The wind seemed to be picking up, dropping the night temperature another degree or so. Hunter and Garcia finished suiting up, grabbed a pair of latex gloves each and entered the house.
The living room, right off the entryway, was small, but furnished with style. Two forensics agents were busy dusting surfaces and the windows for latent prints. The inside of the front door had clearly already been dusted.
In that first room, nothing seemed out of place. No clear signs of a struggle, but Hunter did notice a few drops of blood on the floor. They were drops, not splatters.
Hunter and Garcia greeted the agents with a simple nod before moving deeper into the house.
The corridor that led off the living room was wide but short. The walls were white and bare of any paintings or ornaments. There were two doors on the right, one on the left, and one at the end of it. They were all open. Bright forensics light spilled from the door at the end, causing shadows – presumably cast by the agents working the room – to dance against the corridor walls. On the floor, a few more sparse drops of blood could be seen.
As Hunter and Garcia walked past the first door on the right, they looked inside – a second bedroom, which looked to double as an office. No signs of a struggle in there either.
The door on the left was a bathroom, tiled in blue and white with a walk-in shower – no mess, nothing out of place. The next door on the right was a small storage room with towels, beddings, a vacuum cleaner, and various other household items. Three steps from there and they were at the last door – the main bedroom.
Three forensics agents were gathered around a double-sized bed that had its headboard against the east wall, directly opposite the bedroom door – one agent on each side of the bed and the third one at its foot. The two agents flanking the bed were down in a crouching position. Neither Hunter nor Garcia could quite see what the two agents were doing because their line of vision was obstructed by the agent at the foot of the bed, who was standing up.
The standing agent had heard the detectives’ footsteps and turned to face them as soon as they got to the bedroom door. It was, once again, Dr Susan Slater.
Hunter met her stare and even from that distance, he saw a look in her light blue eyes that he had never seen before – not disgust, or outrage, but sadness, as if she’d given up hope in humanity.
‘Robert… Carlos…’ As Dr. Slater greeted them, she took a step to her right, clearing Hunter and Garcia’s line of view. Their collective gaze moved to the metal-framed bed and to the body on it.
Detective Lopez was right, he thought. This wasn’t human.