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She doesn’t ask. She finds a sterile sheet and spreads it as I get out Bruno’s clothing. The two of us lower him onto the sheet. He’s off to one side, with a few feet of the sheet empty to his right. That’s where I lay his clothing, as if setting it out for a paper doll, each piece placed beside the appropriate part of his body.
“I’m lining up his injuries,” I say. “There’s a lot of blood on his clothing. I’m looking for any place he might have blood that doesn’t seem to have come from his own wounds. Some of it may be transfer, from when Lilith found and moved him, but if I have a limited number of areas to work with, I can test for blood type.”
“Because Denise, Penny, and Bruno all have different ones.”
I nod. We knew Bruno’s and Penny’s from their intake forms, but we’d retested Bruno’s to confirm. We’d also tested Denise’s. While we may not be able to match DNA easily here, you can test blood type with a kit bought at Walmart. The trickier part comes with taking a sample from clothing to test. I have what I need for that, though. I just can’t go running an entire bloodied shirt through it. I need small samples for discrete testing.
We work together and start at his head. Lots of scalp bleeding means that the massive bloodstains on the top of his shirt are his. Are theyallhis? Again, while it’s possible to test that, it’s not easily done under these conditions, so I set that aside. I can come back to it if I need to.
Some of the blood on his torso could also be from his head wound, splattered as he fell. We know from the blood and hair on the rock that his head was bleeding at that point. April and I have a bit of, well, I hesitate to call it fun, but there is a bit of mental puzzle work there that we both enjoy, setting up makeshift models and figuring out the pattern of his fall based on his injuries, which then gives us an idea which blood droplets come from that.
He also has cuts and scrapes from the fall, but none of those tore his clothing, so all that blood is inside his clothing. Then there’s his left leg, where the compound fracture soaked the pant leg with blood.
Once we have removed all that, we are left with three potential spots that might not be his blood. One is a spray of small droplets across his shoulder. The other is a single drop on his hip. The third, which we’d initially mistaken for dirt, is a smear of blood on the right knee of his jeans.
I start with the droplets. Thinking of Denise and how she died, that seems the most likely. When I test it, though, the blood type matches Bruno’s. It must be spray from the headinjury during his fall. On to the drop on his hip. That one is also his type. Of course, it is also possible that these two came from an unidentified third party—I’m testing only blood type, and his is a common one—but the point for now is that it isn’t Penny’s or Denise’s.
Then comes the smeared patch at his knee. That one is tougher, because there’s also dirt there. Dirt on both knees, in fact. That had been there when Lilith brought him, so it isn’t from his “fake” fall. It could be from work earlier that day, though I don’t know how often an engineer needs to get down and dirty on a site, especially that far into the build. All this should be irrelevant. Who cares how he got dirt on his knees?
I do. Because he also got blood on his knee. And that blood type? It matches Denise’s.
April and I are rewrapping Bruno’s body when the door slaps open and boot steps thump through the waiting room. The doorknob jiggles. Then it jiggles again as someone heaves on it.
“It’s locked,” April says. “Do you have a medical emergency?”
“It’s Gunnar.”
“That does not answer my question.”
I shake my head and open the door. Gunnar walks in. His gaze flits to Bruno’s wrapped body and then back to me.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Gunnar says.
“Can I help you?” I say.
He grins. “The question, as always, is whether I can help you.”
I sigh. “Do you have something for me, Gunnar?”
He starts to answer. Then he looks at April. Back to me. Back to April.
“Hey, are you guys, like, sisters or something? Well, half sisters.”
That has April tensing, her voice brittle as she says, “We’re full sisters.”
“Really? Huh.” Another close look before he eases back. “Cool. Anyway, I need to talk to Casey here.”
“Detective Butler,” April says.
I motion at the rear door. “Come on, Gunnar. Let’s take this out back.”
Before we leave, he turns back to April. “If you get lonely while you’re here—”
I give him a push toward the door.
“I’m just saying, if your sister wants to play doctor—”
Another, harder shove as I open the door and prod him through it.
