Blow Fly (Kay Scarpetta #12)(111)

"In a front bedroom-a guest room, it looks like. Robillard's in there, taking pictures and everything."

Scarpetta glances up at the mention of Nic Robillard's name.

"Good," she says.

"You know her?" Now Detective Clark seems very confused. He irritably swats at another fly. "Damn, I hate those things."

Scarpetta follows tiny spatters of blood on the wall and floor, some no bigger than a pinpoint, the tapered ends pointing in the direction of flight. The victim was down on the floor by the baseboard and managed to struggle back to her feet. Small, elongated drops on the wall are not the usual cast-off blood that Scarpetta is accustomed to seeing when a victim has been repeatedly beaten or stabbed and blood has flown off the weapon as it is swung through the air.

The point of origin is what appears to be a violent struggle in the living room, and Scarpetta envisions punching, grabbing, feet sliding and perhaps kicking and clawing, resulting in a bloody mess-but not thousands of drops of blood cast great distances from the swings of a weapon. Possibly, there was no weapon, Scarpetta ponders, at least not at this stage of the assault. Maybe early on, after the assailant came through the front door, the only weapon was a fist. Possibly, the assailant did not assume he would need a weapon, and then he lost control of the situation quickly.

Dr. Lanier glances toward the back of the house. "Eric, go on and make sure everything's secure. We'll be right in."

"What do you know about the victim?" Scarpetta asks Detective Clark. "What do you know about any of this?"

"Not much." He flips back several pages in a notepad. "Name's Rebecca Milton, thirty-six-year-old white female. All we really know at this time is she rents this house, and her boyfriend stopped by around twelve-thirty to take her to lunch. She doesn't answer the door, so he lets himself in and finds her."

"Door unlocked?" Dr. Lanier asks.

"Yes. He finds her body and calls the police."

"Then he identified her," Scarpetta says, getting up from her squatting position, her knees aching.

Clark hesitates.

"How good a look did he get?" Scarpetta doesn't trust visual identifications, and one should never assume that a victim found inside a residence is the person who lived there.

"Not sure," Clark replies. "My guess is he didn't stay in that bedroom long. You'll see when you get there. She's in bad shape, real bad shape. But Robillard seems to think the victims Rebecca Milton, the lady who lives here."

Dr. Lanier frowns. "How the hell would Robillard know?"

"She lives two houses down."

"Who does?" Scarpetta asks, panning the living room like a camera.

"Robillard lives right over there." Detective Clark points toward the street. "Two houses down."

"Jesus God," Dr. Lanier says. "How weird is that? And she didn't hear anything, see anything?"

"It's the middle of the day. She was out on the street like the rest of us."

The house is that of a neat person with a reasonably good income and expensive tastes, Scarpetta notes. Oriental rugs are machine-made but handsome, and to the left of the front door is a cherry entertainment center with an elaborate sound system and large-screen television. Bright Cajun paintings hanging on the walls are joyous in their loud, primary colors and primitive depictions of fish, people, water and trees. Rebecca Milton, if she is the victim, loved art and life. In whimsical frames are photographs of a tan woman with shiny black hair, a bright smile and a slim body. In several other photographs she is in a boat or standing on a pier with another woman, also with dark hair, who looks enough like her to be her sister.

"We're sure she lived alone?" Scarpetta asks.

"It appears she was alone when she got attacked," Clark says, scanning pages in his notepad.

"But we don't know that for a fact."

He shrugs. "No ma'am. We don't know much of anything for a fact at the moment."

"I'm just wondering, because many of these pictures are of two women-two women who seem to have a close relationship. And a number of the photographs were taken inside this house or in what appears to be on the front porch or perhaps in the backyard." She points out the hair swipes near the baseboard and interprets them. "Right here, she went down, or someone did, and whoever it was, the person was bleeding sufficiently for her hair to be bloody..."

"Yeah, well, she's got a big-time head injury. I mean, her face is smashed up bad," Clark offers.

Straight ahead is the dining room, with a centered antique walnut table and six matching chairs. The hutch is old, and behind its glass doors are dishes with gold around the rims. Beyond, through an open doorway, is the kitchen, and it does not appear that the killer or the victim moved in this direction, but off to the right of the living room, the pursuit continuing through a blue-carpeted hallway and ending in a bedroom that faces the front yard.

Blood is everywhere. It has dried a dark red, but some areas of the carpet are so soaked that the blood is still damp. Scarpetta pauses at the end of the hallway and examines blood droplets on the paneled wall. One drop is round, very light red inside and very dark around the rim. Surrounding it is a spray of other droplets, some almost too small to see.

"Do we know if she was stabbed?" Scarpetta turns around and asks Clark, who is hanging back at the beginning of the hallway, busy with a video camera.