erratic and threatening.”
Nader sent a nod toward the waiting officer, who disappeared out the door.
“Nader!”
The shout came from the landing at the top of the stairs. Marissa’s gaze moved to the man who had called out. It was the other detective, Watts.
“Yeah?” Nader glanced over his shoulder.
“Bring the doc up here for a minute, will you?”
Nader stood. “Let’s have a look at your bedroom.”
Marissa followed the detective to the staircase. They waited at the bottom until the two paramedics had descended.
“Coroner’s on his way,” one of the paramedics said to Nader.
The detective nodded and the paramedics left. Marissa watched as they, too, disappeared out her front door. Suddenly she wanted to do exactly that. She didn’t want to be here any longer. She didn’t want to go back upstairs. There was blood in her bed.
Bile churned in her belly.
William was dead.
Nader gestured for her to go ahead of him. Her entire body had started to shake by the time they reached her bedroom door. She hugged herself tight. It wasn’t until she walked into the room this time that she smelled the stench of death. That unmistakable odor of rapidly decomposing cells, mixed with the metallic fetor of blood. The shades had been raised, filling the room with morning light. William remained on the bed. He would be there, she reminded herself, until the coroner arrived to take possession of the body.
The body. Dear God, why? Why would he do this? Yet the gunshot had been to the back of his head. He had not done this. She had to keep her thoughts straight. Her mind whirled madly. He had been murdered. She had to remember that. Someone had come into her home...
Her stomach clenched, and she suffered through another round of nausea. She had assumed that William had somehow gotten her key. But William couldn’t have done this...not alone anyway.
His killer had stood over her bed...had done these awful things while she slept.
“At any time after you awakened and found your husband—”
“Ex-husband,” she corrected Nader, her voice weak, practically a whisper.
He nodded. “After you discovered your dead ex-husband lying next to you, did you at any time walk to that side of the bed?”
Marissa had to think about the question for a moment, then she shook her head. “No. I scooted across the bed and pushed him onto his back.” She shrugged. “All I could think was that he needed CPR, but then I realized it was too late. I suppose I was in shock.” Her hand went to her throat. “I don’t see how this could have happened.” She looked around the room. “Here. With me asleep right next to him.”
Watts held up a clear bag with a handgun inside it. “Is this .22 caliber automatic yours, Dr. Frasier?”
Marissa peered at the bag. “It looks like mine.” She gestured to her night table. “May I?”
Watts and Nader nodded. One of them muttered, “Sure.”
She moved to the table and pulled open the top drawer. A fingernail file, a brush, the book she’d started reading months ago and never gotten back to. The nail polish she never seemed to have time to use, and the lockbox. She removed it from the drawer and opened it. No weapon.
Where was her gun?
“It’s not here.” She turned back to the detective holding the weapon. “Is there a way to determine if that one is actually mine?”
She instinctively understood that the weapon in the bag, the one that was probably hers, had been used to kill William.
“Our forensic experts will make that determination,” Watts assured her.
“We’d like to swab your hands,” Nader said.
She nodded. “Of course.” She had nothing to hide. Apparently she had slept through William’s murder. How was that possible? Wouldn’t she have heard the weapon fire? It might be small, but it was loud nonetheless. She’d fired it numerous times when she took that gun safety course. The sound would certainly have awakened her. The entire scene was sheer madness. None of this made sense.
Horror churned inside her.
Watts motioned for one of the techs to come do the honors. Marissa held her hands in front of her—they shook. The forensic tech carefully collected the samples from the skin on her hands then stepped away from her without ever making eye contact.
This was a nightmare. She squeezed her eyes shut, wondered again how this could be happening.
“We’d also like the clothes you’re wearing, Dr. Frasier.”
Marissa opened her eyes and met Nader’s steady gaze. The female officer was there now, as well.
“Officer Holcombe will accompany you to your closet. You might want to pack a few things. I’m afraid you won’t be able to come back into the house for a few days. We need time to properly process the scene.”
The scene.
“Of course.”
With Holcombe right behind her, Marissa went through the en suite to the large walk-in closet that had been a key selling point for the home. Moving mechanically, she packed jeans and T-shirts and her favorite sneakers into her overnight bag. She wasn’t due back to work until Tuesday. Surely they would be finished here by then. Just in case, she grabbed a set of scrubs as well as a pair of black dress slacks and a matching blouse, along with her favorite flats for meeting with Victoria Colby-Camp. She went back into the bathroom and gathered her toiletries.
Once she’d zipped the bag, Holcombe said, “I’ll just need you to remove your pajamas, ma’am.”
It wasn’t until then that Marissa remembered she was still wearing her pj’s. Rather than answer Holcombe, she returned to the closet and found another pair of jeans and a University of Illinois T-shirt. While the officer stood by, she stripped off her pj’s and dropped them into the waiting bag.
“I’ll need your underwear too, ma’am.”
Naked save for her underwear, Marissa went back to the closet, Holcombe on her heels, and snatched another pair of panties from the drawer. She slipped off the pair she was wearing and quickly shimmied into the clean ones. While Holcombe readied the bags for turning over to one of the forensic techs, Marissa quickly dragged on the jeans and a T-shirt. She’d already packed her sneakers, so she pulled on a pair of thong sandals. With the officer waiting for her, evidence bags in hand, she abruptly remembered she would need pj’s, too. She grabbed a pair and stuffed them into her bag with the rest.
With her bag hanging over her shoulder, she exited the bathroom and walked straight up to Nader. The coroner had arrived and was examining the body.
The body. It sounded so clinical. This was the man with whom she had thought she would spend the rest of her life...
