Karin Slaughter - Indelible

"I'm serious, Sara."

"What?" she asked, glancing in the cabinet before shutting the door. There was a small tube of personal lubricant, but she thought better than to tell Jeffrey. She said, "It doesn't mean anything. Sometimes couples use them. What sort of smoking gun are you looking for here?"

"I don't know," he said, sounding defeated. "He's not telling me the truth. We've got to either prove he's lying or prove he's not." He shrugged his shoulders. "Either way, I'm going to support him through this."

Sara told him, "Sometimes when people lie, they sprinkle in the truth so that it sounds believable."

"Meaning?"

"Robert might have told us a bit of information that we're just not hearing." Sara suggested, "Let's take it from the beginning and go over what Robert and Jessie said happened the first time."

"You mean what they told us when Luke was shot?"

She nodded.

"All right," he said, looking around the room. "Let's take it from the top. We were in the street. I heard the shots and ran through the backyard to here." He stood in the doorway. "I saw what had happened, or at least saw the dead guy. Robert groaned and I turned around. He was here," Jeffrey pointed behind the door. "Jessie was over here," he said, indicating the area by the window.

"Then what?"

"I asked Robert if he was okay, then I went to get you."

"All right," Sara began, taking up the narration. "I came in and you went to call the police. I checked Swan's pulse, then I went to help Robert."

"He wouldn't let you look at the wound," Jeffrey provided. "Jessie kept interrupting while I tried to get the story."

"Which was," Sara took over, "they were in bed. Swan came in through the window."

Jeffrey walked over to the window. He looked out into the backyard. "Someone could have sneaked in through here."

"Did Robert ever say he knocked the screen out?" She clarified, "As part of his new story where he says he did it. Did he say that he knocked out the screen?"

"No."

Sara glanced around the room, trying to remember how things had looked that night.

"So, Swan has a gun," Jeffrey said, picking back up on Robert's first explanation. "He crawls to the bed. Jessie wakes up and screams. Robert stirs and Swan shoots at him."

"He misses," Sara provided. "Robert runs to the armoire and gets his gun." She stood in front of the armoire. "He shoots at Swan, but the gun hangs."

Jeffrey finished, "Swan shoots him, then Robert's gun goes off and shoots Swan in the head."

Sara looked down at where she was standing. The blood-spray pattern did not point to the armoire.

She said, "He would've had to have been here," walking to the door and lining herself up with the pattern. "Look at this," she said, indicating blood in the carpet where Swan had fallen. "Robert had to have been standing here."

"Why?"

"He shoots," she said, holding out her hand with her thumb and index finger forming the shape of a gun. "The bullet hits Swan in the head, and there's backsplatter from the bullet. It's basic science: for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. The bullet goes in, the blood sprays back. Look at the pattern of the blood."

Jeffrey stood beside her, looking at the carpet. "Okay," he said. "I see it. He was standing here."

"Hold on," she told him, leaving the room before he could ask why. She got the sewing basket and came back, saying, "This isn't exactly scientific."

"What are you doing?"

She found a spool of yellow thread, thinking that would show up best. "Blood's subject to gravity, just like anything else."

"So?"

"So," she said, opening a box of straight pins. "You can tell from the shape of the drop which way the blood fell. If it was splattered, if it fell straight down." She pointed to the bullet hole behind the door. "See?" she told him. "You can tell from the pattern that Robert was standing near the wall when the bullet exited his body. The blood drops are almost perfectly round except at the top, where you can see they've got a slight teardrop shape to them. That means the bullet was on an upward trajectory."

"But it looks scattered," Jeffrey said, pointing to the hairline ribbons of red radiating from the circular drops.

"The blood hit the wall straight on, but it still splattered back." She used a straight pin to point this out. "This is where the bulk of the impact took place."

"All right," he agreed, though she could tell he still did not buy it. "What can the rest of this tell us?"

"Watch," she told him, picking at the end of the thread. She pulled it out a few yards, then bent to the carpet to match it to the blood. "I'm just guessing at the angle, and of course I'll have to adjust it – probably up – for the parabolic, but I -"

"What are you talking about?"

"Basic trigonometry," she answered, thinking it was obvious. "I really don't have the right equipment, so this is just a hunch, but the formula goes something like, the ratio of width and length of the bloodstain equals the angle of impact…" She had lost him again, so she said, "Go find some tape."

"Masking? Duct? Scotch?"

"Anything sticky."

While Jeffrey searched the house for tape, Sara went about lining up the thread. She used the pins to attach the ends to the carpet and spun out the thread in lengths of ten to twelve feet.

"Will this work?" Jeffrey asked, handing her a roll of electrical tape.

"It should," Sara said, peeling off strips of tape and sticking them to her arm. She found the major splatters on the bedside table, careful not to touch the chunks of flesh that remained. She wished she had put on a pair of gloves before starting this, but it was too late now.

She told Jeffrey, "Stand here," pointing to the foot of the bed.

"What are you going to do?"

"There's nothing to attach the thread to on this end," she said. "I need to use you."

"Okay," he agreed, and she went back to each piece of thread, probably thirty in all, and judging the angle as best she could without the proper instruments, she followed the angle of the splatter, pinning the ends of the thread to Jeffrey's clothing. She used the black tape to highlight where the yellow threads crossed. By the time she had finished, Sara had worked up quite a sweat in the closed room, but it was well worth the effort.

"His head was here," Jeffrey said, indicating the point at which all the string converged. The black electrical tape represented the area of impact, like some sort of forensic spider on a web, showing the exact spot where the bullet exploded out blood, bone, and brain.

Sara had already gotten her jeans dirty crawling around on the bloody carpet, but she was hesitant to put herself where Swan had been kneeling when he was shot. He must have been a few feet from the bed when the bullet hit. She said, "He was a little shorter than I am, so his head must have been about here, give or take a few inches because of miscalculations on my part."

"Jessie was in bed," Jeffrey said, not moving because of the string. "Swan must have been on his knees in front of her."

Sara saw what could have been an outline of a handprint. "Here," she said. "Do you see this?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "Swan must have had his hand there. Maybe he was leaning against the bed, using it for balance."

"He was facing this way," Sara said, indicating the bed. "The bullet entered the side of his head, here," she put her fingers to the space above her ear. "It came out low on the other side." She indicated the glob of flesh still stuck to the bedside table. "This is his earlobe."

"So it fits," Jeffrey said. "Robert was standing over here about where I am and Swan was kneeling beside the bed, doing whatever."

"He was facing Jessie."

Jeffrey's shoulders slumped, and the string went with him. "What he said was right, then. He didn't even give him a warning. He just shot him in cold blood."