Page 51 of One of Us Is Guilty

So few that they should have come with their own alarm bell.

The forensic photographer would have taken dozens of pictures.

Of the five, two were wide shots of the apartment, the headless corpse of a young woman in the foreground. She was lying on the floor, chest down, arms by her sides, legs straight. She was naked and pale.

I remembered the autopsy report mentioned a cut on the sole of her left foot. There was no close-up of that cut, but the second picture was from the reverse angle, so I could just about see the small dark line on the sole. Her feet were dirty, perhaps from walking around the apartment barefoot.

There was no glass on the floor. Nothing was broken. No furniture disturbed.

A final picture was a close-up of what looked like a jewelry box sitting on a steel desk. This photo wasn’t taken in the apartment. The box was studded with either crystals or semi-precious stones. An exhibit sign beside the box gave me an approximation of its size and scale. About eight inches long, five inches wide and six inches deep, styled to make it look as though it was a treasure chest in miniature. It looked heavy. Three stones were missing in the right corner of the box, just where some dark staining was present.

I flipped through the photobook again, then checked the binder of documents and the envelope, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

This wasn’t a case of what the pictures told me. It was more about what they were trying to conceal.

‘Do you have five photographs on that pen-drive?’ I asked.

‘Just looked through them,’ said Harry. ‘Only five. That’s got to be a first for a murder trial. You can bet they took about a hundred pictures. Where are the rest of them?’

‘They’re in the DA’s file. They’re focusing on the body, maybe minimizing the cleanliness of the rest of the apartment. I can see the sense in that. Bloch said the scene was way too sanitized.’

‘You read the witness statements yet?’

‘Just about to do that.’

‘Fair warning: they don’t help us.’

‘Give me the highlights.’

‘Patrick’s campaign manager, Geoffrey Gilbert, says that Vanessa kept a close eye on Molly. That she was jealous of her, and suspected that Molly was trying to seduce her husband.’

‘That’s not good.’

‘Wait till you get to forensics. We don’t have the full report yet, but it looks like Molly’s blood was found on that ornate jewelry box. There’s also another set of DNA on the box, probably from skin contact. It’s Vanessa’s.’

‘Our client’s DNA and Molly’s blood on that box is the DA’s case.’

The DA had nearly all that they needed to get a conviction, right here. During a heated argument, Vanessa hits Molly over the head with the jewelry box, killing her. I couldn’t see exactly how they were going to make the case that Vanessa cut off Molly’s head, nor why she would do such a terrible thing. That was a big problem here for the prosecutor. I could see a competent DA convince a jury that Vanessa killed Molly in a fit of jealously because she believed her husband was having an affair with her, but I couldn’t see anyone proving that Vanessa then decapitated her victim.

Harry said, ‘Then there’s this,’ and clicked on a file.

It opened a video. Security camera footage from an emergency exit at the rear of the building, out by a small parking lot. The footage was time stamped. It showed a man who looked like Patrick Vanderpool going into the building, coming out a while later. Then a woman, who was clearly Vanessa Vanderpool. When she left, she was carrying a gym bag.

‘Shit,’ I said, ‘you know what they’re going to argue, don’t you?’

‘Yep,’ said Harry. ‘The DA will say Molly’s head is in that gym bag. That it was a desperate attempt to hide the evidence of hercrime. We have to go talk to her. See if there’s an explanation for this.’

‘What if there is an easy explanation?’ I asked.

Harry leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs. He tossed aside the laptop, laced his fingers over his stomach and let his thumbs roll over each other. This was Harry’s way of thinking, and relaxing. It somehow helped his mind wander onto paths that led us out of a myriad problems, but this time it was different. Harry wasn’t thinking about our case. He was thinking about me. I could tell from that deep, penetrating look he gave me. Not that he busted this expression out often, but when I saw it I knew he was trying to dig his way into my head. Harry already knew what I was going to say. But he didn’t speak. He just sat there, quietly, waiting for me to give it breath and let it float into the air around us, so that we could get a good look at it, taste it, see it for what it really was and try to figure out how we felt about it.

I let the thought breathe as I said, ‘Maybe the easy explanation is our client is guilty.’

Harry said nothing. He nodded, acknowledged it was out there. Let the thought permeate.

Then said, ‘Are you asking me if I think she killed Molly?’

‘I’m asking,’ I said.