Free Deception by Randy Alcorn Page A

turned.
    “Sudd? What are you doing here?”
    Kim Suda’s one of our two female homicide detectives. She’s all female and all detective, petite but powerful, with a fifth degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. She was wearing a stylish maroon coat.
    “I live six blocks from here. I couldn’t sleep, so I took a drive. Heard about it on the monitor and figured I’d check it out.”
    “You don’t get enough murders?”
    “Professional hazard. Architects look at buildings; I check out murders. You’ve never dropped by someone else’s crime scene?” Truth was, I had. Three times.
    “It’s getting to be a rock concert in here,” I said. “Make yourself useful … get that patrol out; then tell me if you see something helpful.”
    “You got it, boss.” Within ten seconds she had her hand on the arm of a uniformed officer. Smiling sweetly, she led him out the door.
    “Who’s she?” Clarence asked.
    “Kim Suda. Homicide detective. Been in the department five years. Chris Doyle’s her partner.”
    “Strange time to drop by.”
    “We detectives are strange people.”
    Clarence nodded, more vigorously than necessary.
    I saw Suda and Carpenter watching each other. No smiles. Two attractive females suspicious of each other? Both wanting to impress me?
    Once upon a time I thought I understood women.
    What an idiot.
    Clarence and Carp drifted from me, walking around the room talking and picture-taking.
    I munched on the Snickers bar. It had been checked for prints. No sense letting it rot in the evidence room.
    “Carp’s going outside to take pictures of the neighborhood,” Abernathy announced. “Eventually we’ll want to use one or two for a feature. Will they let her back in?”
    “Got your ticket stub?” I asked her.
    “Thought maybe you’d stamp my hand.”
    “Once we start doing general admissions we’ll have to do that. Tell Guerino and Dorsey I said they should let you back in. Let me know if they give you problems.”
    She smiled again. I’m not used to all these smiles at murder scenes. I looked at her, heart aflutter. She’d had me at double cheese.
    I walked over to the far end of the couch, against the wall. I noticed crumbs on the ground. Big crumbs.
    “What’s this?” I asked the criminalist.
    “Figured you’d want to see it as is before we vacuumed.”
    “What do you make of it?”
    “Crumbs,” he said.
    “What kind?”
    “Graham cracker?”
    I looked closely. Someone had sat on the couch eating.
    On my hands and knees, I looked over every inch of the coffee table. It was clean except for two identical circular stains two feet apart. They looked recent, slight moisture still evident. I took close-up photos of both stains, jotting down which picture corresponded to which stain. Then I took a wide-angle of the coffee table in relation to the couch, noting the location of the crumbs.
    “You can bag the crumbs,” I told the tech. “Need them all?”
    “Nope. Maybe a third.”
    I reached down and picked up three big crumbs. I went to my briefcase and took out a water bottle to get the taste of Snickers off my palate. I put the yellow-brownish crumbs in my mouth.
    “Not graham cracker,” I said. “Granola bar. The crunchy type, not chewy. With a nut component. Maybe almond. Or hazelnut.”
    “They could use your mouth in the crime lab.”
    I went to the kitchen sink and found what I was looking for: two glasses, one with a residue of white wine.
    “Test this,” I said to the criminalist. “Fingerprints and DNA.”
    I searched for a wine bottle. Nothing in the fridge, garbage, or on the counter.
    “I want to know what kind of wine.”
    Two empty bottles of Budweiser sat on the counter to the left of the sink. “At least he drank a good beer,” I said.
    “Bag them?”
    “Why not?”
    Ten minutes later I was back on the floor, hunting more crumbs (being a specialist in food particles), when I noticed something by the corner of the right front leg of the couch, six inches from