Confessions. JoAnn Ross

watched her thoughtful gaze move back and forth, from one wound to the other. The lady, he decided, was no cream puff.

      “There’s carbon stippling,” she murmured, pointing out the unmistakable tattoo of powder soot imbedded in a ring around the head wound.

      “Yeah. Interesting you should recognize that.”

      She heard the question in his voice. “In case J.D. didn’t have time to fill you in, I’m a television scriptwriter. I specialize in crime shows.” She tossed off the names of a few of the more successful ones and a made-for-television movie.

      “I’ve caught a couple of those. The ones I saw were pretty accurate,” he allowed.

      “Thank you. I pride myself on my research.” She looked up at him. The earlier anguish in her eyes had been replaced by an anger much chillier than the artificially cooled air in the freezer. “You know what this proves, don’t you?”

      He crossed his arms. “Why don’t you tell me?”

      “It proves I’m right. Alan shot Laura.”

      “I’m not sure I get your drift.”

      “I don’t need a degree in forensic medicine to tell that my sister was shot from intermediate range.”

      “I’d say twelve to sixteen inches,” Trace agreed.

      “You said on the drive over here that you found her in the bedroom. In bed. Without any clothes on.”

      “Yeah.” He was still bothered about that part. Why lay out all that dough for fancy nightgowns if you weren’t going to wear them? “So?”

      “So who else would Laura have allowed to get that close to her under those circumstances?”

      “Why don’t you tell me? I didn’t know your sister.”

      “There are only two people most women will allow to see them stark naked. Their husbands and their gynecologists.”

      “What about lovers?”

      “Husbands, lovers, same thing.”

      “Sometimes not.”

      Mariah shot him a sharp look. “What the hell does that mean?”

      “It means that a woman’s husband and her lover are not necessarily always the same person.”

      “Are you accusing my sister of having an affair?”

      He thought of the ribbon-bound letters and shrugged. “At this point I’m not ready to accuse anyone of anything.”

      “She was not having an affair.”

      “Whatever you say. Are you finished looking?”

      Her mind reeling with what the sheriff had just implied, Mariah dragged her gaze back to Laura’s body, looking at it so intently Trace thought she might be memorizing her sister’s features. She was.

      “Yes.” She bit her lip as he drew the sheet back over the lifeless form.

      Her emotions in a turmoil, Mariah latched on to the one thing she could handle right now. It was up to Mariah to make certain Laura’s killer did not get away.

      “It was Alan,” she insisted.

      “Maybe.” He shrugged. “Maybe not.”

      Frustrated, Mariah tried another tack. “Did you find the weapon in the house?”

      “Sorry. But I’m not at liberty to discuss the investigation.”

      “Not even with the victim’s next of kin?”

      “No offense intended, Ms. Swann, but technically the senator’s the next of kin.”

      Mariah’s response to that was an earthy, pungent curse.

      Trace turned off the lights. They were walking back down the dingy hallway when Mariah suddenly said, “Could you tell me where the rest rooms are?”

      Her face had turned the color of the puke green walls. “Right around the corner. First door to the left.”

      She was gone before he could finish his instructions.

      After throwing up, Mariah splashed her face with cold water, then swirled more water that carried the scent and flavor of chlorine around in her mouth. She dug through her purse and located a lint-covered peppermint Life Saver, which she popped into her mouth. Then, taking a deep breath, she rejoined Trace, who was waiting exactly where she’d left him. “You okay?” His gaze briefly swept over her too pale face.

      “Fine. Thanks,” Mariah lied.

      Although the basement was a great deal warmer than the autopsy room, she still felt chilled all the way to the bone. She felt, Mariah thought bleakly, as cold as Laura.

      His sharp eyes caught the slight shiver she tried to conceal. “My office is upstairs. How about I buy you a cup of coffee? Or tea,” he amended, thinking about her dash to the toilet.

      The way her nerves were jangling, the one thing Mariah didn’t need was any caffeine. But she’d try anything to warm up. “Tea always makes me feel like a kid with flu. But I could use some coffee, thank you.”

      His office, tucked away in a corner on the third floor, was shabby, but neat. Two chairs, covered in an uninspiring mud-hued Herculon dating back to the earth tones of the 1970s, sat in front of a weathered pine desk.

      A law enforcement recruiting poster featured a scrubbed and polished young man in a starched khaki uniform standing beside a patrol car.

      A second poster advertised the Silent Witness program, while another more colorful one featured McGruff, the crime dog, dressed like Sherlock Holmes and advising citizens to Take A Bite Out Of Crime. Taped to the beige wall beside the poster were crayon drawings from a class of third graders, thanking the sheriff for a tour of the jail.

      On the opposite wall were FBI posters of most wanted felons who looked as if they’d come straight from central casting: a long-haired, tattooed biker, a wild-eyed Charles Manson lookalike and a sullen woman with a frizzy blond perm and four-inch-long black roots who looked like a poster girl for sexually transmitted diseases.

      “Nice photo collection,” she murmured. “And so much more original than the usual candid vacation snapshots of the wife and kids.”

      “I don’t have a wife. Or kids.” He gave the wanted posters a cursory study. “And sometimes, as clichéd as it might seem, the bad guys really do look like criminals.”

      “But not all the time,” she noted significantly.

      “No.” Trace frowned as he thought of the mild-mannered sixth grade science teacher and Boy Scout leader who’d strangled, then methodically dismembered five hookers before he and Danny had finally caught up with him. “Not all the time.”

      He gestured toward one of the chairs. “Have a seat. Nobody’s made coffee this morning, so I’ll have to get some from the machine down the hall. How do you take it?”

      “With cream. Two sugars.”

      He reached into a top drawer, grabbed a handful of change and left the office.

      Drained, Mariah sank down onto the seat he’d indicated. The wood-framed window offered an appealing view of the town square across the street.

      She watched as a young man threw a Frisbee to a remarkably talented springer spaniel who, from what she could tell, never missed. She envied both man and dog. They were playing on the fragrant green grass in the bright morning sunshine, oblivious to the horrors of the world around them.

      Had it only been yesterday that she’d been the same way? Until this morning, murder had always been an intriguing challenge. Fortunately, enough people shared her fascination with violent, unpredictable crime to have made her a very wealthy woman.

      Although she made her living