Since Vail had left by then, too, Jia and I headed down. Prosecutors had to be enormously careful at crime scenes, since, at the very least, they were witnesses to the scene itself. If the defense wanted to disqualify a prosecutor from a case, all they had to do was say that a conflict was created because the prosecutor is both the prosecuting attorney and a witness. It was easily avoided, though, if it could be shown that another witness could provide the same testimony without the prosecutor’s involvement. There were enough people here that it wouldn’t be a problem if I was careful.

“What we got?”

The tech, a burly guy in a coat, flipped on his black light. The basement didn’t have any windows and was naturally dark. The blue-tinged light lit up a space of about four feet, revealing dark splotches that ran in a horizontal line along the floor.

“What am I looking at?” I said.

“Blood. It pooled here before someone cleaned it up. Looks like probably with bleach. It’s a common mistake: bleach doesn’t actually destroy the blood. But they probably used something more powerful, too. It’s really degraded.”

“You got enough for a DNA match?”

“Doubtful. Bleach contaminates the blood. Only one of the three types of blood tests could work with stains this old anyway, what’s called PCR.”

“Polymerase chain reaction, yeah, I know it. It got one of my former clients falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit.”

“Well, no method’s perfect, but that’s a pretty good one. Anyway, I’ll keep looking. There might be some arterial spray or something that got elsewhere that they didn’t use bleach on. But keep in mind, these stains are months old. My guess is nothing usable’s left.”

“Well, good work nonetheless.”

“Thanks. And who are you again?”

“I’m the babysitter for this investigation, apparently. Just keep me posted on what you find.”

We left the basement, and I went outside and called Gates to give her an update, but she didn’t answer. I looked back to the town house as Will came out. He slipped his booties off and said, “I was going to head over to Bebe’s.”

“I’ll come with. These guys might be a while.”

The three of us drove to a house in River Falls that I recognized. A girl I’d had a crush on growing up had lived there. The house was run down, to the point that it looked like it could fall over, and a car that was missing its two rear tires was up on cement blocks, which I didn’t know was actually a thing that happened outside of movies.

“You guys stay here,” I said.