of light. Residual foam dripped from the cabinet onto the floor. Smoke stains blotched the walls and ceiling.

“The arsonist might not have set the best fire,” Logan said, “but I destroyed more evidence putting it out than he did with the flames. Goal accomplished.”

Tessa sat back on her heels. “If Jason was killed in the kitchen, then the blood would most likely have been concentrated on the floor. Most of the foam is on the cabinets. There are tiles in the center that are clear. Even if the floor was cleaned, there might still be traces of blood that can be picked up with luminol.”

Logan glanced at the glass doors that led out onto the deck. “Plus his body had to be removed from the kitchen. There could be a drag trail we aren’t seeing.”

She stood. “Let’s keep looking. We’ll check the boat and dock as well. It hasn’t rained in forty-eight hours. We might get lucky.”

She and Logan inspected every inch of the kitchen floor but found no visible blood.

Frustration tightened Logan’s face. Then his lean features softened with a broad smile as he focused over her shoulder. Tessa turned. High up on a kitchen cabinet, on a white spot untouched by smoke, dark-red spots formed two arcs.

“Henry said that Jason had multiple indentations in his skull.” Tessa walked closer and stared at the drops. “That looks like cast-off blood spatter. The drops are elongated. The tails point this way.” She pointed toward the back of the house. “Indicating that the object casting off the blood was moving in that direction, so the killer was likely facing this way.”

Tessa moved into the killer’s position. She raised an arm over her head and brought it down as if striking someone in front of her.

“The killer struck Jason and brought his arm up for two more blows. The blood flicked off the murder weapon at the top of the backswing.” She demonstrated, then glanced over her shoulder. The arcs of blood droplets echoed the movement of her arm. “I need to make sure it’s human blood before we get too excited.”

She returned to her car for a Rapid Stain ID kit. After photographing the blood spatter from multiple angles, she sampled a single drop and confirmed that the substance was human blood.

“I’m going to request a forensic unit from the mainland.” She glanced around the mess of soot and residual foam. “Between the cleanup attempt and the fire, the biological evidence here will be fragile. An expert will have the best chance of finding and preserving it.”

“We can’t just cover the kitchen in luminol and see what lights up?” Logan asked.