It wasn’t until I was ready to bag her hands that I noticed something under her right index fingernail. I got out a flashlight for a better look, then retrieved a plastic. evidence envelope and a pair of forceps. The tiny fleck of metallic green was embedded in the skin beneath the nail. Christmas glitter, I thought. l -also found fibers of a gold tint, and as I studied each of her fingers I found more. Slipping the brown paper bags over her hands and securing them at the wrists with rubber bands, I went around to the other side of the car. I wanted to look at her feet. Her legs were fully rigorous and uncooperative as I pulled them free of the steering wheel and positioned them on the seat. Examining the bottoms of her thick dark socks, I found fibers clinging to the wool that looked similar to the ones I had noticed under her fingernails. Absent was dirt, mud, or grass. An alarm was sounding in the back of my mind.

“Find anything interesting?” Marino asked.

“You found no bedroom slippers or shoes nearby?” I said.

“Nope,” Lucero answered. “Like I told you, I thought it unusual she walked out of the house on a cold night with nothing but-“

I interrupted. “We’ve got a problem. Her socks are too clean.”

“Shit,” Marino said.

“We need to get her downtown.”

I backed away from the car.

“I’ll tell the squad,” Lucero volunteered.

“I want to see the inside of her house,” I said to Marino.

“Yeah.”

He had taken his gloves off and was blowing on his hands. “I want you to see it, too.”

While I waited for the squad, I moved about the garage, careful where I stepped and keeping out of the way. There wasn’t much to see, just the usual clutter of items needed for the yard and odds and ends that had no other proper storage place. I scanned stacks of old newspapers, wicker baskets, dust’. cans of paint, and a rusty charcoal grill that I doubted had been used in years. Sloppily coiled in a corner like a headless green garter snake was the hose from which the segment attached to the exhaust pipe appeared to have been cut. I knelt near the severed end without, touching it. The plastic rim did not look sawn but severed at an angle by one hard blow. I spotted a linear cut in the cement floor nearby. Getting to my feet, I surveyed the tools hanging from a pegboard. There was an ax and a maul, both of them rusty and festooned with cobwebs.

The rescue squad was coming in with its stretcher and body pouch.

“Did you find anything inside her house that she might have used to cut the hose?” I asked Lucero.

“No.”

Jennifer Deighton did not want to come out of the car, death resisting the hands of life. I moved to the passenger’s side to help. Three of us secured her under the arms and waist while an attendant pushed her legs. When she was zipped up and buckled in, they carried her out into the snowy night and I trudged with Lucero along the driveway, sorry that I’d not taken the time to put on boots. We entered the ranch-style brick house through a back door that led into the kitchen.