Part 10 (1/2)

”Thank you,” I said. ”This will help.”

After putting on shoe protectors, a cotton mask, and latex gloves, Adkins went in, while we waited in the hallway. She had the video camera, and she made her way around the room slowly, recording everything as she found it, zeroing in on anything that on first blush smacked of being potential evidence. The floor was a dark oak with Persian rugs scattered about, so there was no thick pile and nothing visible that resembled a footprint. Still, she videotaped the floor, using oblique lighting, a flashlight held at an angle. She found no footprints.

That done, Adkins videotaped the dressers and an antique ar-moire, with a big-screen television hidden inside, even the tissue box next to Billies bed. When shed finished videotaping, she shot digital stills of the room. Lastly, she focused on the bed, still covered by the tapestry bedspread, speckled with blood. Facing the bed, the headboard to the right bore a fanlike pattern of high-velocity blood spatter and brain matter, caused by pressure from the guns explosion forcing gas through the wound track. After sitting for a week, the spatter had aged brown, barely visible on the dark wood. When Adkins finished, she searched the perimeter of the bed. After a few moments, she motioned toward me.

”Take a look at this, Lieutenant,” she said.

Similarly suited up, I walked in. Adkins had sprayed the floor a foot from the left side of the bed, about three feet from where the body lay, with a colorless liquid, Fluorescein, a chemical that detects latent bloodstains. We put on orange goggles, and Adkins set up the ALS, the alternative light source, a device in a square aluminum box, the size of a DVD player, with a 400-watt, high-intensity bulb at the end of a long flexible wand. She then set the meter on the ALS, turned on the light, and pointed the ALS at a small Oriental rug, all in shades of beige.

”Notice anything?” she asked.

With the goggles on, it didnt take long before I saw a bright yellowish-orange glow on the rug. But not on all of it. One section appeared clean. ”You found a void?”

”Yup. Nothing in this section right here. Someone was standing there, I bet,” she said, aiming the flashlight at the point closest to the bed frame.

”Make sure you photograph that before we move anything,” I said. Thinking about c.o.xs body at the morgue, I added. ”The entry wound was on the victims right side. Thats the angle.”

Adkins nodded, and I walked back out to the hallway, careful where I stepped. Fifteen minutes later, shed bagged the rug and marked off a section of floorboards without spatter. Later, wed send someone in to cut that area out of the floor. ”Okay, you can come in now,” she called out.

I entered c.o.xs bedroom again, this time with Torres beside me, and all three of us began searching for evidence. The first thing Torres did was bag the bloodstained bedspread. When I saw Faith about to walk in, I stopped her.

”Have you been in here since Billies death?” I asked.

”No,” she said. ”I locked it from the outside and left. Except for the police and paramedics, the only one who has been in the room since Billies death is Lena, the housekeeper. She found the body, but hasnt been in the room since she called police.”

”Is she here now?” I asked.

”In her quarters over the garage,” Faith said, offering, ”I can go with you, introduce you.”

”No,” I said. ”Id really prefer that you waited outside, on the front porch. I dont want you to leave, in case we have questions. But its better to keep a distance, and please dont touch anything.”

”Of course,” she said. ”Anything you say.”

Lena Suarez was a tall woman, heavy-boned with a long nose and graying hair pulled into a bun. Her apartment over the four-car garage had its own kitchen and a small sitting area, and she invited me in, although rather reluctantly.

”I only went looking for Miss Billie because she asked me to wake her,” Suarez said. ”When she get home, she said, 'Lena, wake me at six-thirty. I have dinner at home tonight. And I said, 'Yes, Miss Billie. I was disappointed. Friday nights are my time off, so after work, I came here to my room, but then I remember that I need a gift for my nephews birthday. So I leave my room and drive to the store. I buy a game for his computer, so expensive those games are, and go right home to fix Miss Billies dinner. When I get back, I hurry and put a plate in the microwave for Miss Billie, tamales I made on Wednesday. They are her favorites. Then I go to wake her for dinner.”

