A magnificent smile spread across Rosario’s face. “But that’s all in the past now! Dr. Martínez finally came up with the right combination of drugs. I feel really good, Engrasi, on top of the world. Taking the right medication makes all the difference.” She slid her sunglasses down her nose and peered at Engrasi over them. “And they don’t change my personality a bit! I’m still the same person I was before.”
The she-wolf was showing her fangs.
Now it was Engrasi’s turn to step in close. She placed her right hand on Rosario’s shoulder. “Well, I’m very happy for you, dear sister-in-law,” she mimicked Rosario’s mocking tone, “but I don’t care if you take your pills or flush them down the toilet. It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me.”
Rosario’s smile vanished, but she placed her right hand over Engrasi’s. “Oh, no! They change everything. As I said, I know my behavior was irrational. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve always known that I had a mission, but I couldn’t decide how to go about it. The difference is that now I know what I should do every moment of the day.” She seized Engrasi’s hand and squeezed it hard. “And if there’s one thing I’ve known since the day that girl was born, it’s that we all have a destiny, Engrasi. She’ll fulfill her destiny just as I must fulfill mine.”
Engrasi recoiled, pulling her hand free as if struck by pure evil. She gasped. “You’re fucking insane!”
Rosario feigned disappointment. “Oh, dear God! I might have expected that sort of talk from any other woman, Engrasi, but from you? A psychologist?”
Engrasi’s hands were shaking so violently that she had to clasp them to hide her consternation from Rosario. “The girl will not go back to your house. I won’t give her to the two of you! I will do whatever’s necessary, and if you want to take it to court . . .”
Rosario was smiling again, amused. “Nobody’s going to court. That doesn’t suit us, you know that.” She looked around the street. “That would cause a big scandal. You can’t imagine! And especially not now that I’ve finally managed to really make something of your lousy bakery. No, no, we don’t want anything like that.”
Engrasi was disconcerted. “So?”
Rosario stepped past her and started down the street. Then she paused, turned, and favored Engrasi with a winner’s smile. “I told you I’m thinking clearly now. Now I know what I should do every moment of the day.”
Engrasi stood speechless in the middle of the street until Rosario disappeared from view. She thanked God Rosario wasn’t watching, for she dropped her housekeys twice before she could get the front door unlocked. She went inside, shut the door, and leaned back against it, as if barricading it with her body. Never in her life had she been so frightened.
27
SCRAPES AND SCRATCHES
New Orleans, Louisiana
Dusk, Sunday, August 28, 2005
Dupree came into the conference room, accompanied by two uniformed officers none of the team recognized.
“Johnson, Salazar, these are Officers Elliott and Case from the Galveston police,” he said. The visitors nodded. “They just drove more than six hours to bring us prints and negatives of the Andrews crime scene photos and the forensic report on the violin.” He held up a medium-sized cardboard box.
“Good God,” Johnson exclaimed. “You drove all that way into the hurricane? The curfew sirens went off an hour ago.”
The Galveston cops exchanged a glance. “We weren’t expecting it to be this bad. We thought we could beat the storm here. Captain Reed said it was urgent.”
“It is urgent . . . It’s just that we weren’t expecting you’d risk heading into the storm.”
“We really appreciate it,” Dupree interrupted him. “But we can’t allow you to leave. You’ll have to stay here until the hurricane passes.”
“No problem. The news is saying it’ll be a hell of a storm.”
Dupree nodded. “Check in with the ops center and ask them to find a place for you to bed down.”
The officers nodded and left.
Johnson flipped on the recorder and spoke for the record. “Five types of experts are required for a full analysis of any crime scene: a photographer, a draftsman to draw up a plan of the scene, an evidence technician, a medical examiner, and a specialist to take swabs and analyze chemical traces.” He paced back and forth as Bill Charbou and Jason Bull helped Amaia lay out more than two hundred photos on the conference room surfaces. “Ample photographic evidence shows that the team at the Andrews family crime scene included all the necessary specialists.”
All the overhead lights were on, and Dupree had commandeered a few high-intensity desk lamps from elsewhere in the building. Brilliant light illuminated the grisly images that entirely covered the huge conference table. The team’s workspace had suddenly been converted into a crowded autopsy room.
Amaia wasn’t the only one who felt queasy at the sight. Charbou and Bull were also unusually quiet. Amaia was sure they’d seen worse, but they were visibly disturbed by the photos. Most of the prints were extreme close-ups of wounds, bloodstains, textile fibers, and dusted fingerprints. The rulers in each image gave the close-ups a cold, technical aspect deprived of humanity. But the wider perspectives that showed the victims aligned in the rubble and bathed in pools of blood . . . those were something else entirely. And the close-ups of the dead faces were horrific.
Dupree was right. Any normal human being forced to look into this killer’s mind saw hell itself open up. She felt the cops’ pain; she knew they’d never forget this. It would change their view of others and alter their understanding of themselves. The evidence that a person had been capable of such savagery put them face to face with the worst of human nature.
Amaia took a folder from the box and went to the table. “Here,” she said, offering Bull the bulky file. At first he didn’t look up. “Detective?”
He met her eyes. She knew that look. It was the somber, distant gaze of someone struggling to comprehend the unthinkable.
“These are the photos they took of the violin. At the request of Joseph Jr.” She pointed toward the back of the room. “Can you lay them out on the other table?”
He nodded, took the folder without a word, and began to place the photographs on the table beside the whiteboard.
Amaia studied a cluster of images devoted to blood—drops, spatters, smears, and reddish-black pools. They were individually numbered. A ruler appeared next to each stain.
“They appear to have followed standard operating procedure to identify evidence, preserve it, and maintain the chain of custody,” Johnson commented. “Each sample was photographed, sealed in an envelope, and labeled.”
Johnson pointed to another group of photos. Odd shapes glowed against dark backgrounds.
“What are we looking at?” Charbou asked.
“Our Galveston friends were thorough. They used luminol reagents and a black light to search for hidden blood stains. Results were negative; there were no signs of an attempt to scrub away blood or any other substances.”
Amaia looked through photos of fingerprints and scanned the accompanying summary. “Every fingerprint they found was from a family member. They were meticulous about collecting and preserving textile fibers. All were later matched to the victims’ clothing.”