Free Death's Door by Meryl Sawyer

don’t they?”
    “Why do you say that?” His was voice guarded now, her question surprising him.
    “They took my fingerprints, then kept grilling me, asking the same questions over and over and over.”
    “Was there something you didn’t tell them? Something they were fishing for?”
    “No,” she replied just a little too quickly.
    What wasn’t she revealing? he wondered. Paul had taken a careful look at the scene and he’d been at Madison’s side within seconds after she discovered the body. He knew she hadn’t killed her best friend.
    “Do you have any idea what happened? They won’t tell me anything.” She sank down onto the sofa, the retriever at her feet.
    “It’s not my case,” he replied, set to sidestep her questions, but her pleading eyes got to him. Then he decided gaining Madison’s trust might help him when he delivered his news. “This is off-the-record, okay? You didn’t hear it from me.”
    She measured him with those melt-your-heart baby blues. “All right. Tell me.”
    “From the looks of the crime scene, the killer caught the vic—your friend—taking a bath. He threw the blow-dryer into the tub.”
    “Oh Lord, no!” She slapped her hand over her mouth, then sucked in a stabilizing breath. “It’s a wonder she wasn’t electrocuted.” Her eyes went empty for a moment, then she asked, “Aren’t blow-dryers fitted with a gizmo that makes them shut off if they’re in water? Seems to me that I read something about it.”
    “She received a shock before the dryer quit. That’s why her knee was so swollen, but she managed to get out of the tub.”
    “Oh my God. Poor Erin.” Madison gasped and he could see her struggle anew to comprehend the violent and brutal death. She didn’t know the half of it; she hadn’t seen the bathroom. “Do you have any idea…how long she fought?”
    “Several minutes at least. Long enough for blood to keep pumping and the knee to swell.”
    “Once the heart stops beating the body shuts down, right?” she asked, and he nodded. It took her a minute to add, “Erin must have been terrified.”
    Paul couldn’t disagree. “Throwing a blow-dryer is the kind of thing a woman would do.”
    “Why? Couldn’t a man have done it?”
    “Absolutely, but a killer’s method can often tell us about his or her identity. For example, women use guns at times, but if someone is killed with a less direct method like poisoning or lethal drug doses, the responsible party is usually a woman.”
    “But Erin was strangled. That hardly counts as less than direct. The police should be looking for a man. Ninety-three percent of all murders are committed by men.”
    That stopped him cold. She was correct. He knew she and her ex had developed a wildly successful online trivia game. Obviously, Madison was a trivia buff herself to know the statistics so well.
    “Odds are a man killed your friend,” he conceded. “But most people don’t know blow-dryers have shock interceptors in them and have had since 1991. The perp tried to electrocute her. Strangulation was a last resort.”
    Paul studied her closely for a moment. He could almost see Madison’s brain working, imagining her friend running, desperately fighting for her life. Her tormented expression hit him like a sucker punch to the gut when it shouldn’t have. He’d seen more than his share of devastated family and friends. Madison Connelly should be just another woman. Except she wasn’t. He’d read her file and knew the woman better than she knew herself. What he couldn’t predict was how she would react to his news.
    “The killer strangled Erin with the sash from her robe that was hanging on the back of the bathroom door.” He kept his voice pitched low in an effort not to upset her more than necessary. “Your friend was a very small woman. A bigger woman could have overpowered her.”
    Madison frowned at him for a moment, then asked in a voice so thick with emotion that it was difficult to understand