“Someone could’ve sneaked in through the window,” Jeffrey continued. “Maybe he was there already, hiding in the closet or something. She goes to the bathroom down the hall and comes back to her room and—boom. There he is, waiting.”
“Did you find prints?”
“He could have worn gloves,” Jeffrey said, not exactly answering her question.
“Women don’t usually shoot themselves in the face,” Sara conceded, looking at a close-up of Ellen Schaffer’s desk. “That’s more something a man would do.” Sara had always thought the statistic sounded sexist, but the numbers proved it out.
“There’s something wrong with this.” Jeffrey indicated the photograph. “Not just because of the arrow. Let’s take that out of it, take out Tessa. The shooting still doesn’t look right.”
“Why?”
“I wish I could tell you. It’s just like with Rosen. There’s nothing I can put my finger on.”
Sara thought of Tessa lying in bed back at the hospital. She could still hear her sister’s words, ordering Sara to find the person who had done this to all of them. The photograph of Schaffer’s room brought back a memory for Sara. She had driven to Vassar with Tessa to help her get settled in. Tessa’s dorm room had been decorated the same way as Ellen Schaffer’s. Posters for the World Wildlife Federation and Greenpeace were tacked to the walls along with pictures of men torn from various magazines. A calendar hanging over one of the desks had important dates circled in red. The only thing that did not jibe was the array of gun-cleaning tools on the desk.
Sara flipped back to the report. She knew that reading without her glasses would give her a headache, but she wanted to feel like she was accomplishing something. By the time she had finished reviewing all the information Jeffrey had compiled on Ellen Schaffer’s death, Sara’s head was pounding and her stomach was upset from reading in a moving car.
Jeffrey asked, “What do you think?”
“I think . . . ,” Sara began, looking down at the closed file. “I think I don’t know. Both deaths could be staged. I suppose Schaffer could have been taken by surprise. Maybe she was hit on the back of the head. Not that we know where the back of her head is.”
Sara pulled out several of the photographs, putting them in some kind of order, saying, “She’s lying on the couch. She could have been placed there. She could’ve lain down on her own. Her arm isn’t long enough to reach the trigger, so she used her toe. That’s not uncommon. Sometimes people use clothes hangers.” She glanced back over the report, rereading Jeffrey’s notes on the ammo discrepancy. “Would she have known how dangerous it is to use the wrong ammunition?”