Chapter 16
THE living room of the Van Dorn suite was so full of cops it was difficult to move without stepping on one. There were plain-clothes cops and harness bulls and technicians, all apparently busy at specific chores but managing to convey the impression that they were just running around in circles. Even Captain O’Meara himself finally got sick of it and shooed some of them out.
Through a doorway on the left, in Gretchen’s bedroom, a deputy medical examiner could be seen filling out a report, and on the bed beyond him lay the subject of the report, now mercifully hidden by a sheet; mercifully, because the slight body had fought stubbornly to retain the spark of life and the result was not pretty. Death by strangulation usually isn’t.
Under the sheet there were marks of fingers on
