Stephanie Ramos

From there, they had a view of most of the house.

The living room was on their left.

The stairs to the second floor were straight ahead, and the dining room was to the right, with a view of the kitchen toward the back of the house.

In the foyer, blood was smeared around the floor, as if someone had tried to wipe it up.

It was also spattered on the walls.

A small welcome mat, stained with blood, lay in a heap in the living room.

A table that usually stood in the entranceway had been knocked over.

It looked bad, like the aftermath of something violent.

Brett didn't want to move.

He didn't want to find Leslie, he said, in some kind of compromised position.

So he stayed in the foyer while Sandy walked up to the second floor, calling for his wife.

Brett looked into the dining room and saw something peculiar, a pool of water on the floor.

He bent down to take a closer look.

the prayer's elderly black lab, Boomer.

Sandy went down the basement steps to check things out, but soon came back up.

Still no sign of Leslie.

Brett started pointing out the blood smears to Sandy.

Blood on the floor, blood on the walls, blood on the stairs.

Sandy had noticed them, but he kept insisting that there had been an accident, perhaps on the stairs, and that Leslie had been hurt.

To Brett, it felt like Sandy hadn't grasped the seriousness of the situation.