Excerpt of Trace of Innocence by Erica Orloff

Blood spatter was artfully arranged.

Photographs of crime-scene blood spatter, in stark black and white, were matted and framed, lining a long hallway with hardwood floors that squeaked as I walked.

I had stopped thinking of the photos as gruesome or even odd two years ago when I started working for Lewis LeBarge, my boss at New Jersey's State Crime Laboratory and collector of all things macabre. He told me once that it came with the territory. "Spend enough time around the dead," he had said to me, his New Orleans accent giving him a certain Southern charm, "and eventually you come up with ways to mock the Grim Reaper — just to let him know he hasn't won…yet." Lewis regularly talked to The Reaper like an old friend, asking him just how or why a dead body met its maker.

"Lewis?" I called out from the hallway. I had let myself in the front door of his old duplex in Weehawken.

"Up here," he called out. "The office."

I climbed the stairs. There were just two small bedrooms on the second story. One was the master bedroom, and the other he used as a home office, complete with Internet links to our database in the lab.

I poked my head in. "Ready?"

"For you, darlin', always." He winked at me, his prematurely gray hair giving him a distinguished look, making him seem older than his forty years.

I spied a new photo on the wall. The blood puddle next to the gunshot victim looked like black syrup. "Has anyone ever suggested to you that perhaps the reason you never make it past the first date with a woman is your taste in art?"

"Now, Billie, I'm just waitin' for you to realize we're the ones meant to be together.And until then —" he mock- sighed " — I remain alone and desperately lonely in this cold Northern city."

"Don't give me that…your New Orleans gentleman charm is a magnet for women. I've seen them clustered around you like bees buzzing around a flower."

"I never hurt for first dates, but, as you so kindly pointed out, it's getting to date number two that's difficult."

I looked over at the aquarium tank on the shelf, which housed an enormous tarantula he had named "Ripper," after the serial killer he once wrote a thesis on. I'm not squeamish — you can't be, working in a forensics lab — but spiders give me the creeps. Especially hairy ones.

"Maybe you should try telling them you do something sane. Boring, even. Ever try saying you're an accountant? Working with numbers all day is certainly an improvement over saying you spent the day examining brain matter."

"Eventually, I'd be found out. And with the exception of you, there aren't many women who enjoy discussin' blowflies on dead bodies and the rate of maggot infestation over a lovely supper of jambalaya."

"Really? I would have thought some women would love to hear all about it. Especially while eating." I rolled my eyes. "I've got you figured out. You, dear Lewis, love to scare them off."

"Perhaps I do." He winked at me. "How's that cop you've been dating?"

"Good…when he's on the wagon."

"And when he's not?"

"Come on, Lewis, neither of us has a stellar track record in the love department."

"We're both married to the job."

"I suppose we are. You ready?"

"Darlin', I wouldn't miss this chance to mingle with the underworld of New Jersey for anything. Your family is like an anthropological field study."

"Shut up," I snapped, but grinned at him as he stood up, ducking his head slightly to avoid hitting the overhead lamp. Lewis stood a lanky six foot two inches in his custom cowboy boots. He wore his standard-issue black Levi's and white oxford cloth shirt, well-worn at the elbows, with a pair of black onyx cuff links I swear he put on every shirt he wore. He turned off the lamp and the two of us made our way downstairs and out the door. My big maroon Cadillac was parked on the street.

"Still driving the Sherman land tank, I see."

"I can't part with it — despite how much gas this thing guzzles. My uncle Sean left it to me when he went inside."

"Inside," Lewis mused, as he climbed in the car Uncle Sean gave me when he drew thirty years for aggravated assault and murder — he'd not only killed his victim, but taken a hacksaw to him. "I do love how the Quinn family has such special euphemisms — like this party we're going to."

"What? It's a Welcome Home party for my father. What's wrong with that?"

"You mean a Welcome Home from Rahway Prison party. But no doubt your aunt Helen will make one of her wonderful cheesecakes for the occasion. I'm fond of the strawberry one. Very moist."

"Lewis, it's still a coming-home party, no matter where he was prior to actually coming home. Besides, this time was really stupid. A parole violation…busted at an illegal card game. I mean, come off it. You sometimes sit in with them, too."

I started the car and pulled away from the curb, biting my lip in irritation for a minute. There was nothing I hated more than cops going after bullshit crimes when murderers and child molesters were a plague.

Lewis leaned back against the plush velour seats. "Well, all I can say is family parties with y'all is like stepping into a Scorsese film. I love bein' around your relatives. They are quite entertainin'."

I drove from Lewis's place to JFK Boulevard and eventually steered my way toward Hoboken, coping with heavy traffic.

"But you know, Billie, I've still never understood how it is you managed to turn out…honest and law-abiding, if a little unusual around the edges."

I shrugged, staring ahead at the highway. "I don't know."

"Come on, I know you've thought about it. You must have some explanation."

I had thought about it. Endlessly. Until my head hurt, sometimes. My mother had disappeared when I was nine. The cops had bungled the case, more interested in focusing on my father — head of an Irish crime family — than in uncovering the truth. When her body turned up six months later — nothing left but bones and the shreds of her dress — they arrested the wrong man, eventually freeing him without the case going to trial when his alibi was airtight. He'd been sitting in county lockup the night of her murder, on a DUI charge.

"I don't know, Lewis, I just wanted to solve murders. And if I became a cop, my family would have disowned me. So working for you is about as close as I can get to fighting the bad guys legally. Why did you go into forensics?"

"You know. An obsession with blood and guts. Liked to drive my mama mad with bring-in' home dead animals."

Of course, I knew Lewis's reasons ran as deep as my own. He'd been at Tufts, bent on an academic career as a scientist and college professor when the bayous of Louisiana began giving up their dead. One by one, floaters came to the surface, women tortured and murdered by a serial killer. One of the dead was his childhood sweetheart. His path changed, and he never looked back.

The two of us drove through the streets of Hoboken to Quinn's Pub, owned by my father's brother, Tony. If "pub" conjures up images of darts and leather booths, that's not Quinn's. It's a rough bar you don't go to unless you know Tony — or can hold your own among the tough guys who hang there after long shifts driving cement mixers, or otherwise breaking their backs earning a living. It's one of the last neighborhood places around. I parked the car around the corner on the street and the two of us made our way to the entrance. The sidewalks were already teeming with relatives and pals of my dad.

"Billie!" Tony threw his rock-hard, tattooed arms around me as we maneuvered our way inside, squeezing past the crowds. "Your dad's at the tables. How you doin', Lewis?"

"Fine, just fine," Lewis said, smiling and taking a bottle of beer offered to him by Pammie, a waitress in skin-tight black jeans and a Quinn's Pub T-shirt — black with a green shamrock embroidered on the chest. I saw her eye him flirtatiously.

I took Lewis's other hand so I wouldn't lose him as we snaked our way through the bar. We reached the back room, with its four pool tables. Dad was about to sink his last ball into the corner pocket. He let out a whoop when it went in, the ball spinning fast, and collected his forty bucks from his opponent. Then he spotted me and came over and planted a kiss on the top of my head.