Page 53 of Hard Heart

Forty minutes later, there was a knock at the door, but when I opened it, the woman standing there wasn’t carrying a pizza box. No, she wore jeans, a blazer, and a serious expression.

“Ms. Hennessy?”

“Who are you?” I asked, although I thought I might know. Her hard expression, her bearing… She was a cop. But why was she here? Had something happened to…someone? I wasn’t anyone’s next of kin.

“I’m Special Agent Rimer with the Virginia State Police. You contacted my partner about the Levi Sykes case.”

“Right.” I racked my brain. “Special Agent…Paulson?”

“Yeah. Well, I’m working through his emails. He had a medical emergency, and he’s in the hospital. Nobody knows when he’ll be back.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said automatically. “Hopefully, it’s nothing too serious.”

“A bullet wound.”

“Oh my gosh.”

“You were asking about forensics in the Costello case. The only DNA we found belonged to Levi Sykes.”

“That’s what I understood from the trial transcript. I’m interested in any other trace DNA that might have been on the body. Fingernail scrapings, for example. It’s my understanding that Ms. Costello wore her nails long, and the altercation was physical. It seems to me that she would have tried to fight back unless she was incapacitated first. There’s no mention of any toxicology tests either.”

“There were bruises on her wrists. She was tied up during the act and posed postmortem.”

“But the prosecution alleged that scratches on Mr. Sykes were caused by her, so she must have been untied at some point.”

“The ME said there was nothing under Ms. Costello’s nails.”

“I’m aware of that. It just seems strange.”

I realised I’d forgotten to ask Sykes whether Ruby had showered after their afternoon hookup. Another question for my next visit.

“We had everything we needed to get a conviction. Look, Ms. Hennessy, I get that you’re one of those do-gooders who wants to help people, but I saw what Levi Sykes did to that woman. He isn’t a man who should be out on the streets.”

“So you worked on the case?”

A haunted look crossed her face, and she exhaled slowly. “It was only my third murder scene, and still one of the worst. She was cut up like some kind of sacrifice.”

“There was a pentagram?”

“Carved into her chest. Also postmortem,” she added.

The knife belonged to Dawson, that had never been in dispute, but Heidi had read online that it was found in Dawson’s room, a “fact” left out of the trial due to a problem with the search warrant. But Levi himself had said it was sticking out of Ruby’s chest. There was so much misinformation floating around.

“Which way up was the pentagram?”

“What do you mean? She was lying on her back.”

“Where was the point of the star? At the top between her breasts? Or at the bottom near her pubic bone?”

Special Agent Rimer closed her eyes for a moment. “At the top, and the knife was stuck through the centre, right into her heart. If you’d seen her, you wouldn’t be going anywhere near that man.”

“Were there any other suspects?”

“No. It was obvious from the start who did it.”

Maybe too obvious. The police hadn’t even considered looking elsewhere.

The pizza delivery guy sauntered along the hallway with an extra-large box in his hand, and Special Agent Rimer took two steps back.