The Territory A Novel - By Tricia Fields Page 0,45
your windows inside so we can get your trailer dark. I’ll be spraying a solution over your walls and carpet to check for bloodstains. The solution won’t hurt your fabric, and it isn’t harmful to humans. We hope to finish in about an hour. Do you have somewhere you can go for an hour or so? Or you’re welcome to stay in the trailer.”
She smirked. “I’ll stay.”
Josie shrugged. “Suit yourself. Any word from your brother?”
“No. Why?”
Josie considered her. “Well, he’s your brother. He invited you here and then left. I thought he might have found out about Red getting killed in his trailer and come home. Doesn’t seem like an unreasonable question.”
“I never said it was,” Winning said. She turned from Josie and walked toward her trailer.
Josie noted the anger in her abrupt departure, and wondered what secrets she was hiding.
Turning away from her, Josie looked under the trees and picnic table for evidence that Red may have left behind. As she turned, she noticed the trees weren’t uniformly green. The tips of one of the tree branches, at eye level to her, were a deep brown. She stepped back to view the tree from a distance. The brown coloring was primarily on one branch, in a small area. She looked at the coloring up close and was certain the color lay on top of the pine needles; it didn’t seem like an illness or disease that caused the branch to change color. She gently pulled the branches apart and peered into the trunk of the tree, where she saw the bark was cut and something appeared to be protruding.
She forced herself to step back and think through the steps. If she moved ahead too quickly, she might disturb evidence that could be crucial to the investigation. She retrieved her 35-millimeter camera from her evidence case sitting under the picnic table, where it was slightly shaded.
She snapped a dozen pictures of the tree, which looked about twenty feet high with a fifteen-foot spread and deep green needles that were stiff like a bristle brush. Josie backed up twenty feet, then snapped pictures from several angles, showing the tree’s relation to the house, and finally took close-up pictures of the branch and the brown covering. By now she figured it was Red’s blood.
As she began to part the branches again, Marta drove up the road in her jeep and parked beside Winning’s car. Josie waved and called her up. She was glad to see her; Marta’s attention to detail in an investigation made her excellent in processing a crime scene.
Marta walked up with her hands on her hips. “Find anything yet?”
Josie smiled. “That I did. Give me two minutes.” She pushed through the branches and dug at the trunk of the tree with a screwdriver she had pulled from her toolbox.
Josie finally emerged, cursing the sticky pine needles, and handed Marta a small plastic bag. Josie dusted the needles off her uniform as Marta smiled in sudden recognition of her discovery.
“Think this is the bullet that killed Red?” Marta asked.
“I’d lay money on it.” Josie labeled the evidence bag and locked it in her jeep along with the branch from the pine tree that contained what she assumed was blood on the needles.
As they walked toward the trailer, Josie said, “I’d like you to snap pictures as I spray the luminol.”
“If someone shot Red outside, then moved him immediately to the trailer, there could be traces of blood in there we didn’t notice.”
“I’m counting on it.”
* * *
As Josie and Marta taped black plastic trash bags over the windows in the kitchen and living room, Winning sat at her kitchen table painting her finger- and toenails. After the taping was done, the trailer was dark enough to effectively use the luminol solution to test for bloodstains. Josie sat at the table across from Winning and mixed the solutions in the kit, carefully measuring, shaking, and pouring the mixture into a spray bottle. Winning turned off all the lights in the front of the trailer, and they were in almost total darkness. Marta turned on the black light and walked behind Josie as she lightly sprayed the solution on the brown carpet in front of the imprint where the couch had been. Several seconds later, two bright green dots appeared on the floor, approximately a quarter inch in diameter. Josie took a picture of the blood spots, and Marta drew a diagram in case the picture didn’t develop. Josie then sprayed the