Last Breath Part 13

"Do you have a phone number for him?" Connor asked.

When she hesitated, he took a card from his wallet and handed it to her. "Could you give him a call and ask him to contact me at this number?"

"Sure." She glanced at the card. "I'll let him know."

"Please tell him it's very important that we speak as soon as possible."

"I'll be sure to do that."

"Thanks. I appreciate it." Connor took Daria's arm and walked back to the car.

"Connor," she said when they'd set off for the Schuylkill Express-way, "I'm wondering if maybe we should talk to Damien Cross. Maybe he should know what's going on, what's happened to the Blumes and Mrs. Sevrenson."

He handed her his phone. "His number should be under last numbers dialed. If he answers, just let him know we'd like to speak with him."

She scrolled through the numbers until she found it. She dialed, then waited.

"I got the answering machine," Daria whispered. "Should I leave a message?"

Connor shook his head. "Let's just head back there. I have a really bad feeling..."

"I was hoping it was only me," she said as she disconnected the call. "What if..."

"Like I said, let's not get ahead of ourselves. For all we know, Damien Cross took a week at the beach."

"I don't think he would have left his dog alone inside the house if he went away for that long."

"A day trip, maybe." He didn't sound convinced.

Connor made a call to his boss, but had to leave a detailed voice mail. He hung up hoping that John wouldn't pull him off this case just yet. It was just starting to get interesting.

By seven-thirty, they were back at the Cross property and ringing the doorbell once again. And once again, the only sound of life came from the barking dog on the other side of the door.

"Let's walk around the back," Connor suggested. "Maybe there's a door unlocked."

"Are you going to go in?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

He didn't answer.

Daria followed him around the corner of the house. At the rear, they found a patio with French doors that led from the kitchen. The brown-and-white dog scratched wildly on the other side of the gla.s.s.

"Connor, that dog wants out badly." She walked to the door and leaned down to the dog's level. "What's wrong, pup? Have you been locked inside the house all day?"

I'd bet money it was more than one day, Connor thought, as he took in how skinny the dog looked.

Daria was just about to say something else when she jumped back from the gla.s.s. "Oh, G.o.d. Look at the gla.s.s."

Smears of red streaked down the outside of the door like ribbons.

Connor knelt down and studied it.

"It's on the outside of the gla.s.s. Looks like a really clear handprint right here, but there's nothing on the handle." He took something from his pocket, turned his back on her and did something to the door.

"Do you have a tissue?" He asked.

She looked through her bag. "Here's a napkin."

She handed it to him. "Are you going in there?"

"No, that would be breaking and entering. Not a good idea. But at the same time, I can't help but think Cross might be in there, and he could be injured, or worse." He held the napkin over the door handle and gave it a turn. "I'm thinking maybe I'll just open the door and call inside. If he answers, I'll go in."

"And if he doesn't?"

"Then we go to plan B." He hesitated, the whining dog now appearing ready to lunge. "Pit bulls aren't known for being all that nice. I hope this one is friendlier than most."

"Not pit bull. American Staffords.h.i.+re terrier," she said. "My parents used to have one, and she was an absolute lamb. I think this poor thing just wants out." She peered over Connor's shoulder. "See, the dog isn't snarling, it's just whimpering and scratching at the gla.s.s."

"Stand back anyway, just in case."

"Connor, did you pick that lock?"

"Of course not. I'm a federal agent."

"How do you know how to do that?" She ignored his halfhearted indignation.

"Spy school."

"Stop it. Even I know that FBI agents aren't spies. Seriously, where did you learn-"

The napkin still covering the handle, he opened the door and tried to grab the dog's collar. The animal was faster than Connor, though, and shot past them to the yard.

"Boy, that dog really wanted out in the worst way." Daria followed the dog toward the back of the property. "He didn't even pause to give us a sniff. And it looks like he is a she."

"Oh, man." Connor closed the door quickly.

"What?"

"Didn't you smell it?"

"Smell what?" Daria, a hundred feet into the yard, was distracted by the dog.

"Guess you weren't as close to the door as I was." He started around the side of the house. "Stay here for a minute, and don't touch the door."

"Where are you going?"

"To look for something."

Connor had gone three quarters of the way around the house before he found what he was looking for: a window where the drape was covered with an inordinate number of flies.

But only one window. Which meant the body was most likely confined in one closed room. Otherwise, there would be flies on every window, and a surge of them would have tried to escape when he'd opened the door for the dog.

He walked the rest of the way around the house but found no other signs of anything amiss. When he returned to the patio, he found Daria filling a metal bowl with water from an outside spigot.

"Where'd the bowl come from?" He frowned. "You didn't go inside, did you?"

"No. It was on the gra.s.s." She placed the bowl on the ground. "This poor dog is so thirsty. This is her second bowl. You don't think she'll get sick, do you?"

She turned and found Connor sitting on the stone wall that surrounded the patio.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" she asked.

"I'm afraid so."

"From the look on your face, it doesn't appear to be good news."

"Not for Mr. Cross. a.s.suming he's inside."

"You think he's dead?"

"Yes. Well, someone is."

