Cat's Claw (A Pecan Springs Mystery)

million dollars, plus the house and the business, might look to the police like a lot of incentive. It was. People killed for much less.

Chapter Six

    Sheila stood at the open kitchen door, looking at the crime scene. Orlando always said that when you were investigating homicides, you had to remember that you’d never get to know the victims personally. They were dead. You were never going to
know
them the way they were when they were alive. So you had to get to know them in reverse. Backward, he’d say. From the way they lived and worked, from the people they knew, from what they left behind. That would never be enough, but it was all you were going to have. So you had to get what you needed backward, then work it forward, detail by detail, putting the picture together until you knew the victim as well as if he’d been your next-door neighbor, your friend.
    She had gotten a pair of latex gloves from the med techs who stood behind her, waiting to pick up the body as soon as she was finished with her preliminary walk-through. The county team—photographer and forensics specialist—had wrapped up their work, packed their gear, and departed, leaving a stack of a dozen Polaroids on the kitchen table. The videos and digitals would be emailed tomorrow. The forensic report would be sent as soon as the lab work was complete.
    The county crime-scene unit was only a year old, and the protocolswere still being worked out. Before it was in place, PSPD had gotten by with whatever the detectives could handle on their own, or they’d brought the Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office into the case via a telephone consultation, which was never completely satisfactory by anybody’s reckoning. For Sheila, the county alternative had been a viable alternative, at least as long as Blackie was the county sheriff. They had worked comfortably together without having to spell out who was responsible for what or worry about whether they were trespassing on the other’s turf. The new sheriff, Curt Chambers, had been Blackie’s chosen successor and was elected with Blackie’s endorsement and support. But he didn’t have Blackie’s experience or confidence. Maybe he’d grow into the job, but for now, he was a by-the-book guy who seemed to need everything in triplicate. Sheila wasn’t sure just how that situation was going to work out.
    She gloved up and began her survey, working methodically from right to left around the small room. The door behind her, the white-painted knob smudged with dark fingerprint powder, open, so the cloying smell of blood and beer was probably less overpowering than it had been when Ruby Wilcox’s sister stumbled onto the body. The side-by-side fridge-freezer, a grocery list stuck to it with a teakettle magnet. The kitchen range with an egg-crusted skillet on one burner, a half-empty can of pork and beans beside it, a spoon stuck in the can, a fly on the end of the spoon. A bulletin board on the wall displaying a calendar with a flock of pasted-on yellow sticky notes. On the floor directly beneath it, a dark chalked circle with an arrow pointing to nothing—to the empty spot where Bartlett had spotted the cartridge casing.
    Another door opened onto a hallway and then onto what looked like a dining room, where she could see Jack Bartlett, his back to her, using his small digital camera to photograph a table filled with what lookedlike computer components. Then a space of empty wall with a wall phone, also smudged with dark powder. A kitchen counter with a microwave. The remains of a Chinese meal—a white take-out container beside a smaller empty box, a spill of cooked white rice, one wooden chopstick, a broken fortune cookie. The usual cupboards over and under the counter, doors hanging open, draped with dish towels. A dead geranium on the windowsill over the sink. The sink piled high with dirty dishes, several days’ worth, Sheila guessed. In the corner, a kitchen trashcan overflowing with cans, beer bottles, and plastic boxes that had once held cookies or pastry, now just crumbs. The kitchen of a guy who was eating alone and wasn’t watching his diet.
    In the center of the room, a round wooden table. Laptop on the table, beside the laptop, a wallet. A wooden chair on its side on the floor. A puddle of blood and spilled beer. Kirk was lying on his back on the floor next to the chair, head slightly turned to the left. The entry wound at the right temple was small, round, neat. No visible powder