Read Habit for Free Online

pictures of the room earlier. He was now dusting for latent fingerprints.
    “Did you get the door?”
    Patnode looked around and saw Brendan, who was down on his knees at the entrance to the bedroom. Brendan pointed around to the outside of the door.
    “It’s been kicked in. Get pictures, and let’s see if we can lift this shoe scuff, an imprint in the paint, something.”
     
    * * *
     
    The killer had come up the stairs. He had gotten to the top and then strode down the hallway towards the bedroom. He found the door blockaded, and he’d pushed and he’d kicked. It wouldn’t have taken much – the end table likely only weighed thirty or forty pounds. After the initial kick, the killer had probably seen that the door gave easily enough. So he’d pushed it the rest of the way.
    “And fingerprints.”
    “Yes,” said Patnode. “I was getting to the doorknob next.”
    “The door was open when you arrived,” said Brendan, “but it wasn’t when the killer did.” All three of the CSI looked at the young detective, and understood.
    When the killer reached the girl wrapped in her towels, she was still damp from the shower. Rebecca Heilshorn likely struggled with him at the foot of the bed, and then he pushed her onto it. She scrambled back, trying to get away from him. She had been partially under the covers when they’d found her, and so she’d flailed, she’d probably kicked; she’d worked her way under the duvet.
    Then the killer had pounced. He’d climbed on top of her with the murder weapon and pinned her with one hand. What did he want? Just to destroy her? Did he try to get her to do something – agree to something? Many cases like this involved a disgruntled boyfriend, or ex-husband, a rejected lover. When they couldn’t get what they wanted, they eradicated the source of their anger or pain. When this woman didn’t satisfy what was asked of her, she paid for it with multiple stab wounds, and perhaps strangulation.
    Brendan’s unease continued to grow. It wasn’t the same apprehension of coming across his first murder crime scene as it had been an hour ago – it was shaping up to be this different thing, this different sort of feeling. Like he was missing something vital, standing right next to it, and not seeing it.
    He turned and walked out of the room as the CSI began to work the door in earnest.
    Brendan ran down the stairs.
    He walked briskly into the kitchen, his eyes roving, his head turning back and forth. Within seconds, he found the sheath of knives.
    There were ten slots in the sheath. Six slots were filled with a knife. Four others were not.
    Still with his gloves on, he started going through drawers. He went through the dishwasher, too (a Maytag, he saw, recently installed) and finally through the dirty dishes in the sink. Each knife he found, he set down on a butcher’s block in the center of the room.
    The kitchen was old-fashioned and farmhouse-traditional, save for the new dishwasher. The floor was red tile. There was a window over the sink that looked out to the shed with the big dark entrance. To his right was a rudimentary wooden booth built into the wall, bench seats on either side. Then there was a doorway, with no door, to a pantry. This was a small room that took up part of the floor plan of the kitchen, as if added in at some point. Behind him on the other side of the room, more cabinets and a long counter. To his left, an antique hutch with glass doors on top, housing what may have been hand-me-down china. A doorway beside the hutch led to the next room. It was dark, the light not penetrating this far back in a house with southern exposure to its front. Still, the dining room table and chairs were visible. More cabinetry with glass fronts containing dishware, candelabras, and other knickknacks.
    He found knife after knife and set them all out, some splattered with food, some still wet from the dishwasher, some dry and dull from a lack of polish, sitting dusty in the