Free The Trophy Wife by Diana Diamond Page B

the door of Emily’s bedroom, reconnoitering the terrain before stepping into the crime scene. Right now, at this point in time, everything in the room should bear witness to Emily and her husband, and then to the kidnapper. If there was something to be seen he had to see it now, because once he and the forensic team stepped across the threshold the process of obliterating the obvious evidence would begin.
    The profession was filled with stories of evidence destroyed in the attempt to gather evidence. There was the tale of the FBI agent-in-charge who stepped out of the rain into the scene of a bank robbery and bent over a clear, powdered fingerprint. Rain from the brim of his hat had run down and washed the print away. A ranking Chicago detective had once hung up the telephone at a murder scene to silence the annoying off-hook signal, and in the process had hidden the fact that the victim had been talking to someone who might have heard the last words. Hogan wanted to take everything in before he threw the room open to the professionals.
    The first thing that struck him was the size of the room. It seemed sparsely furnished even though it contained two double beds flanking a circular marble-top night table, a triple dresser, a chest of drawers, an electronics entertainment center with an arrangement of leather furniture, and a vanity that was bigger than the chorus dressing room in some Broadway theaters. Hogan and his two brothers had grown up in an apartment that wasn’t as big as the bedroom.
    The two beds were his next observation. Apparently Walter and Emily didn’t fall asleep in each other’s arms. He’d have to check the other bedrooms for evidence that they might not share even the same room. Separate sleeping arrangements usually indicated nothing more than a husband with a jackhammer snoring problem, or a wife who needed to keep the fight on. But in his years of police work, Andrew foundthat men who had done in their wives had usually moved to the couch some time before.
    Next, he spotted the wineglass on the vanity. That set his eyes searching until he found the small refrigerator that was built into the base of the entertainment center. He remembered the wet bar in the pantry kitchen, stocked like the top shelf at a country club grill. Drinking was part of their lives. In Emily’s case, assuming Walter was correct about the time she had been kidnapped, there was no need to wait for the sun to cross over the yardarm.
    His eyes followed the trail of the clothes. The scattered tennis outfit pointed from the bed to the bathroom door. Andrew stepped across the threshold and moved carefully along the marked trail.
    The tennis shirt was sweat stained and seemed to have dried stiff. Whoever had worn it had certainly exercised vigorously, so if the trail of clothes had been laid down to mislead an investigator, the garments had been peeled off someone’s still-sweating body. The bathroom seemed further collaboration of Walter Childs’s story. The shower curtain had been ripped down forcefully. The hollow chromium bar was bent, with a screw pulled out of one of its end fittings. There were rings still attached to it that held torn-out eyelets from the curtain. There were broken rings in the tub and on the floor. Without doubt, the curtain had been involved in a struggle.
    Hogan noticed the thin, red stain that surrounded the tub drain. Blood had been shed, but he couldn’t tell how much. Someone had bled while the shower was still running and the water flow had carried the blood to the drain. He guessed that any wounds had been superficial. At scenes of carnage, bloodstains were usually splattered all over the room.
    The missing shower curtain apparently had been taken away along with Emily. The most logical explanation was that it had been wrapped around her, which, in turn, indicated that when she had left the bedroom, Emily had either been dead or unconscious. The battle in the