Lynda had been shot at least once from what Colleen could tell. Back of the head. Colleen lifted a lifeless foot. Stiff. Rigor mortis was a variable condition but reached the extremities roughly six hours after death and lasted for up to seventy-two hours afterwards. Meaning Lynda had been killed six-plus hours ago. Colleen had spoken to her yesterday. The state of the kitchen suggested dinner last night but no breakfast.
Lynda was killed last night.
Colleen checked the bedside table drawer, which was wide open. The dildo was still there. The baby-blue-handled LadySmith, however, was not. Some of the contents of the drawer, condoms, a jar of Vaseline, rolling papers, were scattered on the floor, around Lynda’s corpse. Someone had retrieved the gun in a hurry. Had Lynda been surprised by an intruder, fought in the living room, run upstairs, knocked the movie poster off the wall on her way, gone for the gun? Had someone struggled with Lynda, taken the gun, shot her with it? Where was the gun that had been in Lynda’s bedside table?
Lynda’s right arm was contorted unnaturally above her head. Colleen got on her hands and knees, nose down to the cold, curled fingers of Lynda’s right hand. Amidst the smell of lotion was that odor of burnt plastic with a sweet tinge to it. Smokeless powder. Had Lynda taken a shot at her attacker before she’d been overpowered and shot? With her own gun?
Colleen stood up, taking deep breaths, willing her heart rate to go down. She got out her Polaroid camera. Snapped pictures.
Again, her thoughts turned to Steve. He had been furious with Lynda. Understandably.
But this? Could he?
Standing back, she saw splotches of blood around the foot of the bed. She checked Melanie’s room. One spot by the door.
She noticed more dark stains on the way downstairs but not around the sofa, where the initial struggle appeared to have taken place. That told Colleen the killer might have been shot, too, upstairs, on his—or her—way out.
Melanie was gone. Taken? Colleen’s heart pulsed with the implications. No blood in Melanie’s bedroom. Whoever had been shot might have helped take Melanie. It seemed a distinct possibility. But who? Her thoughts traveled back to the fiasco in the Transbay Terminal. The little guy who snatched the bag was no longer but the big man in the duffle coat was. As was whoever had intercepted the cash on the bike. And, of course, there was Rex Williamson, Lynda’s father.
And there was always Steve.
Colleen checked the front door. Shut. No signs of forced entry. No bloodstains this way either.
But there was a chaotic trail of spots leading back through the kitchen, now that she was looking for them, across the wild burnt-orange pattern of the linoleum.
And out to the garage, now she saw, where Lynda’s BMW had been parked, one sticky blot by where the trunk would have been, another two by the passenger door.
They had grabbed Melanie, spirited her away in Lynda’s car.
Melanie Cook had finally been kidnapped. A deep chill ran through Colleen’s guts. What had once been a hoax was now the real thing.