by Lisa Black
The generic quality of the print made comparing or searching it very difficult. It could even be part of a palm, but she didn’t think so. The lack of any smudges or other patterns around it made it seem like a single finger. At least Maggie could establish that it did not belong to Joanna Moorehouse.
She had run it through the AFIS system already, and the system had dutifully offered up its ten most closely matching patterns. Its first choice, the left index finger of a young man named Damon Martini, matched perfectly, except for a scar that should have snaked over one side of the bloody print. The system’s logarithms placed Bruce Duffy next. His ridges also matched perfectly except that a feathering at the end of one bloody ridge could have been a bifurcation while the corresponding ridge in his right middle finger did not divide there.
Even if she found a match she believed to be correct, based on years and years of looking at fingerprints every day, she still might not feel comfortable swearing to it in a court of law. The information in the print was too generic. But that was okay—if she could at least identify someone, tell the officers “I think it’s this guy but I can’t swear to it,” it would give them a place to start. If nothing else about that person fit the crime, then they would be cleared. But it was worth a try—same as if a witness had seen a white Ford pickup leaving the scene so the detectives went out and questioned all owners of white Ford pickups. It didn’t mean that a white Ford pickup owner had committed the crime, or that the witness even saw a Ford and not a Chevy, but if during an interview they discover that one white Ford pickup owner lived nearby and had had a bitter argument with the victim the previous day, well, more questions would therefore be warranted.
But, however limited, the print had been the only clue left by the killer, and she would work it until her eyes fell out.
Her phone rang, startling her.
Chapter 11
Tyra Simmons’s home couldn’t have been more different from Joanna Moorehouse’s. A small bungalow on the near east side that she had obviously renovated and decorated with care, it nearly burst with furniture and accoutrements and mementos of people Tyra Simmons loved. She had an expensive leather sofa but with a well-worn crocheted afghan scrunched in one corner. Her closet held designer clothes but also comfy T-shirts and a box of Barbie dolls and other childhood toys. Her bookshelves contained more than her law school textbooks—plenty of novels and a myriad of framed photographs, candid shots of the friends and family in Tyra’s life. The two women did, however, share a fondness for takeout.
She had even kept an old-fashioned address book, as well as entries for “Mom” and “Dad” in her cell phone. It made notifying the next of kin much easier.
Her body, however, formed nearly a mirror image to Joanna’s. Lying on her back with her clothing and then her torso splayed open, the knife having carved up deep sections of skin and organ, her face turned toward the ceiling with the utter hopelessness that came from feeling one’s life slip away. But Tyra hadn’t given it up easily. Her arms flopped open at her sides and bore numerous cuts and gashes. One finger had been nearly severed. But still her attacker came, slashing and stabbing until she went down and stayed down.
Maggie usually spent very little time feeling sorry for the victim. With only one chance to get everything at the crime scene done right she usually had too many other things to think of, things that would benefit the dead much more than her sympathy. But when she had met Tyra the day before, the vibrant, intelligent, concerned, alive Tyra, it became impossible to look at what had become of her without an almost crippling sense of sorrow.
So she took a deep breath and tried to push all those feelings to the side. It didn’t quite work.
As with Joanna, the actual conflict had taken place in a relatively small area, in the opening between the front foyer and a formal dining room. From the lack of blood elsewhere in the house and the lack of items disturbed, Tyra had not run through the house to get away. She had not been restrained—no chafing on the wrists or ankles—and showed no signs of beating, though any bruises might not have had much of a chance to form without blood flowing. Half of her throat had been cut to the bone and blood loss would have quickly stopped the heart. The dining room floor had a thick carpet in a deep red color, so it likely did not do the damage to the back of Tyra’s head as the marble had done to Joanna’s. Though perhaps that explained why Tyra had more time to fight back before consciousness faded.
“Who found her?” Maggie asked.
