Glancing back, she looks at her own feet. Holding on to the pool’s edge with one hand, she reaches forward with the other, as if reaching into the water.
As if she was reaching into the water to grab the money.
As she reaches out with her arm, she watches her feet. One of them moves as she stretches, the toe dragging across the stone. When she sits up and takes a closer look Lizzie sees what she suspected: from the movement, she’s made a small scuff mark.
She feels her hypothesis is correct. The killer tried to get the money from the side of the pool by lying on the stone and reaching into the water. They went around the whole pool, systematically gathering as much cash as they could, while the young woman was dead or dying. The thought sickens her.
Crouching down, Lizzie measures the distance from the pool’s edge to the scuff marks. Using her own height to estimate how many more inches to add to account for the person’s shoulders and head being over the edge of the pool, she does some calculations.
She’s five foot two; the person whose shoes made the scuff marks must be almost a full foot taller than her, putting them between six foot and six two. Lizzie notes her conclusions down in her notebook, then packs it and the tape measure back into her bag. Thinks. She didn’t want to get involved in this investigation, but now she’s here she can’t deny that the puzzle is hooking her in. There’s a real callousness to what the murderer did to the young woman – not just killing her, but sticking around to scoop dollars from the pool as she died, regarding the money as more important than the victim’s life. Lizzie clenches her fists. The anxiety she was feeling earlier is still there but instead of being mixed with intrigue and excitement about the puzzle, now it’s mixed with anger. She’s still concerned about Philip, but she can’t stand by and allow whoever did this to get away free. She wants to make sure this killer is caught.
Shifting her gaze to the pool, she wonders if there’s any chance of her taking a viable sample from the small patches of water left puddled on the pool’s floor. Her first instinct is it’s not enough, but she decides to give it a try.
She strides around to the pool ladder. It’s getting darker by the minute. The sun’s light is orange and red, like a bloodstain across the sky. The birds, so noisy earlier, have fallen silent on their perches up in the trees. Lizzie knows she needs to hurry. Soon she won’t be able to see a thing.
Using the ladder she climbs down into the basin of the pool. It feels weird to step on to the bottom, now waterless and barren. She takes slow steps, scanning the matt, blue-painted surface for a big enough sample.
It seems fruitless, though. The floor of the pool has some imperfections where water has puddled in tiny amounts. She keeps looking. Keeps moving across the basin. She’s almost at the furthest point from the ladder when she sees a slightly bigger puddle, maybe a couple of inches across. It’s a long shot, but it looks like it’ll be enough to get a swab.
Lizzie glances up at the sky. The sun is sinking down below the horizon and the light has almost gone. At least the fading light means whoever was on the top of the hill won’t be able to watch her so easily, but if she’s going to finish this she needs to work faster. Opening her messenger bag, she removes the water swab kit she brought from home. They’d bought the kits online so they could periodically test the hot tub – Philip having heard how bad the things are for harbouring germs and bacteria. She can get a sample on the swab and test it once she’s home.
Crouching down, she removes the swab from the narrow plastic container and presses it against the puddled water. It soaks up most of the water, and when she’s got it damp enough, she pushes it back into the container and screws on the lid.
It’s something, slightly better than nothing. But even if the swab works, whether it will show her anything of use is doubtful. Chances are the amount of chemicals used to keep the water clean will skew the data and she might not be able to get an accurate read on the ratio of water to blood anyway. And that’s assuming she can find her old kit, and if she still has the testing equipment she needs.