The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(36)

The victim’s face, as Madison had predicted, bore the marks of an awful end.

Fellman looked it over. “Beaten about the face with a blunt object. I see splinters embedded in the skin.” He turned to Madison. “There might be a piece of wood around here, maybe coming from one of the pallets.”

The forensics officer standing next to Madison nodded and went off.

“He was beaten,” the doctor continued, “but not hard enough to kill him, as you can see. I’ll know more after the X-rays.”

Madison tried to read through the discoloration of the bruises. “Did you notice the marks on the palms of his hands?” she asked him.

“Yes. It was a prolonged attack. Once I get him out of his clothes, we might see extensive contusions to the rest of the body.”

“And yet . . .”

“And yet the cause of death is two GSWs to the head.”

“Looks like a .22.”

“That’s what I think.”

“How many assailants?”

“I couldn’t tell you now. Maybe later. If they held him down, we could have palm prints.”

“Any defensive wounds?”

The doctor examined the man’s hands. “Hardly. Judging from fingers and nails, he only tried to crawl away. And didn’t really manage that, either.”

“How long do you think the attack lasted?”

Fellman thought it over. It was too early to get a precise time of death, but he could make a rough evaluation considering the time it took for bruises to develop.

“I’d say they had him for at least an hour. That is to say, the attack lasted an hour; they might have had him for longer.”

Madison looked around: if they had spent one whole hour here, they were bound to have left something behind.

Amy Sorensen, the Crime Scene Unit senior investigator, had been taking photographs and making diagrams of the blood-spatter patterns: the dazzling lights had quickly revealed droplets on the walls and floor. Each had been marked and snapped. Sorensen’s people worked like a quiet army in protective suits, collecting and preserving, as they progressed through the warehouse.

Under their suits some of them wore the T-shirts Sorensen had given each member of her team: navy blue, the lettering in bold white: I ♥ LOCARD. Forensic-science pioneer Edmond Locard’s basic principle: every contact leaves a trace. She had given Madison one of the T-shirts, too.

Sorensen had trained her people well, and there was no one else Madison would rather work with at the evidence table. Sorensen pushed a lock of red hair behind her ear.

“Here.” She pointed at the floor. Madison looked where she was pointing and nodded. Sorensen knew that Madison had at least three courses in Evidence Collection and Analysis on top of the basic ones required, and she wasn’t going to spell it out for her.

What she was pointing at was a collection of blood drops on the concrete, all perfectly round.

“And there.” She made a sweeping gesture with her right arm toward the wall.

Madison stepped up to it and narrowed her eyes. “Yes, I can see that.”

The blood drops on the wall had a tail, and it told them which direction they came from and at what speed they flew through the air. Once they had collated all the evidence, Sorensen would be able to tell her how tall the assailant or assailants had been and how the blows had been struck.

From what Madison could see, the warehouse was the primary crime scene. The victim had been brought there and attacked. No blood had been found anywhere near the door. Madison looked at the round drops like shiny coins on the cement. That was where the attack had started: the man had been standing right there, and the aggressor had been raining blows down on him, the weapon creating the pattern of drops on the wall as the arm traveled back and forth, over and over.

“I’d like to see the inside of the suitcase,” she said to the CSU officer standing next to it; the black American Tourister was already sealed in a large evidence bag to be opened at the lab.

“If we start taking things out here, we might contaminate—”

“I understand. I just need to see inside. We don’t even need to touch the contents.”

“Why?” He started to undo the plastic evidence bag.

“Because the victim’s wallet contained plastic and two hundred and fifty-seven dollars and twelve cents.” Madison thought of the half-moon nail marks on his right palm. “It wasn’t a robbery,” she said. “We need to know if he was in a hurry.”

The CSU officer placed the suitcase on a sheet under one of the lights. He had hooked what looked like a bent paperclip in the hole on the pull tab and moved it gingerly backward as the zipper’s teeth came apart. Madison knelt close to it, aware of the hectic work around her but focusing only on this one thing. How quickly did you pack, Mr. Gray? How quickly did you get out of the house last night?