Code 61 - Donald Harstad [65]
He and I both checked the lock. Tight.
“You can verify that it's locked?” I asked, wiping the fingerprint dust from my hands. The knob had already been processed for latent prints.
He tested the door. “Yep.” He looked disappointed. “Can't a reserve do this?” He had kind of a point.
“Nope. In court, we don't want anybody making an issue out of reserve versus deputy sheriff.” I shrugged. “Just best that way, and one less thing to worry about.”
“Okay. Yeah, I agree, I can see that.”
“Look,” I said, “when the next shift of reserves gets up here, we'll open the door from the top, and start down it. Then, we can have a reserve here, and you can come on up.”
He brightened. “Okay.”
As the rest of us approached the third-floor stair via the more conventional front way, we passed down the long second-floor hall. The leucomalachite green that was sprinkled on the suspicious stains on the carpet in front of Edie's room had been covered by two transparent plastic covers that looked as though they had been liberated from the kitchen. The stuff under them gave off a ghostly green luminescence. It was completely dark outside by now, and the hall was lit by converted gas lamps by the door of each of the six rooms. They looked to be about twenty-five-watt bulbs. Dark enough for the bioluminescent chemical to glow. We stepped carefully over the stains, and continued toward the stair.
The door had a dead-bolt lock, similar to the one on the servants' stair down on the first floor. It certainly looked solid. The lab crew had dusted the whole door and frame for latent prints. Nothing. That didn't surprise me. There hardly ever were any prints on surfaces that required hand movement. Like doorknobs. And if you were to place your hand on a door frame for any reason, chances were you'd move the hand as you removed it. Smears, or less. Latent prints, at least good ones, are very rare.
I inserted Jessica Hunley's precious key, and opened the door. There was a light switch just inside, and I turned it on. I stepped back, and let Chris Barnes go first. If there was any trace evidence on those stairs, we didn't want to disturb it, we wanted to keep it. As he shined his light on the polished wood steps, looking for stains or traces thereof, Grothler ran a drop cord from a wall socket in the nearest bedroom, and connected it to a little hand vac. New bag attached, and he was ready to go. After Barnes got up about five steps, but hadn't actually stepped on the stair yet, he backed off and Grothler vacuumed carefully up to the last step Chris had been able to see well. Then they went through the entire process again, with the next set of four or five steps. If you're one of the people who aren't directly involved, it seems to take forever.
It happened as Grothler was vacuuming the second set. With the whine of the vacuum in the staircase, it was pretty difficult to hear much of anything, but Hester grabbed his arm and said, loudly and distinctly, “Quiet!”
As he looked up at her from the depths of concentration, and obviously without quite comprehending, she reached out and snapped off the switch of his vacuum.
“I heard something … ” said Hester, and she reached back and put her hand on her gun.
We all heard what came next. There was the slamming sound of wood on wood, loud, and then the muted thunder of somebody running down stairs. A muffled thud followed, felt as much as heard. Simultaneously, there was a yell from Borman that sounded as if it was coming from the floor above us. Up the back stairwell, I thought. It was funneling his voice, and we were hearing noises that originated below coming from above….
Borman hollered, “Stop!”
Then we heard two shots.
FIFTEEN
Sunday, October 8, 2000
19:08
Hester flew up the stairs, right over Grothler, and I spun around and went charging down the main staircase to the ground floor.