We stepped back inside. And there it finally was: the staircase. Clearly a recent addition, it was pale wood with modern steel detailing in the railing and treads. Blood was splattered all over the walls near the bottom—small drops and big drops and a fine spray. Long splashed lines on top of that like a gruesome Jackson Pollock painting. There was an entryway table under a mirror knocked out of place, beneath that a small, stained towel. In the center of the polished blond wood beneath the stairs was a huge circle of smeared blood. As though somebody had made an effort to clean up, only to make matters worse. But it was one nearly black spot to the side of the last step that was most disturbing. I could picture Amanda’s head lying there, the insides pouring out like a cracked egg.
“You okay?” Officer Kemper eyeballed me.
“Yeah, I just …” I motioned toward the stairs by way of explanation. “I’ll be okay.”
“I thought you’d been inside already?”
“I was. I didn’t look.” It did sound odd now that I’d said it out loud.
“I thought you were his lawyer?”
“I am.”
“Then you’d probably better buckle the fuck up,” he said before starting off toward the kitchen.
Officer Gill was crouched down, inspecting the broken dish with gloved hands. “Interrupted burglary, I’m guessing.”
“But they didn’t take anything?” I asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“They tried to, though.” Officer Gill motioned to the quarters. “An addict, I’d guess. Desperation break-ins usually are. They probably heard you, got startled, took off.”
Officer Kemper drifted over to the back door, opened it with an elbow, then stepped through, studying the backyard for a moment. I considered objecting to this patently absurd burglary theory. Someone totally unrelated to Amanda’s murder just happening to break in days later to steal a bunch of quarters? But Officer Gill would argue it wasn’t a coincidence: the house had been empty since—what, Saturday or Sunday morning—anybody keeping an eye out would be able to see that.
“You can run the fingerprints, right?” I asked as Officer Kemper stepped back inside. “On the door. They probably touched it on the way out.”
“Yeah,” Officer Gill said, sarcastic again. “Sure we can.”
“Are you saying you won’t?” I demanded.
“Nothing’s been taken and nobody’s been hurt,” Kemper offered diplomatically. “This isn’t going to be a top priority.”
My face flushed—part frustration, part embarrassment. “For all we know, the person who broke in here could be responsible for Amanda Grayson’s death. You’re telling me the police won’t try to figure out who it was?”
“Wasn’t your client arrested for that?” Officer Gill asked.
“He was arrested for assaulting an officer,” I shot back. “Anything to keep him where the DA can watch him.”
Officer Gill huffed quietly, but there was something resigned about it. Like she didn’t actually disagree. She held up her hands.
“Listen, we’ll put a request in to get the crime scene unit detectives back out here. We’ll also call the borough evidence collection team that handles property crimes.” She lowered her hands, placed them on her hips. “You’ll get one or the other. All I’m saying is that you’re gonna need to be patient.”
A few minutes later the officers were gone and I was alone in the house again. I made my way back out to the living room and then finally closer to the stairs. I looked up again the length of the metal banister, back down to that large circle of smeared blood on the floor.
And then I saw something on the second to the last stair. It was to the side, hardly visible against the blackened steel of the tread. I stepped closer. It was a pattern in the blood that could have been a print—fingers, a palm. Definitely it could be. What if the police had missed it? It was very hard to see. What if they hadn’t tested other prints on the wall? That also didn’t seem impossible under the circumstances. The crime scene was a mess and there’d been an excellent suspect already in hand.
As soon as the police stepped through the door, they’d have seen their prime suspect standing there, his own golf club at his feet, dead wife at the bottom of his stairs. Once they heard about the sex party, they’d have been even less worried about casting a wider net. And fair enough. The vast majority of female murder victims were killed by a loved one. Having settled on Zach as suspect number one, everything from that point forward would have been about the prosecution building a case.
From a former prosecutor, that wasn’t a judgment, it was a fact. It was also a fact that it was now my job to stop that particular freight train from barreling any farther down the track. And it felt more important now than ever. The outstanding warrant may have left me briefly questioning his trustworthiness, but the intruder in his house had left me more convinced than ever: Zach was an innocent man.
KRELL INDUSTRIES
CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
Attorney-Client Work Product
Privileged & Confidential
June 26
