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

lead to a patch of gray carpet, just to the right of the body, a patch that was clearly defined by the absence of blood.  “Something stopped the blood here.  And I think it was the suitcase.”

“How can you tell?” Erin asked.

“Aside from the shape of the bag fitting the space perfectly, I found blood on it,” Eddie replied.  “Someone obviously tried to wipe it clean, but I used Luminal, and found a couple of really small spots that were missed.  We’ll run it through DNA just to be sure.”

“She stashed it in the closet before we could get up there,” Erin said.  “She was hoping we wouldn’t think to look for it, and she was right.  It just sat there until we were gone.”

“But why do that?” Dusty wondered.  “And then why lie about it?”

Erin smiled, a cat-catching-the-canary kind of smile that she reserved for the moment when a case began to come together.

“She didn’t have a choice,” the detective explained.  “When that bedroom door opened, she didn’t see the silhouette of an unknown attacker standing there.  She saw what I saw when Eddie opened the door -- a man of familiar height and build, carrying a suitcase.  The suitcase alone should have stopped her from firing, or at least made her hesitate.  But it didn’t even slow her down.  I think because she knew exactly what she was doing, and exactly who was walking into that room.  When she turned on the light and saw the suitcase, she realized she couldn’t very well just leave it there.  She couldn’t let us see it -- or more importantly -- she couldn’t let us know that she’d seen it.”

“If that’s how it happened, I think you’re pretty damn close to making the case that she knew she was shooting the husband all along,” Eddie said.

“It’s beginning to look that way, isn’t it?” Erin concurred.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Dusty murmured.

***

“We were hoping you could help us clear up a few little things,” Dusty said at ten o’clock the following morning when, at his and Erin’s request, Clare agreed to come down to police headquarters for a friendly follow-up chat.

“I’ll certainly try,” the widow said, settling herself in the chair indicated by the detectives.

“The night of the shooting,” Dusty began, “do you, by any chance, have any recollection of turning the alarm system on?”

“Yes, of course I do,” Clare replied.  “And I did turn it on.  In fact, Nina and I turned it on together.  You can ask her.  We thought it was going to keep us safe.”

“Yes, well, that’s sort of the point,” Dusty said.  “Because we never heard the alarm go off.  Did you?”

Clare looked puzzled.  “Now that you mention it,” she said after a moment, “no I don’t recall hearing the alarm.  But under the circumstances, it wasn’t the most important thing on my mind.”

“No, of course not,” Dusty conceded.

Erin leaned forward.  “But thinking back on it now, how do you suppose an intruder, a stranger, would have been able to get into the house without setting off the alarm?” she asked.  “It wasn’t like the flowers, when you hadn’t set the alarm, and a window was left open.  No, that night, all the doors and windows were locked and armed.  Nina Jacobsen confirmed it.  And there you were, asleep in your bed, assuming you were safe, the alarm on and us outside to protect you, and all of a sudden, he was at your bedroom door.”

“I don’t really know what I was thinking that night,” Clare said.  “I don’t think I was thinking too clearly about anything.  If I had been, if I had realized that the alarm hadn’t gone off and that it was Richard coming into the room, and not the stalker, a lot of things might have turned out differently.”

“Yes, well, that was another thing we wanted to talk to you about,” Erin said without missing a beat.  “Your husband’s suitcase.”

“What about it?”

“We had our lab take a look at it last night,” Dusty told her.

“And?”

“And it’s our opinion that you didn’t remove it from the Mercedes, as you thought you might have.”

“I didn’t?”

“No,” Dusty said.  “You see, our examination indicates that your husband was carrying it when he entered the bedroom.”

“It does?” Clare murmured.

“It does,” Erin confirmed.

There was a long pause.  “I was frightened out of my wits that night,” Clare said finally.  “And then afterwards, I was numb.  So numb I couldn’t tell you what day it was.  I thought I’d taken the suitcase from his car.  I’d done it before.  Sometimes he brought it in, sometimes he didn’t.  But maybe I didn’t do it that night.  I honestly don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember stepping over your husband’s bleeding, bullet-ridden body to pick it up and put it in the closet while we were knocking down the front door?” Erin queried.

Clare shrugged.  “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember very much about that night at all.”

“Well, do you remember, when you went back into the closet, and found blood on the suitcase, that you tried to wipe it off?”

“No, I don’t remember that, either,” Clare said.  “And I’m not sure I like where you seem to be going with all of this.  Am I under suspicion of something?  Should I be calling my attorney?”

“That’s up to you,” Erin told her.  “But it might not be a bad idea.”

***

David Johansen had grown up in Ballard.  In fact, he had lived right next door to the Nicolaidis family.  His mother and Clare’s mother had been the best of friends, and the two families were always in and out of each other’s houses.

From his early teens, David was big and comfortable to be around, with sandy hair and hazel eyes and a crooked smile.  Clare never had a brother, but if she had, she would have wanted him to be just like David.  He could do anything, from fixing her broken bicycle to finding her lost kitten.  She couldn’t help but adore him.

He played baseball