Sidney Sheldon’s The Silent Widow: A gripping new thriller for 2018 with killer twists and turns

She thought about Doug, and what he’d have made of all this.

She thought about Lisa, about the horror of her death.

She thought about the angry detective, Johnson: She was a whore, sleeping with someone else’s husband.

Nikki understood anger. Since Doug’s death, it had been her constant companion.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the card that the other detective had given her. The civil one. Detective Lou Goodman.

Lou.

How long would it be, she wondered, before she heard from him again?

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_0b77a3c4-6cda-50c7-b811-501d21df8581)

The Medical Examiner, Jenny Foyle, replaced the plastic sheeting covering Lisa Flannagan’s body and returned her attention to the two detectives. In her early fifties, with a short, unkempt bob of salt and pepper hair, a stocky frame and a make-up-free face, Jenny was no beauty. But she was smart, intuitive, waspishly funny and astonishingly skilled at her job.

‘So you’re saying only one of these stab wounds killed her?’ Mick Johnson asked.

‘The one to the heart. Yes,’ Jenny confirmed. ‘The others were all superficial. Designed to wound, to hurt, but never intended to kill.’

Lou Goodman raised a groomed eyebrow. ‘All eighty-eight of them?’

Jenny sighed. ‘I’m afraid so.’

Most people preferred Lou Goodman to his partner, probably because Lou was handsome and charming and, unlike Mick Johnson, rarely looked as if the thing he’d most like to do in the entire world was punch you in the face. But not Jenny Foyle. Detective Goodman’s charms were lost on her. A New York Irish girl herself, Jenny had always had a soft spot for Detective Johnson. True, he lacked charm and was no oil painting. But Jenny liked the big man’s permanently stained shirts, his gruff sense of humor and his take-no-prisoners directness. In a city that was all about style over substance, and a department in which political correctness had gone mad, the Medical Examiner had always found Mick to be a breath of fresh air.

‘So she was tortured?’ Mick asked her. ‘That’s basically what you’re saying?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ said Jenny. ‘She was tortured. Incapacitated, probably through terror as much as from her physical injuries. Then she was moved. And at a later time, killed. Then she was moved again to the dumping site.’

All three of them paused for a moment to take in the plastic-covered shape that had once been Lisa Flannagan. A gorgeous young girl with her whole life ahead of her, reduced to a mutilated carcass.

Goodman broke the silence first. ‘And you’re confident of this timeline?’

‘I am.’

‘Because …?’

‘Because the rate of healing clearly shows the fatal wound occurred some hours after the first injuries. And because the levels of blood loss at the scene, although substantial, are incompatible with the victim having been stabbed in the heart there,’ Jenny answered matter-of-factly.

‘No sexual assault?’ asked Goodman.

Jenny shook her head. ‘Nope.’

‘And she didn’t fight back?’ Johnson asked quietly.

‘Well,’ Jenny peeled off her latex gloves, allowing herself a small smile. ‘At first I thought she didn’t fight at all. Terrified, as I said. But right at the end of my examination I found a tiny – and I mean tiny – sample of tissue under one of her fingernails.’

Johnson’s brow furrowed. ‘Why so tiny?’ he asked. ‘If she scratched him, fighting for her life, wouldn’t there be more?’

‘Indeed there would.’ Jenny’s smile broadened. ‘Which is why I think her nails were cut and the fingers scrubbed. Post-mortem.’

‘Jesus.’ Goodman winced.

‘But he missed a spot?’ Johnson asked brightly. ‘Lucky for us.’

‘I hope it will be,’ said Jenny. ‘Like I say, the sample was tiny. It was also … strange.’

Both men waited for her to elaborate.

‘The cells were unlike anything I’ve seen before. They appeared to be from rotten flesh.’

Goodman raised an eyebrow. ‘Rotten?’

‘Yes, rotten.’ Jenny cleared her throat awkwardly. ‘From something … someone … dead.’

Detective Johnson’s eyes narrowed. ‘You think this chick was killed by a dead guy?’

‘No,’ Jenny replied, deadpan. ‘That would be impossible.’

‘So what are you saying?’ asked Goodman.

‘Simply that the cells I recovered were unusual. And that I can’t guarantee whether the quality or quantity of what we found under that nail will yield a meaningful DNA match to a possible suspect.’

‘Maybe our killer’s a zombie.’ Mick Johnson nudged the ME playfully in the ribs. ‘The living dead are among us!’

Jenny laughed. ‘I’d say you’re proof of that, Mickey. I’ll let you know when I have any more, but that’s all she wrote for the moment, boys. You take care now.’

Standing outside the Boyle Heights Coroner’s Office, the two detectives digested the ME’s bizarre findings in silence. Johnson’s zombie comment was obviously a joke. But exactly how had Lisa Flannagan wound up with a corpse’s flesh under her fingernails?

Realizing someone had to say something, Goodman tried to focus on the facts.

‘So, we’re looking for three sites,’ he observed. ‘Torture. Murder. Disposal.’

‘Uh huh,’ Johnson nodded. ‘Three sites.’

‘I guess we focus on that first.’

‘I guess we do,’ Johnson agreed.

There were a whole bunch of things that irritated him about his slick, young, ambitious partner. But Mick Johnson had to give Lou Goodman credit for an ordered mind, even in the craziest of circumstances.

They were back in their car and about to drive away when Jenny Foyle came rushing out the building towards them, flapping her arms like a lunatic.

Johnson wound down his window. ‘Did you forget something? What else you got for us, Jenny? Vampire teeth-marks on her neck?’ he quipped.

‘Ha ha.’ Panting from exertion, the ME shoved a single sheet of paper into Johnson’s hand. ‘Looks like you got lucky, Mick. DNA results just came back. Turns out your zombie has a name.’