Chapter Nineteen Holly
Chapter Nineteen
HOLLY
The room has been sealed, and Fitzwilliam, Ortiz and I have gloved-up and are hunched over the pile of metal poles. At least a hundred of them at quick count.
Close proximity to Fitzwilliam means I’m forced to inhale gulps of his lemony aftershave. Everything about him is crisp, and richly scented. As though wealth has left a physical imprint on him.
‘Guess these scaffold uprights must have been part of the wedding demo,’ says Ortiz. ‘How sure are you that it’s blood on that pole?’ she looks at me.
‘You’ll want to test to confirm,’ I say. ‘But … See by the way it’s dried in striations? There’s a weak ionic reaction with the steel in the scaffold pole. That’s typical of an iron-rich fluid, like blood.’
I take off my studded backpack, and begin laying out my equipment at careful right angles. My portable spectrometer. A UV light. Bloodstain-detecting reagents, and a swabbing kit.
Fitzwilliam’s eyes widen. ‘You carry those in your purse?’ He’s eyeing the heavy metal box of the spectrometer, with its funnel-shaped aperture for analyzing samples.
‘I use it for work. It’s less weird than carrying a gun,’ I tell him, wielding my swab and dabbing the pole.
‘Ignore Fitzwilliam,’ says Ortiz. ‘He’s afraid of technology. An AI ate his grandma.’
‘I’m not afraid of it,’ grumbles Fitzwilliam. ‘I just believe in honest sleuthing.’
I put my sample in the chute. I press buttons. The spectrometer bleeps and whirs as it analyzes.
‘Blood,’ I confirm.
‘That thing can detect blood?’ Fitzwilliam scowls at it.
‘Not directly,’ I say. ‘It analyzes the absorption of light by molecules present in blood and—’
‘So this could be the murder weapon?’ Ortiz sounds hopeful.
‘Forensic report said she was beaten to death with a heavy blunt instrument,’ I say. ‘Something heavy. Smooth and consistent in shape. I’d say this would be a dead ringer.’
We all stare at the thick upright.
I shiver, wrapping my arms around me. ‘Maybe the killer knew about the forensic process,’ I say. ‘They knew to turn the temperature down in here to throw out the time of death.’
I pick up my UV light and start walking the room methodically, starting with the entrance, examining the doorway.
‘From what you told me about the case,’ I say. ‘The three dresses. The hair cut off. Whoever killed Simone is likely the same person who kidnapped Adrianna three years ago. At her twenty-first birthday party. Right?’
‘Yes,’ admits Fitzwilliam. ‘We are strongly investigating that connection.’
‘The kidnapper was never caught. No leads?’
‘As I told you before, it wasn’t our case,’ says Fitzwilliam. ‘The kidnap happened out on the family’s private island – Elysium. We’ve had to get files from the Colombian police. And the paperwork is patchy to say the least.’
I consider this, thinking back to the news reports. ‘Adrianna believed her kidnapper intended to kill her, right?’
‘That’s what finally drove her to dislocate her wrist, and escape the handcuffs,’ agrees Fitzwilliam. ‘She was convinced her captor would kill her after cutting her hair.’
‘Because?’
‘There were two dolls in the room,’ says Fitzwilliam.
‘Each day, the kidnapper cut the hair from a doll, then strung it up by the neck. The third day they cut Adrianna’s hair.
She figured it was her turn next. Question is, why would a kidnapper take Adrianna, then come back three years later and kill her bridesmaid? ’
‘It’s symbolic,’ I say, immediately. ‘A wedding is symbolic.’
Fitzwilliam rolls his eyes. ‘Save the criminal profiling for court.’
‘What’s your theory?’
‘Money. Or revenge. The Kensingtons are billionaires. This wedding is worth a lot of money to a lot of people.’
I come to a halt, where the carpet meets the wall.
‘Come look at this,’ I say. ‘I think this is where she died.’
Ortiz moves in close. ‘I think I see something,’ she decides. ‘Looks like an old stain on the wall that’s been cleaned off.’
I’m opening my bag excitedly. I have a hunch about this.
‘What are you doing?’ asks Fitzwilliam carefully, as I pull a little spray bottle from my bag and shake it. ‘This is a crime scene. Hey!’ He makes a grab for my hand as I spritz the wall.
‘Don’t you have any decorum at all?’ he demands. ‘This isn’t your crime scene.’
I ignore him, watching the effect of the spray. It emits a faint bluish glow. ‘Thought so,’ I say grimly. I turn to Ortiz. ‘Luminol oxidizes in the presence of hemoglobin. This is blood. Would you mind turning out the lights?’
‘Best find out where she’s going with this,’ shrugs Ortiz. Fitzwilliam crosses the room and snaps the lights out.
The luminol glows brightly. Just as I thought, the bloody handprints were no accident. Simone has left a message for us.
‘It’s concentrated here,’ I say. ‘A cluster of handprints. Looks deliberate, wouldn’t you say? They seem to be leading down.’
The handprints form a vertical line of sorts. ‘Episode seven,’ I say, speaking aloud. ‘Simone set up something similar to draw attention to a carpet stain that had been scrubbed.’
Simone. Even in death she’s leaving tricks and trails.
I snap on gloves, and follow the concentration of handprints to where it ends. Above the carpet. There’s a bulge, I notice, and before Fitzwilliam can stop me, I carefully peel back the carpet.
‘Look,’ I say. ‘I think Simone hid something for us to find.’
It’s a silver key. The top is shaped like a chunky cross. There’s a tag attached with a name.
‘Holly,’ I read, the blood turning to ice in my veins. I look up at Ortiz.
‘Looks like your boss left you a key,’ she observes.
‘There’s a number etched onto the front,’ says Fitzwilliam. ‘1620.’
They both look at me, hopefully. I have a sudden vivid memory of Simone. The forensic trails we’d set up together, to make the factual parts of her show more entertaining.
‘1620 is a service elevator key,’ I explain.
‘Firefighters use them. It opens any elevator panel in the city.’ I look at the key thoughtfully.
‘This featured in a show,’ I explain. ‘We’d take real-life cases and set parts of them up for entertainment.
In this instance, we’d cleared the name of a foreign ambassador accused of being a spy.
He’d leave sensitive documents around the city for his colleagues to collect. Elevators were one of the drops.’
Fitzwilliam and Ortiz exchange glances.
‘Simone was genius at staging forensics for TV,’ I tell them. ‘It was one of the things we disagreed on.’
‘Guess her ratings won that argument,’ says Ortiz. ‘Solving the puzzle was what made Wrongly Accused so addictive.’
I nod sadly.
‘So she left something for you to find?’ suggests Fitzwilliam. ‘In an elevator shaft?’
‘Looks that way,’ I concede.
‘Do you know which elevator Simone would be leaving documents in?’ asks Ortiz.
I rub the back of my neck. ‘Simone liked me to work out her dead drop locations, on the basis of forensic evidence. But … this one’s easy.’
‘It is?’ asks Fitzwilliam.
I nod. ‘Since she was found in the Plaza,’ I say. ‘My guess would be here.’