“This is the first blood,” Marino said, looking at the dried spatters on the wall. “She got cut right here, the first cut.
I figure she’s running like hell and he’s slashing.”
I envisioned the cuts on Beryl’s face, arms, and hands.
“My guess,” he went on, “is he cut her left arm or back or face at this point. The blood on the wall here’s cast off from blood slinging off the blade. He’d already cut her at least once, the blade was bloody, and when he swung again drops flew off and hit the wall.”
The stains were elliptical, about six millimeters in diameter, and became increasingly elongated the farther they arched left of the doorframe. The spread of drops spanned at least ten feet. The assailant had been swinging with the vigor of a hard-hitting squash player. I felt the emotion of the crime. It wasn’t anger. It was worse than that. Why did she let him in!
“Based on the location of this spatter, I’m thinking the drone was right about here,” Marino said, positioning himself several yards back from the doorway and slightly to the left of it. “He swings, cuts her again, and as the blade follows through, blood flies off and hits the wall. The pattern, as you can see, starts here.”
He gestured toward the highest drops, which were almost level with the top of his head. “Then sweeps down, stopping several inches from the floor.”
He paused, his eyes challenging me. “You examined her. What do you think? He’s right-handed or left-handed?”
The cops always wanted to know that. No matter how often I told them it was anybody’s guess, they still asked.
“It’s not possible to tell from this blood spatter,” I said, the inside of my mouth dry and tasting like dust. “It depends entirely on where he was standing in relation to her. As for the stab injuries to her chest, they’re slightly angled from left to right. That might make him left-handed. But again, it depends on where he was in relation to her.”
“I just think it’s interesting almost all her defense injuries are located on the left side of her body.
You know, she’s running. He’s coming at her from the left instead of the right. Makes me suspicious he’s left-handed.”
“It all depends on the victim and assailant’s positions in relation to each other,” I repeated impatiently.
“Yo,” he muttered shortly. “Everything depends on something.”
Through the doorway was a hardwood floor. A runway had been chalked off to enclose drips of blood leading to a stairway some ten feet to our left. Beryl had fled this way and up the stairs. Her shock and terror were greater
than her pain. On the left wall at almost every step was a bloody smear made by her cut fingers reaching out for balance and dragging across the paneling.
The black spots were on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling. Beryl had run to the end of the upstairs hall, where she was momentarily cornered. In this area there was a great deal of blood. The chase resumed after she apparently fled from the end of the hall into her bedroom, where she may have eluded him by climbing over the queen-size bed as he came around it. At this point, either she threw her briefcase at him or, more likely, it was on top of the bed and was knocked off. The police found it on the rug, open and upside down like a tent, papers scattered nearby, including the photocopies of the letters she had written from Key West. “What other papers did you find in here?”
I asked. “Receipts, a couple tourist guides, including a brochure with a street map,” Marino answered. “I’ll make copies for you if you want.”
“Please,” I said.
“Also found a stack of typed pages on her dresser there.”
He pointed. “Probably what she was writing in the Keys. A lot of notes scribbled in the margins in pencil. No prints worth nothing, a few smudges and a few partials that are hers.”
Her bed was stripped to the bare mattress, its bloodstained quilted spread and sheets having been sent to the lab. She had been slowing down, losing motor control, getting weak. She had stumbled back out into the hall, where she’d fallen over an Oriental prayer rug I remembered from the scene photographs. There were bloody drag marks and handprints on the floor. Beryl had crawled into the guest bedroom beyond the bath, and it was here, finally, that she died.