“I’ll be damned,” I said, slipping my hands under the animal’s body. “Come on, Buster. Can’t have you hoppin’ all over the crime scene now, can we?”
By way of response, the animal remained perfectly still, allowing me to carry it back to the laundry room. Once in its cage, it hopped to a food cup inside and began eating. “I’ll be damned,” I repeated, closing the cage door.
Leaving the rabbit to its meal, I returned to the base of the stairs and headed up, skirting the stains on the treads. Upon reaching the landing, I saw three closed doors down a hallway to the right. A set of double doors stood open to the left, leading to the master bedroom. I moved left, deciding to see the worst of it first.
I hesitated at the bedroom doorway, hair rising on the back of my neck. Murky light from the street filtered in through closed drapes, illuminating the large room in shades of gray. A man and a woman lay side by side on a king-sized bed, their eyes staring up with the unmistakable finality of death. Wraps of elastic bandages covered their mouths. Blood-soaked blankets hid their bodies from their necks down. More crimson smears marked the headboard; a dark pool of blood had congealed on the carpet.
I’ve worked homicides for a major part of my years on the Force. With few exceptions, most murders I’ve encountered have been simple, garden variety killings: drive-bys, domestic fights that escalated to a fatality, drug- related deaths, and so forth. Stupid, ugly, cruel and occasionally brutal crimes-but at least on some level understandable. “That fat bastard left the toilet seat up one time too many.” Like that. I knew this was different. Whoever had done this had taken his time. And he’d liked it.
Anyone who confronts gruesome realities on a regular basis eventually develops a method of coping. Mine is to shut off emotions I can’t afford to feel and concentrate on the forensic details of the crime. And that’s what I did now. Taking a deep breath, I entered the bedroom.
With the exception of the bodies, the room appeared undisturbed, with no sign of a struggle. The extinguished stumps of several candles were visible throughout-one on the dresser, another on a chest of drawers, a third on the nightstand beside a small black knife. Blood covered the knife blade. The adjacent candle, in its dying throes, had partially immersed the handle in wax.
As I moved into the room, I noticed a wet spot on the carpet, an oval stain the size of a watermelon. Though a spattering of blood surrounded it, another liquid appeared to have caused the main area of dampness.
Urine? Have SID get a sample, along with the blood.
Drag marks on the rug led from the stain to the bed. I knelt to examine them, surmising that one or possibly both of the Larsons had been moved, either before or after they’d been killed.
Was the killer compulsively neat? Or was he trying to hide something?
I moved farther into the room. As I approached the bed, I noted that someone had stepped in the blood- puddle near the woman, explaining the tracks on the carpet and stairs. Again I withdrew my camera and took shots of the bloody footprints, then moved closer. Not touching the bed, I leaned over. The man, a muscular individual in his early thirties, stared back, his eyes red rimmed and unseeing. A lattice of petechial lesions-burst blood vessels indicative of strangulation-mottled his cheeks and the conjunctivae of his eyes. I raised the comforter. A loop of rope encircled the man’s neck. A two-foot length of galvanized pipe had been inserted through the rope coil as a tightening device. Again, I inspected the man’s face.
Something wrong with his eyes…
Thick, hemorrhagic crusts rimmed the man’s orbits. I leaned closer. Abruptly, I realized what was wrong.
Charles Larson had no eyelids.
I glanced at the knife on the nightstand. Too big. Must’ve used something smaller. A pocket knife? Scissors? All at once I saw something I’d missed earlier. In the wax beside the knife, curling like pork rinds, were the man’s missing pieces of flesh.
With a chill, I resumed my inspection. Gently folding back the covers, I saw that the man’s arms had been bound behind his back. A ligature mark from a rope or something similar traversed his chest. Visible beneath the outer edge of one shoulder, a port-wine staining of the skin-caused by blood settling under the effect of gravity- had fixed in a pattern known as postmortem lividity. The staining was immutable once set. Puzzled, I again glanced at the drag marks on the carpet.
I took several more photos, then walked to the other side of the bed, avoiding the pool of blood.
