As soon as she saw him, Val begged him not to tell Dr. Blythe or anybody else that she was here today. He reluctantly agreed, lecturing her on how inappropriate it was, but Val shot back that she needed to do this. “Julia was my friend. This is important to me.” She was pleasantly surprised when he agreed to keep things quiet, and allowed her to stay.

For the medical examiner’s office, she had a great excuse as to why she needed to be away. Part of the job of death scene investigation involved getting out of the office to re-examine scenes for evidence, or talk with family members of victims, getting information that would be helpful for the medical examiner. She was still following up on Samantha’s medical records, all which were dead ends so far. Samantha had been prescribed high doses of Percocet for her back pain. According to her doctors, she received nothing else. Val used this as her reason to get out of the office today. Following up on leads. No one questioned her.

Gwen didn’t need an excuse. Her shift didn’t start until tonight.

Thomas Hayden walked up to Val and handed her a spool of white kitchen string. The string would aid in determining angle of impact and point of origin of the blood, giving them an idea of where Julia was when she was being attacked. Since the killer removed almost all of the visible blood during the cleanup attempt, they were using the crime scene photos showing the luminol reaction as a guide in positioning the string. Some of the patterns weren’t making sense until now. They had been in the bedroom for nearly two hours taping pieces of the string from the blood spatter patterns that were once on the wall, to those once on the carpet. There were only a few more left to do and he suggested that Val and Gwen give it a try.

Thomas was an excellent teacher, explaining each process as they performed it. Val was nervous at first, but he quickly put her at ease. She found him friendly and approachable. He was attractive for an older man, neatly styled and polished. She guessed him to be in his mid to late sixties and couldn’t help but think that he resembled a more mature version of Jack.

Gwen held up the photos depicting how Julia died. Though Val didn’t want to look at them, she had no choice. She had to see where to put her end of the string.