Well, I won’t have to look at the sightless eyes again-not that I’m liable to forget them.
When they had moved past him, Matt went up the stairs and into the Williamson apartment.
“What happened to that very pretty detective from Northwest?” Joe D’Amata greeted him.
“She went with the brother to tell the mother.”
“This is our job, Matt,” D’Amata said. There was a slight tone of reproof in his voice.
“She calmed the brother down. He liked her…”
“I can’t imagine why,” D’Amata said.
“… and (a) I thought that would make things easier with the mother. The brother suggested his mother was going to blow her cork when she found out that there was a ‘Disturbance, House’ call here and the uniforms didn’t take the door. And (b) somebody had to talk to the mother, and I think she can do that as well as we could, which means that we can be here.”
“Your call,” D’Amata said. “Two things, Matt: You want a look at the rear door?”
“I saw the outside from the stairs,” Matt said, as he followed D’Amata into the kitchen and to the door. “I didn’t see any signs of forced entry. Did you?”
“Those scratches might be an indication that somebody pried it open,” Joe said, pointing. “Operative word ‘might.’ The door was latched, locked, like that, but if you leave the lever in the up position like that, it locks automatically.”
“What do the crime lab guys say?”
“What I just told you. No signs at all on the front door. So we don’t know if the doer broke in, or whether she let him in. Could be either way. If she knew the doer, let him in…”
Matt grunted. Most murders are committed by people known to the victim.
“You said two things,” Matt said.
“This is interesting,” D’Amata said, taking a plastic evidence bag from his pocket. It held a digital camera.
“It may be, of course-and probably is-hers. But it was under the bed, which is a strange place to store an expensive camera like this. Even stranger, there are no fingerprints on it. Not even a smudge.”
“Why don’t we see what pictures are in it?”
“It doesn’t work,” D’Amata said, his tone suggesting that Matt should have known he could come up with a brilliant idea like seeing what pictures were in the camera all by himself. “Which might be because it got knocked off the bedside table when the doer jerked the telephone out of the wall and threw it at the mirror.”
“No prints on the phone, either?” Matt asked.
D’Amata held up his rubber-surgical-gloved hands.
“I’m getting the idea the doer is a very careful guy,” he said. “Which also suggests he knows how to get through a door without making a mess, and which suggests that although they are lifting a lot of prints in here-so far, they’ve done both doors, the bedroom and her bathroom-I would be pleasantly surprised if they came up with something useful.”
"Yeah,” Matt agreed.
“So, I was just about to call you to ask if I should take the camera to the crime lab and see if there are any pictures in it.”
“As opposed to having a District car run it down there, which would put a uniform in the evidence chain?”
“That, too,” D’Amata said. “I was thinking that if there are pictures in there, I could get a look at them a lot quicker if I was there when the lab took them out of the camera, then wait for the lab to print them.”
“The camera’s been fingerprinted?”
“I told you, there’s nothing on it. Not even a smudge.”
Matt set his briefcase on the kitchen table, opened it, rummaged around, and closed it again.
“We’re in luck,” he said. “I’ve got the gizmo.”