Blood Ties Read Free Page B

we’re homicide detectives, not social workers. Injustice is our stock-in-trade. Now get back in there and tell me what you see.”
    Ellen got up from the bed and did as she was told. She would be fine, she thought. Or at least okay.
    But she promised herself that Rita Blandish would have her revenge.
    *   *   *
    Then, last month, a man in North Beach had taken his car out of the garage, noticed a bad smell and opened the trunk. There he found the body of a woman who had lived directly across the street, a saleswoman named Kathy Hudson with no known boyfriends, reported missing by her mother the week before. Her throat had been cut, very carefully, so that it took a while for her to die. There was minimal blood in the trunk, indicating she had been killed elsewhere, and the man who owned the car had just that afternoon returned from a two-week vacation in the Philippines. No suspects, no leads, no useful physical evidence.
    Like everyone else, murderers sharpened their skills with practice, and both of these crimes were what Sam described as “quality work,” not the kind of slapdash performance you see in your garden-variety sex slaying. The odds of two such virtuosos operating in the same city at the same time were not very good.
    Ellen wasn’t alone in making the link, but at present the department was treating the two homicides as unrelated. The department did not want to admit even the possibility that there was a serial killer at large in the Bay Area because the news media would go straight overboard with it and that wouldn’t be good for public morale.
    Homicide—the Holy Grail of police work. It offered a panoramic view of all that was darkest in human character. Greed, lust and madness, in every possible permutation. From time to time it occurred to Ellen to wonder if she wasn’t a little mad herself to be so committed to it.
    Only her father understood. “Sometimes I almost envy you,” he had told her once. “Working with children, I hardly ever see the aberration played out to its logical extremity. I haven’t dealt with a full-blown sociopath since I was a resident.”
    â€œI’m only interested in catching them, Daddy,” she had told him. “I don’t try to understand them.”
    But he had smiled and said, “Oh yes, you do.”
    And now Mommy wanted him to give up his practice so that he would have more time to partner her at bridge. What she didn’t understand—what she could not see, no matter how or how often Ellen explained it to her—was that if she succeeded in badgering him into retirement he would die of boredom. He would never live to collect Social Security.
    Each of them, father and daughter, needed their work to keep life real.
    It was twenty minutes before the photographer came up from shooting the body. He was carrying a video camera in a shoulder sling, so that it was pressed between his chest and his right arm. He was very good. He faced the road and then turned his body to pan the crowd that had collected behind the police tape. He did it twice, looking up at the sky over their heads like a man trying to decide whether it would rain again. They never noticed.
    â€œHow do you want ’em?” he asked, coming up next to her. “Stills or the movie?”
    â€œCan I get both?”
    The photographer shrugged. He was a short, compact man with a blond crew cut and a face suggesting that life had run out of surprises. He wore soiled jeans and a torn gray T-shirt. He looked about thirty-five.
    â€œYou can have anything you want. You’ll get the disk this afternoon, but the stills won’t be before Tuesday. Shaw wants to do the post right away, so I’ll be busy with that. Sorry.”
    â€œThe movie will be fine for starters. Thanks.”
    â€œDon’t mention it.”
    He took a stick of Juicy Fruit out of his pocket, peeled away the tinfoil, folded the gum in half and