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