Fallen (Seven Deadly Sins #2)(9)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Business was good. They should stay there. Safe and aloof and distant. Except that this business was based on his guilt and the need to appease it, along with the desire to find justice for Anne, who hadn’t deserved to die.

“First you need to familiarize yourself with the basic facts of the case. Then I want to hear your interpretation of the physical forensic evidence as we accumulate it. I’m writing the book passages myself, but I need you to assess the old evidence, determine if it’s possible to use modern forensics on any of the trace evidence that still exists. We need to show the difference use of forensics makes when we compare the old case to the current case. Most of the research hasn’t been processed yet. We need to follow the clues, try to unravel both cases from every possible direction.”

“Why do you write true crime?” she asked. “I saw your list of credentials. You’ve written ten true crime books and I’m just curious how you got into this.”

“I just fell into it,” he told her flatly. He wasn’t even sure why he studied violent crimes and wrote about them. But they were filled with negative emotion, and maybe that was why he did it. Maybe it was self-punishment. Retribution. “It’s puzzle-solving. And it pays the rent.”

He handed her a file folder he had put together that morning of pertinent info. “Go ahead and read this.”

Sara took the folder Gabriel was handing her and tried to make eye contact with him. But his eyes darted over behind her, and she sank back on the couch and opened the folder. Her brain felt swaddled in thick cotton, her body exhausted from lack of sleep. She’d lain in bed for four hours, staring at the ceiling of her stark rental, before giving up and surfing the Internet mindlessly until dawn. She’d taken an hour nap around ten, but besides that was running on about six hours of sleep over the last three days.

The folder contained the police report from Anne Donovan’s murder. The handwriting was hard to read, the photocopy a little spotty, but Sara could decipher the pertinent facts.

October 7, 1849

Second District

Name of Deceased: Anne Donovan

Residing at 25 Dauphine Street, The House of Rest, a gaming and drinking establishment

Location of murder the same

Murder assumed to take place between the hours of eight p.m. on October the 6th and 2 a.m. on October the 7th according to witnesses

Victim discovered by John Thiroux, reported to authorities by Madame Conti, owner of the dwelling

No arrests made at this time

Witnesses: John Thiroux, Madame Conti, various and sundry other women in residence at The House of Rest

That was it. No description of the body, the room. No interview with John Thiroux, no mention of a weapon. Nothing useful at all. The reports from her mother’s murder had seemed thirteen miles long, the questions endless, every hair, every fiber, every scrap of anything out of the ordinary collected, catalogued, saved. Sara glanced up. Gabriel was at his computer.

“Is this the only police accounting of the crime scene?”

He glanced back at her and gave a brief smile. “Not exactly stellar police work, was it?”

“No. It doesn’t tell us anything at all. If you line the two crime scene reports up next to each other in your book, you’ve proved your point already. Forensics has essentially altered the entire face of criminal investigation. I know you want to see if we can solve the Donovan case, but how can you solve a crime based on this piece of nothing?” She felt shut down, disillusioned already.

“I can’t. But better information comes from other sources. We have eyewitness accounts as told to journalists. We have the court records of the coroner’s report. And the testimony of the accused murderer.” He turned fully in his chair, his black T-shirt pulling taut across his chest. “Remember what I said . . . it’s scene-setting. Re-creating the months, the weeks, the day leading up to the murder. Then piecing together what happened afterward. Most crimes don’t have a murderer standing over the victim with the smoking gun saying, ‘Well, sir, I had to do it. Nellie drove me to it.’ ”

Sara raised her eyebrow in disbelief, suddenly wanting to laugh. Gabriel had put on a strange fake accent, like a Southern cowboy, and it was so totally unexpected it struck her as funny. “But how do you know who was telling the truth and who wasn’t?”

“You search for consistencies. And likewise, inconsistencies.” He shrugged. “It’s common sense. Logic. Read the rest of the folder and then tell me what you think.”

So ultimately science had to work with human deduction and reasoning. It was interesting. He was interesting.

Sara watched him turn back to his computer, his hair sliding forward. She wanted to touch his hair, to stroke it and see if it felt as smooth as it looked. Which must be the result of fatigue because she didn’t normally have any desire to touch a man’s head. But tired and edgy, she was strangely aware of her own body, of the tactile feel of her bare legs on the soft velvet couch, of the brush of the folder over her wrist, and for the first time in a year she wanted to feel a human touch. But Gabriel didn’t invite casual arm contact, let alone letting her fingers cascade through his soft hair. He had a barrier around him, a stance that said he walked the world alone, and at the moment, he had his back fully turned to her. He was tapping a silver spoon on the desk as he read his screen. It was a rhythmic tapping, a harmony that repeated over and over. She wondered if he even knew he was doing it, but it was definitely a song.

MURDERED!

October 7, 1849—Even in a city where a murder a week takes place in our less illustrious districts, the STABBING DEATH of Anne Donovan has captured the attention of the public due to the severity of the crime, and the lack of an immediate arrest. While it is no secret that a vast number of city officials frequent houses of ill repute, does their status alone preclude them from punishment? It would seem so, given the extraordinary circumstances explained below by Madame Conti, owner of the house where the crime took place, and first WITNESS on the scene.Anne Donovan had been in the employ of Madame Conti for approximately one year prior to her death and was described by her employer as “kind, gentle, a redhead, who never gave me a day’s trouble, which can’t be said for a lot of these girls.” Most have been hardened by the age of Miss Donovan, handy with a knife and inclined to steal from the clients, but by all accounts these rough qualities did not apply to the victim. Madame Conti explained that she had let the victim’s current amour, John Thiroux, into Donovan’s room at eight p.m., and retired to her private salon to write letters to acquaintances. She heard nothing out of the ordinary until two a.m., when Mr. Thiroux sought her out. There was blood on his hands, in his hair, and on his right leg. According to Madame Conti, he said simply, “Anne’s dead.”