“Me,” Marino was saying, “I think it wasn’t any fun unless he chased her. He could’ve grabbed her, killed her down there in the living room, but that would’ve ruined the sport. He was probably smiling the whole time, her bleeding and screaming and begging. When she finally makes it in here, she collapses. The gig’s up. No fun anymore. He ends it.”
The room was wintry, decorated in yellow as pale as January sunshine. The hardwood floor was black near the twin bed, and there were black streaks and splashes on the whitewashed wall. In the scene photographs Beryl was on her back, her legs spread, her arms up around her head, her face turned toward the curtained window. She was nude. When I had first studied the photographs I could not tell what she looked like or even the color of her hair. All I saw was red. The police had found a pair of bloody khaki slacks near her body. Her blouse and undergarments were missing.
“The cabdriver you mentioned — Hunnel or whatever his name was — did he remember what Beryl was wearing when he picked her up at the airport?” I asked.
“It was dark,” Marino replied. “He wasn’t sure but thought she was wearing pants and a jacket. We know she was wearing pants when she was attacked, the khaki ones we found in here. There was a matching jacket on a chair inside her bedroom. I don’t think she changed clothes when she got home, just tossed her jacket on the chair. Whatever else she was wearing–a blouse, her underclothes–the killer took them.”
“A souvenir,” I thought aloud.
Marino was staring at the dark-stained floor where her body had been found.
He said, “The way I’m seeing it, he has her down in here, takes her clothes off, rapes her or tries to.
Then he stabs her and nearly cuts her head off. A damn shame about her PERK,” he added, referring to her Physical Evidence Recovery Kit, swabs from which were negative for sperm.
“Guess we can kiss DNA good-bye.”
“Unless some of the blood we’re analyzing is his,” I replied. “Otherwise, yes. Forget DNA.”
“And no hairs,” he said. “None except a few consistent with hers.”
The house was so quiet our voices were unnervingly loud. Everywhere I looked I saw the ugly stains. I saw the images in my mind: the stab wounds, the hilt marks, the savage wound in her neck gaping like a yawning red mouth. I went out into the hall. The dust was irritating my lungs. It was hard to breathe. I said, “Show me where you found her gun.”
When the police had arrived at the scene that night, they’d found Beryl’s .380 automatic on the kitchen counter near the microwave oven. The gun was loaded, the safety on. The only partial prints the lab could identify were her own.
“She kept the box of cartridges inside a table by her bed,” Marino said. “Probably kept the gun there, too. I figure she carried her bags upstairs, unpacked and dumped most of her clothes in the bathroom hamper, and put her suitcases back in the bedroom closet. At some point during all this, she got out her piece. A sure sign she was antsy as hell. What you wanta bet she checked out every room with it before she started winding down?”
“I know I would have,” I commented.
He looked around the kitchen. “So maybe she came in here for a snack.”
“She may have thought about a snack, but she didn’t eat one,” I answered. “Her gastric contents were about fifty milliliters, or less than two ounces, of dark brown fluid. Whatever she ate last was fully digested by the time she died–or better put, by the time she was attacked. Digestion shuts down during acute stress or fear. If she’d just eaten a snack when the killer got to her, the food wouldn’t have cleared her stomach.”
“Not much to munch on anyway,” he said as if this were an important point to make as he opened the refrigerator door.
Inside we found a shriveled lemon, two sticks of butter, a block of moldy Havarti cheese, condiments, and a bottle of tonic water. The freezer was a little more promising, but not much.