"Why would you think that? You didn't even go inside." She walked to where Connor sat, the dog at her heels, and sat beside him. "You didn't go inside, did you?"

"No."

"If you think he's in there, why not just go in and look?"

"Because I suspect it's a crime scene. One that I have no jurisdiction over."

"A crime scene? Jesus, this is scary. You really think Cross could be dead?" She paled. "What do we do now?"

"We're going to start by calling 911." He got up and started toward the car. The dog began to growl.

"It's all right," Daria snapped her fingers and called to it. "Here, come sit. Can you sit for me? Good girl."

Connor reached inside the car and grabbed his phone, then dialed 911.

"This is FBI Special Agent Connor s.h.i.+elds," he said when the dispatcher answered. "I want to report a possible homicide..."

"She's really hungry, Connor," Daria told him. "I think she's trying to behave, but she probably hasn't eaten since, well, probably since the day Cross died. Do you think I could go inside? Maybe get her some food?"

"Sorry, but no. At least, not now."

They were sitting on the stone wall, waiting for the arrival of someone from the New Castle County, Delaware, police department.

"How long do you think Cross has been..." She had gone pale again. "Cross or whoever is in there."

"My best guess, based on how thin the dog is, and the number of flies on that drape, I'd have to say he's been dead for a couple of days." He stood, his hands on his hips, and walked to the end of the patio, where he remained for a moment before walking down the driveway. He watched the road for a while, then walked back toward his car.

"Maybe Cross isn't in there at all," Daria called to him. "Or maybe he's dead but he died of natural causes. A heart attack, maybe. Maybe it's not what we think."

"Maybe," he said without conviction.

The dog approached him, wagging its tail tentatively. He reached down and let it smell his hand.

"She's a sweet thing, don't you think?" Daria joined them, as restless as both Connor and the dog appeared to be.

"Yeah, she is." Connor agreed . And maybe our only witness to what happened here, he was thinking as he rubbed the dog's head between the ears.

A patrol car pulled into the driveway and parked behind Connor's car. A uniformed officer got out of each side in what appeared to be synchronized moves.

"You Agent s.h.i.+elds?" the driver asked Connor as the dog began to bark. The officer stopped and eyed it warily. "That your dog? Get it under control."

Connor held the dog's collar and unsuccessfully told it to sit. "Yes, I'm s.h.i.+elds. And no, it isn't my dog. I believe it belongs to the owner of the house."

Daria grabbed the dog from him and coaxed it back onto the patio. When she told it to sit, it sat immediately.

"Good girl," Daria said softly, and tried to fade into the background. This was Connor's game.

"You called in a possible homicide?" the second officer, the younger of the two, said as he approached Connor.

Connor explained why he and Daria had been looking for Damien Cross, and what they found when they arrived at the house, from the whimpering dog to the hideous telltale smell when he opened the back door, to the flies that crawled on the drape covering the window on the far side of the house.

"Let's take a look at that." The driver, whose name plate identified him as Patrol Officer Eugene Hill, watched as Daria took control of the dog. "Why don't you show us..."

Daria gave up the hard stone wall in favor of one of the cus.h.i.+oned chairs that matched the gla.s.s-topped table on Damien Cross's patio. Over the past ninety minutes, she'd watched the sun turn the sky coral and purple as it set behind the trees at the far end of the property. It was closing in on nine o'clock, and her patience had just about run out. She was hungry, she was hot and tired and thirsty, and she had work of her own to do. She'd given her statement to the officers and had watched Connor give his. At her request, one of the officers had brought out some of the dog's food and her bowl, and Daria had fed her in increments, a little at a time, so she wouldn't eat too much too fast and get sick. She pa.s.sed the time tending to the dog and trying not to think about what was going on inside the house. She was also trying not to think too much about the murders and what they could mean. The Blumes. Elena Sevrenson. Now Damien Cross.

She watched the endless stream of law enforcement personnel arrive. Forty minutes or so after the medical examiner got there, the body was brought out of the house. Crime scene technicians came, carrying lights and cameras and black bags, and from time to time, Connor would be called into the house by one of the officers. Two more patrol cars and one unmarked vehicle had pulled into the driveway since the body of Damien Cross had been discovered lying in a pool of blood in the first-floor library.

The mosquitoes were the next to arrive, and to Daria's mind, they were the last straw.

She'd made several phone calls to Louise and they brought each other up to date. She'd called her sister, Iona, and her brother, Sam, and was greatly disappointed at having to leave messages for both.

The next time Connor came out of the house, she waved him over.

"I'm really sorry that we've been held up here for so long," he apologized as he approached her, "but I think we should be able to leave very soon."

"I never knew a crime scene was so complicated, so many people coming and going."

"I suspect what they're doing here isn't so very different from what you do." He pulled out the chair next to hers and sat. "What do you do when you find a tomb to excavate, for example?"

"We go layer by layer, photographing, drawing diagrams. We number whatever we find, note the layers of soil or rock. If we find remains, we note their condition and study them thoroughly before they're moved. We make sketches, we photograph everything in context."

"Same here. The entire scene is photographed, evidence is numbered and photographed in situ, marked and tagged and placed in evidence bags. The body is carefully examined before it's moved. Not much difference, really."