He was rewarded with one of Larue’s chilling stares. “All I need is a city full of armed and frightened wackos running around,” he said. “Quinn, what sort of vibe are you getting here? Anything?”
Quinn shrugged. “Was there any suggestion that they could have been into drugs or any other smuggling?”
“The poor bastard was a courier, a baseball coach, a deacon at his church. The mom baked apple pies. No, no drugs. And it sure as hell doesn’t look like one of them killed the others and then committed suicide.”
Quinn spoke to Larue, describing the situation as he understood it. “The grandparents were in bed—separate beds and rooms, but I’m assuming they were old and in poor health. The wife was cleaning up after breakfast, while the husband appeared to be about to leave the house. I think the aunt had just arrived and saw something—but didn’t make it out of the house. She was running for the rear door, I believe. You’d figure she’d be the one shot in the back, but she wasn’t. She was caught—and strangled. The different methods used to kill suggest there was more than one killer in here. What’s odd is that the blood pools seem to be where the victims died. No one tracked around any blood, and there are no bloody fingerprints on the walls, not that I can see. Yes, we have blood spatter—all over the walls.” He shook his head. “It should be the easiest thing in the world to catch this killer—or killers. He or she, they, should be drenched in blood. Except...your victim trying to escape via the back hallway was strangled. There’s no blood on her whatsoever, and you’d think that if the same person perpetrated all the murders, there’d be blood on her, as well. Unless she was killed first, but that’s unlikely. It looks like she was running away.”
“So, the bottom line is...”
“Based on everything I’m seeing, I’m going to suggest more than one killer,” Quinn said. “Still, they should be almost covered in blood—unless they wore some kind of protective clothing. Even then, you’d expect to find drops along the way. It seems that whoever did this killed each of these people where we found them—and then disappeared into thin air.”
Larue stared at him, listening, following his train of thought. “You didn’t tell me anything I don’t already know,” he argued.
“I’m not omniscient or a mind reader,” Quinn said.
“Yes, but—”
“Your men should be searching the city for people with any traces of blood on them. It should be impossible to create a bloodbath like this and not have it somewhere. And the techs need to keep combing the house for anything out of the ordinary.”
“This much hate—and nothing taken. Implies family, a disillusioned friend...or a psychopath who wandered in off the street. They say this kind of violence is personal, but there are plenty of examples to the contrary. To take a famous one, Jack the Ripper did a hell of a number on his last victim, Mary Kelly, and they believe that his victims were a matter of chance.”
“They were a ‘type,’” Quinn reminded him. “Jack went after prostitutes. What ‘type’ could this family have been? My suggestion is that you learn every single thing you can about these people. Maybe something was taken.”
“Nothing seems to have been disturbed. No drawers were open, no jewelry boxes touched.”
Quinn nodded, glancing at his former partner. Larue was in his late thirties, tall and lean with a steely frame, dark, close-cropped hair and fine, probing eyes. There were things he didn’t talk about; he was skilled at going on faith, and luckily, he had faith in Quinn.
“That’s why I called you,” Larue said. “I’m good at finding clues and in what I see.” He lowered his voice. “And you, old friend, are good at finding clues in what we don’t see. I’ll have all the information, every file, I can get on these bodies in your email in the next few hours. Hubert said he’ll start the autopsies as soon as he’s back in the morgue.”
“Mind if I walk the house again?” Quinn asked him. “There’s something I want to check out.”
“What’s that?”
“Like I said, I’m surprised more blood wasn’t tracked through the house. But what I do see leads back to James Garcia.”
“One would think—but you’re trying to tell me that James Garcia butchered his family—and came back to the hall to slash himself to ribbons?”
“No, I’m not saying that. I agree with you that it’s virtually out of the question. I’m just saying that the only blood trails there are lead back to him. There’s no weapon he could have done this with, so...that tells me someone else had to be in the house. They got to the second floor first and murdered the grandparents, headed down to the kitchen and killed the wife, then caught either the aunt or James Garcia. But you’ll note, too, that there’s no blood trail leading out through the doors. Like I said, whoever did this should have been drenched. It seems obvious, but surely someone would’ve noticed another person covered in blood. Yes, this is New Orleans—but we’re not in the midst of a crazy holiday with people wearing costumes and zombie makeup. And even if the killers were wrapped in a sheet or something protective, it’s hard to believe they could escape without leaving a trace.”
“What if they had a van or a vehicle waiting outside?” Larue asked.
“That’s possible. But still...I’d expect some drops or smudges as the killer headed out. I’m going to look around, okay?”
“Go for it—just keep your booties on and don’t interrupt any of my techs. Oh, and, Quinn?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank God you’re back.”
Quinn offered him a somber smile. “Glad you feel that way.”
He left Larue in the hallway, giving instructions to others, and supervising the scene and the removal of the bodies.
At first, Quinn found nothing other than what they’d already discovered. Of course, he was trying to stay out of the way of the crime scene unit. They were busiest in the house; he knew they’d inspected the garage but concentrated on the house, so he decided to concentrate on the garage.
He was glad he did. Because he came upon something he considered unusual.
It was in between two cans of house paint.
He picked up the unlabeled glass container and studied it for a long time, frowning.
There’d been something in it. The vial looked as if it had been washed, but...
There was a trace of red. Some kind of residue.
Blood? So little remained he certainly couldn’t tell; it would have to go to the evidence lockup and then get tested.
He hurried back in to hand it over to Grace Leon, Larue’s choice for head CSU tech when he could get her. She, too, studied the vial. “Thanks. We would’ve gotten to this, I’m sure. Eventually we would’ve gone through the garage. But...is it what I think it is?”
He smiled grimly. “We’ll have to get it tested. But my assumption is yes.”
* * *
The giclée—or computer-generated ink-jet copy—first drew one’s gaze from across the room because of its coloring and exquisite beauty.
Foremost in the image was a dark-haired gentleman leaning over a love seat where a beautiful woman in white lay half-inclined, reading. He could be seen mostly from the back, with only a hint of his profile visible, and he presented her with a flower. The scene evoked the type of mysticism and nostalgia that could be found in the work of the pre-Raphaelite painter John Waterhouse.
Movement, life, seemed to emerge from the image. It was complex; the viewer felt a sense of belonging in the scene, being part of a living environment.
Behind the love seat was a great hearth, like that in the