I don’t want to nudge or touch the doors with my boots or bare hands, and I pick up a branch snapped off by the storm. I hold it by its broken end, poking the tip through the steel handles. I try lifting. The doors don’t budge. I shout this to Marino as he slogs toward me in the deluge.

“A key lock versus a padlock,” I explain over the driving rain. “Someone may have been using these doors to enter the lower area of the house. The flowers have been crushed and gouged as if someone was stepping on them. When you were in the basement earlier did you notice if these doors might have been accessed recently?”

“Nothing much down there and nothing caught my eye.” He looms over me, his hands on his hips. Water streams down his shaved head, and his shoes are beginning to squish. “If it was Hyde who came back here with the tape? What made him walk over here and step all over a bunch of flowers?”

“It would seem that someone did. That much we can say.” I return to the back of the truck, and the water is already inches deep in low-lying areas of the lawn and walkway.

“And then he got interrupted?” Marino squishes and splashes after me. “Now nobody can find him or his police car?”

“As I’ve suggested maybe you should ping his phone.” I try the tailgate’s double doors.

They’re locked just as I thought they would be. I find the right key, and my fingers are wet and slick. I open up the back. Lights automatically blink on and I smell the fresh citrus scents of the disinfectant and bleach we use to wash our transport vehicles. I mandate that we scrub and decontaminate them until they’re clean enough to eat in although I don’t mean it literally. I scan for the source of the mysterious clanking.

I don’t see anything that could account for it. The diamond-plate steel floor is empty and spotless, shining like a new dime. The scene cases, the storage chests and cabinets are tightly buttoned exactly as I left them. Fire extinguishers, chemical cabinets and large tools such as rakes, shovels, an axe and bolt cutters are bracketed to the sides. Nothing is loose, not the laptops, not the camera and forensic light equipment, not the remote controls for the multiple flat-screen displays that constitute what I consider my mobile office. I have everything I need in here including communication technology that allows me to work while away from the CFC for the better part of a day as I am right now.