.2

He took a picture of the shoes. They had a girlish quality. They were flat, and they were gold. A woman invested in nostalgia. They were the first things he could see when he entered the room, glowing in the fluorescent lights and the red tile of the bathroom. But he was not here for the shoes. He was here because of the loosely tied towel around her left wrist.

It would have been routine otherwise, and they might not have called him in. The towel changed everything.

He had inspected the towel. White. Hotel monogram. What had she been doing? With a twist of her hand, she could have “freed” herself. It was clearly a choice, a decision, a desire maybe, even, possibly. The rest of her was on the floor but her arm hung in space, the wrist attached to the radiator by a soft white hotel towel—tied gently.

Had someone else done it and left? Or had she used her own teeth to close the knot? He touched the edge of the towel. She’d used her own teeth.

The forensics were closing in with their fine brushes against her fingertips. He noticed the perfume in her hair. Gardenias.