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I said, “So nothing like a baseball bat.”
“No way, Alex. A bat would’ve shattered the skull like an eggshell. Something smaller and lighter but dense.”
“Maybe one of those retractable batons.”
“Sure. Or a piece of pipe. Though we found no metallic residue so the hard plastic of a baton is a possibility.”
Milo said, “Or a good old-fashioned leather sap.”
Basia said, “I saw a few of those in Warsaw, not yet, here.”
“Last one I saw was at the academy museum,” he said, tenting his fingers. “Guy’s snoozing, one good whack, lights out, he’s hauled out to the street and is made to go airborne.”
“You do have a way with words. In terms of no blood on the couch, it’s also possible bleeding didn’t begin until he was up on his feet and gravity took over. It really is a small wound for something that lethal. The cause of death was compression, not blood loss.”
I said, “Most of the blood in the kitchen and on the driveway was his but not all.”
Basia faux-pouted. “There goes my drama.”
She thumbed pages in the file. “The blood typing is where you really got lucky. Ms. Gannett is A positive and the male victim is Opositive so drawing a distinction between them is simple. The pool around her body is hers alone. While most of the trickle in the driveway is his, a small quantity of hers is mixed in.”
I said, “It traveled on the soles of the killer’s shoes.”
“Most likely. We know it isn’t the killer’s blood—one of those slippage things you get in cuttings—because we found a third sample of blood in the kitchen and now youreallyget lucky. Also O positive so easy enough to assume it was the male victim’s. But you know me, neurotic. Lacking DNA data and with the certainty of a third person present, I ran some subtests and found that the second O-positive sample had different HLA characteristics than that of the male victim. We double-checked the knife to make sure we hadn’t missed slippage blood and confirmed there was none. So your bad guy likely brushed against something in the house before hauling the male victim outside. I’ve already sent the techs back to check, instructed them to concentrate on the kitchen. Hold on.”
She punched a preset on her desk phone. “Hello, Roosevelt? This is Dr. Lopatinski…already? Wow, that’s great. Take tons of photos and send them to me as soon as you can. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
She laid the phone in its cradle, flashed the full-on face-splitting smile. “They just found the point of contact. Not in the kitchen, on the wayoutof the kitchen. An edge of the metal insulation strip around the door is cracked and the edges are burred—tiny metal thorns and on several of them was O-positive blood and I’ll lay odds the HLA will confirm that all or most of it is your perpetrator’s.”
Milo said, “Not neurotic. Brilliant.”
“You’re too kind, Lieutenant.”
I said, “The male victim is a small guy but factoring in deadweight and distance, we’re talking about considerable effort to transport him a hundred or so feet. You’re moving quickly in the dark, it’s easy to brush up against something.”
Without consulting the file, Basia said, “He’s five-five, a hundred thirty-one pounds. Toting him would be about the same as carrying a medium-sized woman.”
Milo said, “Bride over the threshold. If they still do that.”
The three of us, unmarried. No one with a ready answer.
I said, “Adrenaline would help but so would superior strength.”
Milo said, “Hoffgarden.”
Basia said, “Who?”
He explained briefly.
She said, “A weight lifter? Piece of cake. He could toss it at the van like a used tissue.”
Milo said, “In terms of I.D., any way to get a facial reconstruction?”
“Sorry, no. The facial bones were pulverized by the collision and many were detached. Some actually fell out of the wounds when I was working—little splinters and chips. I sent radiographs to the three artists I use and all of them agreed there was too much damage to create anything useful. There are people out there who’d claim they could reconstruct but I wouldn’t trust them or what they produced.”
“Anything from the organs and the toxicology?”
“Ms. Gannett had what looks to be partially digested chicken salad in her stomach plus a small amount of pale alcoholic liquid, probably white wine. Her blood alcohol came in at .03, which is basicallynothing. Your male victim had some sort of vegetable concoction in his gut and the same beverage but a lot more of it. His B.A. was .16. At his weight, I’d guess at least three glasses, though people differ in their ability to metabolize. No drugs in either of them.”
