Blood Memory by Greg Iles Read Free Book Online Page B

longer a child. My eyes blur from the strain of focusing so hard. Could that be the imprint of my own foot? Bloodstains can endure for decades on some surfaces.
    “Fade,” I plead. But my plea does no good.
    I’ve been drinking for over fifteen years. I’ve been sober now for forty-eight hours. I’ve never needed a drink so badly in my life.

Chapter
6
    Inside my mind, instinct is at war with itself. As I stare down at the two glowing footprints, half of me wants to run, the other half to lock the door. I want photographs of the prints, but to get them I’ll have to act quickly. Once the chemical reaction that causes the blood hidden in the carpet to luminesce is complete, it can’t be repeated.
    The front door of the house bangs shut. Pearlie. I cross the bedroom and lock the door. Then I open my camera case, bring out my SLR, and fit a standard 35mm lens and cable release to it. Damn. I forgot to unload my tripod from the trunk of my car.
    Someone raps sharply on my bedroom door. A rush of déjà vu tells me that rhythm belongs to Pearlie.
    “Catherine Ferry?” calls a throaty voice as familiar to me as my mother’s. “You in there, girl?”
    “I’m here, Pearlie.”
    “What you doing home? Last time you came back was…I don’t know when. Why you didn’t call ahead?”
    I can’t waste time trying to explain the situation. “I’ll be out in a few minutes, okay?”
    Grabbing my car keys, I slide up the window, climb out, and run to my car. Tripod in hand, I climb back into the bedroom, close the curtains, and set up the tripod almost directly above the footprints. Pearlie is still knocking on the door. After mounting the camera and aiming it downward, I switch on the lights and shoot a reference photo of the floor. Then I close down the lens aperture by two f-stops, take a ruler from my dental case, and switch off the overhead light. The ruler has copper wire wrapped around the inch markings. The copper will fluoresce when sprayed with luminol. Laying the ruler alongside the glowing footprint, I spray both ruler and bloodstain with more of the chemical and wait.
    “What you doing in there?” Pearlie demands. “Did Natriece mess up something?”
    “I’m all right!” I snap. “Just give me a minute.”
    I hear the muted chatter of Pearlie interrogating the little girl.
    As the greenish-white glow begins to increase in intensity, I open the camera shutter with the cable release and look at my dive watch. To capture the faint glow of luminol in the dark, I need a sixty-second exposure. My hands are shaking badly, but the cable release will keep the camera from vibrating. This time the tremor isn’t from medication or alcohol withdrawal. It’s fear. The same sickening panic I felt at the LeGendre crime scene, and at the Nolan scene before that. If it weren’t for the child’s footprint, I’d assume the boot print was made with deer blood. Whitetail often wander onto the grounds of Malmaison, and my grandfather has been known to shoot a buck now and again, sometimes from the window of his study. But the child’s footprint is there…
    When my watch hits the sixty-second mark, I close the shutter. Then, to be sure I capture the prints, I open the lens aperture by one f-stop and repeat the procedure. By then Pearlie is squawking through the door.
    “Catherine DeSalle Ferry! You open this door!”
    The familiar ritual of crime scene photography is calming my nerves. Habits have great comforting power—even bad habits, as I discovered long ago.
    “Answer me, girl! I can’t read your mind like I used to. You’ve grown up too much and been gone too long.”
    I smile in spite of my fear. The year after my father died—the year I stopped speaking—only Pearlie was able to communicate with me. The stoic maid could read my emotions in a glance, from the curl of a lip to the angle of my downcast eyes.
    “I’m coming!” I call, going to the door.
    As soon as I turn the knob, Pearlie pushes open the