The photographer’s flash went off, leaving a flare of afterimage hovering in front of my eyes: the squiggles of blood on the walls, bright and squirming. For a second I was sure I could smell it. I asked, “Any defense injuries?”
Cooper flicked his finger at the scattering of red on the outline’s arms. “There is a shallow three-inch slash wound to the palm of the right hand, and a deeper one to the muscle of the left forearm—I would venture to guess that this wound is the source of much of the blood at the scene; it would have bled profusely. The victim also shows a number of minor injuries—small nicks, abrasions and contusions to both forearms—that are consistent with a struggle.”
Patrick could have been on either side of that struggle, and the cut palm could go either way: a defense wound, or his hand slipping down the blade as he stabbed. I asked, “Could the knife wounds have been self-inflicted?”
Cooper’s eyebrows lifted, like I was an idiot child who had somehow managed to say something interesting. “You are correct, Detective Kennedy: that is indeed a possibility. It would require considerable willpower, of course, but yes: certainly a possibility. The shallow slash injury could have been a hesitation wound—a tentative preliminary attempt, followed by the deeper successful ones. The pattern is quite common in suicides by cutting the wrists; I see no reason why it should not be found in other methods as well. Assuming the victim was right-handed—which should be ascertained before we venture even to theorize—the positioning of the wounds on the left side of the body would be consistent with self-infliction.”
Little by little, Fiona and Richie’s creepy intruder was falling out of the race, vanishing away over the horizon behind us. He wasn’t gone, not yet, but Patrick Spain was front and center and coming up the straight fast. This was what I’d been expecting all along, but out of nowhere I caught a tiny flash of disappointment. Murder Ds are hunters; you want to bring home a white lion that you tracked down in dark hissing jungle, not a domestic kitty cat gone rabid. And under all that, there was a weak streak in me that had been feeling something like sorry for Pat Spain. Like Richie said, the guy had tried.
I asked, “Can you give us a time of death?”
Cooper shrugged. “As always, this is at best an estimate, and the delay before I was able to examine the bodies does not improve its accuracy. However, the fact that the thermostat is set to maintain a constant temperature is helpful. I feel confident that all three victims died no earlier than three o’clock this morning and no later than five o’clock, with the balance of probability tilting towards the earlier time.”
“Any indication of who died first?”
Cooper said, spacing it out like he was talking to a moron, “They died between three and five A.M. Had the evidence provided further details, I would have said as much.”
On every single case, just for kicks, Cooper finds excuses to diss me in front of people I need to work with. Sooner or later I’m going to work out what kind of complaint to file to make him back off, but so far—and he knows this—I’ve let it slide because, at the moments he picks, I have bigger things on my mind. “I’m sure you would,” I said. “What about the weapon? Can you tell us anything about that?”
“A single-edged blade. As I said.” Cooper was bent over his case again, sliding the sheet of paper away; he didn’t even bother to give me the withering look.
“And this,” Larry said, “is where we come in, if you don’t mind, obviously, Dr. Cooper.” Cooper waved a hand graciously—he and Larry get on, somehow. “Come here, you, Scorcher. Look what my little friend Maureen found, just for you. Or didn’t find, more like.”
The girl with the video camera and the nose moved away from the kitchen drawers and pointed. The drawers all had complicated kiddie-proof gadgets on them, and I could see why: in the top one was a neat molded case, Cuisine Bleu swooping across the inside of the lid in fancy lettering. It was made to hold five knives. Four of them were in place, from a long carving knife to a dinky little thing shorter than my hand: gleaming, honed hair-fine, wicked. The second-biggest knife was missing.
“That drawer was open,” Larry said. “That’s how we spotted them so soon.”
I said, “And no sign of the fifth knife.”
Head-shakes all round.
Cooper was busy delicately detaching his gloves, finger by finger. I asked, “Dr. Cooper, could you take a look and tell us if this knife might be consistent with the victim’s wounds?”
He didn’t turn around. “An informed opinion would necessitate a full examination of the wounds, both at surface level and in cross-section, preferably with the knife in question available for comparison. Do I appear to have performed such an examination?”
When I was a kid I would have lost the rag with Cooper every time, but I know how to manage myself now, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before I give him the satisfaction. I said, “If you can rule this knife out somehow—the size of the blade, maybe, or the shape of the hilt—then we need to know now, before I send a dozen floaters off on a wild-goose chase.”
Cooper sighed and threw the box a half-second glance. “I see no reason to exclude it from consideration.”
“Perfect. Larry, can we take one of the other knives with us, show the search team what we’re looking for?”
“Be my guest. How about this one? Going by the holes in the box, it’s basically the same as the one you’re after, just smaller.” Larry picked out the middle knife, dropped it deftly into a clear plastic evidence bag and handed it over. “Give it back when you’re done.”
“Will do. Dr. Cooper, can you give me any idea of how far the victim could have got after the wounds were inflicted? How long he could have stayed on his feet?”
Cooper gave me the fish-eye again. “Less than a minute,” he said. “Or possibly several hours. Six feet, or conceivably half a mile. Do take your pick, Detective Kennedy, since I am afraid I am unable to provide the kind of answer you want. Far too many variables are involved to permit an intelligent guess, and, regardless of what you might do in my place, I refuse to make an unintelligent one.”
“If you mean could the vic have got rid of the weapon, Scorcher,” Larry said helpfully, “I can tell you he didn’t go out the front, anyway. There’s not a drop of blood in the hall, or on the front door. The bottoms of his shoes are covered, so are his hands, and he’d have had to hold himself up, wouldn’t he, as he got weaker?” Cooper shrugged. “Oh, he would. Besides, look around you: the poor fella was going like a sprinkler. He’d have left us smudges everywhere, not to mention a lovely Hansel-and-Gretel trail. No: once the drama had started, this fella didn’t go into the front of the house, and he didn’t go upstairs.”
