'No expense spared here,' said Lillian, lifting the lid of an electrically powered metal icebox, the wall unit. A handful of dead, dried-up earthworms lay at their feet.
The men poked their heads into the boathouse just in time to see Lillian drop the Styrofoam cooler down into the wall unit, a perfect fit. 'This is a storage cooler for bait- worms,' she said.
'Now we know where the night crawlers came from,' said Nielsen.
'Yeah, they were frozed in here and thawed out in the boat,' joked Al badly. 'So, you saying she threw in the worms for sport?'
'Explains how they got there.'
Nielsen now glanced across the lake at the activity of men and women going in and out of the Brody house. She wondered how Dr. Frank Patterson was doing there. It had irked her that Patterson should get the plum assignment, the house with three bodies to grid, while she was put on a dead gardener in the boat. After all, she had been on the Post-it Ripper case with Leonard from the 'get-go,' as the Americans liked to say, but when push came to shove, seniority had won out. Still, even though Frank was the As-sociate M.E., and she was a mere Assistant M.E., Patterson, unlike her, had not been involved on the case from the 'get-go.' No matter how she turned it in her mind, Lynn felt cheated.
Bide your time, she kept telling herself. Your time will come.
She then chided herself for daring to think she had problems; her problems were small potatoes compared to what Meredyth Sanger must be going through right now. She allowed a silent prayer to escape her for Meredyth, and for Lucas, one that would also suffice for his departed soul, should that be the case. Aside from being colleagues in a sense, the pair had become her new friends as well. How was Meredyth to cope? Lynn knew how desperately the woman loved Lucas. It must be so hard on her.
She started up the incline toward the house, working her way toward Leonard Chang even as she put her cell phone to her ear, having dialed him, but her eyes remained fixed on the mower. The Blodgett body apparently had been successfully plucked from the windmill by the cherry picker, and Chang was escorting the body, now on a stretcher, toward an ambulance. Nielsen didn't want to be distracted, but Lillian, trailing after her, still waved the form she'd come with originally. 'You'll need this for your final report, Dr. Nielsen.'
Nielsen had already filled a spiral book with observations, comments, notes, measured distances, maps, thumbnail sketches of the pier in relation to the boat, and an explanation on how it was impossible to get a true triangu- lation of where the body was discovered since there was no fixed position, the boat having wandered about on the lake. What had alerted authorities in the first place were the birds coming and going from the boat, their beaks full with what Bert called red beauties. Still, she knew about the thousand and one trivial little details needed to fill in all the blanks on all the damn forms waiting back at the office, and even inconsequential items-say a victim's Social Security number or his mother's maiden name-would be called for, delaying the proceedings unless the information was accessible.
At such a time she'd be thanking God for Lil's standard form. She thanked Lillian and took her report, laying it into her notebook just as Chang came on the line.
'Lynn, good! You've finished up with the Kemper body, have you?'
'And you with the Blodgett body?'
'Some truly curious details forming up here at the house. Meredyth tried to save Blodgett's life even after all this.'
She countered, 'I am dying to hear all about it, but it doesn't compare to the bizarre story I have for you, Leonard.'
'Then you have answers, good!'
'Answers, yes. Meet me at the lawn mower.'
'The lawn mower? All right…on my way down.'
Reaching the driveway and the mower, she saw Chang rounding the back of the ambulance where he'd left Blodgett's body in its black bag. After the niceties, and questions about where they might find a bite to eat, she laid out how the gardener had died, and she walked him over to the mower, and pointing, showed him the coagulated blood at the bottom of the well beneath the wheel. It was there, and so were some distinctive shoe prints-small, feminine ones. 'She drove the mower back to here, her feet wading in Kemper's blood. By time he was bleeding out, he was barefoot. The first giveaway was the dried blood I found under his toenails but nowhere else.'
'Impressive,' he replied. 'Perelli! Got any film left in that camera?' Chang pointed to the blood pool imprinted by a pair of unique shoe prints, while Nielsen went to the ambulance and tore away one of Lauralie's shoes from her feet. She returned with it, and the match was clearly visible. 'A matched pair,' she said.
'A match made in blood,' Chang replied.
Lil stood staring, learning, soaking up things, and realizing she wanted very much to work more closely with Dr. Nielsen.
Chang suggested they retire to the Brody house. They took the road that meandered around the lake, disappearing amid the tall sentinels of the pine forest. Along their way, they passed the spot where men in FBI and ATF wind- breakers dealt with the BMW found nestled in the trees just beyond the Brody house.
Dr. Frank Patterson. in white shirt and tie, stood now over the bodies at the foot of the basement stairs in the Brody home, his gloved hands going to his aching back. He'd been bending over the dead family for forty minutes now, assessing how each had died, their relative positions, relative ages, and searching for any additional bruises or obvious marks. Hands tied, the three bodies had been dumped here in the basement as if hurled down the stairs, but the gunshots had all occurred at the top of the stairwell. There the blood spatters, along with brain matter, along with gunshot residue, painted the unfinished wall with enough crazy art to call it a Jackson Pollock painting.
His assistant revved up a small rotary saw and went to work removing the section of wall in question. He'd take it back to the lab with him, study it in detail. Under the right light, and with the help of blood-spatter specialists, he would be able to tell in which order each of the Brodys were killed-father-mother-daughter, mother- father- daughter, or some other variation. The crime would be recreated down to its last detail. If it proved interesting enough, he could write it up in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Examiner. They paid well in both cash and cachet.
The sound of the saw ended, and Patterson looked up to the top of the stairs, thinking Jennings an efficient man to finish with the wall so quickly, but Jennings hadn't finished. He'd merely stopped to allow Dr. Chang and Dr. Nielsen the right-of-way. They came down the stairwell now for a look at the cruel massacre here. 'Anything I ought to know here, Frank?' asked Chang.
'Dunno… little soon to tell, but it's pretty clear the victims were forced to tie one 'nother up. Probably with assurances nothing would happen if they cooperated. Looks like a page out of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. They cooperate and he-ahhh, she, if it proves to've been Blodgett, she blows their brains out anyway, all in the same manner, right here.' He put an index finger behind Lynn Nielsen's ear to demonstrate the location of each entry wound, and said, 'Pow! Just like a professional or someone familiar with the Godfather films.'
Nielsen pulled away, annoyed he'd chosen her head to demonstrate on, his finger jabbing into her head. 'It does appear to be her work,' she said.
'And how would you know that from what little we have?' challenged Patterson, as had been his habit with her.
'She wasn't a big woman, only one hundred ten pounds at most. She wisely used her victims' weight against them here, as with getting Kemper off the mower and into the boat.'
'What mower?'
'It's why they were shot at the top of the stairs and allowed to tumble down. She didn't have to drag, carry, or push them here.'
'Good point,' said Chang.
'Of course it is,' said Patterson. 'It's why I'm having the wall removed. They were shot at the top of the stairs and their bodies came tumbling down.'
'What about the upstairs, the girl's room?' asked Chang. 'Your guys finished there?'
'Finishing, yes.'
'The other half of Mira Lourdes is on ice?' he asked.
'Well, no, not that far along yet, but it'll get done.'