”Had she said what her plans were for that night?” I asked.

”She tell me that she will have dinner at home and stay in,” the woman said. ”Miss Billie young and very pretty, and she went out a lot the last few months. Before that not so much, but lately, all the time. Until the last few weeks, then she stay home again.”

”When she went out, do you know where she went?” I asked.

”No,” the woman said, shaking her head. ”She never tell me where she go or who she go with.”

”So what happened after you put the plate in the oven?”

”Six-thirty, like she say, I go upstairs to wake Miss Billie,” Suarez said. ”I knock on the door. No one answer. I knock again, two more, maybe three more times. No one answer. I think shes sleeping, but I am afraid to go in. Maybe she not want me to. So I wait in the hall and try to think what to do. Then I say to myself, 'Lena, Miss Billie say to wake her, so you should do as she tell you. I open the door.”

”Did you notice anything odd in the hallway, anywhere in the house, before you went into the bedroom?” I asked.

”No,” she said. ”Nothing.”

”Did you see anyone? Anyone at all?”

”No, no one,” she said.

”Go on,” I said. ”What happened next?”

With this, the woman lowered her face and rubbed her eyes. Her voice grew weary. ”Like I say, I open the door,” she recounted. ”The shutters are closed. It is dark in the room. No lights on. So, I turn on the light switch. I say, 'Miss Billie, it is the time you say . . . But I dont finish, because I see Miss Billie. I see the blood, so much blood, and her face, her beautiful face. What that bullet did to her. Dios mio. I look hard to make sure its her. It is Miss Billie.”

Lena Suarez stopped talking and wrapped her arms around herself, appearing troubled. I felt sorry for her, but I needed the woman to talk. ”What did you do next?” I asked. ”Did you call the police?”

”No,” she said. ”I stand there for a while, and I just look, wondering if maybe my eyes not tell me the truth. Then, I think, I must get help. So I call for ambulance on nine-one-one, on the telephone down the hall, on Miss Billies desk. They ask me to help her, to do CPR. I tell them, it is too late.”

”Did you wait for them in the office?”

”No,” she said. ”I go downstairs to the front porch. I sit on the steps and try not to think about what I see. And soon they come in the ambulance with the siren. I point to the room, and the ambulance people go inside. But they come back in a hurry and say there is nothing they can do. Miss Billie is dead, and the medical men, they called police.”

From that point on, Lena Suarez told me of waiting for the police to arrive, without going back in the house. Shed never entered the front door, not since that afternoon. Instead, she stood on the porch and watched as the officers and a coroners a.s.sistant made their way upstairs. They lingered, undoubtedly sizing up the scene, and then filed slowly down. Late that night when the police were finished, a detective, probably Brad Walker, told her that the medical examiner was removing the body.

”That detective say Miss Billie kill herself, but I couldnt understand why she do that,” Lena said. ”She seem happy, not upset. And shes so proud of the way she looks. Why would she do that to her face?”

”I dont think she did,” I said.

The housekeeper looked just momentarily surprised, then nodded, as if shed suspected.

”Have you seen any men here, anyone at all that Miss Billie appeared to have a relations.h.i.+p with? Anyone she was dating?”

”No,” Suarez said. ”The only ones who visit Miss Billie are Miss Faith and Mr. Grant. Miss Billie very busy at work. She work all the time.”

”But you said shed been out more lately,” I pointed out. ”You said shed been going out over the past few months.”

That made her pause, and she thought. Then she said, ”Yes, I dont know where she go, but she go out more. Maybe with a man.”

”Miss Suarez, what was Miss c.o.xs relations.h.i.+p like with her brother-in-law, with Mr. Grant?” I asked.

Her eyes grew round and she stared at me, and then cautiously said, ”They seem to like each other very much.”

”How much?” I asked.

The housekeeper lowered her eyes.

”I need to know,” I said. ”Its important.”

”I dont think they do anything wrong,” she whispered. ”But sometimes, I think maybe they like each other too much.”