Thomas then went back to the pictures and asked Gavin this time. “What is wrong with the blood on that part of the wall?” He pointed to the right side of the bed, to the other area of spatter.

Gavin said nothing and waved Thomas away, dismissively.

“How did that occur?” Thomas questioned again, not affected by Gavin’s attempts to ignore the findings. “The angle depicted by those droplets indicates that our killer and Julia had to have been closer to that part of the wall, but there’s nothing to show movement to get over there.”

Gavin again, failed to engage in discussion on this.

Thomas said, “How did they move from right here without leaving a bloody trail? Based on these large pools of blood on the carpet, Julia would have bleeding profusely. How did she get to that side of the bed and leave no blood on the carpet if she was stabbed again over there? This is impossible. The blood on that part of the wall also didn’t occur during the attack. It couldn’t have landed there, at that angle, from this point.”

Thomas walked around to the right side of the bed and studied the angle of the droplets shown in the photographs. “This had to have happened somewhere around here, on this side of the bed, not that side. It’s as if someone took the bloody instrument and splashed it here to make the spatter look more expansive.”

“Maybe this was the point of origin of the attack, Thomas,” Gavin said. “He stabbed her here and she managed to run to the other side of the bed where he finished her off. That would make this spatter pattern isolated from that one.”

“Even if this is where it started, some type of blood trail would be seen from here to there. Julia would have been bleeding. The killer would have had an instrument that was dripping. There is no trail. There is no blood on the floor here or anywhere to show movement from one side of the bed to the other. Not a drop. How do you do that?” Thomas challenged.

For the third time Gavin didn’t respond.

“There are obvious signs of staging here,” Jack said. “It’s made to look like something other than what it really is. You have to at least admit that, Detective Gavin.”

“Why clean it then if that’s the case? Why clean any of the crime scenes?” Gavin finally asked, his tone challenging. “If there’s blood on the walls and floor, we can spray luminol and know where it all once was. So why bother getting rid of it? Why go through the trouble staging the blood and then removing it?”

“Excellent point. Why clean it? That’s what we need to find out,” Thomas said, hesitating for a second before continuing. “But this is a staged crime scene. The lamp and that impossible blood pattern confirm it.”