phone conversation, nodded. “Maybe we should call and see if she’s at home.”
English turned back to the phone and dialed Leisha Hamilton’s number. The woman answered immediately. English told her he was following up some leads regarding Scott Dunn. She agreed to talk to him, launching into the story about Tim Smith that English had just heard from Jim Dunn. Tim had been coming into the restaurant where she worked, just sitting and watching her work her entire eight-hour shift. And he had been leaving notes on her car and on her apartment door. No matter what she said to him, he would not leave her alone.
“Oh, there’s something else,” she added. It seemed that her father, who lived three hours away, had visited on May 28 and she had cleaned up the house. When she vacuumed the living room floor, she moved the couch and discovered that a large piece of carpeting had been cut out, leaving the bare carpet padding.
English’s chest felt tight. He tried to free it by taking a deep breath. Why would someone remove a piece of carpet? He couldn’t think of one reason for such an act that didn’t mean trouble for Scott Dunn. Something was wrong here. “Leisha, my partner and I would like to come and take a look at the apartment. All right?”
“Sure. Whatever you want.”
“We’re on our way,” he said, nodding to White. The two grabbed their jackets from the rack and left the office, shrugging into them as they walked. They drove to the Regency Apartments, an older unit that covered about half a block. Its front was a mosaic of narrow windows, aqua-colored doors flush with the building and faded light blue siding. A small, fenced pool was next to Leisha’s unit. Number 4 was the northernmost apartment on the west-facing building. The small apartment was of the mass-produced variety popular in the sixties, with a low roof and two small windows flanking the blue wooden door.
English parked in a small area adjacent to Apartment B4, walked quickly up the short sidewalk and knocked on the door. The good-looking woman who opened the door was tall, slim and dark-haired. They stepped into a small, sparsely furnished living room. The couch sat immediately to their right, on the west wall of the tiny room. English walked across the room and, looking back at the couch, saw a tan oblong of padding underneath it, where a large chunk of the gray and green pile carpet had been removed. The thought crossed his mind that she would not have had to move the couch to see the cut-out in the carpeting. Across from the couch was a portable television on a stand and a portable stereo. A chair that matched the couch was the only other furniture in the living room. To the left was a small kitchenette, separated from the living room by a breakfast bar. The two men moved the couch and measured the area, roughly three feet by five feet, which had been cut out. A pretty big hunk of carpet, English thought.
Then his eyes opened wider. Directly in front of the stereo, the carpet was stained pink in a large, irregular pattern.
“What’s this?” White asked.
Leisha shrugged. “That was here when we moved in. I have no idea what it is. Kool-Aid, maybe?”
“Why do you think you never noticed before that the carpet had been cut?” English asked.
She shook her head. “I’ve been sleeping on the couch ever since Scott left. I’ve had sheets hanging over it, so I never noticed it.”
George White nodded amiably. “Mind if I look around the rest of the apartment?”
Leisha shrugged again and White went into the north bedroom. English glanced cursorily around the small kitchen.
“Tal! Come look at this!” White called from the bedroom.
Hearing the urgency in his partner’s voice, English hurried into the other room. He stopped just inside the doorway and stared. The room was empty. Not a stick of furniture. A few boxes, half-filled with clothes and miscellaneous items, were scattered about the floor. George White was holding the edge of a brown afghan that was spread neatly in one corner and staring at the carpet below it. English’s eyes followed White’s. A half-moon shaped piece of clean carpet, about three feet long and two feet wide, had been patched into the existing carpet in the room. Along the ragged edges of the patch, where the original carpet had been cut, were large brown splotches.
Leisha had said this was the room where she and Dunn slept on the floor. White gave the patched area a closer look, then reached down and pulled at the edge of the clean carpet. The smaller piece of carpet came loose. White peeled back a small portion of it. It was stuck to the padding with duct tape that was crusted with a large amount of a dried ruby substance. Blood?
English, his heart pounding, exchanged a meaningful look with White. Then English turned around and looked through the bedroom door to where Leisha sat on the couch, watching television as if oblivious to their presence.
“Leisha,” English called.
She appeared in the doorway.
“What is this?” English asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe some mud or something Scott tracked in.”
“How long has it been here?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t used this room since Scott left.”
“You didn’t put the afghan on the floor? You never moved the afghan or looked under it?” English persisted.
“No. I told you. I’ve been sleeping on the couch.”
“Let’s call the ID boys over here,” White said and headed for the telephone.
While English and White were waiting for an officer from LPD’s Identification Section, they examined the room in minute detail. A closer look at the bedroom wall revealed a collage of whitish smears, lighter than the surrounding wall, as if someone had tried to wash the wall and had done a poor job of it. The smears were markedly evident along the baseboard in that area, but English’s eyes followed the smears higher up the wall, where he could see red-brown specks. “Blood?” he suggested to White.
“Leisha, do you know what this is?” White asked.
Leisha walked up to the wall and looked at a brown fleck just above her eye level. “It looks like blood,” she said. “And look, there’s a hair in it.”
She volunteered that she had not noticed the spot before. She pointed to the afghan. “This is where Scott was sleeping the last time I saw him.” Her voice was as cool and as calm as if she had been telling them what she had eaten for lunch.
English stared at the woman, scrutinizing her.
English continued to track the brown specks up the wall. He could see droplets on the ceiling, too. Blood spatter? With a chill in his chest, English began to feel that something bad had happened in this room.
ID Officer Gaylon Lewis arrived and began taking photographs. White showed him the bare place in the living room where the piece of carpet had been removed and Lewis photographed that area. In the bedroom, White had replaced the corner of carpet he had pulled away from the wall so that Lewis could photograph the patch in place. Then, White pulled up the half-circle of carpet again, revealing padding underneath that bore dark stains. Duct tape had been taped to the underside of the existing carpet and to the half-circle. This was a fairly neat job and undoubtedly took some time to do. Pictures were taken of the underside of the patch of carpet and of the padding underneath. Lewis collected the duct tape for processing for latent fingerprints. Then the carpet padding and sections of
