Inside the house, Tony Ramirez and his SID team, aided by the Sherriff’s Department forensic experts, scoured the house. Liz finished her examination of Blake Hunter’s body and crossed to the Lady in Red’s corpse.
Off to the side and safely out of the way, Ryan and Syd stood with Hanrahan. Hanrahan sucked on a cherry Tootsie Roll Pop. Ryan and Syd had declined Hanrahan’s offer.
After Syd summarized Alice’s high school rape and Syd’s abridged version of the Blake/Lady in Red battle, Hanrahan said, “Wait, you’re saying the rape was videotaped.”
Syd nodded. “Blake Hunter taped the whole thing and then he used frames from the tape to send out those disgusting emails.”
“Where’s the tape now?” Hanrahan asked.
Syd planned to discover the DVD in a day or so. She wanted the world to see what happened to Alice Waterman. To understand what drove the Lady in Red to kill those men. And maybe help realize Alice’s hope that her rape and ultimate revenge would inspire and empower other rape victims. But she couldn’t turn the tape over. Not yet.
“I don’t know,” Syd said.
“Blake Hunter’s office is full of tapes and DVDs,” Ryan said. “And he’s got stacks of hard drives. It could be here, but it’ll take us a while to go through them all.”
Tony Ramirez joined them. “Well, unlike all the other crime scenes, this one is teeming with evidence. Some familiar, like the Lady in Red numbering her victims; she used the four of hearts this time. And the severed penis, I get it already, she hated these guys. And he’s got a missing American Express card, which I found in her wallet. But we’ve got a lot of new stuff; I found five .25mm shell casings, one in the kitchen floor and four in the living room. In the past the Lady in Red always picked up her brass. We’ve got blood in the living room, on the floor leading into the master bath and all over the master bath. Bloody fingerprints galore in the master bath; I did a quick check with the Lady in Red’s fingers, they match. There also signs of a struggle in the office; there are fresh bloodstains and tissue fragments on that wall,” he said pointing.
“That would be Blake Hunter’s blood and skin,” Liz said joining them. “Besides the scalpel lacerations and that bullet hole between his eyes, he shows signs of blunt force trauma to his face and forehead, and his Achilles’ tendon has been severed.”
“And let’s not forget his cock,” Hanrahan said.
“I’ve seen bigger.” Liz said.
Hanrahan grunted.
Liz went on. “The Lady in Red has the three gunshot wounds as well as a huge contusion on the top of her skull and abrasions on both wrists.”
“Probably from these,” Ramirez said holding up an evidence bag containing Blake’s fur-lined handcuffs. “I found them on the floor of the office.”
“Yep,” Liz said. “Those would do it.”
“And this is interesting,” Tony Ramirez said, holding up Blake’s camera. He turned it on and showed them the digital screen in back. A stunning picture of the Lady in Red backlit by the sunset appeared. Tony hit a button and scanned through three more poses.
“Wow, classy shots,” Liz said.
“Wait, he was taking pictures of her, too?” Hanrahan said. “So let me get this straight, he takes her picture, knocks her out, handcuffs and shoots her. She bangs his head into the wall, cuts his ankle, slashes his face and shoots him in the head.”
“I’ve had worse dates,” Liz said.
“God, I’d love to know exactly what happened here.” Hanrahan said.
“I don’t think we’ll ever really know for sure,” Ryan said.
Oh yes you will, Syd thought. She intended to find the videotape of Alice and Blake’s fight to the death when she discovered the rape tape. The image of Alice, bound and handcuffed, being forced to watch her own rape was too heartbreaking not to release. And Alice’s brave fight to save herself was downright inspirational.
But once again, not yet.
“You guys finished?” Hanrahan asked Liz and Tony. They both nodded. “All right, good work.”
Liz turned to her two assistants. “Let’s bag them up.” They dropped the first body bag next to Blake and unrolled it.
Tony Ramirez headed into the kitchen where he left his crime scene kit. He started boxing the evidence. “Excuse me a minute,” Ryan said to the others and went to join Tony.
“So,” Hanrahan said, turning to Syd. “Looks like you and Ryan have still got the only perfect record in Homicide. You’re my Dream Team.”
Some dream team, Syd thought. A bitch-fucking, backstabbing, lottery stealing Ryan and a lying, evidence stealing, murdering Syd. “We make a great team, all right,” Syd said.
And, Syd thought, there was a very good chance their partnership wouldn’t last past tomorrow. If, as she feared, Ryan and Anne hooked up, she’d be asking Hanrahan for a transfer.
Hanrahan drifted off leaving Syd alone. She glanced into the kitchen. Ryan was huddled with Tony Ramirez, Tony was shaking his head and laughing. What the hell were they talking about, Syd wondered.
A body bag was unrolled next to the Lady in Red. Syd watched as the coroner assistants picked Alice up, slipped her into the bag and zipped her up. Was there anything more dehumanizing than being zipped into a black plastic bag?
“There’s a lot of sympathy in those green eyes,” Liz said joining Syd.
“I feel sorry for her, Liz. She was a good kid just trying to get by before those boys raped her. And I can’t help but wonder what her life would have been like if she didn’t go to that party.”
“I call it the Domino Theory,” Liz said. “The innocent single event leads to an inevitably tragic conclusion. This morning I had a six-year-old boy on my table, shot once through the head. Last night he found his dad’s handgun in a bedside drawer and started playing with it. He dropped it, it went off and killed him. So when did the first domino fall? When the kid found the gun, when his dad put the gun in the drawer instead of the top shelf of the closet, when his dad bought the gun, when his dad read the newspaper article about a home invasion in their neighborhood that sent him to the gun store in the first place? Sometimes it gets a bit murky, but it’s always there, the first domino. And if you could just stand it up again, stop the chain reaction, then so much needless tragedy could be undone.”
Was tonight’s domino the bus ride eleven years ago when Alice fell in love with Adam, Syd wondered. Or her saying yes when he asked her to the party, or Adam not walking out the door of the game room that night, or Nick Wood raping Alice, or Alice’s father selling her out, or the doctor’s lying to her about the cancer or Syd not answering Ryan’s phone call?
Liz asked, “And what was the first domino in your relationship with Ryan? The day you first met him… or the day he first met Anne?”
Syd recalled her binocular-enhanced view of Ryan kissing Anne. A melancholy smile touched Syd’s lips. “I’m afraid it was the day he met Anne.”
Liz touched Syd’s arm. “I’m sorry, sweetie.”
“Well, it’s not over until the greedy bitch sings.”
Liz laughed.
From the kitchen Ryan watched Syd and Liz. What was Liz laughing about, he wondered. But Syd didn’t look amused, if anything, she looked downright miserable.
Ryan knew Syd lied to him. She’d said she’d just arrived at the house a few minutes earlier, but when Ryan arrived, he put his hand on the hood of Syd’s car. It was cool, so she’d been there at least a half an hour. Plus, she told him to check out the mess in the master bathroom, but if the Lady in Red had gotten the drop on Syd in the office, how would she have known what was in the master bath?