As Officer Rodriguez had indicated, Susan Larson had once been beautiful. Now, shallow knife wounds marked her face and neck in a jagged pattern of slashes. As I’d done with the husband, I folded back the covers, feeling a slight resistance from the crusted blood. I inhaled sharply as the woman’s body came into view.
Angry double arcs, the livid pattern of individual tooth marks easily visible, tattooed her upper torso. Some had suck marks at the center; some did not. Tissue was missing from several areas where the bites went clean through. Deeper wounds, apparently made by a sharp-edged instrument, punctured her chest and abdomen.
Like her husband’s, the woman’s hands had been bound. They now rested at her sides, tags of rope still cutting into her wrists. I checked under the bed. Lengths of matching rope were tied to each of the roller posts, the ends now coiled on the floor like snakes. Longer lengths lay on the bed between the bodies.
I took one of the woman’s wrists in a gloved hand and raised it slightly, noting that rigor had begun. As I replaced the hand, I noticed a series of crescent-shaped cuts on her palm. I recognized them as self-inflicted fingernail wounds, indicating she had been alive-at least for at least part of it.
I took several more shots with my camera, shielding myself from the horror by mentally ticking off future elements of the investigation: Take saliva swabs and impressions of the bites. Semen swabs, too. If nothing else, they’ll help rule out the possibility of more than one killer. There’s a lot of blood. Maybe he cleaned up afterward. Go through the bathrooms for blood and hair.
Carefully retracing my steps, I backed from the room, passing an antique oak dresser on the way. On top, beside the stump of a candle, sat the couple’s wedding picture. The groom in the photo appeared nervous and uncomfortable in his tux, but the lens had caught his bride in a moment of unconcealed joy. In her white satin gown, the woman in the silver frame bore little resemblance to the bloodied corpse on the bed. Next to the picture I noticed a tightly rolled ten-dollar bill. Using my flashlight, I illuminated the surface of the dresser, noting a fine dusting of powder. A careless swirl of finger marks ran through it.
The killer’s? Or were the Larsons into cocaine? Have SID check for prints and get an analysis on the powder. Maybe there’s a drug connection. Doubtful, but maybe.
After an unproductive search of the master bath, I proceeded down the hall. Along the way I inspected a small guest room, then a second bathroom displaying red smears on the toilet handle and tank. Upon reaching the end of the hall, I stood outside the final room. A sticker on the door proclaimed “Skateboarding Is Not a Crime.”
I opened the door and stepped inside. Toys and board games crammed the shelves of a bookcase to the right. A clutter of clothes lay nearby. Across from the door was a bunk bed. On the lower mattress, hands folded peacefully across his chest, lay a young boy wearing blue fleece pajamas. He appeared to be sleeping. I looked closer. A small black hole, as symmetrical as a ball bearing, marked the center of the child’s left temple.
I crossed the hardwood floor, stepping over a bunched-up rug. Leaning down, I examined the boy’s head wound. Stippling, powder burns, and a circular tissue-tear bordered the hole, indicating that the muzzle of the gun had been near or touching the boy’s skin when fired. No exit wound.
Small caliber. A twenty-two, maybe a twenty-five.
Examining further, I found dark fibers imbedded in the skin surrounding the entry lesion.
Steel wool from a homemade silencer?
Full rigor had stiffened the boy’s body. Lifting the child’s arms by his pajama sleeves, I pulled back the covers. Aside from the gunshot wound, the body seemed unmolested. But as I replaced the covers, I noticed a smear of red marking the comforter where the boy’s hands had rested. Again lifting the child’s stiffened arms, I inspected his palms. Jagged slashes covered the pale tissue, many continuing to the fingertips.
Not defense cuts. Something else…
I looked beneath the bed. A smear of red trailed across the dusty floor. The underside of the bed frame revealed more stains on the wire mesh supporting the mattress.
Unsuccessfully struggling to pinch off my feelings, I stared at the grim testimonial to the boy’s battle to survive. Without willing it, I pictured what must have happened. Terrified by the sounds coming from his parent’s
