He had stared at the wall for quite some time before it struck him that something else was wrong. He didn't have to bend over to see the spatter. He knelt down again beside the chalk torso and measured it roughly with his arm. It was slightly shorter than the arm itself. The spatter should be quite a bit lower on the wall.
Maybe, he thought, Aline had been in a chair. But the only chair in the room had no bloodstains on it. Maybe, he thought, whoever killed Aline had done so while holding him in their arms, perhaps dancing or spinning as he stabbed. He could imagine the limbless torso stiff, rigid, struggling.
But that didn't strike him as quite right either. True, he had been trained to infiltrate; true, his experience with crime scenes was far less than most of his former colleagues. Perhaps the killer had struck upward each time, as if carrying a golf swing through? Perhaps that would account for the odd spatter and the decreased amount of blood on the lower part of the wall?
But why? he wondered. Why strike that way at all?
And what was the instrument? From the way the spatter was slung he would have guessed a knife, some kind of blade. Without seeing a photograph of the body it was difficult to be sure. It hardly seemed likely that the killer would attempt to use a knife as if it were a golf club. Something was wrong.
He regarded the chalk torso, the way the blood had pooled unconvincingly out of the chalk head. It had been drawn wrong somehow. He reached out to touch the surface of the pool of dried blood. It looked almost lacquered. It was slick in some places, cracking on the surface in others, darker and thicker in the center. The light from the ceiling shined off it in a kind of busted nimbus, the shape not unlike that of a broken jaw.
What could blood tell? he wondered. Where blood was could tell a lot. Could blood itself tell nothing?
He got out his keys and dug at the blood in the center of the stain. The top quarter-inch layer cracked away in bits, but underneath it merely separated. Right near the floor the blood was almost moist, like a dough.
How long had it been? he wondered. They had started calling him several weeks ago. At least that; it could have been longer: he had been confused enough not to know exactly how much time had gone by. Aline, then, must have been dead for at least three weeks, perhaps more than a month. There was no way blood would stay moist for that long. It would either dry out completely or it would begin to rot and stink. And why were there no flies?
He went out into the hall. The guard was waiting, standing as stiffly as he had been when Kline had gone into the room.
"Nobody was killed in that room," said Kline
"I don't know what you're talking about," said the guard.
"Whose room is it?"
The guard just looked at him.
"I need to see Borchert," said Kline. "Right now."
"The room, Mr. Kline?" said Borchert absently. "What room is that exactly?" He held his mutilated finger between them and scrutinized it, his eyes flashing back and forth between it and Kline. "Nice work, don't you think, Mr. Kline?"
The fingertip was pale and puffy, streaked dark at the end, a sort of red collar just below the cut.
"It's infected," said Kline.
"Nonsense," said Borchert. "What you see is simply the body sealing itself off."
"About the room-"
"I can see the appeal of self-cauterization, Mr. Kline," said Borchert. "Ugly, true, but you really do have something there. Less clinical. A return to natural religion, so to speak."
"I don't have anything," said Kline. "This has nothing to do with me."
"Oh, but it does, Mr. Kline. You may be an unintentional avatar, but you are an avatar nonetheless."
"Look," said Kline. "I'm done with this. I'm leaving."
"So sorry, Mr. Kline," said Borchert. "But we've talked about this. If you try to leave, you'll be killed. Now what was this about the room?"
Kline shook his head. "Nobody was killed in that room."
"What room?"
"The murder room."
"Oh," said Borchert. "I see." He used his arm to raise himself out of the chair and onto his remaining leg and then stood there, half gone. He stood tilted slightly in the direction of his absent limbs, as if crimped at the side, for balance. "How can you be so sure, Mr. Kline?"
"Everything is wrong," said Kline. "The blood spatter pattern is irregular, the positioning of the body isn't right in regard to blood flow-"
"But surely, Mr. Kline, irregular doesn't mean falsified. Perhaps it's simply an unusual circumstance."
"Perhaps," said Kline. "But there's something wrong with the blood."
"The blood?"
"It isn't completely dry."
"But surely-"
"It's been artificially dried. A fan or a hair dryer or something. But it's still damp underneath. It couldn't possibly belong to the body of a man killed several weeks ago."
Borchert looked at him thoughtfully a long moment and slowly hopped his way around so he could slide back into the chair.
"Well?" said Kline.
"So it's a reconstruction," said Borchert. "So what?"
"So what?" said Kline. "How can I be expected to solve a crime by looking at a reconstruction of it?"
"Mr. Kline, surely you're enough of an armchair philosopher to realize that everything is a reconstruction of something else? Reality is a desperate and evasive creature."
"Am I being asked to solve the crime or the reconstruction of the crime?"
"The crime," said Borchert. "The reconstruction," he said, gesturing to himself with his thumb and his one and two-thirds fingers, "c'est moi."
"I can't get anywhere without real evidence."
"I have perfect faith in you, Mr. Kline."
"At least let me talk to a few people who might know something."
"Somewhat tricky," said Borchert. "But, ever the optimist, I'm convinced something can be arranged."
Shaking his head, Kline went toward the door. Once there he turned, saw Borchert smiling in his chair. When he smiled, Kline realized that all his bottom teeth had been removed.
"This is going well, don't you think?" said Borchert, speaking loudly, perhaps for the sake of the guard. "Thank you, dear friend, for stopping by."
V
Ramse showed up a few days later with a tape recorder balanced on his forearms. He put it on the table near Kline.
"What's this for?" asked Kline.
"It's a tape recorder," said Ramse. "For taping things. Borchert asked me to bring it."
"What does he want me to do with it?"
"It's for the interviews," said Ramse. "For the crime."
Kline nodded. He went to the fridge and poured himself a glass of milk, drank it slowly as Ramse watched.
"Anything else you need?" Kline asked.
"No," said Ramse. "Just that."
Kline nodded. "Right," he said. "Where's Gous?"
"He's getting ready for the party."
"The party?"
"Didn't he send you an invitation?"
"No."
Ramse furrowed his brow. "An oversight," he said. "He'd want you to come. I'm sure he wants you to come. Will you?"
Kline shrugged. "Why not?" he said.
"It's settled then," said Ramse. "I'll pick you up at eight."
Kline nodded, looked absently at his watch. Until the accident, he had worn his watch on his right arm, but now if he wore it there it threatened to slide off the stump.