Page 117 of Almost Dead (The Cahills 2)

Inside, the living room was virtually empty. A couple of folding chairs and a small table sat on a scratched hardwood floor. No other furniture. No beds in the two bedrooms, no towels hanging in the bathroom, the bathtub home to spiders, and the stench permeating through the place was overwhelming. The minute he’d crossed the threshold, he’d been assailed with the scents of solvent, pine and air-fresheners, but beneath it all, overpowering in its intensity, was the unmistakable smell of death.

Carefully he picked his way around the techs who were dusting for prints, scanning for blood, picking up trace evidence and examining every nook and cranny of the little post–World War II cottage. Through a kitchen with a cracked linoleum floor from the fifties, Paterno made his way downstairs to a musty, dank basement that reeked—the scent of rotting flesh nearly choked him. He pressed on.

Evidence of flooding was visible in the cracked cement walls, and he noticed the washer was rusted. Cell phones rang and radios crackled as he made his way to an open doorway, a shelf pushed aside to expose a small room from which the horrible smell was emanating. He locked his jaw so he wouldn’t gag and stepped inside.

He nearly retched anyway.

Sitting in a chair in front of a television with the volume turned low was the decomposing corpse of a woman. Her eyes were missing, and there were gaping holes in her face, exposing blackened muscle and bone. “Jesus,” he whispered, his stomach ready to toss everything inside. The ME was examining her, and a small, fortyish woman was waving the beam of her flashlight over the twin bed pushed into a corner. “I’m looking for Detective Lee.”

“That’s me.” She offered her gloved hand. “Susannah Lee. I go by Suze.”

“Anthony Paterno.”

“I figured.” Seemingly unfazed by the grisly sight or the horrible smell, Lee said, “We think this is Marla Cahill, though it’s hard to tell in her current condition. But race, height, size are consistent. This place was rented a few weeks before Marla escaped, right after the holidays. Look at it. Is it weird or what? The bed’s been made and used, there’s evidence of the body being in the sheets, body fluids, insect larvae and eggs, that sort of thing. So someone moved her. And someone did her hair, check it out.” Lee shined her flashlight over the dead strands of the corpse’s hair. Combed and styled. “Look at her fingers.” She shined the light on the rotting fingers, and, sure enough, the nails were polished. “Toes too.” She focused the beam on the toes peeking out of sandals. “Someone’s been here. Recently. Look in the wastebasket. Food from a local burger shop. What’s left of the burger hasn’t been here as long as the dead body.”

Paterno glanced around the room. There were pictures on the wall, photos of Marla Cahill as a girl, and a comb and brush next to a silver baby cup…the cup that Cissy reported missing from her house.

Detective Lee was right. The person rotting in front of some game show was Marla Cahill, and, from the looks of her, she’d been dead for quite a while, probably killed soon after her escape.

“Cause of death?”

“Beneath the perfectly coifed hair…” she said, then shone the light on the back of Marla’s head to reveal a bullet hole. “Looks like she was executed.”

“Here?”

“We don’t know that yet. Still looking for blood splatter. Whoever killed her went to a great deal of trouble to make her comfortable. A bed with sheets and an expensive coverlet, homey pictures, a television? What kind of nut job are you tracking, Detective?”

“Good question.” He glanced at Lee. “Who found the body?”

“Sybil Tomini. She’s with Treasure Homes. Her firm rented the bungalow to a woman by the name of Elyse Hammersly.”

“Marla didn’t rent it?”

“Don’t think so. Ms. Tomini’s in my squad car. I thought you might want to ask her a few questions. I’ve taken her statement, so once you’ve talked to her, she’s free to go. She’s been making noise about that for nearly an hour. And there’s one other thing: we found this.” She held up a scrap of blue material.

“What is it?”

“Looks like part of a piece of clothing, possibly ripped off when someone passed by.” She held the flashlight’s beam on the plastic bag. “But the weave’s loose, and the material’s fuzzy. Maybe part of a blanket. A baby blanket?”

“Jesus,” Paterno whispered. He thought of the Holts, dealing with the FBI, who had set up shop in their living room, worrying themselves sick about their kid.

“I’ll have the lab analyze it, and then you might want to take it to the Holts. See if they recognize it.”

His jaw tightened at the prospect. “No one found a baby here,” he said, though he was certain he would have been informed immediately if B.J. Holt or his body had been located.

She shook her head. “No baby. No body. Even this”—Detective Lee held up the scrap of material—“might prove not to belong to the kid.” She met Paterno’s gaze, and they had an understanding. They both felt B.J. Holt had been here with his decomposing grandmother.

Lee glanced at an officer near the door. “Would you show Detective Paterno to my car and Ms. Tomini?”

The young uniform nodded. “You got it.”

“I’ll send you my report,” Detective Lee said, turning back to the bed as Paterno and the Berkeley cop walked through this tomb of a basement to climb the rickety stairs once more.

Outside, night had fallen. Paterno breathed deep of the rain-washed air, but the rank stench of death lingered in his nostrils, and he knew it would take days, and more than a few hot, steamy showers, before the odor would leave. It clung. For days. What the hell was going on?

It looked as if Marla’s accomplice had murdered her. A friend? Deadly enemy?

Or both?

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