“Ugh,” she heard herself say, snapping pictures almost immediately because she didn’t want to waste time. Some of the footprints were clearer than others, but she didn’t have the heart or the stomach to parse it now.

Christine took a slew of pictures, looking around the small, pretty kitchen, its walls a sunny shade of buttercup yellow, with white cabinets and heartbreakingly charming details; above the sink was a narrow shelf with an array of photographs of Gail with her family and friends, everybody smiling and with their heads together, taken at a Great Adventure park, in bathing suits at the beach, and around a table in a restaurant.

Magnets blanketed the refrigerator, plenty of SpongeBob SquarePants, but more about nursing; one was shaped like a Band-Aid and read, NURSES MAKE IT BETTER, another showed a picture of a nurse in a cape and read, I’M A NURSE, WHAT’S YOUR SUPERPOWER? and a third one said, RN: CUTE ENOUGH TO STOP YOUR HEART, SKILLED ENOUGH TO RESTART IT. Christine felt her eyes tear up as she took pictures, but she suppressed them.

“Watch your step.” Detective Wallace led her out of the kitchen, and she followed him, though the stench grew stronger and more nauseating.

“Look down. Don’t step on that.” Detective Wallace stopped, pointing down with an index finger, and Christine looked down, taking more pictures of the footprints tracking blood from the kitchen to the bedroom.

Detective Wallace turned on lights, and she noticed that the apartment was laid out the same way as Linda Kent’s was, with the bedroom to the left and the living room to the right. Detective Wallace strode ahead to the bedroom and turned on the light, and Christine gasped.

Blood stained the flowery sheets of a queen-size bed, obliterating the pattern as it spread all over the surface. No longer red, it had dried a dark brown and even black in spots, spattered everywhere: on the brass headboard, on the white wall behind the bed, on the framed reproduction of van Gogh’s sunflowers at the head, even on the floor beside the bed, where there was a pair of clog sandals, left where Gail must have taken them off. They were splattered with blood, too, and the pool of blood around them was disturbed by more footprints, in different directions.

Christine tried not to tear up again or even breathe as she took pictures of the horrifying sight. A human being had been slaughtered here, and the sights and smells revolted her to the depths of her very being. She realized that the bed was the first thing she had seen because the headboard was against the right wall, and the midsection of the bed was in direct view of the doorway, but then she noticed that there was a dark pool of blood at the foot of the bed, a dark red-black that had soaked into a blue twill rug, almost the color that Christine had in her bedroom at home.

She ignored the thought, taking pictures of the spot because even as a nonexpert, she could tell that that must’ve been where Gail had been stabbed. The blood was concentrated on that spot, and it had even spurted on the opposite wall, obscenely marking the mirror and pine dresser with teardrops of blood. Christine remembered that Zachary had told her how the blood would spurt out of a stab wound to the left ventricle, pulsing with each heartbeat, but she never would have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.

She tried to stay in control of her emotions, trying to reconstruct the murder, whoever had committed it: from what she was seeing, it looked as if the killer must have confronted Gail at the foot of the bed, maybe surprised her by stabbing her with the medical saw. Perhaps he had it hidden in his back pocket or elsewhere. Her blood would have gushed all over him, as well as the mirror and the dresser, then he would have carried her to the bed, where he bound her at the wrists and ankles, either as she lay dying or even after she was dead.

Christine kept taking pictures, her brain filled with gruesome scenarios. She knew she would learn more after the autopsy reports were turned over, but she didn’t need to be a coroner to know that the way she imagined the crime matched the blood that she had seen on the photographs of Zachary last night. Except for one detail: the fact that there was no blood on the uppers of his loafers. He should have had blood on his shoes if he had killed Gail in the way Christine had imagined. Unless it was just random that no blood had spattered there.

Detective Wallace kept an eye on her as she took more pictures, walking gingerly around the bedroom, taking in the girly perfume bottles, ponytail holders, pink-striped makeup case, and other bits and pieces of Gail Robinbrecht’s tragically short life. Detective Wallace escorted her to Gail’s bathroom, and Christine followed him, taking pictures of the bathroom, then the living room, and she knew that there was no substitute for seeing this scene with her very own eyes, even if her photos were like Griff’s pictures, which wouldn’t be ready until later today.

All of the darkest emotions from last night came rushing back at her, and she felt the deepest despair she had ever known at the notion that one human being could do this to another, much less that it was Zachary Jeffcoat who had done it to Gail Robinbrecht. She wanted to punish whoever had committed this murder, even if it was Zachary, a feeling she had never had before this moment.

Christine finished going through the apartment, taking pictures as she breathed in the awful odor, her head filled with gruesome images and her heart full of anger, and by the time Detective Wallace led her finally outside, she stood on the landing of the wooden stairs, breathing in deep lungfuls of fresh air before she began to take off her gloves and booties.

Her head was swimming with questions, all of them for Zachary, and she couldn’t wait to get to the prison.

Chapter Forty-two

Christine’s mouth dropped open when she caught sight of Zachary, being escorted to the booth. He had been badly beaten; his forehead was puffy and pinkish, his right eye was swollen half-closed, and fresh scabs covered his right cheek. Dried blood clotted in his hairline at a cut that had been closed with butterfly bandages. The corrections officer uncuffed him, and Christine could see that red scrapes cross-hatched his arms and fresh bruises discolored his elbows. A gauze pad was adhesive-taped to his left forearm.

Christine couldn’t imagine what had happened. Her chest tightened, and she remembered their blood connection. The father of her child had been assaulted, and she couldn’t deny that she cared about him for that reason alone. It disarmed her on the spot; she had been upset and angry at him, having come from Gail Robinbrecht’s, the stench of the murder still in her nostrils. Fresh in her mind were the bloody photos of him, and she had been geared up to confront him for lying. But her anger dissipated when he entered the booth and she saw his wounds close-up.