Free Bloodman by Robert Pobi

in his head. “What about the blond hairs on the floor of the guest room? There were more in the living room in front of the window, too.”
    The effect on Hauser was instantaneous. “What blond hairs? I didn’t see any—”
    “I didn’t see them until this morning.”
    Hauser was frozen in a position that said he was either going to run or hit someone. “You didn’t go back in the house this morning. My deputy would have—”
    Jake tried not to sound flippant. This was the part they never understood. “Not the real house.” He lifted his hand, tapped his index against his temple. “I recorded everything I saw last night, then went through it this morning. And I found hairs.”
    Dr. Reagan gave him a hard brown stare. “They are equine.”
    Hauser, still stuck on disbelief, simply repeated the last word as if it were a question. “Equine?”
    Jake thought out loud. “The Farmers are sailors—not horse people. I didn’t see one ribbon or photo in the place that would make me believe that they were horse people. And if the hairs had come from the antiques, they’d be black.”
    “The antiques?” Hauser asked.
    “Antique chairs and sofas are stuffed with horsehair.” He turned back to Dr. Reagan. “Tox scan?”
    Reagan flipped through the printout and the pages rattled. Jake saw a coffee ring flip by. “I appreciate the late night.”
    Reagan’s subway-tile hue darkened a little, as if she were done holding her breath. “There are plenty of slow days.” She stopped. “Toxicology. All negative. I did a CBC, a WBC, and a WBC differential.”
    Jake waved it away. “That’s perfect.”
    “Her liver was pretty beat up, her gamma-glutamyl levels were high but aspartate levels were perfect, so it’s an old problem. She gave up drinking a while ago.
    “She had renal issues at one point—her kidneys had been stressed by something she used to take. Function was somewhere around seventy percent. I doubt she even knew she had problems unless she had a blood work done in the past little while. She smoked. Had at least one child. No venereal diseases. She was fit at the time of death—I’d say in super shape. No subcutaneous fat. No fat deposits in abdomen, posterior, under the arms, or around the neck. Her heart was in stellar shape.”
    “What was she skinned with?” Hauser asked.
    Jake stared down at the crescent-shaped ridges in the muscle. Without meaning to, he said, “Single-edged knife with a recurve blade. Heavy, probably a hunting knife.”
    Reagan looked at her notes and nodded. “About eight inches.”
    Hauser shook his head. “Not an ideal knife.”
    “Meaning?” Jake asked.
    Hauser swallowed. “A small curve-bladed skinning knife would do the job in half the time.”
    Jake nodded. “What does that tell us?”
    “That he had time?”
    “Bingo.”
    Jake examined the thin ridges along her muscles where the tip of the knife had left its mark, removing a little more of who the woman was with each swish of the razor-sharp edge. “Vaginal wounds?”
    Hauser had fallen back into a nervous silence, his lopsided stance a little more pronounced now. His eyes were no longer on the woman, but spent their time nailed to Jake.
    Reagan shook her head. “Nothing. Wash, swabs, and pelvic exam were clean. Nothing was put into her vagina.”
    Jake was examining the bottom of Madame X’s foot. He ran his index up the muscle as if he expected it to curl in a ticklish reflex. “Size six feet,” he said softly. “Small.”
    Hauser’s head tilted to one side in that canine way that was becoming familiar to Jake. His mouth opened up and in a monotone voice he said, “Female, roughly thirty-two years of age. One old break in her wrist. Slender athletic build. Good muscle mass. Light smoker. Weakened kidney function. Bad liver from an old alcohol problem. Three fillings and an old iron deficiency. Size six feet and her killer did not interact with her in a sexual manner.”
    Jake held up his hand.