Indelible

She headed toward the master bathroom but stopped when she caught sight of a sewing basket sitting on the highboy beside the dining room table.

She told Jeffrey, "Come in here, the light's better," as she searched the basket. "These will work," she said, finding a pair of straight-edged tweezers among the pins and needles.

"You want me to open these?" Jeffrey asked, but he was already twisting the rod to open the blinds. He looked out into the backyard, saying, "It's nice here, huh?"

"Yes," she said, taking his hand in hers. She wore glasses sometimes at work, but she had been too vain to bring them along on the trip. "This might hurt."

"I can take it," he said, then, "Ow, shit." He jerked back his hand.

"Sorry," she said, trying not to smile at his reaction. She held his hand closer to the window, taking advantage of the light. "Just think about something else."

"That won't be hard," he told her sarcastically, wincing as the tweezers grew near.

"I haven't even touched it," she said.

"Are you this mean to your kids?"

"Usually they're a little braver."

"That's nice."

"Come on," she teased him. "I'll give you a lollipop if you're good."

"I'd rather give you something to suck on."

She raised an eyebrow, but did not respond. Slowly, she worked at the splinter, trying to get it to come out in one piece.

Jeffrey asked, "Did you notice something weird about Swan?"

"Weird how?" She groaned as the splinter broke.

"Like…" He made a hissing sound as she dug into the skin. "He's the exact opposite of Robert."

She shrugged. "Maybe that was the point. She wanted something different. A change."

"Am I different from the guys you usually date?"

Sara worked on the splinter, trying to come up with a good answer. "I can't say that I've given it much thought." She smiled as the splinter came out. "There."

He put his hand to his mouth, something Sara saw kids do at the clinic, as if some genetic imperative convinced them that their mouth could cleanse a wound.

"Let's look in the bedroom," Jeffrey said.

"You think he was lying about keeping a backup in the living room?"

"I don't know."

"He could have kept it in his truck."

"Maybe."

"What else is bothering you?" She decided not to let him brush it off. "I'm not stupid, Jeffrey. Something's bothering you. Either tell me or not, but don't keep denying it."

He put his hand on the windowsill. "Yes, something is bothering me. I just can't talk about it."

"Okay," she agreed, glad that she had at least gotten him to admit it. "Let's finish in here. Maybe then we can go back to Nell's and try to make some sense of all this."

The bedroom door was slightly ajar, and the hinges squeaked when she opened it. Light was streaming in through the windows, and Sara was surprised to find that her memory of what the room had looked like the night Swan had been shot was completely skewed. Somehow, her mind had exaggerated everything so that whenever she tried to imagine the room, she saw blood everywhere. In actuality, except for the splatter fa

Jeffrey opened the armoire and searched the shelves as Sara went to the bedside table opposite the side Swan had been shot. Everything in the room had been dusted for prints, black powder showing specks of dirt and ridges on every available surface. She assumed Reggie had lifted whatever evidence he needed, but still Sara tried not to touch the black powder on the cabinet door, knowing from experience how difficult it was to wash off. She opened the door from the top, stepping back as a baby-blue vibrator fell out onto the floor.

Jeffrey was looking over her shoulder. "That explains a lot," he said in a knowing tone.

"What does it explain?" Sara asked him, taking a tissue to use as she returned the machine to its resting place. "Every woman I know has one of these."

He seemed surprised. "Do you?"

"Of course not, honey," she joked. "You're more than man enough for me."

"I'm serious, Sara."

"What?" she asked, glancing in the cabinet before shutting the door. There was a small tube of personal lubricant, but she thought better than to tell Jeffrey. She said, "It doesn't mean anything. Sometimes couples use them. What sort of smoking gun are you looking for here?"

"I don't know," he said, sounding defeated. "He's not telling me the truth. We've got to either prove he's lying or prove he's not." He shrugged his shoulders. "Either way, I'm going to support him through this."

Sara told him, "Sometimes when people lie, they sprinkle in the truth so that it sounds believable."

"Meaning?"

"Robert might have told us a bit of information that we're just not hearing." Sara suggested, "Let's take it from the begi

"You mean what they told us when Luke was shot?"

She nodded.

"All right," he said, looking around the room. "Let's take it from the top. We were in the street. I heard the shots and ran through the backyard to here." He stood in the doorway. "I saw what had happened, or at least saw the dead guy. Robert groaned and I turned around. He was here," Jeffrey pointed behind the door. "Jessie was over here," he said, indicating the area by the window.

"Then what?"

"I asked Robert if he was okay, then I went to get you."

"All right," Sara began, taking up the narration. "I came in and you went to call the police. I checked Swan's pulse, then I went to help Robert."

"He wouldn't let you look at the wound," Jeffrey provided. "Jessie kept interrupting while I tried to get the story."

"Which was," Sara took over, "they were in bed. Swan came in through the window."

Jeffrey walked over to the window. He looked out into the backyard. "Someone could have sneaked in through here."

"Did Robert ever say he knocked the screen out?" She clarified, "As part of his new story where he says he did it. Did he say that he knocked out the screen?"

"No."

Sara glanced around the room, trying to remember how things had looked that night.

"So, Swan has a gun," Jeffrey said, picking back up on Robert's first explanation. "He crawls to the bed. Jessie wakes up and screams. Robert stirs and Swan shoots at him."

"He misses," Sara provided. "Robert runs to the armoire and gets his gun." She stood in front of the armoire. "He shoots at Swan, but the gun hangs."

Jeffrey finished, "Swan shoots him, then Robert's gun goes off and shoots Swan in the head."

Sara looked down at where she was standing. The blood-spray pattern did not point to the armoire.

She said, "He would've had to have been here," walking to the door and lining herself up with the pattern. "Look at this," she said, indicating blood in the carpet where Swan had fallen. "Robert had to have been standing here."

"Why?"

"He shoots," she said, holding out her hand with her thumb and index finger forming the shape of a gun. "The bullet hits Swan in the head, and there's backsplatter from the bullet. It's basic science: for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. The bullet goes in, the blood sprays back. Look at the pattern of the blood."

Jeffrey stood beside her, looking at the carpet. "Okay," he said. "I see it. He was standing here."

"Hold on," she told him, leaving the room before he could ask why. She got the sewing basket and came back, saying, "This isn't exactly scientific."

"What are you doing?"

She found a spool of yellow thread, thinking that would show up best. "Blood's subject to gravity, just like anything else."

"So?"

"So," she said, opening a box of straight pins. "You can tell from the shape of the drop which way the blood fell. If it was splattered, if it fell straight down." She pointed to the bullet hole behind the door. "See?" she told him. "You can tell from the pattern that Robert was standing near the wall when the bullet exited his body. The blood drops are almost perfectly round except at the top, where you can see they've got a slight teardrop shape to them. That means the bullet was on an upward trajectory."