Code 61

THIRTEEN

Sunday, October 8, 2000

14:26

I went right back upstairs to Hester, and we had a conference.

“It'd help if you were to find a blood trail leading to the third floor,” I said.

“Well, give me your wrist.”

“Not yet, but let's keep that option open.” I looked back down the stair. “I'm staying up here a minute or two. I want them to think I'm in conference.” I just hate it when attorneys get involved so soon. They belong in a courtroom, not at a crime scene.

Finally, as Hester and company continued on the second floor, I returned to the parlor, carefully stepping over the chalk marks in the second-floor hall. Looking back at them, they seemed to be just about perfectly located in front of Edie's bedroom door. Damn. That could be a problem. They didn't lead anywhere. Just the way they would if she'd been brought here, and then they sat her down while they opened the door. No indication of direction.

Downstairs, Borman was just standing in the parlor doorway. “I think,” I said to him, certain that I would be overheard, “we're just about done up there on the second floor. Or, should be within an hour or so.”

Borman said, “Good, and then up to the third floor?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “No problem at all.”

“So, what,” asked Junkel, “have you heard from the county attorney?”

“I'll be talking to him again shortly. We really are trying to be accommodating with this, but we also have a duty, and a higher obligation to the court.” I shrugged. “You know how that goes.”

By pulling both Borman and myself off search duties, we had probably lost two or three hours by now. We'd done it to be accommodating to Jessica Hunley in the first place. I'd hoped Ms. Hunley would have arrived, smiled, handed over the keys to the third floor, and left. Not to be. We'd tried to be accommodating when we simply should have taken the lock off one of the doors to the third, and reimbursed the owner.

There's always an upside, though. Although it had been in the back of my mind, I was quite aware that we had also kept Jessica Hunley from talking to the other residents of the house. I knew they'd talked on the phone, but so far they hadn't been able to sit down and exchange information as a group.