A Farewell to Legs: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,72

to stop chewing long enough to hear it.

“So what happened was, something was spilled on the carpet,” Friedman began.

“And we don’t have to be Einstein to figure out what that was,” Wharton said. I gave him the patented stare I give my kids to shut them up, but on Wharton, in this case, it had the opposite effect than the one my children employ: Wharton actually shut up.

“And whatever it was, it was mopped up just about immediately,” Friedman went on, ignoring both Wharton and the byplay that had gone on between Wharton and me. “Because you’re right, Tucker, if it’s in a rental, it was probably a cheap carpet, so if it had been left to stain for even a couple of minutes, it probably would have left a noticeable discoloration.”

“What do you use to mop up liquid on a rug?” I asked, not being well schooled in the art of cleaning. And if you don’t believe me, come to my house sometime.

“Best thing right away is club soda,” he said. “So it doesn’t leave a stain, but the fabric is left with a change in texture, and that’s why you can notice it, if you look, and feel it, if you touch it or walk on it.”

“Whart,” I said, “if someone is stabbed in the heart, I assume that would cause a pretty massive blood loss. Would I be wrong?”

“Well, there’d be a lot of immediate spurting,” he said. “You have to figure that a wound to the heart, if the heart were contracted, or beating, at the time, would last for a few beats of the heart, expansions and contractions, at the very least. So blood would be spraying all over for at least a few seconds.” “The police report indicated that there was a good deal of blood on the bed,” I said. “Would that be consistent with the kind of wound you’re talking about?”

Wharton thought for a moment, chewing carefully on his cheddar burger. Finally, he regarded me and pointed a finger. “Can I have one of your fries?” he said.

I handed him one, probably without even thinking. “What about the blood, Whart?”

“You told us to consider our answers carefully, didn’t you?” he asked through a mouthful of potato. “I’m considering.”

“Not to mention raising your intake of carbohydrates by about six zillion percent,” Friedman added.

“From what you’ve told me, the wound was a single wound, delivered through the rib cage and into the heart,” Wharton said finally. “That’s a strong person pushing that knife, or a really, really angry one pumped up by adrenaline.”

“So there’d be a bunch of blood?” I asked, trying to get him back to the question.

“Not as much as in the first few seconds of a head wound,” Wharton said. “But for maybe ten or fifteen seconds, the blood would be flying, and not in any predictable pattern. It wouldn’t be pretty in the room, I’ll tell you that.”

“If he’s stabbed while he’s lying on the bed, would it fly far enough that there’d be a stain almost at the foot of the bed, and to the side, like where you’d put your shoes, if you were neat?”

Wharton thought about that for a while, too, until I realized he wanted another French fry. Given that, he said, “No, I’d say probably not. The heart would pump out blood, but not in arcs. It would fly up, miss the bed, and then hit just the one spot at the foot of the bed. There would have to be a lot of other dark spots on the rug to indicate that was what happened.”

“So if there is just the one spot, and a relatively large one, at the base of the bed, what does that tell us?” I asked.

“One of two things,” Wharton said, washing down his pilfered potato with some of McGregor’s beer. “Either he was killed near the foot of the bed and fell down. . .” he tailed off.

“Or what?”

“Or that wasn’t blood that got washed up at the foot of the bed. Could be other bodily fluids.”

Emitted was a loud group grimace that you can actually hear on the cassette tape, and Mahoney made a comment about not discussing such things in front of open food. I turned to McGregor.

“Okay, Alan, let’s talk money.” McGregor brightened considerably, about to show us his level of expertise. Everyone was glad not to be discussing bodily fluids.

“What money?”

“About thirteen million dollars that’s missing from the Legs Gibson ‘You’d-Better-Have-My-Values’ Foundation. If I want