I said, “And that’s what we came down to ask you about. That computer: did you pull any prints off it, before you sent it back to the lab?”

“We tried. You’d think a keyboard would be the dream surface, wouldn’t you? You’d be so wrong. People don’t use a whole fingertip to hit the key, just a tiny fraction of the surface, and then it gets hit over and over at slightly different angles … It’s like taking a piece of paper and printing a hundred different words on it, one on top of the other, and then expecting us to work out the sentence they came from. Your best bet is the mouse—we got a couple of partials that might be almost usable. Apart from that, nothing big enough or clear enough to hold up in court.”

“What about blood? On the keyboard or the mouse, specifically?”

Larry shook his head. “There was some spatter on the monitor, a couple of drops on the side of the keyboard. No smudges on the keys or the mouse, though. No one used them with blood on his fingers, if that’s what you’re asking.”

I said, “So it looks like the computer came before the murders—before the adults, anyway. That’s some nerve he’s got, if he sat here playing with their internet history while they were asleep upstairs.”

“The computer didn’t have to come first,” Richie said. “Those gloves—they were leather, they’d have been stiff, specially if they were all bloody. Maybe he couldn’t type in them, took them off; they’d kept the blood off his fingers …”

Most rookies on their first outings keep their mouths shut and nod at whatever I say. Usually this is the right call, but every once in a while, watching other partners argue and bat theories back and forth and call each other every shade of stupid gives me a flash of something that could be loneliness. It was starting to feel good, working with Richie. “Then he sat there playing with Pat and Jenny’s internet history while they were bleeding out four feet from him,” I said. “Some nerve, either way.”

“Hello?” Larry inquired, waving at us. “Remember me? Remember how I told you the handprints weren’t the good bit?”

“I like saving my dessert for last,” I said. “Whenever you’re ready, Larry, we would love the good bit.”

He got each of us by an elbow and turned us towards the sweep of congealing blood. “Here’s where the male victim was, amn’t I right? Face down, head towards the hall door, feet towards the window. According to your buffaloes, the female was to his left, lying on her left side facing him, propped against his body, with her head on his upper arm. And here, just about eighteen inches from where her back would have been, we have this.”

He pointed to the floor, to the Jackson Pollock gibber of blood that radiated out around the puddle. I said, “A shoeprint?”

“Actually, a couple of hundred shoeprints, God help us. But take a look at this one here.”