Cruel and Unusual - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 57

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He slipped a pack of Camels from the breast pocket of his white shirt and dug a book of mate from, his faded denim jeans. A pocket watch was attached to a belt loop by a leather thong, and I noticed a number of things as he slid it out to glance at the time and then lit the cigarette. His hands trembled, his fingers were swollen, and broken blood-vessels covered his cheekbones and nose. He had no bothered to empty ashtrays, but he had collected bottles and glasses and had been careful to carry out the trash.

“This is fine. You don't, need to move anything else,” Wesley said. “If we do, we'll put it back.” “

And you said this chemical you're using won't damage anything and isn't toxic to humans?”

“No, it's not hazardous. It will leave a grainy residue similar to when salt water dries,” I said to him. “We'll do our best to clean up.”

“I really don't want to be here while you do this, Patter said, flaking a nervous drag on the cigarette. “Can you give me an approximation of how much time it will require?”

“Hopefully, no more than two hours.”

Wesley was looking around the room, and though his face was completely devoid of expression, I could imagine what was going through his mind.

I took off my coat and didn't know where to put it, while Vander opened a box of film.

“Should you finish before I get back, please shut the door and make sure it's locked. I don't have an alarm to worry about.” Potter went back out through the kitchen, and when he started his car it sounded like a diesel bus.

“It's a shame, really,” Vander said as he lifted two bottles of chemicals from a box. “This could be a very nice house. But inside it's not much better than a lot of slums I've seen. Did you notice the scrambled eggs in the skillet on the stove? What more do you want to pick up here?”

He squatted on the floor. “I don't want to mix this up until we're ready.”

“I'd say we need to move as much, out o€ here as we can. You’ve got the picture. Kay?” Wesley said.

I got out Robyn Naismith's scene photographs “You've noticed that our professor friend is living with her furniture,” I said.

“Well, then we’ll leave it here.” Vander said as if it were common, for furniture from a ten-year-old murder scene to still be in place. “But the rug's got to go, I can tell that didn’t come with the house.”

“How?”

Wesley stared down at the blue and red braided rug beneath his feet. It was filthy and curling up at the edges. “If you lift up-the edge, you can see that the parquet is just as dull and scratched underneath as it is everywhere else. The rug hasn't been here long. Besides, it doesn't look very well made I doubt it would have lasted all this time.”

Spreading several photographs on the floor; I turned them this way and that until the perspectives were right and we could tell what needed to be moved. What furnishings were original to the room had been rearranged.

As much as it was possible to do so, we began to re create the scene of Robyn's death. “Okay, the ficus tree goes over there, I said like a stage director. “Right, but slide the couch back about two more feet, Neils. And that way just a little bit more. The tree was maybe four inches from the left armrest. A little closer. That's good”

“No, it's not. The branches are oar the couch.”

“The tree's a little bigger now.”

“I can't believe it's still alive. I'm surprised anything could live around Professor Potter except maybe bacteria or fungi.”

“And the rug goes?” Wesley took off his jacket.

“Yes. She had a small runner by the front door and another small Oriental under the coffee table. Most of the floor was bare.”

He got down on his hands and knees and began to roll up the rug.

I went over to the television and studied the VCR on top and the cable connection leading into the wall.

“This has got to go against the wall opposite the couch and the front door. Either of you gentlemen good with VCRs and cable connections?”

“No,” they answered simultaneously.

“Then I'm left to my own devices. Here goes.”

I disconnected the cable and the VCR, unplugged the TV, and carefully slid it across the bare, dusty floor. Referring to the photographs again, I moved it a few more feet until it was directly opposite the front door. Next I surveyed the walls. Potter apparently collected art and was fond of an artist whose name I could not quite make out, but it looked French. The sketches were charcoal studies of the female form with lots of curves, pink splotches, and triangles. One by one they all came down and I propped them against the walls in the dining room. By this point, the room was almost bare and I was itching from the dust.

Wesley wiped his forehead on the back of his arm. “Are we about ready?”

He looked at me.

“I think so. Of course, not everything is here. She had three barrel chairs right over there.”

I pointed.

“They're in the bedrooms,” Vander said. “Two in one bedroom and one in the other. Do you want me to bring them out?”

“Might as well.”

He and Wesley carried in the chairs.

“She had a painting on that wall over there, and another one to the right of the door leading into the dining room,” I pointed out. “A still life and an English landscape. So Potter couldn't live with her art but didn't seem to have a problem with anything else.”

“We need to go around the house and close all blinds, shades, and curtains,” Vander said. “If any light is still coming through, then tear off a section of this paper” he pointed to a roll of heavy brown paper on the floor “and tape it over the window.”

— For the next fifteen minutes, the house was filled with the sounds of footsteps, venetian blinds rattling, and scissors slicing through paper. Occasionally somebody swore loudly when the paper had been cut too short or the tape stuck to nothing but itself. I stayed in the living room and covered the glass in the front door and in the two windows facing the street. When the three of us reconvened and turned out the lights, the house was pitch-black. I could not even see my hand in front of my face.

“Perfect,” Vander said as the overhead light went back on.

Putting on gloves, he set bottles of distilled water, chemicals, and two plastic spray bottles on the coffee table. “Here's the way we're going to work this,” he said. “Dr. Scarpetta, you can spray while I videotape, and if an area reacts, just keep spraying it until I tell you to move on.”

“What do you want me to do?” Wesley asked.

“Keep out of the way.”

“What's in this stuff?” he asked as Vander unscrewed the caps from bottles of dry chemicals.

“You don't really want to know,” I replied.

“I'm a big boy. You can tell me.”

“The reagent's a mixture of sodium perborate, which Neils is mixing with distilled water, and three-aminophthalhydrazide and sodium carbonate,” I said, getting a packet of gloves out of my pocketbook.

“And you're certain it will work on blood this old?” Wesley asked.

“Actually, aged and decomposed blood reacts better with luminol than do fresh bloodstains because the more oxidized the blood, the better. As blood ages, it becomes more strongly oxidized.”

“I don't think any of the wood in here is salt treated, do you?” Vander looked around.

“I shouldn't think so.”

I explained to Wesley, “The biggest problem with luminol is false positives. A number of things react with it, such as copper and nickel, and the copper salts in salt-treated wood.”

“It also likes rust, household bleach, iodine, and formalin,” Vander added. “Plus, the peroxidases found in bananas, watermelon, citrus fruit, a number of vegetables. Also horseradish.”

Wesley looked at me with a smile.

Vander opened an envelope and removed two squares of filter paper that were stained with dried, diluted blood. Then he added mixture A to B and told Wesley to hit the lights. A couple of quick sprays, and a bluish white neon glow appeared on the coffee table. It began to fade almost as quickly as it had appeared.

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