Stewart stepped forward and threw his jacket over Kendra Rhode’s torso. “Don’t tell me we’re preserving evidence,” he said. “There’s no evidence to preserve.”
They could hear people in the corridor beyond the stairwell. The fire door opened and Jerry Young stood there,with Don Hecklewhite behind him, and beyond them men in uniform Gregor didn’t recognize. They all looked stupefied.
Clara Walsh came up behind them. Gregor could see her red hair moving among the uniforms. For some reason, it struck him as odd that both Clara Walsh and Marcey Mandret had red hair, although Marcey’s actually looked red, and Clara’s looked dyed red. This line of thought made no sense at all. If Gregor hadn’t known himself better, he would have wondered if he was in shock. He thought the nurse named Leslie really was in shock.
Clara made it to the front of the police ranks and stepped into the stairwell. She looked down at Kendra Rhode’s body. She looked up at Gregor and Stewart and Leslie. She said, “My God. What happened here?”
“She wasn’t naked to begin with,” Stewart said. “They pulled her clothes off. Ripped them right off of her while I was standing here and Gregor, too. They pulled the body around. They took pictures. I can’t imagine what they took for pictures.”
“She could be alive,” Leslie said. “She could be. She fell down the stairs, I think. I came out into the stairwell because of Mr. Bullard, Mr. Bullard got out of his bed somehow and he got into the corridor and the door to the stairwell was open when I found him, so I got worried about it, and I came into the stairwell and I looked down and there she was at the bottom. I think she fell down the stairs. But people fall down the stairs all the time and they break their necks and they’re still alive, so I came down here, I came down here, I did come down here and then there was noise and then people started coming in, all those people, and then—”
“Listen,” Gregor said gently. “Try to think. Was she alive when you got to her?”
“I never got to her,” Leslie said. “I got partway down the stairs and then they were everywhere. I couldn’t check. I couldn’t check. But she could still be alive. Somebody should check.”
“She’s not alive now,” Gregor said. “I think I can guarantee that. You can check her if you want to, though.”
Leslie looked up at the faces around her, police faces, Clara Walsh’s face. Then she seemed to decide that she had been given some kind of permission. She went down a few more steps to the body itself and put her stethoscope in place on her ears. She put the scope under Stewart’s jacket and felt around, then felt around again, then listened, then listened again. She withdrew the scope and shook her head.
“No,” she said.
“Didn’t you say that Mr. Bullard was out of bed?” Gregor asked. “Maybe you should make sure he gets back into bed.”
“I did,” Leslie said. “I put him back into bed before I came out to the stairwell. I don’t even know why I did. It was just that the door was open, and that didn’t make any sense, and we don’t know what happened to Jack, so I thought whoever had attacked him might still be around, or something, you know, the way it is on television. Attacked him before, I mean. I don’t think he was attacked this afternoon. I think the door was open and she fell down the stairs and he heard her cry out and tried to go to her. I must have been in the ladies’ room or downstairs picking up lunch. It doesn’t make any sense to have just one nurse on duty when there’s a patient on the ward, but then there are almost never any patients on the wards during the off-season and it costs so much money to keep people on. But I should have been there. I shouldn’t have left the station. I don’t even know what she was doing here.”
Gregor looked up and around the crowd again. Mike Ingleford was there, at the back, with his arms folded across his chest. “Dr. Ingleford,” Gregor said. “Do you think it’s possible to find out whether Kendra Rhode died from the fall or from the actions that took place afterward?”
Mike Ingleford looked amused. “I’m not a pathologist,” he said, “but I think I can assure you that forensics has not advanced to the point where it could tell you if a woman died now or fifteen minutes from now, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“What about what she died of?” Gregor said. “She fell down the stairs, Leslie thinks, and probably broke her neck.Could we find out if she died from the fall or from being manhandled later?”
“I doubt it,” Mike Ingleford said. “I don’t want to be a pessimist here, but assuming the reports are accurate and that she fell down the stairs and broke her neck, then in all likelihood that’s what she died from, whether she died instantaneously or because somebody pulled at her body while it was lying there and finished the job the broken neck started. But there would be no way that I know of to distinguish between the two.”