"No-I don't know. . . ." said Diane.

Before she finished, the patrolman began searching her apartment, trying carefully to avoid the blood- which was impossible. He tracked it into her bedroom.

Diane struggled carefully to her feet. A policeman who had been standing at the door came in to help her.

"Are you hurt? You say this isn't your blood? Do you know whose it is?"

"No," said Diane. "No, I don't."

He pulled out a chair from her dining room table as she carefully made her way, trying not to step in the blood. As she started to sit down, she looked at the seat cushion and stopped. She was soaked in blood. It dripped from her night shirt and robe. The policeman noticed her hesitation.

"You need to sit down," he said. "You have a bruise on your head. Did someone attack you?"

Diane reached a hand up to touch her head but saw that her hands were covered in blood. She sat down on the floor.

"Is there a body somewhere?" the patrolman asked.

"What? No, not that I've seen." That sounded stupid That sounded stupid. "I mean, I just woke up." Think, dammit. Think, dammit.

"All clear," said the first policeman. He walked back to them. He was leaving b.l.o.o.d.y footprints all over the floor. "You got a bulb out in the bedroom."

"You just woke up and found all this blood in your apartment?" The policeman sounded skeptical. Diane didn't blame him.

"Better call Chief Garnett," said the first policeman. "You know he wants to be called about anything involving Fallon, the museum, or the crime lab."

"We need to call the paramedics. She has a serious lump on her head," said the other patrolman.

"Call the crime lab. . . . " She thought for a moment, remembered Jin's home phone number, and gave it to them.

As they made their calls, Diane looked at the blood pattern-pooled in the hallway, running into the kitchen and dining area, pooling up under the table. There was so much of it. A smear of blood led from the main pool out the door. Something-someone was dragged. She looked up at the ceiling. There were three lines of cast-off blood spatter-that would be four thrusts of a knife. First one picked up the blood, the subsequent ones spattered it across the ceiling. On the wall across from the table where she sat there was a smear of blood as if someone had put their hands on it, then slid down the wall. She looked on the floor for footprints. There should have been a lot of them made by whoever was here, but she couldn't make out the originals from the ones made by the policemen and by herself. It struck her that it all looked so ridiculous-and so horrible.

"Are you hurt?" asked one of the patrolmen.

Diane touched her head. "Just a small b.u.mp."

"How did you get it? Were you hit?" he asked.

"Hit? No. I fell-slipped in the blood," she said.

"You didn't hear anything?" he asked. She looked at his bra.s.s name tag. Officer Ellison. She looked at the other one. Officer Lange. It was Lange she knew.

"No, I didn't hear anything," she said.

"Are you a heavy sleeper?" Lange asked.

Diane shook her head. "No. I'm a light sleeper." She was a light sleeper. Why didn't she hear anything? And why did she feel so fuzzy now. Drugged? When? Drugged? When?

She looked down at her arms, her clothes. She was soaked in blood. The smell was making her sick, the sight about to cause her to gag. She had to get away from the blood.

"You don't need to be getting up until the paramedics get here," said Officer Ellison.

Diane hadn't realized that she had tried to rise. "Sorry. I feel sick. It's the smell."

"The paramedics will be here soon. Put your head down," he said, nodding at her and putting his own head on his raised folded arms as if she might not understand the language.

She put her forearms on her knees, bent her head down, closed her eyes, and tried to breathe evenly.

The noise level rose and Diane realized that other people had arrived. She thought of her neighbors. Given the number of times violent events had happened in or near her apartment, they had been longsuffering. She was sure that the people across the hall already had their door open a crack. Hopefully they had heard something that might shed some light on what happened.

Two paramedics entered and began taking her blood pressure and asking her questions designed to detect whether or not she was in her right mind.

"Your pulse is low," commented the female paramedic.

"I run," said Diane. "My pulse normally runs about fifty, often lower."

"We're okay, then. Does your head hurt?"

"Yes," answered Diane.

They continued to ask questions and Diane answered. She heard Garnett arrive, followed by her crime scene team.

"Oh, my G.o.d," said Neva. She, Jin, and David stood looking at Diane and the pool of blood. "What happened?"

