“Jesus. There was blood everywhere,” Colin answered. “Her hands were like this.” He takes his hands off the wheel and tucks them under his neck. “Maybe a reflex to move them to her throat after it was cut or to tuck up in a fetal position as she died. Or they might have been positioned like that by the killer, who I believe spent some time staging the bodies, making a mockery of them. Point is, her hands were covered with blood.”
“Anything in the bathroom to make you think she might have cut herself earlier?” Marino asks.
“No. But one of their neighbors said in a statement that Mrs. Jordan was out in the garden the afternoon before the murders, presumably doing winter pruning,” Colin continues, as I envision the dormant garden behind the Jordans’ house, the branch stubs, water sprouts, and sucker growth I noted in photographs I just saw.
Gloria Jordan wasn’t much of a gardener, or she hadn’t gotten very far with her pruning when she cut her thumb and had to stop.
“The guy next door who had a poodle?” Marino asks. “Lenny Casper, the neighbor who called the police the morning of the murders after noticing the busted glass in the kitchen door?”
“Yes, I believe that’s the name. As I recall, he could see the Jordans’ backyard from several of his windows, and he noticed Mrs. Jordan working in her garden earlier that day, during the afternoon. The theory that makes the most sense is she cut herself while pruning. The blood drips were left by her when she came back in from the garden after she cut her thumb. My guess is she was holding her hand up and it dripped in the pattern you observed in the scene photographs. She walked back into the house and dripped blood on the floor of the sunporch, and a few drops were found in the hallway in the area of the guest bath.”
“That’s possible,” I suppose dubiously.
“It was a vital wound,” he adds. “You’ll see that in photos and the histology. She had a blood pressure, she had tissue response, when it was inflicted.”
“Maybe so,” I reply, but I have my doubts. “Why no Band-Aid? No dressing of any kind?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was a little odd. But people do odd things. In fact, they do them more often than not.”
“Maybe she wanted the air to get at it,” Marino shouts. “Some people do that.”
“She was married to a doctor, who likely knew that infection is the most common complication of an open wound,” I reply. “In fact, if she’d not had a tetanus shot in recent memory and cut herself on a garden tool, that should have been in the equation, too.”
“There’s just no other logical explanation for the blood on the sunporch and in the garden,” Colin says. “It’s definitely hers. So obviously something happened that caused her to bleed, and it’s not related to her being stabbed to death, most likely in her sleep. She and her husband both had anxiolytics, sedatives, on board. Clonazepam. In other words, Klonopin, which is used to relieve anxiety or panic or as a muscle relaxant. Some people use it as a sleep aid,” he explains, for Marino’s benefit. “The hope is the Jordans never knew what hit them.”
“Was it your theory at the time that her husband was killed first?” I ask.
“It’s not possible to know the order they were killed, but logic would suggest the killer would get him first, then her, then the children.”
“Her husband’s stabbed to death right next to her and it didn’t wake her up? Must have been a lot of clonazepam,” I comment.
“I’m guessing it happened incredibly fast. A blitz attack,” he says.
“What about her shoes? If she was bleeding while walking back inside the house earlier in the day, it’s likely she dripped blood on whatever shoes she was wearing in the garden. Anybody think to check for bloody shoes?”
“I think you got a shoe fetish,” Marino says, to the back of my head.
“Since she had only a nightgown on and was barefoot when she was murdered,” Colin replies, “shoes weren’t something anybody was interested in.”
“And at some point earlier she left blood on the sunporch floor and in the hallway?” I ask, as we pass the greenhouse with its diapered shrubs and potted trees in front. “It was there for the rest of the day and night, and no one cleaned it up?”
“They probably didn’t use the sunporch much in the winter, and the tile was dark red. The flooring in the hallway was dark hardwood. She might not have noticed or probably just forgot,” he says. “I do know for a fact the DNA is hers. It was her blood,” he emphasizes. “I think you’ll agree she wasn’t dripping blood downstairs and outside in the early-morning hours when the murders took place. There is every reason to believe she never got out of bed.”
“I agree it doesn’t seem possible she was bleeding on the sunporch and in her backyard, and then climbed back in bed to be stabbed multiple times while an intruder was inside her house murdering her entire family,” I reply, as I’m reminded of the obvious pitfalls of ending an investigation before it’s begun because everyone involved believes the killer has been caught.
When Lola Daggette was discovered washing bloody clothing in her shower at the halfway house, assumptions were easy, and what difference did it make if they were wrong? Blood on the sunporch floor or a cut on Gloria Jordan’s thumb or the burglar alarm not being set or unidentified fingerprints didn’t matter anymore. Lola’s far-fetched lies and fantastic alibis, and the case was over, the killer tried and convicted and on death row. There are no more questions when people already have the answers.
20
We gather crime scene cases and personal-protection equipment from the back of the Land Rover and follow the concrete walkway through blooming shrubs and flower beds, their colorful blossoms washed out by the glare. Inside the checkpoint of the white-columned brick building, Officer Macon and the warden are waiting for us.
“An unhappy time, I’m afraid,” Tara Grimm greets us, and today her demeanor matches her name.
She is unsmiling, her dark eyes unfriendly when they fix on me, her mouth firmly set. In frumpy contrast to her elegant black dress from the day before, she wears a pastel blue skirt suit, a loud flower-printed blouse with a looping bow tie, and toeless flats.
“I guess you’re with Dr. Dengate,” she says to me, and I sense disappointment. I detect hostility. “I thought you’d gone back to Boston.”
She assumed I was far north of here or at least on my way, and I can see in her eyes and the expression on her face that her mind is making rapid recalculations, as if my presence somehow changes what might happen next.
“This is my chief of investigative operations,” I introduce her to Marino.
“And you happened to be in Savannah for what reason?” She doesn’t even try to be gracious.
“Fishing.”
“Fishing for what?” she asks.
“Mostly I get croakers,” Marino says.
If she gets his unseemly pun, she doesn’t let on. “Well, we’re very grateful for your time and attention,” she says to Colin, as Officer Macon and two other uniformed guards inspect our crime scene cases and equipment.
When they turn their attention to the personal-protective clothing, Colin orders them to halt.
“Now, you can’t be touching that,” he says. “Unless you want your DNA on everything, and I’m guessing you don’t, since we don’t know for a fact what killed this lady.”
“Just let them on through.” The warden’s lilting voice has the iron ring of a military commander. “You come with me,” she orders Officer Macon, “and we’ll escort them over to Bravo Pod.”
“Sammy Chang with the GBI should be there,” Colin says.
“Yes, I believe that’s his name, the agent with the GBI who’s been going through the cell. Now, how do you want to do this?” she addresses Colin in a different voice altogether, as if I’m not here, as if our mission is a casual one.