“How long were you at the hospital?” I asked.
“Oh, a long time. I had to have surgery, because I had severed a bunch of tendons. I wasn’t ready to go home until about ten or eleven o’clock the next morning; then we couldn’t find the car. So by the time we talked to the hospital security people and did the police report-they just took the report by phone-and hired a taxi to come home, it was early afternoon on Saturday. We were all exhausted.
“My parents put me to bed, then they stayed up talking for a while. I was really excited, because I thought they were getting back together. Then when I woke up, late on Saturday, my mother told me that Gwendolyn had been murdered, and that my father didn’t kill her, but he would be blamed. She said that if anyone ever asked me, my father had been home with us all evening. I guess I knew right at that moment that we would only have a little time together. There wasn’t any way that things were ever going to be okay again. Maybe I should have told the truth to the police, but I loved my father-I had figured that out that night, when I got hurt, that even if I was angry with him about some things, I loved him. If he were alive right now,” he said, his voice breaking, “I would lie for him again.”
Neither one of us said anything. I could tell that his story didn’t sit well with Rachel, but she didn’t criticize him. I sat trying to imagine what it would have been like to be an eleven-year-old boy in that situation.
“Rachel,” I asked, “wouldn’t his hand print have remained in the blood on the sheet?”
“It probably was there,” she said, “and might still be on the sheet if they’ve kept it. But as I said, the scene was disturbed. The housekeeper and several other people-including Richmond-were leaning on or kneeling on the bed to look at the victim. It may have gone unrecognized after that.”
Travis drew a deep breath and said, “So, back to distraction. What have you got to show us, Rachel?”
Rachel pulled out one of the copies of the crime scene photos. It was a sharp image in black and white-too sharp.
“That’s an actual print, not a photocopy,” I said.
She smiled. “Switched them on old Richmond. I’ll give these back to him when we’re done with them.”
“Rachel-”
“Hell, he’s had over a dozen years to look at these things. If he hasn’t memorized them by now, he’s a bigger jerk than I think he is.”
Travis was half looking at it, half looking away.
As crime scene photos go, it wasn’t one of the more gory ones I’ve seen. It was a shot taken inside Gwendolyn DeMont’s bedroom, from across the room, looking toward the bed. The body was not uncovered; there was form under a single, bloodstained sheet. A pillow lay across the face.
Rachel looked at it dispassionately. “There’s a lamp here where your dad said he reached for one.”
She handed the photo toward him, and when he shrank back from it, she gave it to me. She moved on to the next photo, which was taken directly over the bed. It was easy to see why Arthur knew his wife was dead. The one part of her that could be seen between pillow and sheet was her throat, which lay slashed open like a strange dark mouth.
“That was probably one of the last blows,” Rachel said. “Not much bleeding for that type of cut, no arterial spray. I think she was already dead when the killer got around to this slice. The ones over her chest and stomach bled more.”
I made myself ask, “What about spatter patterns?”
“That’s some of the best evidence-Richmond and the housekeeper didn’t touch the walls and ceiling.” She thumbed through the photos and handed me several.
“Even though there isn’t blood all over the place, you can tell that her killer really went at it,” she said. “There’s a pattern to the spray-it’s called cast-off blood, because it was projected or cast from an object, not the site of the wound; it came from the weapon, not directly from the victim, like this arterial spurting, here and here.” She pointed to large spots with long drips running down from them.
“Look at this, then,” she said, showing me other, finer drops. “A bloodstain specialist could give you a good estimate of how far, how fast, and at what angle this blood traveled from the knife, and would have been able to count the blows delivered.
“See the way the spray arcs up the walls, even to the ceiling? Look at the close-ups of the spatter-at the shape of the blood drops. See the tails on these drops? They’re more elongated as they’re more distant from the source. And they indicate two directions-up and back down. He was really putting some swing into it.” She demonstrated with a closed fist, making a motion that would bring a knife up high above the killer and back down in a powerful sweeping curve. “I’d say this killer was pissed.”
She handed me other photos, not as close up as the previous ones. “Some of the spray is blocked,” she said, pointing to places on the photos-on the ceiling and the wall nearest the foot of the bed-where there seemed to be “shadows,” or areas where something blocked the spray of blood. “See here?” she said, “and here?”
I nodded, and tried not to think about throwing up.
“There was some spatter on the floor, but according to the reports, this housekeeper had started cleaning up before the scene was secured. Mopped the floor and opened the windows to let some air in. Neither action helped out as far as preserving evidence goes, but the blood traces were found with chemicals used by the lab guys. There was a single bloody footprint impression found on the farther side of the sheets, probably made when he got up off the bed. And in the hallway going to the front door, they did find a series of very faint bloody footprints. So there were probably footprints in the room before she started mopping.”
“From a bare foot?” Travis asked.
“No, the sole of a man’s shoe.”
“So the killer was male?” I asked.
“Yes, probably,” she said.
“What size shoe?”
She looked through the file, then said, “Eleven.”
“A big man, then.”
“Possibly. Most men wear between an eight and a ten-and-a-half.”
“Do you know your father’s shoe size, Travis?”
He shook his head. “I could probably find out.”
I was trying to picture the killer’s actions from what she had told us. “He stood on the bed?”
“No. I think the killer straddled her, pinned her arms down with his knees-there was some bruising there-muffled her screams with the pillow-used his left hand to hold the pillow on her face. Her hands were beneath the covers, no chance to scrape or claw him-nothing found under her nails.
“Killer is probably right-handed-see how the left arm blocked some spray? So did his body, as he bent over her. Wounds are all in the victim’s upper body. The autopsy studies of the wounds also indicate a righty doing the work.”
“Attacker was above the bedding the whole time?” I asked. “No sign of rape or molestation by her attacker?”
“They did all the usual tests during the autopsy-no recent sexual activity.” She handed over the next one, which showed the body without the pillow or sheet.
“Excuse me,” I heard Travis say weakly, and he hurried out of the room. I was regretting the fact that the house had only one bathroom. I winced and pushed the photos back at her.
“Sorry,” she said, but there was an unrepentant gleam in her eye.
“So do you think Arthur told him the truth?”
She lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know. It’s certainly possible. I guess the old cop in me ain’t dead yet, because it pisses me off that these people never spoke up. I guess it never occurred to any of them that someone got away with murdering this woman.”
“I think you’re wrong about that, Rachel. It probably occurred to them every day, and they felt guilty. I think that’s what kept Briana and Arthur apart all those years: Gwendolyn’s ghost.”