"That's why you're here," said Diane.

"What do you mean?" said David.

"I mean, I don't know," said Diane evenly. "David, you aren't on call to respond to a crime scene. You're supposed to be on vacation."

"I am on vacation. This is one of the sights," he said. "Like I was going to stay home when the crime scene Jin and Neva were called to was your place?"

"Are you all right?" asked Neva.

"Yes," said Diane.

"You have a big bruise on your head," Chief Garnett said. "It looks like you were attacked." Garnett, as usual, looked like he had just come from the theater or a concert. Well dressed, tall, in his mid-forties, he always appeared elegant, especially with his full head of black and silver hair.

Diane started to explain to Garnett that she slipped and fell in the blood, but her voice was drowned out by the policeman telling someone they couldn't come in.

"What's going on?" a woman's voice said. "Has something happened? If there is danger, we need to know about it."

It was Veda Odell, her eccentric elderly neighbor across the hall who lived with her husband and attended funerals for recreation.

"Just go back into your apartment, please," said Officer Ellison.

"I'll talk to her," said Garnett.

He clearly wanted to control the situation, thought Diane, making all the information come to him.

"Let David do it," said Diane. She met Garnett's eyes. He nodded, probably remembering that David had a special rapport with the Odells, earned from a previous case they had worked on.

David shot her a you-owe-me-big-time glare as he reintroduced himself to Veda Odell.

"Yes, I remember you," Veda said. "David, isn't it? We have some new photographs in our collection I'll bet you would like to see."

"I would indeed, Mrs. Odell. Do you mind if I ask you and your husband a few questions? I know it's early in the morning."

Neva chuckled under her breath and shook her head. "He's going to get you for this," she said.

"Is any of this blood yours?" asked Jin. He stood staring at the red pool.

"No," said Diane. "I don't think so."

"Lord have mercy."

The newest member of the law enforcement entourage to arrive was Lynn Webber, medical examiner for Hall County, just north of Rosewood. Like Garnett, she was never caught anywhere-even at a crime scene-without being well dressed. She was wearing designer jeans, a blue silk blouse that went great with her short, shiny black hair, and a lightweight brown embroidered jacket. She watched carefully where she stepped with her Ferragamos.

"Are you all right?" She turned to the paramedics. "Let me see her vitals."

After exchanging a brief glance, the paramedics handed Lynn a clipboard.

"What are you doing here, Lynn?" asked Chief Garnett. "A little out of your jurisdiction, aren't you?"

"I heard on my police scanner that the paramedics were called to Diane's...."

Garnett jerked his phone from his pocket. He looked around for a safe place to walk and finally decided it was out in the hallway where he had entered the building. Lynn and Diane watched him go. Lynn raised her eyebrows at Diane.

"A long and political story," said Diane.

In an effort to protect the interests of the city and of the museum, Garnett had a standing order that any police business having to do with Diane, the museum, or the crime lab was not be broadcast on the police radio but should be called in by phone. That order certainly extended to emergency services.

Lynn nodded, a knowing look glittering in her dark eyes. Garnett returned frowning. Lynn stared at the pool of blood as if she had just noticed it.

"What happened?" she asked. "Did someone break into your apartment? Where's the body?"

Then she saw the drag marks out the door. She lifted her eyebrows and looked back at the pool of blood. Diane knew what she was thinking, what Jin was thinking as he looked at all that blood.

Chapter 17.

The human body has ten pints of blood. If you lose four pints you die. There were easily more than four pints on the floor. All that blood amounted to a dead body. Jin knew it, so did Lynn, so did Diane, so did the paramedics. Diane guessed that Garnett and the policemen knew it too.

Provided all the blood came from one person. Diane hoped it didn't. She hoped that when they canva.s.sed the area hospitals they would find two or three very anemic people who could tell her why they decided to battle it out in her home. Why didn't I hear it? Why didn't I hear it?

Garnett sent the paramedics outside. Diane didn't hear what he said to them. When they were gone he pulled up a chair and sat down.

"Was this a home invasion?" he asked.