“Another chick from the office,” Riley said. He nudged the front door closed with his toe; no one wanted to touch it until Maggie could process for prints, but he also wanted to keep the air-conditioning in and the neighbors’ prying eyes out. “Tyra’s car has been in the shop—foreign job, so it takes a while to get parts. This other gal has been giving her a ride every day. Arrives this morning, knocks, no answer, calls Tyra’s phone, no answer, peeks through the window next to the front door and loses her breakfast.”
“She lives alone?” The deep gash in the victim’s throat would have kept her from screaming. Strands of her long waves lay scattered on the pile, probably caught by the knife at the same time.
“Nobody but one of those little froo-froo dogs.” Riley looked around, as if the animal might choose that moment to gnaw on his ankle. “Which has made itself scarce.”
“He did it again,” Maggie muttered.
“What?”
“Walked away from this bloodbath without leaving a trail.” The color of the carpeting did not make it easy to see blood, but still, with a flashlight and close inspection she should be able to see something. There were plenty of impressions from heavy feet between the body and the front door, but those would be from EMTs, cops, and herself as well as the killer.
Jack spoke. “He wouldn’t necessarily have a lot of blood on the bottoms of his shoes. They’d be pointed away from the activity while he was straddling her.”
Maggie agreed that the carpet made the situation different from Joanna’s house. It would have brushed off the soles of the killer’s shoes as soon as he stood, unlike marble tile, with no absorbency. There were a few small smears around the body, which could be the edges of his shoes or, more likely, his hands as he wiped them or simply pushed himself up. He might have been shaky after the ferocious attack.
But not shaky enough to leave blood on the doorknobs as he exited the property. Maggie had already checked the three ground-floor doors.
“Shoes aside, this guy has to be covered in blood. He walks outside and gets into his car? Not worried that neighbors or joggers might notice a man walking around stained in red?”
“Late at night,” Riley guessed. “No one out of doors.”
“It wasn’t that late.” Tyra had changed into comfy clothes: yoga pants and a worn T-shirt, athletic bra, and cotton panties. Yellow ankle socks seemed to sum her up, Maggie thought—young, bright, alive. “Not quite pj’s, though I doubt this is what she’d wear for a date. I’m guessing quiet weeknight at home. So why did she let the guy in? Or did she not lock her door after returning home and he just walked in?” There were no signs of forced entry. Tyra had a home alarm system but it used only motion sensors; she wouldn’t have it on while home.
Jack said, “Maybe one of these two women forgot to lock their doors. But both?”
“They knew him,” Riley agreed. “Maybe he wore a Tyvek suit. That’s why there’s no blood. He stands up, takes it off, he can tuck it under his arm and stroll out of the house all spankin’ clean.”
Maggie argued, “And she lets a guy wearing a Tyvek suit into her house? Or stands here and watches him put it on?”
“She doesn’t let him in. He gets in somehow, surprises her.”
Maggie stood next to the body, her gaze roaming the room as if she could picture these different scenarios playing out. “But gets close enough to stab her without her running away, bumping into things, snatching up an object to use as a weapon. Maybe she started to run and he struck her
in the back—we’ll know more when we can turn her over—but Joanna didn’t have any injuries there.”
“She knew him,” Jack echoed.
Riley had a thought. “Maybe it’s the alarm company guy.”
“Different systems.”
Silence descended again as they puzzled this out, broken only by the electronically produced shutter sound of Maggie’s camera as she documented the scene. The garish light of the flash illuminated every inch of Tyra Simmons’s broken body. Riley, in particular, didn’t seem able to tear his gaze from the corpse. Finally, he said, “Do you think my girls would object if I told them they could never live alone?”
“Probably,” Jack said.
Maggie frowned at him, then said to Riley, “As long as they don’t work for Sterling Financial, I’m sure they’ll be fine.”
This did nothing to reassure the concerned dad. “At least not without a security system, infrared cameras … a gun taped to the bottom of a table in every room … and a Rottweiler.”
