Free Shadow Games by Ed Gorman

Willa Cather, but he'd never developed a taste for Henry James. He'd always supposed this marked him as a peasant for sure.
    "Of course, she's got a lot of trash here, too, a lot of self-esteem books and things like that. Tell Them The Lord Says To Shove It . My God."
    Cozzens said, "Why don't we try the bedroom?"
    "Detective Cozzens?" Kemper said.
    "Yes?"
    "I don't know how I'll handle it if we find— Well, if something happened here. I mean, you're used to it, I suppose, but—"
    "That's a myth, Mr. Kemper."
    "A myth?"
    "About cops being used to it."
    "Really?"
    "Nobody ever gets used to it, Mr. Kemper." Cozzens offered a sad smile. "Being good professionals, we just have to pretend we do."
    Cozzens went into the bedroom.
    Kemper stood in the doorway, watching him.
    The room was small and sun-splashed. A very sweet scent of sachet lay agreeably on the air. The motif was pink and almost aggressively girlish, as if the Swallows woman were trying to recapture her lost teen years. On the neatly made bed, three plump teddy bears sat watching Cozzens with bright button eyes. Between a wicker chaise lounge and a rocking chair sat a huge teddy bear, one as big as most four-year-olds. He had a jolly smile but curiously melancholy eyes.
    "My stomach is in knots," Kemper said from the doorway. "I'm afraid..." He was much less talkative up here than he'd been downstairs.
    He let his voice trail off.
    There were also two closets in this room, one containing good but not expensive clothes, the other holding skiing gear on which she'd obviously spent a good deal of money.
    Cozzens closed the door.
    "I guess that leaves the bathroom and the kitchen," Kemper said. His voice was shaking. He obviously sensed they were getting closer to finding something he dreaded.
    Cozzens led the way into the bathroom.
    He took one look at it and saw that it had been cleaned recently. There was a residue of scrubbing compound on the curving white bowl of the sink. In the sprightly yellow waste can next to it, he found an empty container of Windex and Lysol liquid disinfectant. There was also a rolled lump of dirty rags. The discoloration on them looked all too familiar to Cozzens.
    He was careful not to touch anything.
    The bathroom was small, tiled in mint green, with opaque sliding shower doors on the tub and two different cabinets on the wall.
    It smelled of disinfectant, water and, faintly, of the mildew that always accrues in rooms where water is used frequently without benefit of sunlight to dry it.
    He took a pencil and used it to slide back one of the doors on the tub.
    A gray bath mat lay on the ribbed floor of the tub. A brown container of Vidal Sassoon shampoo stood in one corner. A festive yellow bottle of discount conditioner stood in the other.
    The tub had been thoroughly cleaned. Suspiciously so.
    Not even when Cozzens got down on a knee and looked carefully at the floor of the tub did he see so much as a single hair.
    Cozzens stood up.
    "I guess that leaves the kitchen," Kemper said, still clinging to his familiar position in the doorway of the bathroom.
    When Cozzens turned to look at him, he saw that fear had given the aging Kemper the look of a frightened little boy.
    "You don't have to go with me to the kitchen, Mr. Kemper."
    "I've gone everyplace else. I may as well."
    Cozzens studied him a moment.
    To judge Kemper by the book, he was behaving suspiciously. By rights, he should even be a suspect in case something had happened to the Swallows woman.
    But somehow Cozzens didn't think so. Here was a gentle, civilized little man for whom violence was an abstraction, something he mostly read about and heard about. Now, he was confronting it in his own life, and it was terrifying him.
    They went into the kitchen, Cozzens leading the way as usual.
    The scent of blood was overwhelming here, even though none could be seen, even though somebody had scrubbed the hell out of this room.
    The kitchen was done in black and white tiles with two small