“In what?”
“Literature,” he said again, slowly enunciating each syllable.
“What sort of literature?”
His brown eyes finally fixed unemphatically on me.
“American’s what he told me. But I get the impression his main interest is plays. Seems he’s in one right now. Shakespeare. Hamlet, I think he said. Says he’s done a lot of acting, including some bit parts in movies shot around here, a couple of TV commercials, too.”
The ID officers stopped what they were doing. One of them turned around, his brush poised in midair.
Marino pointed toward the computer diskettes on the desk and exclaimed loudly enough to grab every-body’s attention, “Looks like we’d better take a peek at what’s on these suckers. Maybe a play he’s writing, huh?”
“We can take a look at them in my office. We’ve got a couple IBM-compatible PC’s,” I offered.
“PC’s,” he drawled. “Yo. Beats the hell out of my RC: one Royal Crapola, standard issue, black, boxy, sticky keys, the whole nine yards.”
An ID officer was pulling out something from beneath a stack of sweaters in a bottom drawer, a long-bladed survival knife with a compass built into the top of the black handle and a small whetstone in a pocket on the sheath. Touching as little of it as possible, he placed it inside a plastic evidence bag.
Out of the same dresser drawer came a box of Trojans, which, I pointed out to Marino, was a little unusual, since Lori Petersen, based on what I’d seen in the master bedroom, was on oral contraceptives.
Marino and the other officers began the expected cynical speculations.
I pulled off my gloves and stuffed them in the top of my bag. “The squad can move her,” I said.
The men turned in unison, as if suddenly reminded of the brutalized, dead woman in the center of the rumpled turned-down bed. Her lips were pulled back, as if in pain, from her teeth, her eyes swollen to slits and staring blindly up.
A radio message was relayed to the ambulance, and several minutes later two paramedics in blue jumpsuits came in with a stretcher, which they covered with a clean white sheet and placed flush against the bed.
Lori Petersen was lifted as I directed, the bedclothes folded over her, the gloved hands not touching her skin. She was gently placed on the stretcher, the sheet pinned at the top to ensure no trace evidence was lost or added. Velcro straps made a loud ripping sound as they were peeled apart and fastened across the white cocoon.
Marino followed me out of the bedroom and I was surprised when he announced, “I’ll walk you to your car.”
Matt Petersen was on his feet as we came down the hall. His face wan, his eyes glassy, he stared at me, desperately, needing something only I could give. Assurance. A word of comfort. The promise his wife died quickly and did not suffer. That she was tied up and raped after the fact. There was nothing I could say to him. Marino led me back through the living room and out the door.
The front yard was lit up with television lights floating against the background of hypnotically flashing red and blue. The staccato voices of disembodied dispatchers competed with the throbbing engines as a gentle rain began to fall through a light fog.
Reporters with notepads and tape recorders were everywhere, waiting impatiently for the moment when the body was carried down the front steps and slid into the back of the ambulance. A television crew was on the street, a woman in a snappy belted trenchcoat talking into a microphone, her face serious as a grinding camera recorded her “at the scene” for Saturday’s evening news.
Bill Boltz, the Commonwealth’s attorney, had just pulled up and was getting out of his car. He looked dazed and half asleep and determined to elude the press. He didn’t have anything to say because he didn’t know anything yet. I wondered who notified him. Maybe Marino. Cops milled around, a few of them aimlessly probing the grass with their powerful Kel lights, some of them clustered by their white cruisers and talking. Boltz zipped up his windbreaker and nodded as he briefly met my eyes, then hurried up the walk.
The chief of police and a major sat inside an unmarked beige car, the interior light on, their faces pale as they periodically nodded and made remarks to reporter Abby Turnbull. She was saying something to them through an open window. Waiting until we were on the street, she trotted after us.
Marino warded her off with the flap of a hand, a “Hey, no comment” in a “screw yourself” tone of voice.
He stepped up the pace. He was almost a comfort.
“Ain’t this the pits?” Marino said with disgust as he patted himself down for his cigarettes. “A regular three-ring circus. Jesus Christ.”