I see remnants of glue where the three thin strips of leathery backing have been attached to notches machined into the copper shaft. I think of mummified human scalps, and I have a strong suspicion about what this is as I cover a countertop with blue towels. I place the arrow on them. The razor-sharp broadhead has been deployed. The reddish-stained blades are bent backward, as if the arrow penetrated a target and was forcibly pulled out. Carrie has hurt or killed someone else. I can’t possibly know this for a fact. Yet I have no doubt and it’s not coincidental that I can’t conduct a simple and quick presumptive test for hemoglobin. Copper is an impossible problem and very little is random with Carrie.

I remember the way she used to look at me coldly and with calculation during our encounters at Quantico. No matter what I said about science, medicine, law or anything at all she always acted as if she were better informed on the subject. I felt she was judging me, looking for anything that might verify her superiority. She was competitive. She was jealous and impossibly arrogant. She was extraordinarily knowledgeable, charming when she chose to be, and one of the brightest people I’ve ever met. I know her patterns. I know them as well as she knows mine.

She’s creating situations and then sabotaging any effort I might expend in response, and copper is part of her plan. I saw in the videos that she believes copper has healing if not magical properties. She would also be aware that it creates chaos at crime scenes. The reagent phenolphthalein plus a drop or two of hydrogen peroxide will instantly turn a swab bright pink no matter what chemical or material is present. In the typical presumptive blood test, copper tops the list of substances that react with a false positive.

In other words I’ll definitely get a confirmation. It could be correct. It could be misleading, and that’s Carrie’s unique gift. She creates confusion, false hope, wrong turns, seeming impossibilities, and is supremely skilled at curdling one’s deductive skills, of foiling science and procedures. She revels in upending our routines and training on their heads, and I feel as if she’s inside the truck with me. I know without empirical proof that what I’m thinking will be validated soon enough. There’s no point in denying that the disasters of the day all come from the same single source.