“In the marine world, that’s extra-large,” she says. “Fenders associated with yachts.”

“And it’s not inflatable,” I point out. “So if extra-large fenders were being stored on a boat as opposed to off-site, it had to be a really big one. At first I just assumed whoever did this bought it new. Like the dog crate, the bags of litter. I assumed this person shopped for new items that couldn’t be traced.”

I clean the measuring tape and return it to a drawer, and I change my gloves.

“But you can see this fender’s rubbed up against something, suggesting it’s not new,” I explain. “It’s used. Possibly it was removed from a large boat.”

“Someone with money,” Lucy says. “Channing Lott has a hundred-and-fifty-footer he docks in Boston. Some of the time it’s in Gloucester, a very well-known yacht.”

“Why the airport in Beverly?” I ask if there’s a special reason to keep a helicopter there.

“He has a hangar in Beverly, has hangars in a lot of places,” Lucy says. “Beverly’s convenient to Gloucester, where his oceanfront mansion is, where his wife disappeared from.”

I open a large black plastic case and get out a handheld crime light and goggles, and Lucy dims the lights in the room. I start with the wavelength for blue, painting it over the black shirt, and a galaxy of fibers and debris fluoresce in different colors and intensities. What look like orange-hot coils and multicolored ones are probably synthetics, and those that are coarse I associate with carpet. The clothing front and back is dirty with construction dust and debris, bits of paint and glass, and animal and human hair, much of it from contact with flooring, I suspect.

I feel the thick stiffness of dried blood I can barely see on the black fabric, dark voids where blood likely dripped from Howard Roth’s lacerated head, and I ask Lucy to turn the lights back on. Most of the blood is concentrated on the back of the collar and shoulders, as if he bled from the back of his head while he was lying faceup and blood seeped under him. I can imagine why Luke assumed the injury was caused when the body came to rest on the basement floor at the foot of the stairs, but I don’t believe it.

“I’m sure it’s crossed your mind that what happened to his wife is similar to the other ones.” Lucy continues talking about Channing Lott.

“I need scene pictures of Roth’s body as it was found. Check to see if Machado has sent them yet.”

“His missing wife is in the same general age group, distinguished for one reason or another, a formidable woman.” Lucy returns to the computer. “She certainly wouldn’t appear to be in a high-risk category, and in fact quite the opposite. Scene pics have landed. Opening them now.”