suit turned to Haldane. His voice was surprisingly deep: 'We've vacuumed the place, Lieutenant, finished with photographs, lifted what prints we could, all the rest of it. We're moving this victim out.'
'See anything special in the preliminary exam, Joey?' Haldane asked.
Laura supposed Joey was a police pathologist, although he was badly shaken for someone who should have been accustomed to scenes of violent death.
Joey said, 'Looks like nearly every bone in the body was broken at least once. One contusion atop another, hundreds, no way to tell how many. I'm positive an autopsy is going to show ruptured organs, damaged kidneys.' He glanced uneasily at Laura, as if not certain he should go on.
She maintained a bland expression of professional interest that she hoped didn't look as phony and sick as it felt. Joey continued: 'Crushed skull. Teeth broken loose. One eye was jarred out of its socket.'
Laura saw a fireplace poker on the floor, against the baseboard. 'Is that the murder weapon?'
'We don't think so,' Haldane said.
And Joey said, 'It was in this guy's hand. Had to pry it out of his fingers. He was trying to defend himself.'
Staring at the opaque body bag, they fell into a mutual silence. The ceaseless percussion of the rain on the roof was simultaneously a mundane and strange sound — like the rumble of enormous doors sliding open in a dream to reveal a mysterious and unearthly vista.
The other men returned with the wheeled stretcher. One of the wheels wobbled erratically like a malfunctioning supermarket cart: a cold, clattering noise.
Three doors led off the short hall, one on each side and one at the end. All three were ajar. Haldane led Laura around the corpse and into the room at the end of the passageway.
In spite of her warm sweater and lined raincoat, she was cold. Freezing. Her hands were so white they looked dead. She knew the heat was on, because she felt the warm air blowing out of the vents when she passed them, so she knew the chill came from within her.
The room had once been an office-study, but now it was a monument to destruction and chaos. Steel file drawers were ripped from their cabinets, scraped and dented, handles twisted off; the contents were scattered across the floor. A heavy chrome-and-walnut desk was on its side; two of its metal legs were bent, and the wood was cracked and splintered as if it had taken a few blows from an axe. A typewriter had been thrown against one wall with such force that several keys had snapped off and were embedded in the drywall board. Papers were everywhere — typewritten sheets, graphs, pages covered with figures and notations in a small precise handwriting — many of them shredded or crumpled or wadded into tight balls. And there was blood everywhere: on the floor, the furniture, the rubble, the walls, even on the ceiling. The place had a raw, coppery smell.
'Jesus,' she said.
'What I want you to see is in the next room,' he said, leading her toward a door at the rear of the demolished study. She noticed two opaque plastic body bags on the floor. Looking back at her, Haldane said again, 'Next room.'
Laura didn't want to stop, but she stopped. She didn't want to look down at the two shrouded bodies, but she looked. She said, 'Is one of these... Dylan?'
Haldane had moved ahead of her. Now he returned to her side. 'This one had Dylan McCaffrey's ID,' he said, pointing. 'But you don't want to see him.'
'No,' she agreed, 'I don't. She glanced at the other bag. 'Who was this one?'
'According to the driver's license and other cards in his wallet, his name was Wilhelm Hoffritz.'
She was astonished.
Her surprise must have been evident, for Haldane said, 'Do you know him?'
'He was at the university. One of my husband's ...
Christine Zolendz, Frankie Sutton, Okaycreations