Body Of Evidence

“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...

“May I leave now?” She kept her gaze carefully averted from the activities across the room.

“You can.” He reached into his jacket pocket and removed a business card. “Call me if you think of anything else.” When she’d taken the card, he added, “I will have more questions, and there’s the official statement you’ll need to come downtown and make, so keep me informed of your location.”

Marissa nodded and hurried from the room. She felt sick and disgusted and aggrieved. How the hell had this happened? When she went to sleep last night, her biggest concern had been how to extract William from her life. Now she had to worry about whether she was a murder suspect.

Her heart hurt for William. She would never have wished him dead.

Downstairs, yet another new arrival stood near the stone fireplace perusing the framed photographs there. This one was male and tall, with sandy blond hair. He wasn’t like the others. He wore well-loved jeans, a sky blue shirt and a tan summer-weight suit jacket, but it was the cowboy boots that really set him apart from the others. He turned as she descended the last step and thrust out his hand, looking for all the world like a character from a modern-day Western movie who’d just stepped off the screen and into her living room.

“Lacon Traynor,” he said, “from the Colby Agency.”

Marissa took the final steps between them and accepted his hand for a quick shake. She wasn’t sure what she had expected when Eva mentioned calling the Colby Agency, but this towering, cowboy-boot-wearing guy was not it. He looked vaguely familiar, but for the life of her she couldn’t place him.

She finally found her voice. “Have we met?”

He gestured for her to follow him toward the kitchen. Her graystone was three stories and quite deep, but very narrow. When you walked in the front door you could see all the way out the back, with nothing but the staircase with the powder room tucked beneath it to hamper the flow. Beyond her kitchen was a set of French doors that led onto a rear deck. Beyond the deck was the small driveway. No garage, just a driveway. She was immensely grateful for something beyond street parking. A garage was on her wish list.

“We may have run into each other at the Edge when I was working with Bella and Dr. Pierce.”

Now she remembered. She’d seen him once with Dr. Pierce during that awful business about his deceased wife. She remembered thinking then that this guy looked like a sheriff from a modern-day Western. Ruggedly handsome and utterly capable. She hoped he could help her the way Bella Lytle had helped Dr. Pierce, and Todd Christian had rescued Eva.

“Let’s get out of here,” he suggested.

She was more than ready to do that. In the kitchen, she grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. Traynor took her bag and led the way out onto the deck and down to where her car was parked. He walked right past her vehicle and to the alley.

She followed, too overwhelmed to put up a fuss. “Where do we go from here?”

“My car. They’ll want to go over yours at the lab.”

Marissa hissed a disgusted sigh. They were taking over her entire life. Not that she actually minded, as long as it would help find William’s killer.

A killer who had been in her home. Fear tightened around her throat.

She waited until they were seated in Traynor’s car and he’d driven away before she said as much.

“Until they’ve collected all the evidence they believe they can find and have ruled you out as the shooter, they’re going to be all over you and your property. You might as well get used to that now.” He sent her a sidelong glance. “The good news is that while ruling you out, they’ll also be looking for the actual perpetrator. It’s no fun, but it’s the way it works.”

Marissa closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest. She was so tired.

“Why don’t you tell me why someone would want to make it look as if you killed your ex-husband?”