Bloodborn by Kathryn Fox Read Free Book Online Page A

evidence bags would be safe with a policeman standing guard nearby.
    Liz pointed to an area of dirt at the bottom of the drive.
    “This is where she was found.”
    Anya surveyed the ground. Numerous footprints and the wheel tracks of what had to be the ambulance gurney made impressions in the soil.
    “Has your photographer been through?”
    Liz nodded and the pair squatted to look more closely at a blackened area on the sloped driveway.
    “Sophie must have laid here for a while. Allowing for absorption, it’s a significant amount of blood loss. If she crawled along, her head was pointing downhill the whole time, which might have just saved her life.”
    “The trail goes back up to the house.”
    The women slowly stepped along the drive, careful not to disturb the bloodstains soaked into the white gravel.
    “She must have been on her stomach for most of the way.”
    Anya thought of the blackened fingernails and the samples she had taken from beneath the fingernails.
    “I’d say she stopped at least three times for a rest, judging by the pools concentrated at various intervals.”
    The neck and abdominal wounds would have oozed and been further traumatized by the driveway. “What was the temperature overnight?”
    Liz Gould pulled out her notebook. “Your colleague asked the same thing, apparently. Got down to four degrees Celsius. Sophie’s lucky she didn’t die of exposure.”
    “Or the cold slowed the blood loss and her metabolic rate long enough for her to be found alive.”
    “Barely—she’s not out of the woods yet.”
    Anya knew that even if the young girl survived theater, there was the possibility of kidney, lung and brain damage. For the moment, she kept those thoughts to herself.
    As she and Liz approached the house, the photogram-metry team appeared with their array of digital equipment. One crime scene officer held a vertical stand supporting two cameras mounted on either end of a crossbar. The other held a computer bag and recorded findings. By combining the two images taken of the one object or area, the police would establish a 3-D image and from that calculate distances and depths of objects without touching and disturbing them any more than was necessary for the pictures.
    The one with the computer offered Anya disposable gloves and shoe covers. She took them gratefully.
    Despite the warmth of the midmorning sun, Anya felt a shiver as she crossed the threshold into the house.
    Two crime scene officers swabbed separate patches of living room floor in silence. They looked up at the sound of footsteps on the polished wooden boards.
    “Anyone from Homicide here?” Liz asked.
    “Try the bedroom. Third door on the left.”
    With a narrow frontage, the cottage was surprisingly large, extending down the block. Exposed wooden beams gave the place a country feel. Dried flower arrangements and wallpaper friezes at hip height were dated but homely. Anya suspected the mother had been crafty and, since her death, the daughters had kept things as she’d left them.
    Until last night.
    Broken mugs lay alongside the coffee table along with a pool of water and fresh flowers. The petals had been crushed, presumably by shoes. Anyone in bare feet or socks would have been cut by the shards of vase.
    “Sophie was out here, we think. Her sister was in the bedroom.”
    Either someone had smashed the items to scare the girls, or Sophie had fought her attacker. Judging by the strength the girl had shown by crawling for help, there might have been a significant struggle.
    “We’ve bagged a small pair of underwear from under the coffee table,” offered one of the officers, “and a pair of jeans from just near the door. There are some smears of blood on the outside, so we assume her attacker removed them, then assaulted her. If the blood came from the older sister, then the younger girl was stabbed second.”
    “We won’t know until we interview Sophie.” Liz moved further inside.
    If she survives surgery and