Free The Girl in the Leaves by Robert Scott, Sarah Maynard, Larry Maynard Page B

working, both inside and out. Hoffman spent
     awhile in the woods, watching. In some ways he liked this—seeing what they were doing
     and not being seen. The police seemed to have no idea he was down there spying on
     them. Hoffman got a kick spying on people—he had often done so from up in the branches
     of a tree on his property,
    After quite a while of watching, Hoffman gathered up a few of his things before making
     his way back, on foot, to his bike and then backtracking to his car. Authorities would
     learn later just what he took from the woods—a baseball cap and a knife—and what he
     left behind. And as with much of what Hoffman did, none of it would make much sense
     to other people. The walk to his bicycle took quite a long time, and it was about
     9:00 AM when he got home, once again exhausted from all his nocturnal activities.
    * * *
    Sarah, left in her cold dark dungeon on the bed of leaves, was fairly certain that
     her captor was gone once again. But he had told her that someone else would be watching
     the house whenever he wasn’t there. And besides, what could she do? She was tied to
     the primitive frame of the bed of leaves.
    Sarah believed Hoffman was telling the truth about an accomplice. How else could he
     have moved so many vehicles around by himself? And how had he gotten to her house
     in the first place, if someone had not dropped him off there? Obviously he had driven
     Stephanie’s Jeep away from the house, with her in it, and she had even seen the silver
     car he’d approached, parked at the Pipesville Road baseball fields.
    Sarah decided not to cause any waves. If someone was indeed watching the place, she
     didn’t want anything bad reported back to her assailant. It was best to do just what
     he said. It was her best insurance of survival.

TWELVE
    A Scene of Horror
    Special Agent Gary Wilgus of BCI&I met with Agents Ed Lulla and Ed Carlini at Tina’s
     residence at 1:00 PM on Friday, November 12, 2010. Sheriff David Barber was there also, along with Detective
     Sergeant Roger Brown and several deputies who were securing the scene. The BCI&I agents
     and Detective Sergeant Brown put protective coverings over their shoes and entered
     the house.
    Wilgus was briefed by the other agents, and his job would now be to examine the blood-spatter
     patterns while Agents Lulla and Carlini processed Stephanie Sprang’s Jeep Cherokee,
     which was still parked in the garage.
    Agent Wilgus was a bloodstain expert, and early in his report he defined the terms
     he would be using to describe his findings. A “bloodstain” was a deposit of blood
     on a surface. An “altered stain” was a bloodstain with characteristics that indicated
     a physical change had occurred. A “blood drop” was a volume of blood of sufficient
     weight to overcome its surface tension and fall free from the mass of blood from which
     it was formed.
    Wilgus defined a “drip stain” as a bloodstain resulting from a falling drop that formed
     due to gravity. And an “impact pattern” was a bloodstain pattern resulting from an
     object striking liquid blood. A “perimeter stain” was an altered stain that consisted
     of the peripheral characteristics of the original stain. A “saturation stain” was
     a bloodstain resulting from the accumulation of liquid blood in an absorbent material.
    A “spatter stain” consisted of a bloodstain resulting from a blood drop dispersed
     through the air due to an external force applied to a source of liquid blood, as might
     result, for example, from someone being struck by a heavy object. A “swipe pattern”
     was a bloodstain pattern resulting from the transfer of blood from a blood-bearing
     surface onto another surface, with characteristics that indicated relative motion
     between the two surfaces. “Transfer patterns” were contact bloodstains created as
     a result of compression or lateral movement of a bloody surface against a second surface.
     And a “wipe