In Self Defense Susan Sloan (summer reads .txt) 📖

shoebox, not so much as a handkerchief remained, while the left side was still filled with suits and ties and shirts and shoes that Richard Durant would never wear again.  A brown leather suitcase rested on a shelf.

“Is this the one?” the detective asked.  Clare nodded.  Dusty snapped on a pair of latex gloves and carefully removed the suitcase from the closet.  “How did it get here?” he asked.

“I must have put it there,” Clare told him.

“Where was it before you put it in the closet?” Erin asked.

“I don’t know,” Clare said with a shrug.  “I guess it must have been in Richard’s car.”

“How did it get out of Richard’s car?” the detective pressed.

“I don’t really remember, things were so crazy there for a while, but I suppose I must have taken it out,” Clare said.  “After -- you know.  I must have unpacked it, and put his shirts and underwear in the laundry, and sent his suits to the dry cleaner.  It was what I always did when he came home from a business trip.”

Dusty handed the suitcase to Eddie.  “We’ll have to take this with us,” he informed her.

“It had to have been in his car,” Clare offered.

“The suitcase?”

“Yes.  I must have found it and unpacked it and put it away in the closet.”

“Where in the car did you find it?” Erin asked.  “In the front seat . . . the back seat . . . the trunk?”

“I don’t really remember,” Clare replied.  “Maybe it was on the back seat.”

“So you think you might have brought your husband’s suitcase into the house, but you left his briefcase.  How odd.  His suitcase was filled with dirty clothes, but his briefcase might have had important papers in it.  Maybe relating to that new product you were talking about.  Can you say why you would have done that?”

Clare shrugged again.  “I don’t know.  Richard usually brought his own briefcase in.  Unless it was late, and he wasn’t going to need it until the next morning.  I guess I didn’t think about it.”

Outside, the sky, which had been heavy and threatening all day, had grown dark.  “If you’ll excuse us,” Erin said politely.  “We’re going to need this room for a little while.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing damaging, I assure you,” the detective declared.  “We just have to check a few things out.”

“Didn’t you do all this that night?” Clare persisted.  “Your people were here for the longest time.”

“Yes, but sometimes, things come up, and we have to go over what we’ve done before,” Dusty explained.  “And on your way out, will you please turn on the light in the hallway -- the one that was on the night your husband was shot.”

Clare had little choice in the matter.  She left the room, snapping on the light as she went down the hall.

The two detectives and the investigator went into action.  Eddie followed Clare out of the bedroom, shut the door, and waited.  Erin closed the curtains to block out the remains of the day, and then sat down on the bed, with her back against the headboard, in much the same way as Clare indicated her position was on the night of the shooting.  Dusty turned off the overhead light.  The room was now in almost total darkness., with only a small strip of light showing beneath the bedroom door.

“All right,” Erin said.  “Now let’s just see what it was that Clare Durant saw when her husband walked in that night.”

Eddie opened the bedroom door.  The light from the hallway was soft, diffuse, but it was more than enough for Erin to see a clear silhouette of the man standing there.

“I can’t see your face,” she conceded.  “But I can certainly see things about you -- the shape of your body, your height, the case you’re carrying.”

“Do you think it’s enough?” Dusty asked.

Erin swung herself off the bed.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “Let’s go find out.”

Clare was suddenly nowhere to be found. She was with the children, Doreen told them.  They were upset.  And confused.  It didn’t matter.  They were done here.

The housekeeper showed them out, standing in the doorway, watching silently while they climbed into their vehicle and took off down the drive, watching until their taillights faded into the dusk.  It was her job to protect this family, and she had always taken her job very seriously.  She wondered how much longer it would be before she was called upon to do just that.

***

The lights at the King County crime lab burned late into the night.  They ordered dinner in – a pepperoni pizza and a six-pack of root beer.  It was almost eleven o’clock before Eddie was ready to talk.

“I found two sets of fingerprints both on the doors and in the interior of the Mercedes,” the crime scene analyst reported, “Richard Durant’s, and an unidentified.”

“What do you want to bet the unidentified turns out to belong to Stephanie Burdick?” Erin murmured.

“There were also two sets of prints on the suitcase,” Eddie continued, “Richard Durant’s and Clare Durant’s.”

              They had taken a set of Richard’s fingerprints at the time of his autopsy, and they had lifted Clare’s from the Beretta.

“But did she lie about taking the suitcase from the car?” Dusty wondered.

“We don’t know,” Erin said.

“Yes, we do,” Eddie told them.  “She took it from the carpet beside her husband’s body.”

Erin looked at him intently.  “Are you sure?” she breathed.

“Yep.”  Eddie pulled out one of the photos taken of the scene on the night of the shooting.

“Take a look,” he said.  “You can pretty much determine what happened by examining the blood spatter pattern,” he said, zeroing in on the carpeting beside the body.  “We didn’t bother before because we were looking at this as an accidental shooting.  But now it clearly shows that Durant was hit nine times, there was a lot of blood, and it was spattered all over the place -- all except for this little area.”  Dusty and Erin followed his