Beverly Connor - One Grave Too Many

“No, Crystal, you won’t. Even if Star is convicted of her parents’ murder, you aren’t in the will.”

Crystal stared openmouthed for a moment. “What? You telling me all this goes to somebody else? Who?” Frank didn’t answer. “They can’t cut me out-I’m the closest blood relative George’s got. It’s not legal. Gil’s cousin’s daughter’s a paralegal, and I know for a fact you can’t cut blood out of your will. We’ll just see about this.”

The three of them watched the McFarlands get in their ’92 Lincoln and drive off, white smoke billowing from the exhaust.

“Well, that was interesting,” said the guard.

“It was something,” said Frank. Frank introduced Diane and started to lead her into the house.

“I’d like to take a look at the spot where Jay was shot before it gets dark.”

He led her to the place where Jay was found, near a live oak with a thick trunk and broad canopy. Diane wondered how old it was-decades older than Jay.

“Here,” said Frank, squatting next to a place where someone had dug into the ground.

Diane squatted beside him, scanning the area. “This is where they found the bullet?”

“I believe so.”

The sun was sinking behind the tree line; however, a remaining flicker of sunlight reflected on something. She took a pair of tweezers from her pocket, along with an evidence bag and picked up the object.

“What is it?” asked Frank, looking at the curled piece of clear plastic about the size of two postage stamps.

“Plastic.”

“Is it important?”

“Might be.” Diane put the fragment into the bag and planted a ribbon and nail in the ground. “The pictures aren’t clear about which direction the body lay.” Frank stood, hesitating for a moment before he spoke. “I know this is hard,” said Diane.

“Yeah. I just remembered, today’s Louise’s birthday.” Frank pointed to the house. “Jay’s head was pointing toward the house.”

“Do you know if they found any gunpowder residue on his jacket? I didn’t see any, but. .” She let the sentence hang as she backed up from where Jay had fallen. “If Detective Warrick’s saying he was coming home and was surprised by his sister, why was he shot in the back?”

“I guess she’d say she couldn’t face her brother.”

“But she’d just killed her parents in their bed.” Diane looked around the grass where she stood. She squatted and scrutinized the area again. Just a couple of feet in front of her she found another plastic fragment smaller than a postage stamp. She bagged it and marked the place.

“Did the crime scene find more of these pieces? I don’t see any tags. . ”

“I don’t know what they found. I’ll see if I can find out. You think it means something?”

“Possibly.” She handed him the bag and he put it in his jacket pocket. “We need to have it analyzed.” Diane glanced over at the guard sitting on the porch, watching them. The cost for Star’s defense was mounting and it had just begun. Unless the murders were solved soon, there wouldn’t be much for Crystal McFarland to fight over.

Diane examined the tree trunk, but saw no obvious blood spatters. She also looked around for more pieces of plastic, but found none.

“OK. Let’s go to the house now.”

“I think I’ll tell Harry he can take a break. How long will we be here?”

“All night.”

Diane stood in George and Louise’s bedroom and stared at the bare bloodstained mattress. It had been new; now it was ruined. Before it was a crime scene, their bedroom probably had an airy brightness, with its light pine furniture, green iron garden bench at the foot of the bed, and floral-patterned wallpaper. It was the wallpaper that drew her attention away from the bed and created a frown on her forehead.

Frank stood next to her, his gaze darting from the chest of drawers to the dresser covered with family photographs, to a new green wrought iron headboard still in its box leaning against a wall, and finally to the bed and the bloodstained wall next to it.

“Louise was redecorating the bedroom. You should have heard George complaining on poker night. Said he had to win big just to pay for the new headboard. It’s all unfinished. Jay’s too-unfinished.”

Unconsciously, she grasped Frank’s hand and squeezed it. He squeezed back.

“This is going to take all night?” he asked.

She nodded, her thoughts focused on the scene before her. The room smelled of death. It emanated from the mattress, the curtains, the walls. And the house was hot. She felt her scalp prickle with sweat, and she hadn’t even begun yet. It was going to be an unpleasant night. She took two pairs of latex gloves from her kit and handed one pair to Frank. He took the gloves but looked at her quizzically.

“You think we still need to protect the crime scene, after all the people that have trampled through here?”

“The gloves are not to protect the crime scene,” she said. “They’re to protect us from the crime scene.”

“It is pretty ripe in here,” he said.

“You’ll get used to it.”

She looked in dismay at the wallpaper as she pulled on her gloves. Antique red roses, gold buttercups, baby’s breath and green leaves against a background of tiny flecks of color-and overlain by blood spatters.

She gestured to an area of fine spattering. “See this fine mist pattern here?”

Frank studied the wall, squinting. “Yes.”

“This is high-impact spatter from a gunshot. But where the drops are larger-here-these are places of medium impact. And this line of spattering that leads upward to the ceiling. That’s castoff from whatever was used to strike them.”

“I sort of see. Kind of hard to see on top of that wallpaper.”

“That’s going to be a problem. It’s difficult enough, but the pattern on the wallpaper makes it like a hidden-picture illusion.”

“You saying they were shot and beaten?” He asked, as if he had just realized what she had said.

Diane nodded.

“The autopsy will give us the details of that,” he said.

“But the autopsy can’t tell us what this spatter can. Up on your trig?”

“Trig?”

“Trigonometry.”

“Oh. Yes, math I understand.”

“Analyzing blood spatters is mostly geometry-you take the two-dimensional pattern from the wall and project to three dimensions.”

Diane looked over at Frank. This was the blood of his friends that she was at the moment being so dispassionate about. He was already getting a five o’clock shadow and, though most of the time it made him look sexy, it now made him look more melancholy. “Are you all right with this?” she asked.

“I’m fine.” His voice was a little too sharp, but Diane took him at his word and continued.

The only way to do a good job is to find your objectivity and hang on to it like an anchor. That was one of the things that Santos took away from her-for a while.

“What I’ll be analyzing is the medium-impact spatter, and I have to measure the two axes-the length and width-of the drops.”

Frank turned his face to her, his dark eyes startled. “You’re kidding. All of them?”

“Not all, but a significant enough number to make sure I get reliable results.”

“I guess that will take all night and then some. Damn, how can you even see them?”

“It’d definitely be easier if she’d chosen plain white wallpaper. I’ll use a magnifying glass.”

She picked up the glass from her case and showed Frank magnified spatters of blood that had hit the wall.

“A spatter that hits the wall head-on at a perpendicular angle will be round. As the angle of impact gets smaller, the more elongated the drop becomes. See the little tail on most of these drops here?”