Free Plea of Insanity by Jilliane Hoffman Page A

you’d need a warrant to search the victim’s own home,’ Julia said out loud, her eyes moving away from the crayoned door and over the smiling photos. A beaming, sandy-haired Jennifer and a baby. A little girl with no front teeth in front of a Christmas tree and a fake fireplace. A baby boy swaddled in blue. The professional headshot of David Marquette from the morning paper.
    ‘Think again,’ he said, shooting her a look. ‘A dead body might give you exigent circumstances to get in the house, secure the premises and wait for the ME, but it doesn’t give you the right to do a full search, even if the victim, or in this case, victims, lived there, too. I’ve had even hotshot veteran cops somehow forget they need a warrant when they respond to a homicide. They see “dead body” and that’s all they need.’
    Strike three. If you don’t know something, it’s better just to keep your mouth shut and let people maybe think you’re stupid, than open it up and confirm it . Another Uncle Jimmyism she should have remembered sooner.
    Instead of heading down the hall that led to Emma’s room, Rick instead turned and walked down another hall that T-boned the balcony and staircase. A set of closed double doors waited at the end. And more phantom footsteps. ‘Let’s start in what we believe so far to be the order of the murders. This is the master bedroom,’ he said, slipping on a pair of latex gloves he had pulled from his pocket. He handed her a pair. ‘Even though Crime Scene has been through the upstairs already for prints, if you touch anything, use gloves. I hope you’re not squeamish,’ he said, opening the door. ‘This is where the mother was found.’
    Julia swallowed hard and tried to brace herself for something she was suddenly no longer sure she wanted to see. It was one thing to sit around and talk about a crime scene, discuss the position of the bodies, the entry and exit wounds, and the clinical cause of death; it was another to walk among ghosts down bloodstained halls. She had an urge to turn around, just walk quickly down the stairs, out of this creepy, perfect house and back to the car, back to the office, back home. Take her scolding from Charley Rifkin, kiss her budding relationship with Rick Bellido goodbye if she had to, chalk this overwhelming bad feeling that was slowly sucking the air out of the room up to inexperience. Just don’t look anymore. Don’t see it. Don’t open the door, Julia. Don’t make it real again .
    But it was too late for that.
    Dark red splashes of blood ran up arctic-white walls, splattering into countless tiny droplets on the ceiling. White evidence tape marked where blood and other body fluids had presumably dripped or pooled onto a dark mahogany wood floor. Above an antique sleigh bed, an elaborately framed wedding portrait of a smiling David and Jennifer looked down upon a stripped, bare mattress, stained, like the walls around it, a rich, darkred. Blood had seeped through the thin pillow-top, leaving a zigzagging level line on the side of the bed that looked a couple of inches deep in places. Julia’s eyes returned to the happy, oblivious picture taken what must have been only a few short years ago. Blood had sprayed up onto the glass, coagulating and then freezing in time as it dripped back down, like drops of paint stuck forever onto a dry wall.
    The ghosts were crying tears of blood, the silenced shrieks of the dead playing over and over again in her head, like the violent crescendo of music in a horror film. That’s when Julia realized she’d just walked into the part where everyone starts screaming.

10
    ‘The body was found, as you can guess, on the bed,’ Rick said, looking around the room. ‘Crime Scene cleaned it up somewhat and the bedding has been impounded. The bloodstain analyst from Metro was here yesterday and again this morning. As you can see, we have spatter on the headboard and on the walls, traveling at a high enough velocity to actually