Body of Evidence (3 page)

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. There were a few packages of chicken breasts, Le Menus, and lean ground beef. Cooking, it appeared, was not a pleasure for Beryl but a utilitarian exercise. I knew what my own kitchen was like. This one was depressingly sterile. Motes of dust were suspended in the pale light seeping through slits of the gray designer blinds in the window over the sink. The drainboard and sink were empty and dry. The appliances were modern and looked unused.

"The other thought is she came in here for a drink," Marino speculated.

"Her STAT alcohol was negative," I said.

"Don't mean she didn't think about it."

He opened a cabinet above the sink. There wasn't an inch to spare on three shelves: Jack Daniel's, Chivas Regal, Tanqueray, liqueurs, and something else that caught my attention. In front of the Cognac on the top shelf was a bottle of Haitian Barbancourt Rhum, aged fifteen years and as expensive as unblended Scotch.

Lifting it out with a gloved hand, I set it on the counter. There was no strip stamp, and the seal around the gold cap was unbroken.

"I don't think she got this around here," I told Marino. "My guess is she got it in Miami, Key West."

"So you're saying she brought it back from Florida?"

"It's possible. Clearly, she was a connoisseur of good booze. Barbancourt's wonderful."

"Guess I should start calling you Doctor Connoisseur," he said.

The bottle of Barbancourt wasn't dusty, even though many of the bottles near it were.

"It might explain why she was in the kitchen," I went on. "Perhaps she came downstairs to put away the rum. She may have been contemplating a nightcap when someone arrived at her door."

"Yeah, but what it don't explain is why she left her piece in here on the counter when she answered the door. She was supposed to be spooked, right? Still makes me think she was expecting company, knew the squirrel. Hey, she's got all this fancy booze, right? She drinks the stuff alone? Don't make sense. Makes more sense to think she did a little entertaining from time to time, had some guy in. Hell, maybe it's this 'M' she was writing down there in the Keys. Maybe that's who she was expecting the night she was whacked."

"You're entertaining the possibility 'M' is the killer," I said.

"Wouldn't you be?"

He was getting combative, and his toying with the unlit cigarette was beginning to grate on my nerves.

"I would entertain every possibility," I replied. "For example, I would also entertain the possibility she wasn't expecting company. She was in the kitchen putting away her rum and possibly thinking of pouring herself a drink. She was nervous, had her automatic nearby on the counter. She was startled when the doorbell rang or someone started knocking--"

"Right," he cut me off. "She's startled, jumpy. So why does she leave her piece here in the kitchen when she goes to the damn door?"

"Did she practice?"

"Practice?"

he said as our eyes met. "Practice what*"

"Shooting."

"Hell... I donno ..."

"If she didn't, it wasn't a natural reflex for her to arm herself but a conscious deliberation. Women carry Mace in their pocketbooks. They're assaulted and the Mace never enters their minds until after the fact because defending themselves isn't a reflex."

"I don't know ..."

I did know. I had a Ruger .38 revolver loaded with Silvertips, one of the most destructive cartridges money could buy. The only reason it would occur to me to arm myself with the handgun was I practiced, took it down to the range inside my building several times a month. When I was home alone, I was more comfortable with the handgun than without it.

There was something else. I thought of the living room, of the fireplace tools upright in their brass stand on the hearth. Beryl had struggled with her assailant in that room and it never occurred to her to arm herself with the poker or the shovel. Defending herself was not a reflex. Her only reflex was to run, whether it was up the stairs or to Key West.

I explained, "She may have been a stranger to the gun, Marino. The doorbell rings. She's unnerved, confused. She goes into the living room and looks through the peephole. Whoever it is, she trusts the person enough to open the door. The gun is forgotten."

"Or else she was expecting her visitor," he said again.

"That is entirely possible. Providing somebody knew she was back in town."

"So maybe he knew," he said.

"And maybe he's 'M.' " I told him what he wanted to hear as I replaced the bottle of rum on the shelf.

"Bingo. Making more sense now, isn't it?"

I shut the cabinet door. "She was threatened, terrorized for months, Marino. I find it hard to believe it was a close friend and Beryl wasn't the least bit suspicious."

He looked annoyed as he glanced at his watch and dug another key out of a pocket. It made no sense at all that Beryl would have opened the door to a stranger. But it made even less sense that someone she trusted could have done this to her. Why did she let him in} The question wouldn't stop nagging at me.

A covered breezeway joined the house to the garage. The sun had dipped below the trees.

"I'll tell you right off," Marino said, the lock clicking open, "I only went in here right before I called you. Could've busted down the door the night of her murder but didn't see no point."

He shrugged, lifting those massive shoulders of his as if to make sure I understood he really could tackle a door or a tree or a Dumpster if he were so inclined. "She hadn't been in here since she left for Florida. Took us a while to find the friggin' key."

