Alone in the mansion, she is able to appreciate the details this time around. The antique French furniture, the chandeliers and sconces, the high, old windows and strange art. The Leblanc-Landry mansion encompasses its history, although it’s a darker story than some of the other nearby estates.

The detective was born in Louisiana, and she is familiar with most of the houses and properties in the city of New Orleans, some more than she would like to be. So, she is familiar with the tragic story of the Leblancs and the Landrys, and she knows that the property has changed hands many times over the last century. Currently, it belongs to a wealthy businessman, who owns nearly a dozen other rental properties in the city. He rents them out to tourists for exorbitant amounts; he doesn’t even live in Louisiana, brokering out the upkeep and care of the properties to others. Many people in New Orleans despise opportunistic people like that.

The detective moves stealthily through the house, this time bypassing the dining area where the body was found.

She enters the library instead, a sudden draft sending chills up and down her back.

Her father talked a lot about intuition, and she believes strongly in that too. But more than imagination and intuition, she relies on science. Science tells the story better than her imagination ever could.

When she closes the door of the library and turns off the lights, photons come to life. They glow like a neon Pollock painting, telling a bloody tale.

The detective has already seen the photos, taken by crime scene technicians, an hour ago. But seeing them in person is different.

The book, used as a weapon, was obviously swung in an arc, striking the victim and creating the initial blow. But that wasn’t enough, and the castoff on the wall behind the bookshelves shows that the killer swung the book back, striking a second time. Was the second hit a fatal blow? the detective wonders.

The blood on the floor tells another story. The victim hit the floor and tried to brace herself, bloody smears mark the books as she went down, and there’s a smear on the floor as well.

The detective stares at the backside of the library door, turns her head sideways as she studies the castoff on the wall.

If the victim died here, then she would have been carried or dragged from this room. But there are no smears of blood on the carpet near the library door, no gruesome trails showing where the body was slid across the marble…

The luminol tells a gruesome story, but there’s still part of it missing.

How did one killer lift the victim out of this room, leaving no blood trail, and then lift her overhead, slip the noose over her neck, and send her into the rafters… without any help?