This was a woman who had been drugged, and choked, and had fought.

I will not describe what it did to me to see those marks.

There are no words I am willing to spend on it, and my daughter would not want them spent.

But I will say this about the makeup, because it is the detail that tells you everything about the kind of man Damon was.

Someone had sat with her body, patiently, with brushes and pigments and a professional’s steady hand, and painted over the evidence of her murder so that the people who loved her would file past and see nothing but a peaceful, sleeping face.

That is not the panic of a killer covering his tracks.