Free Plea of Insanity by Jilliane Hoffman

‘I got it. Hand me a bag.’
    ‘Where’s Latarrino?’ asked Rick, looking around.
    ‘Yeah, I’m happy to see you, too, Ricky. Thanks for exchanging pleasantries,’ Brill quipped. ‘Lat’s upstairs. Master bedroom, I think.’
    ‘You’re looking good, Steve,’ Rick said, slapping the detective’s shoulder. ‘The Rogaine looks like it’s working.’
    ‘That’s better,’ replied the detective with a laugh.
    ‘Okay, Julia, let’s head up,’ said Rick, turning to her. ‘That’s where the bodies were found. Let me show you what we got.’
    ‘Hey, Ricky, can we arrest this asshole yet?’ called out Brill.
    ‘Soon,’ Rick yelled back from the living room. ‘Let’s see what the dad of the year has to say when the anesthesia wears off. And besides, I’m not picking up the tab he’s running over at Ryder, Steve.’ The state of Florida was ultimately responsible for providing medical care to any person in their custody. Arresting David Marquette now might make for a nice lead-in on the five o’clock news, but it also potentially could mean footing the bill for his surgery and hospital stay. In a setting where an aspirin cost upwards of twelve bucks a dose, that could amount to a pretty outrageous sum. One that Julia figured the taxpayers of Miami-Dade County probably wouldn’t like to hear they’d be shouldering.
    ‘Oh shit,’ she heard Brill say to the guys in the kitchen. ‘I did it again.’
    ‘My kid makes you pay him a dollar if you say a curse word,’ someone said.
    ‘He must make a fortune off your fucking mouth, Ed,’ joked another.
    ‘College fund’s paid off.’
    Everyone laughed.
    ‘ “Are you an intern?” You’re a fucking idiot, Brill,’ said Satty.
    ‘What? I think I have suits older than her.’
    ‘I could see that,’ someone said. ‘Maybe you should think about getting a piece.’
    ‘Fuck you, too, Burke,’ said Brill. ‘I ain’t wearing no toupee.’ Then he yelled out, ‘Hey, Julie, sorry about the language.’
    ‘No problem,’ Julia replied, with a sigh she made sure no one else could hear as she followed Rick up the stairs.

9
    She hadn’t even made it to the top step when she saw the large squares conspicuously missing from the beige shag carpeting. It was obvious that Crime Scene wasn’t through yet: plastic evidence markers that looked like tiny white easels with black numbers on them had been placed in the spots where the carpet had been cut out and impounded. A strong chemical smell lingered in the air, but Julia couldn’t quite place it. It smelled kind of like cleaning solution, but not just your ordinary household Mr Clean and Clorox scent. It smelled nursing-home clean, like antiseptic and death.
    ‘Two sets of bloody footprints were found here,’ Rick said, stopping in the hallway. ‘One looks like it was from the responding uniform who unwittingly stepped in blood and then trailed it into the last room on the left. That’s the little girl’s room. The six-year-old, Emma Louise.’
    Julia’s eyes followed the path of phantom footsteps down a pale yellow hall to where they stopped just outside of a closed white door. Family pictures crowded the walls. Someone had scribbled in different colored crayons on the bottom of the door – someone who couldn’t have been more than two or three feet tall.
    ‘The other set we think is from the father,’ Rick continued. ‘But the scene got pretty chaotic when the officers initially found the bodies; there was a lot of blood and a lot of people. The suspect prints looked smeared somehow, and it doesn’t help that it’s shag carpeting. The long, cut piles don’t hold prints as well as, say, a tightly looped Berber. The warrant let us clean out Marquette’s shoe closet, so we’ll test all of them, even the slippers and flip-flops. If we don’t get anywhere with that, I’d like to do a print and cast impression of his foot, but we’ll need a separate warrant for that.’
    ‘I wouldn’t think