Faith countered, ‘Strange place to meet up for a blow job.’
‘That’s a small tarp,’ Will said, because Amanda didn’t spend her weekends strolling the tarp section at her local hardware store. ‘Standard would be a five-by-seven, six-by-twelve, but the package outside was for a three-feet-seven by five-feet-seven, which is forty-three inches by sixty-seven. Harding’s at least a forty-inch waist, and around six feet tall.’
Amanda stared at him. ‘I need that in English.’
‘If the killer brought the tarp to the scene in order to dispose of a body, then the tarp he purchased was for a much smaller person.’
‘A woman-sized tarp,’ Faith said. ‘Great.’
Amanda was nodding. ‘Harding met the woman here to kill her, but she managed to get the upper hand.’
‘She’s injured.’ Sara came up the stairs. Her glasses were hooked on her shirt collar. She used the back of her arm to wipe the sweat off her forehead. ‘There are bloody bare footprints going up the left set of stairs. Likely a woman’s, probably size seven or eight, with a heavy strike that indicates she was running.’ She pointed back at the stairs. ‘Second tread down, there’s an impact point that indicates she fell and hit her head, likely at the crown. We found some long brown hair in the spatter, similar to what was found in the hairbrush.’ She pointed to the other set of stairs. ‘On the right, we’ve got more footprints, walking, and passive spatter leaving a trail toward the emergency side exit, then it disappears on the metal stairs. Passive spatter indicates a weeping wound.’
‘Ran up and walked down?’ Amanda guessed.
‘It’s possible.’ Sara shrugged. ‘There have been hundreds of people in and out of this building. Someone could have made the footprints last week and someone else could’ve left the drops of blood last night. We’ll need to sequence DNA on every sample before we can definitively say what belongs to whom.’
Amanda glowered. DNA could take weeks. She preferred her science more instantaneous.
‘Finished.’ The photographer started peeling off his Tyvek suit. His clothes were soaking wet. His hair looked painted onto his head. He told Amanda, ‘You can have the room. I’ll get the photos processed and uploaded as soon as I get back.’
She nodded. ‘Thank you.’
Sara pulled a fresh pair of gloves from her back pocket. ‘These shoeprints here—’ She pointed to the floor, which looked like it belonged in an Arthur Murray studio. ‘They’re from the first responders. Two sets. One went into the room, probably to see the face. The treads for both are nearly identical. HAIX Black Eagles. Police issue.’
Collier bristled. ‘They said in their statements that they didn’t enter the room.’
‘You might want to go back at them.’ Sara slipped on a fresh pair of shoe protectors as she explained, ‘There’s a lot of blood. They recognized the victim. He’s a fellow officer. That’s a lot to—’
‘Hold on, Red.’ Collier held up his hand like a traffic cop. ‘Don’t you think you should wait for the ME before you go traipsing in there?’
Sara gave him a look that had once presaged the two most miserable hours of Will’s life. ‘I’m the medical examiner, and I would prefer that you call me Sara or Dr Linton.’
Faith barked a laugh that echoed through the building.
Sara braced her hand against the wall as she walked into the room. Ripples spread through the pool of blood. She picked up the purse in the corner. The strap was broken. There was a long tear down the side. The bag was black textured leather with heavy brass zips and buckles and a padlock at the clasp, the kind of thing that could be very expensive or very cheap.
‘I don’t see a wallet.’ Sara held up a gold tube of lipstick. ‘Sisley, rose cashmere. I’ve got the same at home.’ Her eyebrows furrowed. ‘The gold is scratched off on the side, just like mine. Must be a manufacturing defect.’ Sara dropped the lipstick back into the purse. She tested the weight. ‘This doesn’t feel like Dolce and Gabbana.’
‘No.’ Amanda peered inside the bag. ‘It’s counterfeit. See the stitching?’
‘The ampersand is in the wrong font, too.’ Faith spread plastic on the ground so they could do a more careful inventory. ‘Why buy a fake D and G when you can afford Sisley and La Mer?’
Amanda said, ‘Twenty-five-hundred-dollar purse versus fifty-dollar lipstick?’
Faith said, ‘You can palm the lipstick, but not the purse.’
‘Maybe a tester. The scratch could be from peeling off the label.’
Will tried to give Collier a conspiratorial ‘us manly men have no idea what they’re talking about’ look, but Collier was already giving him an ‘I want to shoot you in the face’ look.
Sara went back into the room. This was her first opportunity to really examine the murder scene. Will had caught glimpses of this side of her before, but never in an official capacity. She took her time exploring the room, silently studying the blood patterns, the spray on the ceiling. The graffiti did not make her job easy. The walls were painted black in places from oversprayed logos and tags. She got close to everything, putting on her glasses so she could differentiate between the spray paint and the blood evidence. She walked around the perimeter of the room twice before beginning her examination of the body.
She couldn’t kneel in the blood, so she squatted down at Harding’s thick waist. She searched his front pants pockets, handing Faith a melted 3 Musketeers, an opened pack of Skittles, a wad of cash strapped by a green rubber band and some loose change. Next she checked Harding’s suit jacket. There was a folded sheet of paper inside the breast pocket. Sara unfolded the page. ‘Racing form. Online betting.’
‘Dogs?’ Amanda guessed.
‘Horses.’ Sara handed the form to Faith, who set it on the plastic alongside the other items.
‘No cell phones,’ Faith noted. ‘Not on Harding. Not in the purse. Not in the building.’
Sara patted down the body, checking to see if she’d missed anything obvious in his clothes. She pushed open Harding’s eyelids. She used both hands to force open his jaw so she could look inside the mouth. She unbuttoned his shirt and pants. She studied every inch of his bloated abdomen. She pulled back the unbuttoned cuffs of his shirtsleeves and looked at his forearms. She lifted his pant legs and pushed down his socks.
Finally she said, ‘Livor mortis indicates the body hasn’t been moved, so he died here, in this position, on his back. I’ll need to get ambient and liver temp, but he’s in full rigor, which means he’s been dead for more than four but less than eight hours.’
‘So we’re talking a timeline of Sunday night into Monday morning,’ Faith said. ‘The fire department estimates the car was set on fire four to five hours ago, which brings us to three AM. today. The nine-one-one came in at five AM.’
‘Sorry, but can I ask a question about that?’ Collier was obviously still licking his wounds, but he just as obviously wanted to prove his usefulness. ‘He’s got mold around his mouth and nose. Wouldn’t that take a lot longer than five hours to grow?’
‘It would, but it’s not mold.’ Sara asked, ‘Can you help me roll the body onto its side? I don’t want him falling forward.’
Collier pulled two shoe protectors out of the box. He gave Sara a lopsided grin as he slid the booties over the old protectors he’d put on when he entered the building. ‘I’m Holden, by the way. Like in the book. My parents were hoping for a disaffected loner.’
Sara smiled at the stupid joke, and Will wanted to kill himself.
Collier kept grinning, taking the gloves Sara offered, making a show of stretching out the fingers with his child-sized hands. ‘How do you want to do this?’