A World the Color of Salt by Noreen Ayres

Author:Noreen Ayres
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

CHAPTER

22

“It’s fly specks, I’m telling you.”

“It’s paint.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I said, “What’s it painting here? What’s it depicting? Not holly berries.” Using the eraser end of a pencil in the corner where the window met the frame, I shoved open the metal door that led from the kitchen into the customer area of the shop. We’d been checking stain on the door’s window.

“It’s flies,” I said.

“What makes you think so?” Joe said.

“Because, the way they’re grouped.”

“We don’t have flies in December.”

I stopped, saw he was sort of smiling. He used to do that to me when I was a lab rook—test me, see how much I believed my guesses.

I said, “I don’t care what time of year it is, certain conditions, you get flies. Here . . .” I started back. He wasn’t following. I said, “The edges. Come back and look.”

He didn’t move. He did raise his eyebrows and thrust both hands on his hips. Now what did I say?

Finally he came over. Looking back into the kitchen through the door’s window, I saw the Westminster cop, whose shoulders blocked most of the view farther in. A woman’s legs and feet extended on the floor ahead of him, like tiny alien legs emitting from his shoulder. She wore black moccasins and no socks or stockings. The legs had broad stain on them, almost as if they’d been wiped.

I said, “We should do prints on the legs.” The puffy ankles meant the skin would be firm. Many times investigators don’t dust certain surfaces because they think they can’t get prints, or they don’t know what we barn boys can do with our technology. Once we found a perfect, clean set of four on each of the undersides of a victim’s arms who’d been raped and murdered right after toweling off from a bath. The girl was thirteen; the killer was her neighbor. That was the first of many times I would’ve liked to have seen Star Chamber justice—the personal, uncomplicated meting out of penalty I would sooner call repair.

The Westminster cop turned around, a question in his eyes, when I tapped on the glass with the pencil, showing Joe the edge of the red concentration. I shook my head no, and spoke to Joe again.

“Little parentheses. Foreleg, middle leg, rear leg. Foreleg, middle leg, rear leg.” Fly footpads had left the pattern. Find six red specks away from the main mass, and you could see it clearly. I said, “Flies.”

“Hm. Not bad.”

“Who needs a course in insects?” I said.

“You taking a course in insects?”

“Maybe. I’m bored.”

“Why are you so edgy today?”

“I’m not edgy.”

I went back toward the front of the shop, Joe somewhere behind me. I passed the white plastic table with broad splats of blood across it. “Let’s see what else is around,” I said. Joe had taken smears, using Q-Tips and slides, of the blood on the table and on a chair leg. It’s not unusual to gather fifty, seventy-five blood samples from a scene. Joe had already syringed the larger pools in the back near the victim.

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