Patricia Cornwell - Blow Fly

"So she's running and he's stabbing. She's in front of him, at least at some point." It is Eric who deduces this as he and Nic return with several lamps and plug them in.

"Maybe," is all Scarpetta has to say about it.

"One smear on a wall in the hallway looks like she may have been pushed up or knocked up against it. About midway in the hallway. Maybe he shoved her against it and stabbed her in the back, and then she got away and ran in here," Nic proposes.

"Maybe," Scarpetta says again, and she and Dr. Lanier gently lower the body to the floor. "This much I can tell you: Her pajama top was in disarray when some of these stab wounds to her chest and belly were inflicted."

"The pushed-up top suggests a sexual motive," Eric says.

"This is a sexual murder with tremendous rage," Scarpetta replies. "Even if she wasn't raped."

"She might not have been." Dr. Lanier bends close to the body, collecting trace evidence with forceps. "Fibers," he comments. "Could be from the pajamas. Despite what people think, rape isn't always involved. Some of these bastards can't do it, can't get it up. Or they'd rather masturbate."

Scarpetta asks Nic, "She was your neighbor. You're sure this is Rebecca and not the other woman in the photographs? The two women are very similar in appearance."

"It's Rebecca. The other woman is her sister."

"Lives with her?" Dr. Lanier asks.

"No. Rebecca lived alone."

"For now, that will be a pending identification until we can be sure with dental records or some other means," Dr. Lanier remarks as Eric takes photographs, using a six-inch plastic ruler as a scale, arranging it next to whatever he shoots.

"I'll get on it." Nic stares without blinking at the dead woman's battered, bloody face, the eyes dully staring out from swollen lids. "We weren't friends at all, never socialized, but I saw her on the street, doing yardwork, walking her dog…"

"What dog?" Scarpetta looks sharply at her.

"She has a yellow lab, a puppy, maybe eight months old. I'm not sure, but he's not fully grown and was a Christmas present. I think from her boyfriend."

"Tell Detective Clark to make sure the police go out and look for her dog," Dr. Lanier says. "And while you're at it, tell him to make sure they send everybody they've got to keep this place secure. We're going to be here a while."

Dr. Lanier hands Scarpetta a packet of cotton-tipped swabs, a small bottle of sterile water and a sterile tube. She unscrews the caps of both the bottle and the tube. Dipping a swab in the sterile water, she swabs the breasts for saliva, the cotton tips turning red with blood. Swabs of her vagina, rectum, of every orifice can wait until the body's at the morgue. She begins to collect trace evidence.

"I'm going outside," Nic says.

"Someone needs to set up more lights in here," Dr. Laniers voice rises.

"Best I can do is bring in lamps, whatever else is around the house," Eric replies.

"That would help. Photograph them in situ before you move them, Eric, or some goddamn defense attorney will say the killer carried lamps into the bedroom…"

"A lot of hairs, dog hairs maybe, maybe from her dog…" Scarpetta is saying as she gently shakes forceps inside a transparent plastic evidence bag. "What? A yellow lab?"

Nic is gone.

"That's what she said. A yellow lab puppy," Dr. Lanier replies, the two of them alone with the body.

"The dog has to be found for a number of reasons, not the least is out of decency, to make sure the poor thing is all right," Scarpetta says. "But also for hair comparison. I can't be sure, but now I think I'm seeing quite a variety of animal hairs."

"So am I. Sticking to blood, mostly here." He points a bloodstained gloved finger at the woman's naked upper body. "Not on her hands or in her hair, though, which is where you might expect to find animal hairs if the origin of them is the floor, the carpet, here inside her residence."

Scarpetta is silent. She secures another hair in the forceps and shakes it loose inside a bag that must have at least twenty hairs in it now, the origin of all of them the dried blood on the belly.

Out on the street, someone has started whistling loudly. Voices are calling, "Here, Basil! Come, Basil!"

The front door opens and shuts repeatedly, the sounds of feet moving in the living room, the dining room, cops talking, and then a woman's voice, a woman crying and screaming.

"No! No! No! That can't be!"

"Ma'am, just show us in one of these pictures."

Scarpetta recognizes Detective Clark's voice. He is loud and trying not to sound upset, but the more the woman screams, the louder he gets.

"I'm sorry, but you can't go in there."

"She's my sister!" 1 m really sorry.

"Oh, God, oh, God."

Then the voices are quiet, and conversation recedes into a background murmur. A few flies begin to stray into the house, drawn by the scent of death, the high-pitched droning straining Scarpetta's nerves.

"Tell them to stop opening the goddamn door!" She looks up from her kneeling position, sweat rolling down her face, her knees in terrible pain.

"Jesus. What's going on out there?" Dr. Lanier is angry, too.

"Heeerrrre, Basil! Come on, boy!"

Whistling.

"Yo! Basil! Where are you?"

The front door opens and shuts again.

"That's it!" Dr. Lanier gets to his feet.

He walks out of the bedroom, yanking off his bloody gloves. Scarpetta removes another animal hair, this one black, and places it inside an evidence bag. The hairs adhered to the body when the blood was wet. They are adhering to the belly, breasts and chest but not to the bottoms of the woman's bare feet, which are also smeared with dried blood, not from injuries, but from where she stepped.

Scarpetta's breath is hot and loud behind her surgical mask, sweat stinging her eyes as she waves off flies and goes over the woman's face with a lens, looking for more hairs, every crack in dried blood magnified and more horrible, every split and cut in the skin more ragged and gaping. Flecks of paint adhere to blood, possibly transferred from the living room wall. The variety of animal hairs recovered from the body supplies Scarpetta with an important piece of information.

"We found the dog." Nic is standing in the doorway.

Scarpetta is startled back to a different dimension, one that isn't a hideous, dry red landscape behind a magnifying glass.

"Basil, her dog."

"That's not where most of these hairs are from. I'm finding dozens, different kinds, different colors. Dog hairs, possibly. Much coarser than cat hairs. But I'm not positive."

Dr. Lanier walks back inside the room, brushing past Nic, snapping on fresh gloves.

"What I'm seeing here makes me think the hairs were transferred from the perpetrator-perhaps from his clothing-directly to her upper body. Maybe if he got on top of her."

She pulls the pajama bottoms down an inch, just far enough to expose the indentations left by their elastic waistband. She sits back on her heels and stares, then takes off her mask.

"Why would someone get on top of her and not take her pajama bottoms off?" Dr. Lanier puzzles. "Why would someone transfer all these dog or doglike hairs to her naked upper body and nowhere else? And why the hell would anybody have all these dog hairs all the hell over them to begin with?"

"We found Basil," Nic says again. "Hiding under a house across the street. Just cowering and shaking. He must have run off when the killer left, I guess. Who's going to take care of him, of Basil?"

"I expect the boyfriend will," Dr. Lanier replies. "If not, Eric loves dogs."

He tears open two packets containing sterile, plasticized homicide sheets. While Scarpetta spreads one on the floor, Dr. Lanier and Eric grip the body under the arms and behind the knees, lifting it, centering it on the sheet. They spread the second sheet on top of her, rolling up the edges, wrapping her like a mummy so no trace evidence will be added or lost.