How many roses to cover an abyss #9: Clothes (Three)

 

(By Maria Letizia Cerica)

Prince did not own a mobile phone. He communicated exclusively by landline, and for written messages he used email only. He would have had no reasonable reason to take the elevator that night. And without shoes — where could he have gone? He did not use his landline to call for help.

Was he perhaps found on the floor, unconscious and half-naked in the Green Room, by someone the following morning?

By someone who hastily dressed him, not yet knowing that there was nothing more to be done?

Prince had a concentration of fentanyl in his blood ten times the maximum level administered to a terminal patient.

The day before, he had undergone blood tests: the results had come back positive for opiates, but days after his death the tests were repeated, and in his blood that Wednesday afternoon there was no fentanyl.

The fentanyl entered his bloodstream through the pills he took during the night.

On Thursday, April 21, in one corner of the Green Room rug, police detected a large stain, and according to several testimonies — in particular that of Omarr, Prince’s brother, who had heard it from someone and later reported it to the police — other stains had been cleaned up that morning near the staircase.

One of the investigators found an extensive pool of liquid in the elevator, corresponding to a rivulet running vertically down the wall near the button panel.

When he was found, Prince was seated, slightly leaning to the left. He was then pulled out by the paramedics and laid on the floor. The rug beneath his legs had not been placed there intentionally — it was inside the elevator and had perhaps rolled up under his legs during the process of moving him.

So was Prince somehow dressed and hurriedly placed inside the elevator, in the belief that an immediate emergency response would once again be enough to resolve the situation?

Or did he make his way into the elevator on his own, with part of his clothes on inside out and without shoes, because the effects of the fentanyl had clouded his mind and he was moving randomly, no longer fully aware of what he was doing?

These remain questions without an answer.