On Harrow Hill

With gloves and booties on, Gurney headed around to the area behind the house, which was approximately half lawn and half stone patio. A corridor of sorts had been cordoned off with additional yellow tape, beginning at the back door of the house and extending across the patio onto the lawn. The rest of the lawn had been gridded with white string into a standard geometric search pattern. One of Barstow’s techs was proceeding slowly through it, his attention on the ground in front of him. A wide-eyed Slovak hurried over to Gurney.

“It looks like someone broke in through the back door and got into a scuffle with Peale, killed him, and dragged his body outside. There are tire marks on the grass—like they brought a car around to take the body away. Peale’s Lexus is gone, so that may be the vehicle that left the marks. The gas stove in the kitchen was still on, like Peale had been cooking something, but it was all just a blackened mess, the pot even had a hole burned through it. The house stinks from the smoke, lucky the whole place didn’t go up in a blaze.”

“Any estimate of the time this happened?”

“The blood is still tacky in a few spots, so I’m guessing sometime this morning?”

“What are you focused on right now?”

“I just sent two of our patrol guys around the neighborhood to find out if anyone noticed anyone coming or going around this house. And I issued an APB on Peale’s Lexus. What’s next, I’m not sure.” He lowered his voice. “DA Stryker has taken over the scene. She tells us to do one thing, then another thing. I don’t know if she knows what she’s doing herself.”

On cue, Stryker appeared inside the open back door and summoned Gurney over with a peremptory wave of her hand.

“Take a look in here. I want your interpretation of this.” Her voice had the rigid edge that often comes with an effort to project self-confidence.

When Gurney reached the taped corridor leading out from the back door, he noted the reddish-brown drag marks on the patio. He stepped gingerly around them and followed Stryker into the rear hall of the house. As he passed the door, he saw that the glass panel nearest the knob had been broken. Some of the glass pieces were on the hall floor and some were outside the doorway on the patio, seemingly where they had been dragged. Those had the same brownish-red traces on them as the hall floor and the patio stones.

Stryker pointed along the hallway. “Actual crime scene is in the kitchen.”

There was blood all over the floor, mainly, but also on the kitchen tabletop and chair back, where a handprint, perhaps of the staggering victim, had smeared it. There were scuff marks on the floor, a spoon, and the pieces of a broken bowl. There was an open oatmeal container and a measuring cup on a countertop next to the stove. The blackened, warped remnant of a pot sat on one of the burners. The tile wall behind the stove and the exhaust fan above it were covered with soot.

Gurney looked more closely at the central bloodstain on the floor. It appeared that a body or other substantial object had rested in it, then been dragged out of the kitchen, through the hall, and out the back door. He followed the smeared bloodstains out onto the patio and through the taped corridor onto the lawn, where they stopped. The portly photographer was taking multiple shots of that area, with Barstow and Slovak both directing him to places in the grass they wanted him to focus on.

Stryker had followed Gurney out of the house and was standing behind him.

“Well?”

Gurney ignored the question. He was estimating the distance from the last bloodstain in the grass to the indentations caused by a vehicle’s tires.

“Looks like this is where he dumped the body in the trunk,” said Slovak, stretching his thick neck from side to side.

Gurney noticed a plastic evidence bag in Barstow’s hand with something dark inside it. He asked what she’d found.

She held it up so he could see it more clearly. “Peale’s wallet. It was tossed on the grass over there.” She pointed to a spot a few feet from where they were standing. “Driver’s license, Lexus registration, credit cards were all missing, along with any cash he might have been carrying. Other items were still in it—golf club membership card, Mensa membership, hunting club membership, medical insurance cards.” A damp, gusty wind was blowing her hair sideways, but she seemed not to notice.

“Whoever did it just took the essentials,” added Slovak, unnecessarily.

“Well, Detective?” The edge in Stryker’s voice had become more insistent.

He turned to her. “Yes?”

“I’m waiting for your reaction.”

“So far, I have nothing to add to what’s obvious.”

“What would you say is obvious?”

“There’s a lot of blood in the kitchen. Some of it seems to have been dragged out here. And a vehicle of some sort was recently driven across the lawn.”

“That’s all your famous power of deduction tells you?”

“I’m afraid so.”

After staring at him for a moment in disbelief, she turned to Slovak. “How about you? How would you explain what we’re seeing here?”