Dust to Dust

“How do you know? She was strangled, wasn’t she? Is that blood someone tried to clean up?”
    “More likely urine and maybe feces that someone tried to clean up,” said Diane. “Often during a death like Stacy’s, the bladder and colon relax and evacuate. Murderers usually don’t count on that.”
    “You want me to take the samples?” said Jin.
    Diane nodded. “Get some shots of this first, and let me go over the rest of the room.”
    Jin took multiple photos of the luminesced image in rapid succession from several angles.
    “Nice camera,” said Kingsley.
    “Yeah, you bet,” said Jin, a big grin on his face. “Don’t know what I ever did without it.”
    Diane worked her way around the small apartment and finished with the bed.
    “There’s very little on the bed. You would expect urine to be here if she died here,” said Diane. “Particularly if she was left in an upright position for an extended period after death. Jin, go ahead and collect samples, photograph everything, and do the bathroom.”
    “Sure thing, Boss,” he said.
    Armed with evidence bags, Diane began a search of the apartment. She used the same systematic procedure she had used with the floor to make sure she covered every spot. Just under the bed she found the towel that was around Stacy’s neck in the photo, along with the knotted rope that had been around her neck and anchored her to the bedpost. Evidently the coroner’s people had cut it off and dropped it on the floor and it got kicked under the bed. She put the items in evidence bags.
    Diane went around the room and searched the tops of dressers, tables, and door frames for prints. She lifted several. She enlisted Kingsley’s help in searching all the drawers in the apartment for any items that might shed light on Stacy’s life up until the time she died.
    In a small desk Kingsley found a tablet of yellow legal-sized paper. It was about half used up. Perhaps Stacy used it for notes. Diane bagged it. They could bring out the indented impressions in the paper using the electrostatic detection apparatus at the lab and see at least what had been written on the page before it.
    Diane and Kingsley searched the pockets of the clothes hanging in Stacy’s closet and came up only with movie ticket stubs from several months before. They searched all the trash cans, the clothes hamper, and the kitchen cabinets. Diane felt under the drawers and tables for anything that might be taped under them. She looked behind the pictures on the walls. She slid photographs out of their frames and looked for anything Stacy might have stashed behind them.
    It was almost dark when they finished. Kingsley gave the key back to Mr. Dance and they left for Rosewood.
    “So you think she was murdered,” said Ross Kingsley.
    “A good possibility,” said Diane. “I’ll analyze the evidence when we get back to the lab.”
    “So, then, to find out who did it, you’ll have to find out who framed the brother,” said Jin. “Unless it was her boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or a member of her band, or a neighbor, or someone from her job. What was her job?”
    “She was a student,” said Diane, “and the next big thing we need to do is get the body exhumed and have a new autopsy.”
    “Whom can we get to do it? The autopsy, I mean,” said Kingsley. “I have some funds I can use.”
    “Good,” said Diane. “There is only so much you’re going to be able to get for free.”
    “Did you find anything outside?” Diane asked Jin.
    “I found a few cigarette butts at the side of the road nearest the steps to her apartment. I don’t expect much from those. Most look too new. Could be from anybody before or since. I searched the wooded area in back of the house. Didn’t find anything. Took a lot of pictures. But there is an empty house just beyond the woods. There are a lot of empty houses in the neighborhood. I kind of wanted to see if I could get in, but I figured you wouldn’t want me to.”
    “I think if we find enough to get the police to reopen the case, they can call the GBI in to do a search,” said Diane.
    They stopped at the museum to drop Jin off. Diane had called ahead and a member of museum security was waiting at the door with a cart to transport the crime scene gear inside.
    “I’ll start analyzing the evidence for you, Boss,” he said, unloading the crime scene equipment and a duffel bag filled with the bags of evidence they had collected.
    “Do you have time?” she