picked up her purse. As she came around the partition she saw that Greg was already in bed, under the sheet, with the bedspread folded down to the foot of the bed. She set the purse on the floor by the near side of the bed, lowered the lights, took off her clothes, and laid them out neatly on the chair. It gave Greg a long time to watch her doing it, and she knew he enjoyed that.
She went to his coat rack, took a scarf, crawled onto the bed, and slipped it under his head.
“What’s that? What are you doing?”
“It’s a blindfold. I’m blindfolding you. Don’t struggle.” She finished tying it and straddled his body.
“Is this an execution?”
She was taken aback for a half second. “It’s something nice. Don’t peek or you’ll spoil it.”
Judith reached into her purse and took out the gun. She drew the end of the soft, fake-fur bedspread toward her and wrapped it around the gun, held it there with her left hand, and pressed it gently to his head. When he felt the soft, smooth fur touch him, he smiled.
52
Catherine Hobbes examined the blood-spattered screen beside Gregory McDonald’s bed. The coroner’s crew had taken his body out earlier, but this space was going to be the property of the visiting blood-spatter expert for a day or two, so Catherine had to stay back and look in from the opening at the side. She didn’t need to be any closer. Catherine Hobbes, or any other experienced homicide detective, could stand at the end of the screen and see what had happened.
Gregory McDonald had apparently been blindfolded with a scarf. The killer had wrapped the gun in the bedspread, held it to the left side of Gregory McDonald’s head, and pulled the trigger. The blood had sprayed mostly from the exit wound on the right side of the head, and the blowback spatter had been taken mostly by the bedspread, but the killer had almost certainly been bloodied too. The upper end of the bed and the pillow under the victim’s head had been soaked. Just from a glance at the bathroom, it looked to Catherine as though the killer had needed to clean up before leaving.
Catherine stepped away and surveyed the loft. What she could see made the murder seem even worse, more wasteful. Gregory McDonald had been a well-paid software designer with an engineering degree, but the loft was decorated in fraternity-boy baroque, complete with a basketball net and a few empty beer cans. He had not had time to reach anything she would have recognized as adulthood.
As Catherine thought about the simple, unembellished facts—a single man found naked in bed shot once through the head, but no gun at the scene, and a killer who had cleaned up afterward—she began to have a sinking feeling.
Her cell phone rang, and she took it out of her purse. “Catherine Hobbes.”
“Hey, Cath.” It was the captain. “I’m moving my knights around on the board. Where are you?”
“Gregory McDonald’s loft. Where do you want me?”
“You may as well stay there. This one is going to be yours too. One of the prints the forensic people lifted off the tile in the shower belongs to your girl.”
“I was afraid of that.” Instantly she wished she hadn’t said that. The captain didn’t need to be reminded that she had predicted this. He had given her as many people as he could spare to canvass the area where Tanya had used the credit card. She had to think ahead, not back. “Captain, I wonder if we could delay releasing the news about the fingerprint for a day or two.”
“Why? Do you think if she hears it, she’ll take off again?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s a distinct possibility. I’m sure that she watches the television news.”
“All right. Let’s keep the print out of the press for the moment.”
“Thanks.”
She heard him disconnect, so she folded her phone and put it away. She raised her voice so all of the officers in the loft could hear her. “Attention, everybody. One of the prints on the shower tile has turned out to be a match for Tanya Starling. That is not to be released to the press for the moment. We’ve got a female perpetrator who sometimes dyes her hair. The minute you find hairs that don’t match the victim, please find me or call me. I need to know what color Tanya’s hair is this week.”
She walked to the door of the bathroom and looked inside. The tiled walls, the sink, and the mirror were almost completely blackened with print dust. The crime scene people loved mirrors and tiles. Anything that got cleaned frequently and was smooth and glassy was made for preserving clear prints.
Catherine stood still and imagined the scene, putting herself in Tanya’s place. Tanya had been in the bedroom area with Gregory McDonald. He had been naked, and so she had been too, probably. She had blindfolded him in some playful way. But she had done it because she had needed to have him lying still and not fighting her for the gun or ducking behind things. She had wrapped the bedspread around the gun to muffle the sound and then pulled the trigger.
The sound had not been as quiet as she had hoped. The gun must have sounded like a cannon in this loft. Catherine could almost hear the blast in her imagination.
Catherine imagined she felt the gun kick upward, heard the ringing in her ears. The bedspread had not muffled the sound. Tanya was afraid, and Gregory looked terrible now. She placed the pillow over what had been his face. She became conscious of her nakedness and felt vulnerable; the blood spattered on her was warm, almost hot, and the feel of it made her sick. She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to put on her clothes and run, but she had Gregory McDonald’s blood on her—on her face, in her hair, on her chest, her belly. She had been beside him, or maybe above him, straddling him, and now she rolled off the bed and crouched, the gun aimed at the door of the loft.
She stayed there for a long time, listening. Maybe it was ten minutes, maybe only five minutes, but it seemed to her to be much longer. She was waiting for a sound that would indicate that someone had heard. Cautiously she moved in the dark to the window and looked down at the street. Probably she knew that if a neighbor were coming to investigate, he would already have banged on the door. If the Portland Police Bureau had been called, their response time would not be this long. She reassured herself, because she knew the secret of shots fired in a city. When people heard one shot they told themselves it was a car backfiring or a firecracker. It was only when they heard multiple shots that they couldn’t tell themselves that it was something harmless.
She went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She was freckled with Gregory’s blood, and she had to get it off. She turned on the shower, adjusted it to a bearable temperature, and stepped into it. She scrubbed herself, washing her hair and her skin, then stayed in the shower for a long time, being sure that the bright red blood was off her and the pink diluted remnant had long since washed off the tub. Maybe she was even aware that firing a pistol had left a residue of burned powder and heavy metals on her skin, so she scrubbed harder. She came out and dried herself with the cleanest towel she could find, then wiped the floor with it and the faucets and anything else she could remember touching. The one place that she missed was where she had touched one of the shower tiles and forgotten it: had she lost her balance for a second while she was getting out, or leaned against it to dry her foot? She took the towel back to his bedroom enclosure, stuffed it in the laundry basket beneath his clothes, or maybe tossed it in and then picked up some clothes from the floor and threw them in to cover the towel she had used.
Then she got dressed. If the gun was a revolver, she put it in her purse. If it was semiautomatic, she found the shell casing and put it in her purse with the gun. She went to the front windows again and looked outside to be sure the police were not visible in the streets below the building. Since they weren’t, she explored the loft, probably with a flashlight. She was looking for money, or jewelry, or anything else that might be valuable. She took some time looking around, probably using something like one of Gregory’s socks over her hand to open drawers. She bothered to do it not because she was desperate for money but because there was no reason not to, and the sound of a gun should not be followed by the sounds of someone leaving the building until a long time had passed.
Catherine knew that Tanya had learned that by now—that one reason people got caught was that they did not take time to think and prepare and act normally. They ran and they sweated and they looked suspicious. When she felt ready, she glanced outside once more, took Gregory McDonald’s car keys, went down the stairs, and drove his car away. It had not turned up yet, but Catherine was sure it would later in the day, parked at a shopping mall or an airport or a public parking lot.
Catherine walked away from the bathroom and up to two of the forensic people who were dusting the long
