Mr. Throckmorton sighed.
Horace reached up to unfasten the latch and pulled open the plywood doors.
“That you, Horace?” Aida Morris loomed up on the other side of the barricade.
“Yes,” Horace said. “I’m going to test outside of the plywood barrier for blood spatter.”
“Test it how?” Aida said. “You can see with your own eyes that there isn’t any.”
“Trace blood spatter,” Horace added.
“Hmph.” Clearly Aida didn’t share Horace’s enthusiasm for forensics. But she did watch with close attention as he repeated his luminal routine.
Rob and Mr. Throckmorton had been hanging back. But on hearing that there was no visible blood spatter on the door, they crowded forward. I stepped back so they could watch Horace’s luminal routine at close range.
“No blood on the outside of the plywood either.” His tone was glum.
“Of course not,” Aida said. “It all went the other way.”
She stood back and gestured at where Colleen Brown had fallen. I couldn’t help looking, and realized with surprise how very much blood there was on that part of the floor and even on the wall. Perhaps Brown’s scarlet-clad form had distracted me from realizing this before. And—
I heard a small thud. Mr. Throckmorton was lying in a crumpled heap on the floor to my left.
“Oh, dear,” I said. “Mr. Throckmorton has fainted.”
“I’ll take care of it!” Rob said. “Hang in there, Phinny!”
He dashed down the steps and over to Mr. Throckmorton, threw the small, limp form over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and threaded his way through the file cabinets and boxes back to the other end of the room. I followed to make sure both of them were all right. Rob probably would be, now that Mr. Throckmorton had given him an excuse to flee the area near the blood spatters.
He shouldered aside a curtain hanging between two high sets of shelves to reveal what must be Mr. Throckmorton’s sleeping quarters. A twin-sized air mattress, neatly made up with clean white sheets, rested on some kind of platform—probably more boxes of files—while the shelves that surrounded it on three sides were filled to overflowing with books—mostly American history, at least from what I could see from my vantage point just outside the alcove.
“Here you go!” Rob exclaimed in a cheerful tone as he deposited Mr. Throckmorton on the air mattress. “Do you think I should throw some cold water over him?”
“No, I think you should fetch a glass of cold water and offer it to him when he comes to,” I said. “And keep him down at this end of the basement.”
“Will do!” Rob might be squeamish, but he was also resilient.
I wound my way back to the other end. Horace had moved on to taking pictures of the gun, which was still wedged inside the barrier.
“Mr. Throckmorton okay?” Aida asked.
I nodded.
“Aida, can you reach the gun from out there?” Horace asked.
Aida squatted down and tried. Several times.
“I could if I didn’t mind shredding my hand on that razor wire,” she said. “But not easily.”
“Whereas it’s very easy to reach from here,” Horace said. “The wire’s not as dense on this side.”
He stuck his gloved hand through a gap and snagged the gun on the first try.
“Is that important?” Aida asked.
“If you wanted to throw the gun through the barrier, and realized it had stuck there, why not pick it up and throw it again, if you could reach it?” Horace said. “That could help Phinny.”
“Of course, a really sneaky person might deliberately leave it there so we’d think just that,” I said. “I don’t think that proves anything.”
“Assuming the killer’s devious enough to have thought that through,” Aida said. “And besides, from what I hear, he had to make tracks if he didn’t want to get caught red-handed.”
Horace nodded, and put the gun in an evidence bag.
“So,” Horace asked, in a nonchalant voice. “Are we opening up the barricade soon?”
“Not that I know of,” Aida said. “Chief told me to keep everyone the heck away from it for now. And out of this room, so no one would see you if you needed to open the plywood. You finished? We should shut it up if you are.”
“Oh.” Horace’s face fell. “Well, I’m going to be here for a while, looking for any more evidence. You just let me know if he changes his mind.”
“Chief wants to get the gun and some of that stuff off to Richmond ASAP,” Aida pointed out.
“We could pass it through the barricade,” Horace suggested.