Leonard’s friend had taken months to draw up her initial findings over the blood splatters. She had submitted them on a DVD with a forty-page explanation that amounted to a thesis. Every point was footnoted, every authority cited. She had even put a cover letter in with the DVD and the thesis explaining that her graphics had been borrowed from the computer games department and she would, in the fullness of time, devise her own graphics, but, for the sake of time efficiency, for the benefit of the particular case in which they were engaged, she had resorted to—
Morrow left the letter in her in-tray with the thesis and put the DVD into her hard drive.
A screen, offering her a selection of episodes, all blank blue except the first one marked “Case I*.” She clicked it with her mouse.
A photograph of the stairs at Glenarvon, seen from the foot, a doctored version of the scene-of-crime photos with Sarah’s body wiped out and replaced with a graft of green from further up the stairs. The screen was still for a moment, and then an aerial view of the stairs with three sets of feet at the top, imprints of feet. Bare feet, Sarah, next to the banister, toes deep in the carpet, quite distinct from the soles. At the other side of the stairs, next to the wall, one pair of shoes with the three circle marks of the St. Augustus shoes. A slash across one sole, the left sole. Slightly behind Sarah, between her and the slash shoes, another pair. This pair had a distinctive dot at the heel. Morrow knew what it was: a black pebble from the Glenarvon driveway. They’d found it in Thomas’s right shoe, the pair Jonathon had bagged carefully and hidden in his room.
She wasn’t ready for it when Sarah’s feet took off down the stairs—jumped slightly in her chair, glanced, embarrassed, around the office.
When she looked back at the screen it was happening in slow motion: Sarah’s feet flew down the stairs, two at a time and then, out of nowhere, hair fell from her invisible head, she didn’t see it but Morrow felt Sarah’s head yanked back as someone grabbed her hair and pulled out chunks, letting them drop gracefully to the ground. The slash shoes had grabbed her hair and then Sarah’s invisible bottom impressed itself on the carpet, her feet twisted against the green and then her back landed on the steps, like a ghost sinking into green marzipan.
Feet were by her, kicking, sending graceful red splatters over the carpet, settling like scarves over one another. And one set of feet moving by her, keeping balance by shifting their weight, taking a stair, going back up, holding the banister. And the other set, creeping down, keeping by the wall, tight to the wall.
Jonathon Hamilton-Gordon’s heels clung to the skirting board, keeping as far away as he could, trying to pass at one point, and retreating, as Thomas Anderson kicked and kicked and kicked the red out of Sarah, until she was wiped out.