LITMIR.BIZ

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the blow, combined with the force of it, probably indicates the perp was around five-six or -seven and not very strong.”

      “Ah, a small wimpy guy or a woman. Is that what you’re saying?” She sounded insulted for some reason, but she was right on the money.

      Ryan inclined his head in agreement. “It was a lucky blow. Because of that and the choice of weapon, I really don’t think the murder was premeditated.”

      Nina huffed. “Maybe not, but last night’s fire certainly was.”

      “Maybe whoever set it didn’t know you were in there. Could have been to destroy any trace evidence.”

      “Then why wait until you’d already made the sweep?” she argued. “They knew I was there, all right. I had the distinct impression I was being followed all the way to the guesthouse.”

      “Later.” Ryan shushed her when Pete’s son, Jack, started over with their food.

      Ryan attacked his burger immediately, amazed that Nina did exactly the same.

      “Umm,” she crooned, the look on her face one of ecstasy as she chewed a mouthful of the juicy fat hamburger.

      A smudge of mustard dotted her lower lip, enticing him the way mustard never had before.

      The frosty attitude he’d worked up against her that morning had thawed down to acceptance, then warmed up to something he didn’t even want to name.

      Ryan reached for the sugary tea, grasping at any kind of reassurance that his life hadn’t changed all that radically. He was in trouble here. Even his ice cubes had melted.

      When Ryan took her back to the lab over the police station, Nina didn’t bother apologizing to Franz Koenig for her earlier escape. As for Franz, he didn’t even seem aware that she had been gone.

      Ryan got right down to business, asking Franz to produce the murder weapon from the evidence vault downstairs. Nina felt edgy about seeing the thing that had killed Desmond, but also eager to check out what had occurred to her about it. Ryan remained quiet while they waited, ostensibly reading over a page of notes Franz had been writing when they arrived.

      Once she had the statuette in her hands, she turned the small bronze figure this way and that, holding it by the marble base while she examined the arm of it through the plastic bag. The sculpture depicted a standing nude, one arm fused to the side of the body, the other raised with the hand buried within the hair at the nape of the neck.

      “The bent elbow there inflicted the killing blow,” Franz mumbled, pointing clumsily at it.

      “It had been wiped, but we found traces of blood and skin particles in the crevices of the arm where the bronze is textured,” the tech related in a monotone with just a hint of a German accent. “We also have isolated a half print, not yet identified.”

      She wondered what sort of person would have the presence of mind to wipe off the makeshift weapon after bashing Desmond with it and watching him die. Somehow she couldn’t believe it had been someone so stricken with outrage they didn’t know what they were doing. Whoever had done it must have recovered their senses pretty quickly after the so-called crime of passion.

      “Not squeamish at all, are you?” Ryan commented, inclining his head toward the object she was holding.

      Nina realized he’d been watching her, his eyes narrowed, as she’d handled the instrument of her brother’s death. It did seem strange, even worried her, that she felt so little.

      “I’m being objective, as you suggested,” she replied. She could hardly blame him for wondering about her lack of emotion when she wondered about it herself.

      Maybe it was because she really hadn’t known Desmond well. Not the man he’d become after he left home. Maybe she had used up all her grief over losing him when he had left the family without a backward look.

      Her little-sister grief had turned to anger eventually, then finally to acceptance. The victim of this crime was a virtual stranger to her. While she truly regretted Desmond’s death, Nina knew she would feel almost as distressed about anyone who died so needlessly.

      She was doing this for the memory of that brother she had worshiped so long ago, for her mother’s son and especially for a boy who had been so angry he’d allowed no one to get close to him.

      She hefted the slender little sculpture to feel its considerable weight. It was only about sixteen inches high, but could no doubt make a truly serious dent if wielded with some force. Desmond’s wound had not looked terribly deep, just lethally placed.

      “Hold it like this.” Ryan took her hand and positioned it. “That puts your thumb where we found a partial print. Stand here like this,” he told her, moving her in front of Franz. “He’s about the same height as Desmond. Draw the thing back naturally and swing in slow motion.”

      “Very slow motion, please,” Franz said, exhibiting the first sign of full awareness she had noticed in him. She’d pegged him as a space cadet, wrapped up in his work to the exclusion of everything else. She was glad to know he at least had a sense of self-preservation.

      She raised the object and swung. When the plastic-covered arm of the statuette touched the technician’s temple, she immediately saw that the angle was wrong to inflict the same kind of blow Desmond had suffered.

      “See that? Your mark would be too vertical,” Ryan said, following the angle of the protrusion on the statue with one long finger. “The person who struck him must have been taller than you. Say, around five-seven or -eight, we think.”

      “Nearer Desmond’s height,” she confirmed and he nodded his agreement.

      Nina gladly released the thing when Ryan closed his fingers around hers and took the object with his other hand.

      “It was a woman,” she said conclusively. “This demonstration and the earring convince me.”

      He shrugged. “Well, you have a fifty-fifty chance of being right.”

      “More like eighty-twenty,” she argued, hitching herself onto a stool next to the counter by the lab table. “You said a man would probably have hit harder, too, and made a deeper wound. I agree.”

      “Okay,” he said. “There’s a good chance our perp is female. But it could still be a man with a weak swing. Hopefully we’ll get something useful on the earring.”

      He penned a note in one of the folders and snapped it shut. “We’re finished here for today. Let’s go back to my place.

      “I’m taking copies of the files with me to go over some of the interviews tonight,” he told Franz. “I need to make lists of further questions before I reinterview. You check out the rest of those things that were bagged out of the bathrooms. I want the results in the morning.”

      They left Franz bent over a microscope, either engrossed in his work or sulking. Nina couldn’t tell. The man was none too happy with their long interruption of his afternoon, or Ryan’s berating him for his premature report on the earring to the king’s office.

      Despite Franz’s pouting and Ryan’s gruff manner, Nina realized she was beginning to feel a part of the team. Ryan was now being fairly generous with information and in allowing her access to everything he and his men had discovered.

      “Thanks for not shutting me out,” she said as he deposited the box of folders in the back of his SUV.

      “No problem,” he muttered, slamming the hatch and walking her to the passenger side. He opened the door, waited for her to fasten her seat belt, then closed it.

      He was lying. He had a problem with it, all right. Though he had apparently relented, he didn’t look very happy about it. He hated to relinquish one ounce of control, she decided.

      She had really misjudged him at first, when she’d assumed he didn’t care one way or the other about apprehending Desmond’s killer. Everything he did seemed directed toward that

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