yet?”
Tony, staring at the body, shook his head. “One of the uniforms went to find him.”
“He can’t have gone far. Stay out there until they find him and interview him. And anyone who was with him. Then meet me back at the station, and we’ll get her picture out in the media. I want uniforms raking the neighborhood, the dumpsters, you name it, looking for a purse, clothing, anything they can find.”
Tony nodded and left.
The M.E. the Coroner’s Office had sent out that morning was Craig Dewey. Dewey looked like anything but the general conception of what a medical examiner should: he was tall, blond, about thirty-five. Basically, until they found out what he did for a living, most women considered him a heartthrob.
Like the others, he paused in the door. But Dewey didn’t stand there stunned and frozen as Tony and Gus had done. He did stare, but Jagger could see that his keen blue eyes were taking in the scene, top to bottom, before he approached the corpse. Finally that stare focused on the victim. He looked at her for a long while, then turned to Jagger.
“Well, here’s one for the books,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. “On initial inspection, without even touching her, I’d say she’s been entirely drained of blood.” He looked around. “And it wasn’t done here.”
“No. I’d say not,” Jagger agreed with what appeared to be obvious.
“Such a pity, and so strange. Murder is never beautiful, and yet … she is beautiful,” Dewey commented.
“Dewey, give me something that isn’t in plain sight,” Jagger said.
Dewey went to work. He was efficient and methodical. He had his camera out, the flash going as he shot the body from every conceivable angle. Then he approached the woman, checked for liver temperature and shook his head. “She’s still in rigor. Other than the fact that she’s about bloodless, I have no idea what’s going on here. I’ll need to get her into the morgue to figure out how and why she died. I can’t find anything to show how it might have happened. Odd, really odd. A body without blood wouldn’t shock me—we seem to attract wackos to this city all the time—but I can’t find so much as a pinprick to explain what happened. Hell, like I said, I’ve got to get her out of here to check further. Lord knows, enough people around here think they’re vampires.”
“Right, I know,” Jagger said. “When did she die? I was estimating late last night or early this morning.”
“Then you’re right on,” Dewey told him. “She died sometime between midnight and two in the morning, but give me fifteen minutes either side.”
“I want everything you get as quickly as you get it,” Jagger said.
“I have two shooting deaths, a motorcycle accident, a possible vehicular homicide—not to mention that the D.A.’s determined to harass an octogenarian over her husband’s death, even though he’s been suffering from cancer for years—” Dewey broke off, seeing the set expression on Jagger’s face. “Sure, Lafarge. I’ll put a rush on it. This is the kind of thing you’ve got to get a handle on quickly, God knows. We get enough sensationalist media coverage around here. I don’t want to see a frenzy start.”
“Thanks,” Jagger told him.
He looked around the Grigsby family tomb one more time. It was what he didn’t see that he noted. No fingerprints in the dust. No footprints. No sign whatsoever of how the girl had come to lie, bloodless and beautiful, upon the dusty tomb of a long dead patriarch.
He wanted the CSUs, Tony and the uniforms all busy here. He had some investigating to do that he needed to tackle on his own.
He lowered his sunglasses from the top of his head to his eyes and walked back out into the brilliant light of the early fall morning.
The sky was cloudless and brilliantly blue. The air was pleasant, without the dead heat of summer.
It seemed to be a day when the world was vibrant. Positively pulsing with life.
“Hey, Detective DeFarge!”
It was Celia Larson, forty, scrubbed, the no-nonsense head of the crime-scene unit that had been assigned. “Can we go on in? I’ve had my folks working the area, around the entry, around the tomb … but, hey, with the cemeteries around here being such tourist hangouts, folks had been tramping around for an hour before we got the call. We’ve collected every possible sample we could, but we really need to get inside.”
“It’s all yours, Celia. And good luck.”
She leaned into the mausoleum and said accusingly, “You and Dewey have tramped all over the footprints.”
“There were no footprints.”
“There had to be footprints,” she said flatly, as if he was the worst kind of fool.
He shrugged and smiled.
“None, but, hey, you’re the expert. You’ll see what we missed, right?” he asked pleasantly. Celia wasn’t his favorite civil servant with whom to work. She considered every police officer, from beat cop right on up to detective, to be an oaf with nothing better to do than mess up her crime scene. She didn’t seem to understand the concept of teamwork—or that she was the technician, and the detectives used her information to put the pieces together, find the suspect and make the arrest. Celia had seen way too many CSI-type shows and had it in her head that she was going to be the detective who solved every case. Still, he did his best to be level-tempered and professional, if not pleasant. He did have to work with the woman.
“Get me a good picture of the face, Celia. We’ll get her image out to the media.”
She waved a hand dismissively, and he walked on.
This wasn’t going to be an ordinary case. And he wasn’t going to be able to investigate in any of the customary ways.
He made it as far as the sidewalk.
Then he saw real trouble.
He groaned inwardly. Of course she would show up. Of course—despite the fact that he’d only just seen the corpse himself, word had traveled.
She didn’t look like trouble. Oddly enough, she came with a smile that was pure charm, and she was, in fact, stunning. She was tall and slim and lithe, mercurial in her graceful movements.
Her eyes were blue. They could be almost as aqua as the sea, as light as a summer sky, as piercing as midnight.
Naturally she was a blonde. Not that brunettes couldn’t be just as beautiful, just as angelic looking—or just as manipulative.
She had long blond hair. Like her eyes, it seemed to change. It could appear golden in the sun, platinum in moonlight and always as smooth and soft as silk as it curled over her shoulders. She had a fringe of bangs that were both waiflike and the height of fashion.
And naturally she was here.
Sunglasses shaded her eyes, as they did his. The Southern Louisiana sun could be brutal. Most people walked around during the day with shades on.
“Well, hello,
