Read Hades for Free Online Page B

could put together a crime scene unit, get another officer from the East End station over here as quickly as possible, get an ambulance to come take the body when the CSU was done. Then Justin stepped over to the archway, looked into the living room, and nodded at Abby. She walked toward him, continued past him, drink tightly clutched in her hand; and he let her lead him upstairs.
    At the top of the landing, she stopped.
    “He’s in the master bedroom,” Justin said. Before she could step forward, he took her hand. “It’s not going to be pleasant,” he said. “He was beaten to death.”
    Confused, trying to comprehend: “Beaten how? Punched?”
    “No,” Justin said softly. “It was with some kind of implement. A club, a bat, I don’t know. Gary said his face is . . . well . . . like I said, it’s not going to be pleasant.”
    “I can do this.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “No. But stop asking me questions, ’cause I won’t even
think
I can do it for very much longer.”
    “All right. Let’s go.”
    He walked in ahead of her, his body momentarily shielding her husband’s corpse. He took in the sight of the mangled and bloody body of Evan Harmon. Justin had to close his eyes for a moment, but that didn’t cause the horrific image to go away. He knew the image would now be fixed in his memory forever; this was not the kind of picture one could remove merely with wishful thinking. Every bone in Evan Harmon’s body seemed to have been crushed. His face was particularly gruesome. Even his eye sockets were shattered, and his nose was flattened and formless. Under his light brown hair, part of his skull was visible where the skin covering his forehead should have been. His teeth were scattered on the floor near him, looking as if they’d tumbled from a collector’s jar. On his neck and forearms were round, deep burns. Justin heard Abby moan behind him, turned to see her eyes widen in shock and horror and the excruciating awareness of the pain her husband must have endured before his life ended.
    “That’s Evan?” he asked, his voice low and hoarse.
    “His face,” she said. “His face . . .” Her breathing was heavy now, coming in short, heavy bursts. “What are those burns? Why does he have all those burns?”
    “Is it Evan, Abby?”
    She nodded. Made a coughing noise and a thin stream of vomit escaped from her tight lips. She immediately wiped it away with her hand.
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes,” she said. “His hands. Our wedding ring. Those shoes . . . he just bought those shoes yesterday. No, two days ago. Maybe yesterday . . . I don’t know . . .”
    “It’s all right,” he said softly. “It doesn’t matter.”
    She was breathing quickly now, unable to tear her eyes away from the devastating scene. “And his sweater,” she wailed. “Oh god, I gave him that sweater.”
    The glass of vodka dropped from her hand, landing softly on the thick carpet. She looked down, watched the liquor spread into the fibers, but made no move to pick it up.
    “It’s his favorite sweater.” Abby looked up at Justin in bewilderment. It was what murder did. She understood that her husband was dead. She understood that some sick fuck had been in her house and committed an unspeakable act of violence. She understood that life as she’d known it had now changed forever. She didn’t comprehend how a favorite sweater had somehow been defiled. Didn’t see how something so delicate and beautiful had become a part of the tragedy, had been changed into something ugly and unusable. Something repellent.
    “His favorite sweater,” she said one more time.
    “I know,” he told her. And then he said, “Let’s go back downstairs.”
    After getting Abby settled onto the living room couch, and putting another glass of vodka in her hand, Justin went back to the bedroom, and spent twenty minutes there, alone. At one time, he had considered himself a truly good homicide cop. Not now. His skills had been