The girl with the video camera and the nose moved away from the kitchen drawers and pointed. The drawers all had complicated kiddie-proof gadgets on them, and I could see why: in the top one was a neat molded case, Cuisine Bleu swooping across the inside of the lid in fancy lettering. It was made to hold five knives. Four of them were in place, from a long carving knife to a dinky little thing shorter than my hand: gleaming, honed hair-fine, wicked. The second-biggest knife was missing.

“That drawer was open,” Larry said. “That’s how we spotted them so soon.”

I said, “And no sign of the fifth knife.”

Head-shakes all round.

Cooper was busy delicately detaching his gloves, finger by finger. I asked, “Dr. Cooper, could you take a look and tell us if this knife might be consistent with the victim’s wounds?”

He didn’t turn around. “An informed opinion would necessitate a full examination of the wounds, both at surface level and in cross-section, preferably with the knife in question available for comparison. Do I appear to have performed such an examination?”

When I was a kid I would have lost the rag with Cooper every time, but I know how to manage myself now, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before I give him the satisfaction. I said, “If you can rule this knife out somehow—the size of the blade, maybe, or the shape of the hilt—then we need to know now, before I send a dozen floaters off on a wild-goose chase.”

Cooper sighed and threw the box a half-second glance. “I see no reason to exclude it from consideration.”

“Perfect. Larry, can we take one of the other knives with us, show the search team what we’re looking for?”

“Be my guest. How about this one? Going by the holes in the box, it’s basically the same as the one you’re after, just smaller.” Larry picked out the middle knife, dropped it deftly into a clear plastic evidence bag and handed it over. “Give it back when you’re done.”

“Will do. Dr. Cooper, can you give me any idea of how far the victim could have got after the wounds were inflicted? How long he could have stayed on his feet?”

Cooper gave me the fish-eye again. “Less than a minute,” he said. “Or possibly several hours. Six feet, or conceivably half a mile. Do take your pick, Detective Kennedy, since I am afraid I am unable to provide the kind of answer you want. Far too many variables are involved to permit an intelligent guess, and, regardless of what you might do in my place, I refuse to make an unintelligent one.”

“If you mean could the vic have got rid of the weapon, Scorcher,” Larry said helpfully, “I can tell you he didn’t go out the front, anyway. There’s not a drop of blood in the hall, or on the front door. The bottoms of his shoes are covered, so are his hands, and he’d have had to hold himself up, wouldn’t he, as he got weaker?” Cooper shrugged. “Oh, he would. Besides, look around you: the poor fella was going like a sprinkler. He’d have left us smudges everywhere, not to mention a lovely Hansel-and-Gretel trail. No: once the drama had started, this fella didn’t go into the front of the house, and he didn’t go upstairs.”