It was the only paneled garage I had ever seen, the floor a gorgeous dragon skin of expensive red Italian tile.

"Was this really designed to be a garage?" I asked.

"It's got a garage door, don't it?"

He was pulling several more keys out of a pocket. "Some place to keep your ride out of the rain, huh?"

The garage was airless and smelled dusty, but it was spotless. Other than a rake and a broom leaning against a corner, there was no sign of the usual tools, lawnmowers, and other impedimenta one would expect to find. The garage looked more like a car dealership showroom, the black Honda parked in the center of the tile floor. The car was so clean and shiny it could have passed for new and never driven.

Marino unlocked the driver's door and opened it.

"Here. Be my guest," he said.

Momentarily, I was settled back in the soft ivory leather seat, staring through the windshield at the paneled wall.

Stepping back from the car, he added, "Just sit there, okay? Get the feel of it, look around the interior, tell me what comes to mind."

"You want me to start it?"

He handed me the key.

"Then please open the garage door so we don't asphyxiate ourselves," I added.

Frowning as he glanced around, he found the right button and cracked the door.

The car turned over the first time, the engine dropping several octaves and purring throatily. The radio and air conditioning were on. The gas tank was a quarter full, the odometer registering less than seven thousand miles, the sunroof partially open. On the dash was a dry cleaning slip dated July eleventh, a Thursday, when Beryl took in a skirt and a suit jacket, garments she obviously never picked up. On the passenger's seat was a grocery receipt dated July twelfth at ten-forty in the morning, when she bought one head of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, ground beef, cheese, orange juice, and a roll of mints, the total nine dollars and thirteen cents out of a ten she gave the check-out clerk.

Next to the receipt was a slender white bank envelope that was empty. Beside it a pebbly tan Ray Ban sunglasses case -- also empty.

In the backseat was a Wimbledon tennis racket, and a rumpled white towel I reached over the seat to get. Stamped in small blue letters on a terrycloth border was WESTWOOD RACQUET CLUB, the same name printed on a red vinyl tote bag I had noted upstairs in Beryl's closet.

Marino had saved his theatrics for last. I knew he had looked over all of these items and wanted me to see them in situ. They weren't evidence. The killer had never gone inside the garage. Marino was baiting me. He had been baiting me since we had first stepped inside the house. It was a habit of his that irritated the hell out of me.

Turning off the engine, I got out of the car, the door shutting with a muffled solid thud.

He looked speculatively at me.

"A couple of questions," I said.

"Shoot."

"Westwood is an exclusive club. Was she a member?"

A nod.

"You checked out when she last reserved a court?"

"Friday, July twelfth, at nine in the morning. She had a lesson with the pro. Took a lesson once a week, that was about the extent of her playing."

"As I recall, she flew out of Richmond early Saturday morning, July thirteenth, arriving in Miami shortly after noon."

Another nod.

"So she took her lesson, then went straight to the grocery store. After that, she may have gone to the bank. Whatever the case, at some point after she did her shopping, she suddenly decided to leave town. If she'd known she was leaving town the next day, she wouldn't have bothered going to the grocery store. She didn't have time to eat everything she bought, and she didn't leave the food in the refrigerator. Apparently she threw away everything except the ground beef, the cheese and possibly the mints."

"Sounds reasonable," he said un-emphatically.

"She left her glasses case and other items on the seat," I continued. "Plus, the radio and air conditioning were left on, the sunroof partially open. Looks like she drove into the garage, cut the engine, and hurried into the house with her sunglasses on. Makes me wonder if something happened while she was out in the car driving home from tennis and her errands ..."

"Oh yeah. I'm pretty damn sure it did. Walk around, take a look at the other side--specifically at the passenger's door."

I did.

What I saw scattered my thoughts like marbles. Gouged into the glossy black paint right below the door handle was the name BERYL enclosed in a heart.

"Kind of gives you the creeps, don't it?" he said.

"If he did this while her car was parked at the club or the grocery store," I reasoned, "it seems someone would have seen him."

"Yo. So maybe he did it earlier." He paused, casually perusing the graffiti. "When's the last time you looked at your passenger's door?"

It could have been days. It could have been a week.

"She went grocery shopping." He finally lit the damn cigarette. "Didn't buy much." He took a deep, hungry drag. "And it probably all fit inside one bag, right? When my wife's got just one or two bags, she always sticks them up front, on the floor mat, maybe on the seat. So maybe Beryl went around to the passenger's side to put the groceries in the car. That's when she noticed what was scratched into the paint. Maybe she knew it had to have been done that day. Maybe she didn't. Don't matter. Freaked her right out, pushed her over the edge. She makes tracks home or maybe to the bank for cash. Books the next flight out of Richmond and runs to Florida."