“Right,” I said. “If that knife shows up, let me know right away. Until then, we’ll get out of your hair. Thanks, lads.”
The flash went off again. This time it slapped Patrick Spain’s silhouette across my eyes: blazing white, arms flung wide like he was leaping into a tackle, or like he was falling.
*
“So,” Richie said, on our way down the drive. “Not an inside job, after all.”
“It’s not that simple, old son. Patrick Spain could have gone out into the back garden, maybe even over the wall—or he could have just opened a window and thrown that knife as far as he could. And remember, Patrick’s not the only suspect here. Don’t forget Jenny Spain. Cooper hasn’t checked her out yet: for all we know, she could have been well able to leave the house, stash the knife, come back inside and arrange herself neatly next to her husband. This could be a suicide pact, or she could have been shielding Patrick—she sounds like the type who might well put her last few minutes into protecting the family reputation. Or this could have been her gig, from start to finish.”
The yellow Fiat was gone: Fiona was headed for the hospital to try and see Jenny—hopefully the uniform was driving, so she wouldn’t wrap the car around a tree during a crying jag. Instead, we had a cluster of new cars, up at the end of the road by the morgue van. They could have been journalists, or residents who the uniforms were keeping away from the scene, but I was betting these were my floaters. I headed for them. “And think about this,” I said. “An outsider isn’t going to go in there unarmed and hope he gets a chance to go through the kitchen drawers and find something good. He’s going to bring his own weapon.”
“Maybe he did, and then he spotted those knives and figured he’d be better off with something that doesn’t trace back to him. Or maybe he wasn’t planning on killing anyone. Or maybe that knife isn’t the weapon at all: he nicked it to throw us off.”
“Maybe. That’s one reason why we need to find it fast: to make sure it doesn’t lead us down the wrong track. Want to give me another one?”
Richie said, “Before it’s got rid of.”
“Right. Say this is an outside job: our man—or woman—probably threw the weapon in the water last night, if he has any sense, but if by any chance he’s too thick to have thought of that off his own bat, all this activity’s bound to tip him off that it might be an idea not to have a bloody knife hanging around. If he ditched it somewhere on the estate, we want to pick him up coming back for it; if he took it home with him, we want to catch him dumping it. All this is assuming he’s in the area, obviously.”
Two seagulls exploded up from a heap of rubble, screaming at each other, and Richie’s head whipped around. He said, “He didn’t find the Spains by accident. This isn’t the kind of place where someone could be just passing by, just happen to spot a set of victims that pushed his buttons.”
“No,” I said. “Not that kind of place at all. If he’s not dead or local, then he came in here looking.”
The floaters were seven guys and a girl, all somewhere in their late twenties, hanging around their cars trying to look sharp and businesslike and ready for anything. When they saw us coming their way they straightened up, tugged jackets down, the biggest guy threw his cigarette away. I pointed to the butt and asked, “What’s your plan there?”
He looked blank. I said, “You were going to leave it there, weren’t you? On the ground, for the Bureau to find and file and send away for DNA testing. Which one were you hoping for? That you’d wind up at the top of our suspect list, or at the top of our time-waster list?”
He whipped up the butt and fumbled it back into his packet, and just that fast, all eight of them were on notice: as long as you’re on my investigation, you do not drop the ball. Marlboro Man was scarlet, but someone had to take one for the good of the team.
I said, “Much better. I’m Detective Kennedy, and this is Detective Curran.” I didn’t ask for their names; no time for handshakes and chitchat, and I would only forget anyway. I don’t keep track of my floaters’ favorite sandwiches and their kids’ birthdays, I keep track of what they’re doing and whether they’re doing it well. “You’ll get a full briefing later on, but for now, this is all you need to know: we’re looking for a Cuisine Bleu–brand knife, curved six-inch blade, black plastic handle, part of a matching set, a lot like this but slightly larger.” I held up the plastic evidence bag. “All of you got camera phones? Take a picture, so you’ve got a reminder of exactly what you’re looking for. Delete the photo before you leave the scene tonight. Don’t forget.”
They whipped out phones and passed the evidence bag around, handling it like it was made of soap bubbles. I said, “The knife I’ve described is a good bet for the murder weapon, but we don’t get guarantees in this game, so if you come across another blade hanging around in the undergrowth, for God’s sake don’t skip on your merry way just because it doesn’t fit the description. We’re also keeping an eye out for bloody clothing, footprints, keys and anything else that looks remotely out of place. If you find something that’s got potential, what do you do?”
I nodded at Marlboro Man—if you take someone down a peg, always give him a way to climb back up. He said, “Don’t touch it. Don’t leave it unattended. Call the Bureau lads to photograph it and bag it.”
“Exactly. And call me, too. Anything you find, I want to see. Detective Curran and I will be interviewing the neighbors, so you’ll need our mobile numbers, and vice versa—we’ll be keeping this off the radio for now. The reception out here is shit, so if a call doesn’t get through, text. Don’t leave any voice-mail messages. Everyone got that?” Down the road, our first reporter had set herself up against some picturesque scaffolding and was doing a piece to camera, trying to keep her coattails down against the wind. Within an hour or two there would be a few dozen like her. Plenty of them wouldn’t think twice about hacking into a detective’s voice mail.
We did the number swap all round. “There’ll be more searchers joining us soon,” I said, “and when they take over I’ll have other jobs for you, but we need to get moving now. We’re going to start from the back of the house. Start at the garden wall, work your way outwards, make sure you don’t leave any gaps between your search areas, you know the drill. Go.”