“The uncle doesn’t know where Swanson is?”
“He said he doesn’t.” Marino clips the flashlight to his belt. “But Swanson headed out around eight this morning on foot, said he needed to be somewhere and he was going to take the train. I guess we know for sure who Lombardi picked up at the commuter rail station here in Concord.”
“If you could get two thermometers from my field case?” I ask. “You can help me take photographs and there’s a notepad in there, too. She was standing upright, facing the refrigerator, holding the door open, when he attacked her from behind.”
“How can you tell about the refrigerator?” He bends over my field case on the floor. “How do you know she had the door open?”
“The blood here.” I indicate drips near the handle. “This area is in line with her neck and chin if she was standing with the door open when the left side of her neck was cut. Blood caught the edge of the door, which wouldn’t have been possible if it was shut, and then the blood was transferred to the gasket when someone closed the door.”
“Who did that?”
“I can’t tell you who.”
“You think maybe she shut the door after he cut her the first time?” Marino moves next to me, holding his camera, handing me the thermometers.
“She might have. I just know that someone did.”
The storm door in the entryway opens and Lucy is here. I give her the package with the adhesive stubs in it and she stuffs it into a big pocket on the leg of her flight suit.
“Benton’s walking around and the others can’t be far behind,” I say to her.
“I’ll be out of here in ten minutes max.”
“He didn’t come with them. He came alone. That’s my point,” I add.
“To get here first,” she says and she knows what it means.
Then she’s gone through the open steel door, jogging toward the back offices where what she wants is in a closet. It’s past three now and I’m listening for cars pulling up. I’m looking for Benton and I’m waiting for the arrival of the rest of them. He isn’t acting as if he’s part of them and I’m reminded of the way he was talking when we were following the railroad tracks. He talked about the FBI as if he wasn’t FBI and right now he’s not. Benton is here to solve these homicides and Granby is coming with a very different agenda in mind, one I certainly don’t trust.
I unbutton the top of the dark green fleece and tuck a thermometer under the arm. I set the second thermometer on top of a counter.
“It could have been a reflex when she was ambushed by the attack.” I measure the wound on the left side of her neck. “It may be as you suggested, that he came up behind her and she turned at the same time he sliced, missing major vessels, and the blade went through her jaw. Maybe she pushed the refrigerator door shut or fell against it. That incision is three and a half inches long, from left to right and upward.”
Marino squints as he scribbles on the notepad. He pats himself down for his glasses as if he can’t remember which pocket. He finds them, cleans the lenses on his shirt, and he puts them on.
“There are shallow incisions that run parallel, strange ones with abraded edges and some of the skin is peeled back.” I give him the measurements. “I have no idea unless the tip of the blade is bent.”
He looks up from his notes, his eyes magnified. “Why would he use a knife with a bent blade?”
“Maybe it got that way because of something he did with it. I’ve seen acutely bent blade tips in stabbings when the blade tip strikes bone.”
“Was anybody stabbed?”
“She wasn’t.”
“Didn’t look to me the other two were,” Marino says.
“I haven’t gotten there yet.”
“There’s no blood on their backs, no indication they have other injuries. I think he cut their throats and that was it,” he says.
“That was enough.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“This second incision is five inches and one-quarter and I’m thinking it was inflicted from in front. He was facing her.”
I show him the deep cut on her left index finger, across the first knuckle.
“Like this.” I get up to show him. “The first incision is when my back’s to him and I’m turning around.”
I act it out.
“I hate it when you treat yourself like an anatomical doll. It gives me the creeps,” Marino says.
“Then I’m going to grab the left side of my neck while drops of blood are falling straight down, perpendicular to the floor.” I show him. “Those drops are perfectly round like the ones close to the refrigerator door and on the tops of her shoes. Now I’m facing my attacker and he cuts again, cutting my left index finger. I’m still upright but moving this way.”
I step to the right of the refrigerator.
“Then I’m facing forward, toward the counter, possibly leaning against it, my hands on my neck.”
“Maybe he held her there.” Marino looks at the waves of arterial blood on the cabinets. “Maybe he had his hand on her back until she started getting too weak to run or struggle. I’m thinking he might have held the other two down. They’re bleeding to death at their desks and he pushes his hand against their backs so they can’t get up. It would only take a few minutes. It would explain why there’s blood only on their desks and under them. Most people would try to get up but they didn’t.”
“We’ll see when I look at them,” I reply. “Here’s the arterial pattern on the cupboard, and a mist of it on the glass from her strangling on her blood, forcibly exhaling it because her trachea is severed. She’s aspirating blood. It’s accumulating in her airway and lungs and now she’s going down and here’s the pattern on the cabinets beneath the stove and the sink.”
I point out waves of blood drips, the crests and troughs from blood spurting in rhythm to the beating of her heart. Large drops of dried blood with long tails trickle down, across a cabinet, up and down and up, getting weaker and lower.
“She’s on her knees,” I continue, “explaining the spatter here on the floor from blood dripping into blood and the blood soaked into the knees and lower area of her pants legs. And this puddle indicates where she died but not in this position.”
I look up as Lucy walks swiftly through the front office, carrying a tower server through the entryway, pushing through the doors with her foot. Marino moves the plastic ruler, using it as a scale in photographs he takes, and I show him smeared areas of blood on the floor that tell me the most important part of the story as I hear the loud rumble of Lucy’s SUV and then she’s driving away fast.
“Blood already had begun to clot when she was moved.” I point out a red outlined circle and a smear, a distinctive pattern shaped like a big tadpole. “What you’re seeing is a drop of blood that was coagulating when something was dragged over it and that happened after some time had passed. There are more of these smeared clots. Here and here and here.”
He begins taking photographs of them, placing the labeled scale next to each one.
“I wonder if you’re picking up on the same thing I am,” he says. “The way her arms are resting on her belly like she’s sleeping. It reminds me of Gail Shipton.”
“It’s similar.”
“Someone posing the body in a peaceful position. Almost like he felt bad about it.”
“He looked her in the face when he cut her throat a second time. He didn’t feel bad about it,” I reply. “I think you’re going to find this isn’t her fleece.” I remove the thermometer from under her arm, noting her black padded push-up bra.
Her chest has a wide circumference but her breasts are small.