“You got it.”
“Meaning, if you shone a flashlight on the latch lock from the outside, you probably could see whether it’s fastened or not?”
“Maybe.”
Those flat, unfriendly eyes again. “But only if you climbed up something to look. You couldn’t see the lock from the ground.”
“You mentioned a picnic bench,” I reminded him.
“Problem with that’s the backyard’s soggy as hell. The legs of the bench should’ve left depressions in the lawn if the guy put it up against the other windows and stood on top of it to look. I got a couple men poking around out there now. No depressions under the other two windows. Don’t look like the killer went near ’em. What it does look like is he went straight to the bathroom window down the hall.”
“Is it possible it might have been open a crack, and that’s why the killer went straight to it?”
Marino conceded, “Hey. Anything’s possible. But if it was open a crack, maybe she would’ve noticed it, too, at some point during the week.”
Maybe. Maybe not. It is easy to be observant retrospectively. But most people don’t pay that much attention to every detail of their residences, especially to rooms scarcely used.
Beneath a curtained window overlooking the street was a desk containing other numbing reminders that Lori Petersen and I were of the same profession. Scattered over the blotter were several medical journals, the Principles of Surgery and Dorland’s. Near the base of the brass gooseneck lamp were two computer diskettes. The labels were tersely dated “6/1” in felt-tip pen and numbered “I” and “II.”
They were generic double-density diskettes, IBM-compatible. Possibly they contained something Lori Petersen was working on at VMC, the medical college, where there were numerous computers at the disposal of the students and physicians. There didn’t appear to be a personal computer inside the house.
On a wicker chair in the corner between the chests of drawers and the window clothes were neatly laid: a pair of white cotton slacks, a red-and-white-striped short-sleeved shirt and a brassiere. The garments were slightly wrinkled, as if worn and left on the chair at the end of the day, the way I sometimes do when I’m too tired to hang up my clothes.
I briefly perused the walk-in closet and full bath. In all, the master bedroom was neat and undisturbed, except for the bed. By all indications, it was not part of the killer’s modus operandi to ransack or commit burglary.
Marino was watching an ID officer open the dresser drawers.
“What else do you know about the husband?” I asked him.
“He’s a grad student at Charlottesville, lives there during the week, comes home on Friday nights. Stays the weekend, then goes back to Charlottesville on Sunday night.”
“What is his discipline?”
“Literature’s what he said,” Marino replied, glancing around at everything but me. “He’s getting his Ph.D.”
“In what?”
“Literature,” he said again, slowly enunciating each syllable.
“What sort of literature?”
His brown eyes finally fixed unemphatically on me. “American’s what he told me. But I get the impression his main interest is plays. Seems he’s in one right now. Shakespeare. Hamlet, I think he said. Says he’s done a lot of acting, including some bit parts in movies shot around here, a couple of TV commercials, too.” The ID officers stopped what they were doing. One of them turned around, his brush poised in midair.
Marino pointed toward the computer diskettes on the desk and exclaimed loudly enough to grab everybody’s attention, “Looks like we’d better take a peek at what’s on these suckers. Maybe a play he’s writing, huh?”
“We can take a look at them in my office. We’ve got a couple IBM-compatible PC’s,” I offered.
“PC’s,” he drawled. “Yo. Beats the hell out of my RC: one Royal Crapola, standard issue, black, boxy, sticky keys, the whole nine yards.”
An ID officer was pulling out something from beneath a stack of sweaters in a bottom drawer, a long-bladed survival knife with a compass built into the top of the black handle and a small whetstone in a pocket on the sheath. Touching as little of it as possible, he placed it inside a plastic evidence bag.