and there we are and she joins us. Ignoring me like I wasn’t there. Focused only on you. Right. What a coincidence.”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“Just like she’s happened to show up everywhere else the two of you have fucked each other, Carrie.”
“You want to talk a health threat?”
“You mean you?”
“Jealousy. It’s toxic.”
“How about lying, which is all you ever do. Over and over again.”
“You need to start putting this on every time you go out, even on overcast days in the dead of winter.” The viscous translucent lotion Carrie dribbles into her palm looks like semen. “And you say fuck too much. Vulgarity is inversely proportionate to intelligence and facility with languages. Profuse swearing is generally associated with a low IQ, a limited vocabulary and uncontrollable hostility.”
“Are you listening to me? Because I’m not kidding.” Lucy seems to vibrate with emotion, with fury and pain.
“How about a back rub? I promise you’ll feel better.”
“I’m done with your lying! Your cheating and stealing credit!” Lucy is crying. “Every shitty thing you do! You don’t know what it is to love anybody. You aren’t capable of it!”
Carrie is completely calm no matter what is happening or said, her attention flicking from one concealed camera to another like an exotic reptile reading the air with its forked tongue.
“You’re a cheater-whore!”
“Someday I’ll remind you what you said. And you might wish you hadn’t.” Carrie holds up her hand with a dollop of lotion, smiles brightly.
“I’m scared.” Lucy glares at her, the veins standing out in her neck.
Carrie begins rubbing the lotion on herself, slowly, salaciously on her face, her neck. She clicks her tongue at Lucy as if she’s a dog, waving the bottle of lotion at her as if it’s a bone.
“Come. I’ll put it on you. I’ll rub it in the way you like.” She rapidly rubs her palms together. “I’ll warm my hands and drive my magic potion into your skin. Sort of an improvised nanotechnology.”
“Stay away from me!” Lucy furiously wipes tears with the back of her hand, and suddenly the video stops.
I try to rewind it but I can’t. I can’t replay it. I can’t do anything to it at all.
The icons are inert. When I click on the link in my text messages nothing happens.
Then just as suddenly the link isn’t there anymore, as if I deleted any trace of it from my messages. But I certainly didn’t. The recording has vanished before my eyes like a disturbing dream. It’s gone as if it was imagined, and I look around the foyer at the dark dried blood, the shattered glass, the gory area on the floor where the body had been. My attention stops on the upright ladder.
Fiberglass, rubber feet, four steps and a platform on top, perfectly centered, and that begins to bother me like many details in this case. The ladder is set up directly under the light fixture, which at some point shattered over the marble floor. If Chanel really lost her balance I would have expected the ladder to slide, possibly to tilt and tumble over as she fell. I scan feathery marks made by her bloody hair at the perimeter of the putrid crazed blackish mess where her upper body had been. It appears that at some point she moved her head.
Or someone moved it.
We’ve found no footprints, handprints, nothing that might suggest the presence of a second person including the housekeeper who discovered the body. I recall the bottoms of Chanel’s bare feet were completely clean. Once she was down, she stayed down. She didn’t step in her own blood. It doesn’t appear anybody did, and then I begin looking harder at a scene that is increasingly suspicious as I listen for Marino, waiting for him to come back so we can check on Lucy. I halfway expect another alert tone on my phone, another video link to land, and I keep hoping Lucy will call me. I text her at the same time I carefully scan the foyer, focusing on areas of clean white marble, looking for any indication that someone may have washed the floor in an attempt to alter the scene, to stage it.
We haven’t yet checked for latent blood, for a trace residue that might have been left if blood is washed away and we no longer can see it without chemical assistance. I’m not sure the police were going to bother since they seem convinced the death is an accident, and I crouch down by my scene case and open it again.
I find the bottle of reagent. I shake it and start spraying areas of the floor that appear clean. Instantly a rectangular shape and swipe marks fluoresce a vivid blue just inches from the decomposing blood where the body had been. The shape was made by something manufactured, possibly a bucket it occurs to me, and that and other shapes are eerily vivid on the white marble.
Darkness isn’t required for this particular chemical, and sunlight coming through the transom and the ambient illumination don’t interfere with the sapphire blue luminescence. I see it plainly as I notice a pattern of elongated droplets, some as small as a pinhead, what looks like back spatter that impacted at an acute angle. Medium velocity. What I associate with beatings.
I closely inspect a blue mist near where the head had been. Possibly expirated blood, and I think of the missing front tooth I recovered when I first got here. Chanel would have been bleeding inside her mouth, and when she was down on the floor, unconscious and dying, she was exhaling blood mixed with air. It appears someone wiped up this area of the floor, attempting to eradicate anything that might not be consistent with an accidental death.
That’s what it’s looking like but I need to be conservative and cautious. There could be other explanations such as a false positive chemical reaction to something other than blood. Or even if it is nonvisible blood it could have been on the floor for a while. It might be completely unrelated to Chanel Gilbert’s death. But I don’t believe it.
Next I conduct a quick and easy presumptive test, moistening a swab with distilled water, gently rubbing a small area of the rectangular shape that is fluorescing blue. Then I drip a phenolphthalein solution and hydrogen peroxide onto the swab and instantly it turns pink, which is positive for blood. Next I take photographs using a plastic ruler as a scale.
“Marino?” I look for him.
The house is empty except for the two of us. Hyde, the gray-haired Cambridge officer and the state trooper are en route to Dunkin’ Donuts or headed who knows where. I detect sounds in the area of the kitchen. Then I hear a door shut, the thudding distant and muffled, possibly downstairs, and that’s perplexing. I could have sworn everyone was gone, that no one is left on the property except Marino and me. Maybe I’m mistaken, and I listen. I detect more movement in the kitchen area.
“Marino?” I call out loudly. “Is that you?”
“No it’s the boogeyman.” I can’t see him, only hear him, and now the sounds are coming from the hallway beyond the staircase.
“Are you sure there’s nobody here besides us?” I ask
