"Since Angelo's car was impounded, forensics has gone over every inch of it," Robertson said and Charlie leant forward with keen interest. "They found traces of blood on the steering wheel and gearstick with a partial bloody fingerprint enough to match to Angelo. The lab is running a DNA comparison to the blood found at the scene, but I think it's safe to assume that it comes from Miss Scott. Now, that alone isn't enough, as Angelo has already stated that Miss Scott was hurt at the scene and could easily claim the blood came from helping her back to the car."
"Shit," muttered Charlie, forced to agree with Robertson. Angelo could afford the best lawyers money could buy, so they would need strong evidence against him if they were going to get a conviction against him.
"What he may have trouble explaining though, is the lack of blood anywhere else in the car."
He really had Charlie's attention now. "Forensics found semen on the front and back seats, some quite recent," which made Charlie grimace. "Yet aside from the traces found on the steering wheel and gearstick, there was no other blood found in the car, which is surprising, considering how much head wounds tend to bleed, so you'd expect to have found some trace of blood on one of the seats, but there was nothing," Robertson said. "And what is most interesting, is the boot. It was spotless and appears to have been freshly bleached."
The colour drained from Charlie's face as the implications set in.
"There was nothing to suggest a clean up in the front of the car, hence the presence of semen and while there could be countless reasons for only having the car boot cleaned and freshly bleached, under the current circumstances, I think the three of us know the most likely scenario," Robertson said to them.
"I can't believe this," Charlie said with a shake of her head. "It was bad enough Martha being hurt, but now this, I just." She stopped, momentarily at a loss for words. There was still a chance Bianca was alive somewhere, but any belief in that seemed incredibly slim and was slipping further away with each new discovery. Hogan and Avery had spoken to all of Bianca's neighbours, none had seen her since before the accident, add in the rather interesting doctor's report and now this and it certainly didn't look good for Bianca. If she was dead though, then how did Bianca die? They knew from Angelo that Bianca had been hurt at the scene, but was she dead or alive when he then put her in the boot? "We only have Angelo's word that Bianca being hurt was an accident," she finally put voice to her thoughts. "But what if she didn't slip, but was pushed backward or worse, he hit her with the rock?"
"The blood pattern at the scene supports a fall onto the rock, so we can rule out Angelo picking it up and hitting her with it, but Angelo pushing her is certainly a possibility."
"We just have no way of proving it," Graves added from Robertson's side and not for the first time since they had arrived, Charlie found herself forgetting that Robertson didn't work alone, but with the way Graves was often so silent during meetings, she tended to forget she was there and so her sudden interjections into a conversation came as a surprise. "We also don't have any actual proof that Miss Scott was ever in the boot of Angelo's car, nor do we have any conclusive evidence that she is dead, even though we suspect that is the case," Graves said. "We still have to prove it though."
"Angelo can't get away with this," Charlie stated empathically.
"I admit, as things stand right now, we don't have a lot," Robertson said. "But there have been instances where people have been charged with murder without a body having been found."
"Plus there are a lot of loose threads that have been left behind for us to still follow up on," Graves said. "We still have to track down Dr Dick Head's whereabouts and when we do, we should be able to prove he probably never even saw Miss Scott and faked that medical report, which points to Angelo lying about dropping her off at the clinic."
"And after speaking to Frinchetti, we're fairly certain he had nothing to do with the cleanup of the car boot and that it happened before he even saw the car, which suggests that."
"Angelo had to have had help," concluded Charlie. "He couldn't have arranged the payoff to the doctor at the clinic and cleaned up and disposed of the body," she hated talking about Bianca as 'the body', but to think clearly, she needed to distance herself, "By himself and then gotten back here so quickly."
"Exactly," Robertson said. "The doctor received a payment the day after the accident and I suspect it was only then, that he wrote his report and backdated it to the day of the accident, by which time, Angelo had already been back in the Bay for a day. We'll check Angelo's phone records to be sure, but I find it highly unlikely he arranged all of this by phone, so someone had to have approached the doctor in person while Angelo was here."
"Any idea who that might be?" asked Charlie.
"If we can trace the payment to the doctor to see where it came from, that might help us identify Angelo's accomplice, but for the moment, we're going to start with those closest to him, like his family and then work from there," answered Graves.
"His father used to be a cop," Charlie reminded them.
"As was his father before him," Robertson replied. "There's been a long line of Rosetta's in the Force and I have little doubt that they've garnered some staunch supporters along the way, which means we're going to have to tread carefully when we start sniffing around," he told her. "By all accounts though, Rosetta Snr had more integrity in his little finger than his son has in his entire body, whereas Mummy Rosetta is known to eat babies for breakfast, so I'm thinking she's going to be the best place to start."
"It's going to be hard to get anywhere without Bianca's body though," Charlie thought aloud. "I mean, Angelo could just keep claiming she ran away out of guilt and is now in hiding."
"Look, all we can do is gather as much evidence as we can that contradicts what he's said so far and if we can show a trail of deliberate lies and attempts by him to mislead us into believing Miss Scott was responsible for the accident, then even the most fair minded juror will have a bit of a problem believing his elaborate attempt to cover it all up were the actions of an innocent man."
"If it gets that far," murmured Charlie. She hated the thought he might get away with what he'd done, but she had to consider the real possibility that he just may very well walk away from this without punishment and she dreaded the reactions of others if that happened. "So, what happens now?"
"Now, we put out a missing persons report on Bianca Scott, see if that rattles Angelo or anyone else who may be mixed up with this. Forensics also found prints besides Angelo's on the driver's side of the car, so we need Miss Scott's to see if she was ever on that side of the car and if not, then at least we can cast doubt on his assertion that Miss Scott was driving at the time of the accident," Robertson said. "And even though Angelo has placed Miss Scott at the scene, we still need a DNA comparison to officially confirm that it was her blood at the scene."
"I'll get a brush or toothbrush of Bianca's from April." Charlie rubbed her forehead. "Oh god, we're going to have to let April in on what we suspect has happened to her sister," said Charlie. "She's already worried about her and this is going to hit her hard."
"Unfortunately, that's unavoidable. Has Joey ever driven Angelo's car?"
"Yes."
"Then we'll need her prints so we can discount them from the others." Robertson looked at her with some compassion. "Charlie, I know you have a personal stake in this, both with your closeness to Martha and your previous relationship with Miss Scott, but as weak as our case may look at the moment, I've seen convictions from less, so stay positive," he said to her.
"I just want it over with, so that we can get justice for Bianca and concentrate on helping Martha to recover," she said tiredly.
"Martha may actually be able to help us when she wakes up," he said. "It's possible she may have seen something."
"God I hope so," murmured Charlie.
Watson yawned and turned away from the window. She was so tired but she couldn't seem to sleep whenever she tried to, her mind too busy worrying and going through worse case scenarios. Martha meant everything to her and she needed her in her life to keep her sane. "Please wake up," she begged. "I love you so much."
"I love you too."
The quiet murmur had Watson rushing to her girlfriend's side and she was overcome with emotion when Martha gazed back at her. "Oh thank god you're awake," Watson said through happy tears and she rained light kisses over her girlfriend's face.
"What happened?" Martha asked. "Why am I here?"
"You don't remember?"
Martha shook her head.