A Vine in the Blood

A Vine in the Blood Read Free Page A

Book: A Vine in the Blood Read Free
Author: Leighton Gage
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panicked and lost control of her bladder. We found urine on the rug and on the sheets. We figure he tossed her onto the bed, threw himself on top of her to hold her down, and injected her with whatever was in the syringe.”
    “ Tossed her? Is the victim a lightweight?”
    “Juraci? Hardly. There are pictures of her all over the house. She weighs ninety kilos if she weighs a gram.”
    “Big guy, then.”
    “Big feet at least. And strong. We recovered a few fibers from the sheets. Looks like he was wearing a wool sweater.”
    “Any sign of blood?”
    “Not in the bedroom. The kitchen is full of it. That’s where they killed the maids.”
    “The bodies are still here?”
    “Still here. I’ve got an ambulance on call to bring them to the IML, but I figured you’d want to see them first.”
    “You figured right.”
    The IML, Instituto Médico Legal , was where São Paulo’s criminal autopsies took place.
    “Who will be doing them when they get there?” Hector asked.
    “Gilda.”
    Gilda Caropreso was an assistant medical examiner—and Hector’s fiancée.
    “Did she do the in situ as well?”
    “No.”
    “Who then?”
    “That new guy, Whatshisname.”
    “Plinio Setubal. Did he estimate time of death?”
    “He did. The same for both. Between four and five this morning.”
    “Both. So there are two of them?”
    “Brilliant deduction. You a detective?”
    Hector ignored the sarcasm. “Shot?”
    “Shot. Small bore pistol. A .22 would be my guess. No exit wounds. Come on, I’ll show you.”

    I N THE kitchen, a wooden door leading to the garden had been battered in. Some fragments still hung from the hinges; the remainder, in pieces, was scattered across the white tile floor.
    Through a door to his left, open and intact, Hector could see two beds, a wardrobe cupboard and a poster of a rock star. The maids’ quarters, apparently.
    Near the sink, the dead women lay side by side, their blood mingled in a common pool.
    “One bullet for each,” Lefkowitz said. “Point blank.”
    “Yes,” Hector said. “I noticed.”
    Hot gases, escaping from the murder weapon’s muzzle, had singed the hair around their wounds. Singeing occurred only when bullets were discharged at very close range.
    “Execution style,” Lefkowitz said. “No passion here, nothing spontaneous, very deliberate. Poor things must have been scared to death. Look at that.”
    Lefkowitz pointed. The women had been holding hands when they were shot. Their dead fingers were still entwined.
    Hector felt a twinge of sympathy. No matter how hard he tried to maintain his objectivity, retain his distance, there were often little details about murder that touched his heart.
    “Sisters,” Lefkowitz said, “from Salvador. Their purses and identity cards were in their room. The one on the left was Clara. She’d just turned nineteen.”
    The floor around Clara’s body was sprinkled with shards of broken glass. Some were tinged with blood.
    “What’s that?”
    “It used to be a drinking glass. There are others in that cabinet over there. Intact ones, I mean.”
    “She wouldn’t have bled like that if—”
    “—her heart wasn’t pumping when she sustained the cuts. And a shot like that would have stopped her heart immediately. So, yes, she was cut before she was shot. See how this part of the pool is more red than brown? There was water in the glass. The blood that flowed into the water got diluted. It wasn’t able to fully coagulate.”
    “Is that a dog?”
    Hector pointed to a bundle of fur near one of the bodies.
    “What’s left of one,” Lefkowitz said. “A toy poodle, a female. They broke her back.”
    “Broke her back?”
    “Stepped on her. Snapped her spine like a twig.”
    “What kind of people do that to a dog?”
    “What kind of people shoot young women in the head? In a moment, I’m going to sum it all up. Just one more thing: look at Clara’s face.”
    Hector had to drop to one knee to see what Lefkowitz was talking

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