He pointed to drops in the center of the trail.

"These spatters are due to the backswing."

He indicated several drops lying along the edge of the arc.

"And these are downswing trails."

I took a moment to digest that.

"So you're saying that he was beaten before he was shot?"

"This trail is one of five we were able to identify. General y, assuming the blunt injury trauma is the only source of blood, or at least the first, the number of trails equates to the number of blows plus two."

"Why plus two?"

"There wouldn't have been any blood on the first blow. On the second blow blood is picked up by the weapon and thrown off as the attacker makes the backswing for the third blow."

"Right."

"This medium-velocity spatter was found down low on the wal s, and on the crap stacked in the corner.

He worked the keys again and more strings appeared, these converging on a point less than two feet above the floor.

"My opinion is that he was struck near the corner of the room, fel to the floor, and was then hit repeatedly. After that he was placed in the chair and shot."

"Struck with what?"

Gilbert pooched out his lips. "Pfff. Not my cal ."

"Why bludgeon him then shoot him?"

"Definitely not my cal ."

"If he was dragged, wouldn't that have left a trail?"

"The assailant may have wiped it up. Besides, there was so much blood everywhere, and so many people on the scene the floor was useless."

"And the burning may have disguised some of it."

"At least on the carpet. We may go in with Luminot, but it's not going to change what the spatters tel me."

I was thinking about that when he spoke again.

"There's something else."

"There's more?"

Again he worked the keys. Again a mist of high-velocity blood spatter fil ed the screen. But a portion of the cloud was missing, like a stencil with a cut out pattern.

"This is another shot of the wal behind the victim's head."

"It looks like someone took a cookie cutter to it."

"This is cal ed a void pattern. It's produced when an object blocks the path of blood and is then removed."

"What object?"

"I don't know."

"Who removed it?"

"I don't know"

As I hurried back to my office, Dorsey's words provided voiceover for Gilbert's images.

Amateur Hour. Whoever did Cherokee is going to walk.

I grabbed my phone and punched in a number. A secretary told me Jacques Roy had flown to Val-d'Or and would be unavailable until Monday.

Impatient, I asked for Claudel. Neither he nor his Carcajou partner was in. I thought of pagers, again decided the situation was not sufficiently urgent, and left messages for everyone.

I had just replaced the receiver when the phone rang. "Should I be sending the world's biggest fruit basket?"

"Hi, Harry."