“You keep that positive outlook, Beaver. How old’s the blood?”
“Come on, Lieutenant.” Behind the sensor lenses, his eyes were huge and cynical. “You know I can’t give you that from one of the portables. Gotta take it in. All this little girl does is identify. No skin,” he announced. “Be better if you had some skin.”
“I’ll take the blood.” As she sealed the knife into evidence, a movement caught her eyes. She looked up and into the dark, damning eyes of Marco Angelini.
He glanced down at the knife, then back into her face. Something moved across his, something wrenching that had the muscle jerking in his jaw.
“I’d like a moment of your time, Lieutenant Dallas.”
“I can’t give you much more than that.”
“It won’t take long.” His eyes flicked to Beaver, then back to the knife as Dallas slipped it into her bag. “In private, please.”
“All right.” She nodded to the uniform who stood at Angelini’s shoulder. “Tell one of the team to come up and finish the hands-on search in here,” she ordered Beaver, then followed Angelini out of the room.
He turned toward a set of narrow, carpeted steps, his hand trailing along a glossy banister as he climbed. At the top, he shifted right and stepped into a room.
An office, Eve discovered. Sunwashed now in the brilliant afternoon. Light beamed and glinted off the surfaces of communication equipment, struck and bounced from the smooth semi-circular console of sober black, flashed and pooled on the surface of the gleaming floor.
As if annoyed with the strength of the sunlight, Angelini hit a switch that had the windows tinted to a soft amber. Now the room had shadows around pale gold edges.
Angelini walked directly to a wall unit and ordered a bourbon on the rocks. He held the square glass in his hand, took one careful sip.
“You believe my son murdered his mother and two other women.”
“Your son has been questioned on those charges, Mr. Angelini. He is a suspect. If you have any questions about the procedure, you should speak with his counsel.”
“I’ve spoken with them.” He took another sip. “They believe there’s a good chance you will charge him, but that he won’t be indicted.”
“That’s up to the grand jury.”
“But you think he will.”
“Mr. Angelini, if and when I have arrested your son and charged him with three counts of first-degree murder, it will be because I believe he will be indicted, tried, and convicted on those charges, and that I have the evidence to ensure that conviction.”
He looked at her field bag where she’d put some of that evidence. “I’ve done some research on you, Lieutenant Dallas.”
“Have you?”
“I like to know the odds,” he said with a humorless smile that came and went in a blink. “Commander Whitney respects you. And I respect him. My former wife admired your tenacity and your thoroughness, and she was not a fool. She spoke of you, did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“She was impressed by your mind. A clean cop’s mind she called it. You’re good at your job, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”
“Yeah, I’m good at it.”
“But you make mistakes.”
“I try to keep them to a minimum.”
“A mistake in your profession, however minimal, can cause incredible pain to the innocent.” His eyes stayed on hers, relentlessly. “You found a knife in my son’s room.”
“I can’t discuss that with you.”
“He rarely uses this house,” Angelini said carefully. “Three or four times a year perhaps. He prefers the Long Island estate when he’s in the area.”
“That may be, Mr. Angelini, but he used this house on the night Louise Kirski was killed.” Impatient now, eager to get the evidence to the lab, Eve moved a shoulder. “Mr. Angelini, I can’t debate the state’s case with you—”