On his back, the bar of the two-hundred pound weight rested on his throat, his mouth open. That alone would have been enough to kill him, cutting off his oxygen; eyes bugged out like a something in a horror film, as though he’d fought for breath. But it was the gaping chest wound that had done it. Jimmy was ripped open down to his lifting belt, ribs broken and protruding at grotesque angles. Blood had spattered the wall behind the bench and had pooled on the floor. Blood continued to drip into a box of chalk, the powder Jimmy had used on his hands to help his grip. Shimmering bright red, Bridget couldn’t shake her gaze away from the growing pool of blood. “Bridget.” Louder: “Bridget!” Bridget looked away and into the face of the Aidan Murphy, her head domestic. Aidan was in his sixties, a Westie who had come to work full-time in the brownstone after it had been renovated, the only employee who never addressed Bridget as Miss O’Shea. It was Aidan who had summoned her. “I was doing laundry, Bridget.”
