As Mo and Sci snapped on latex gloves, Justine turned on a digital recorder and motioned to me to start talking. I told her that after I got off the plane, Aldo had met me at British Airways arrivals, 5:30 sharp.
I told her about showering, then finding Colleen’s body. I said that my gun was missing as well as the hard drive from my security system.
I said again that I had no idea why Colleen was here or why she’d been killed. “I didn’t do it, Justine.”
“I know that, Jack.”
We both knew that when the cops got here, I would be suspect number one, and although I had cop friends, I couldn’t rely on any of them to find Colleen’s killer when I was so darned handy.
I had been intimately involved with the deceased.
There was no forced entry into my house.
The victim was on my bed.
It was what law enforcement liked to call an open-and-shut case. Open and shut on me.
CHAPTER 5
If you’re not the cops on official business, processing an active crime scene is a felony. It’s not just contaminating evidence and destroying the prosecution’s ability to bring the accused to trial, it’s accessory to the crime.
If we were caught working the scene, I would lose my license, and all four of us could go to jail.
That said, if there was ever a time to break the law, this was it.
Mo said, “Jack, please get out of the frame.”
I stepped into the hallway and Mo’s Nikon flashed.
She took shots from every angle, wide, close-up, extreme close-ups of the wounds in Colleen’s chest.
Sci took Colleen’s and my fingerprints with an electronic reader while Mo-bot ran a latent-print reader over hard surfaces in the room. No fingerprint powder required.
Justine asked, “When did you last see Colleen alive?”
I told her that I’d had lunch with her last Wednesday, before I left for the airport.