Other whiteboards rolled against the wall displayed gruesome crime scene photos, showing positioning of the bodies and the knives. One board held drawings, detailed like blueprints, offering a site plan of the Tullock home, showing the basement, main and second floors, and the yard. The drawings had legends with corresponding color-coded keys, numbers and letters pinpointing “blood drops,”

“blood on grass,”

“blood on windowsill,”

“blood on floor,”

“blood on stairs,”

“blood on wall,”

“blood pooled,” and “large pool standing blood.”

One of the whiteboards had photos and a map locating the small, empty glass vodka bottle that was discovered by a K-9 unit before it lost the trail leading into town. Another board held charts and checklists.

Much work had been completed, but more needed to be done.

At the scene, they had searched, recorded and preserved latent and visible fingerprints from the knives, the bloodied message, basement windowsill, door handles, doors, walls, kitchen, bathrooms and the vodka bottle. They were submitted electronically to Ottawa for an Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) search against the national repository of fingerprint and criminal record information. They were also checked against local records and the set of elimination prints volunteered by people who had been in, or had access to, the Tullock house.

Marsh also reviewed the painstaking work on the footwear impressions found in blood at the scene. They’d been photographed and in some cases they’d been lifted using casting silicone. The impressions were then searched digitally against various databases, including those with images from other crime scenes, and those provided by shoe manufacturers.

FIS also worked on the shoes volunteered by people who’d had access to the house, making test impressions and photographing them, studying and recording the outsole size, the pattern and wear, such as cuts, nicks and embedded objects. Further processing involved comparing the impressions with those found in the blood pools and partial tracks throughout the house.

Marsh was confident the team would produce results soon.

At one end of the room she’d posted photos of the Tullock family, aglow in happier times, to remind everyone on the case that they had a profound duty to see that justice was done. For a moment she thought of Torrie Tullock, the lone survivor and what she’d have to live with for the rest of her life. Then Marsh allowed a personal thought of her own family, her son and daughter, her husband, a fighter pilot, and how fragile life was, when her line rang.

“Amanda, it’s Teresa. I’ve got something.”

Marsh went down the hall to the workstation of Corporal Teresa Honchar, one of the RCMP’s most seasoned fingerprint experts. She’d been at it for twenty-two years. When Marsh entered, she saw two images of fingerprints splitting one of Honchar’s two large monitors.

“Okay.” Honchar pointed with her capped pen. “Look at the loops, whorls and arches against the sample.”

“Consistent.”