Berger shuffles through photographs and finds the one of Bray’s green satin blouse and black underwire bra on the floor several feet from the bed.
“This close to the bed and we begin finding brain tissue.” I keep deciphering the gory hieroglyphics.
“He places her body on the bed,” Berger interpolates. “Versus forcing her on it. Question is, is she still conscious when he gets her on the bed?”
“I really don’t think so.” I point out tiny bits of blackened tissue adhering to the headboard, the walls, a bedside lamp, the ceiling over the bed. “Brain tissue. She doesn’t know what’s going on anymore. That’s just an opinion,” I offer.
“Still alive?”
“She’s still bleeding out.” I indicate dense black areas of the mattress. “That’s not an opinion. That’s a fact. She still has a blood pressure, but it’s very unlikely she’s conscious.”
“Thank God.” Berger has gotten out her camera and begins taking photographs. I can tell she is skilled and has been properly trained. She walks out of the room and starts shooting as she comes back in, recreating what I have just walked her through and capturing it on film. “I’ll get Escudero back here and videotape it,” she lets me know.
“The cops videoed it.”
“I know,” she replies as the flash goes off again and again. She doesn’t care. Berger is a perfectionist. She wants it done her way. “I’d love to have you on tape explaining all this, but can’t do it.”
She can’t, not unless she wants opposing counsel to have access to the same tape. Based on the resounding absence of note-taking, I am certain that she doesn’t want Rocky Caggiano to have access to a single wordwritten or spokenthat goes beyond what is on my standard reports. Her caution is extreme. I am shaded by suspicions that I have a hard time taking seriously. It really hasn’t penetrated that anyone might seriously think I murdered the woman whose blood is all around us and under our feet.
BERGER AND I FINISH WITH THE BEDROOM. NEXT WE explore other areas of the house that I paid little if any attention to when I was working the scene. I did go through the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom. I always do that. What people keep to alleviate bodily discomforts tells quite a story. I know who has migraines or mental illness or is obsessive about health. I know that Bray’s chemicals of choice, for example, were Valium and Ativan. I found hundreds of pills that she had put in Nuprin and Tylenol PM bottles. She had a small amount of BuSpar, too. Bray liked sedatives. She craved soothing. Berger and I explore a guest bedroom down the hall. It is a room I have never stepped inside, and unsurprisingly, it is unlived-in. It isn’t even furnished, but instead is cluttered with boxes that Bray apparently never unpacked.
“Are you getting the sensation that she wasn’t planning on staying here long?” Berger is beginning to talk to me as if I am part of her prosecution team, her second seat in the trial.
“Because I sure am. And you don’t take on a major position in a police department without assuming you’re going to stick it out for at least a few years. Even if the job is nothing but a stepping stone.”
I look around inside the bathroom and note there is no toilet paper, no tissues, not even soap. But what I find inside the medicine cabinet surprises me. “Ex-Lax,” I announce. “At least a dozen boxes.”
Berger appears in the doorway. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she says. “Maybe our vain friend had an eating disorder.”
It is not uncommon with people who suffer from bulimia to use laxatives to purge themselves after bingeing. I lift the toilet seat and find evidence of vomit that has splashed up on the inside of the rim and the bowl. It is a reddish color. Bray supposedly ate pizza before she died, and I recall that she had very little stomach contents: traces of ground meat and vegetables.
“If someone threw up after eating and then died maybe a half hour or hour later, would you expect his stomach to be totally empty?” Berger follows what I am piecing together.