"If it was, they didn't invite me," said Diane. "You slept through it?" If Garnett, who was both politically and by friendship predisposed to believe her, looked that skeptical, she was in for a difficult time.

"Apparently I did," said Diane.

"You know, if someone came in and attacked you in your home, you are ent.i.tled to defend yourself," said Garnett. "I need you to try to remember. We don't want anyone thinking you did this for any other reason." He stopped as if waiting for her to respond.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," said Lynn, using her mildly scolding southern voice. "If she wanted to kill someone, she wouldn't do it here and ruin her hardwood floors, for heaven's sake. Besides, Diane is just like me. We both know a dozen ways to kill a person without making such a mess-and without detection, I might add."

"I'm not suggesting anything like that and I didn't mean it the way it sounded," said Garnett. "I'm just afraid others might interpret things in the most negative way. You know how newspapers are."

Indeed Diane did. "I know this is strange. I'm not understanding it either..."

The paramedics came in rolling a stretcher.

"What's that?" asked Diane. "I don't need to go to the hospital. Neva has to process me and I have to shower and change. I don't know if you have ever had occasion to wear bloodsoaked clothes, but it is not comfortable."

"You can be processed at the hospital," said Garnett. "I'll be in charge here so there will be no-"

"Neva needs to stay here and help process the site." Diane said site site as if it were someplace other than her home. as if it were someplace other than her home.

"I'll go with you," said Lynn. "I process bodies all the time. They're dead, of course. But I can do yours, no problem. You need to go to the hospital. I don't like some of your readings, and any hit to the side of the head like that needs to be looked at more closely. And I don't like that nausea you've been feeling."

In the end, they won. Before Diane left on the stretcher-which she was sure Garnett ordered in case any reporters were lurking outside-she directed Neva to process outside the apartment and have Jin do the inside. Neva was only too happy to let him take care of the blood. Diane expected Neva would find a dead body somewhere around the apartment building. It was still the early hours of the morning, so with good luck, it would be one of her crew who found it and not one of her neighbors.

Fortunately there were no reporters waiting outside. She was embarra.s.sed to be riding to the hospital, taking up valuable ambulance s.p.a.ce and the paramedics' time. She was fine. Garnett simply wanted Diane to appear as the victim in case anyone was watching. Which was true, she was a victim, but not in the way he was staging it. She didn't know how he would spin the presence of all that blood and no body.

As for Lynn, she was going along with Garnett. Lynn knew her way around politics, had sized everything up quickly, and fell easily into helping Garnett. Diane doubted that Lynn would be riding to the hospital with her under different circ.u.mstances. But then maybe she would have. Lynn wasn't a brutally scheming person any more than Garnett was-but she was a player. Diane might have felt better about all this attention if it had actually been about her well-being. It wasn't. It was all about the crime lab and maintaining its reputation.

The ride to the hospital was uneventful. Thank goodness they didn't use the siren. Diane was rolled right into an examination room and the paramedics left, taking the gurney with them. She removed all her clothing and sealed it in a plastic bag for processing by the crime lab. It was a relief to get out of bloodsoaked clothes, even if it meant putting on one of the skimpy hospital gowns.

Lynn Webber did know how to process a body. She looked for bruises, defensive injuries, and bloodspatter patterns, and she took numerous photographs.

"With all that blood you couldn't have stabbed anyone and not have cuts on your hands. The knife would have been too slippery to hold," said Lynn.

She was right. Diane's grip would have slipped on a knife and sliced her palm or her fingers, a.s.suming the weapon was a knife. But the victim, whoever the victim was, could have been bludgeoned with something like a tire iron. It would also have made castoff spatters and a lot of blood. Diane wanted to see the spatter pattern up close. She hadn't been in a position to do much from her dining room table. Now that she was thinking more clearly, she realized that the castoff was very high, too much of an arc across the ceiling to be from stabbings; more like a beating.

Lynn took a blood sample from Diane and had her collect a urine specimen.

"We need to find out why you slept through a ma.s.sacre in your home," said Lynn.

"I don't know when I could have been drugged," said Diane.

"Well, obviously someone had access to your house. Did you eat or drink anything before you went to bed?"

"I drank a bottle of green tea," said Diane.