Jack said, “Natalie’s only thirteen. I think she’ll be living with her mother for a while yet.”
“Don’t know. She wants to start dating.” He made it sound as if the little girl had decided to join a cult in Timbuktu.
Maggie cast about for something to distract him from envisioning one of his own daughters slaughtered on her own floor, and something he had said came back to Maggie. Having become more acquainted with the victim’s circle than usual, she asked, “Which other woman at the office found the body?”
Riley fumbled for his notebook, then decided not to bother. “Hasn’t been there that long, but says she’s the regulator, whatever that means. Good-looking girl. She’s out in my car.”
Maggie stopped taking photographs. “Anna Hernandez?”
“Uh—yeah, that was it. Why?”
Maggie explained that they had spoken the day before. “I’m going to see how she’s doing.”
She finished her photos of the living room, then set the camera down on an end table. She left the detectives to continue their canvas of the house and went out the front door. Pieces of cobalt sky peeked out between clouds that lowered the temperature but also fostered the humidity. Birds sang along with the low hum of traffic on nearby Chester. Everywhere else in the city, it was a nice day. Not so much for Tyra Simmons.
She went to Riley’s battered Crown Vic and opened the back door, where Anna Hernandez had been staring straight ahead. She turned to Maggie with relief, clasping her hands as if they had been friends for twenty years. Oddly, it felt as if they had.
“This is terrible. Who is doing this? And why Tyra? I mean, I’m sure Joanna had lots of enemies, but Tyra was such a sweet girl.”
Maggie realized she shouldn’t discuss the case or anything about it, though that probably wouldn’t be possible. “I just wanted to see how you were doing. I’m sorry you have to wait. If you want to go home—”
“I don’t mind, honestly. Anything I can do to help. I mean I barely knew Tyra—never met her before this assignment. But we got to talking about her car and I drive right by here on my way in so … ”
“I know it must have been a shock.”
“Shock doesn’t begin to cover it. Is that what Joanna looked like? Is that how she was killed?”
Maggie said nothing, but of course her silence created confirmation.
“Who is doing this? Why? Who declared war on Sterling Financial, and even if they did, why Tyra? Why not Lauren? She’s next after Joanna. Tyra was just in-house counsel and I don’t think they ever listened to her anyway.”
Maggie should stick to neutral topics. Pat her hand and get her a drink of water. But she couldn’t help asking, “What makes you say that?”
Anna’s racing thoughts had already leapt forward, so she had to stop and retrace. “Because Tyra said so. I think that was how she introduced herself to me—I’m in-house counsel, not that Joanna ever listens to me anyhow. A joke, you know. Self-deprecating sense of humor. But then on our morning commute she’d be bubbly and ready to go, and then on the way home I could barely get a word out of her. She seemed frustrated. And worried.”
“About what?”
“No idea. And honestly, she could have been like that all her life, for all I know. We’ve only been commuting partners for four or five days. She did seem high strung on a general basis.”
“Did she—” Not your job, Maggie, not your job. “Please tell the detectives anything you know about Tyra, if she had worries or concerns, especially about people in her life. In the meantime, can I get you anything, a drink of water?”
“No, thanks. I think I’d throw up anything I swallowed. Oh—I called the office and told them. I was in such a daze, I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t know any of Tyra’s family or anything so I didn’t know who else to tell.”
“It’s okay. We understand.”
“And I told them how she … looked. I hope that’s all right.”
“Of course,” Maggie said. Not ideal, but you can’t control everything. Officers always preferred to hold back some details from public consumption, but that had gotten increasingly more difficult in the modern age. Amazing, Maggie thought as she retraced her steps to the house, how cell phones had changed nearly everything about their lives. And deaths.
Then she put aside such philosophical reflections to process the rest of the crime scene.
*
As it turned out, their efforts didn’t yield much. Nothing else in Tyra’s house appeared to have been disturbed other than her body. Her laptop sat charging on the kitchen counter next to a curdled bowl of corn flakes and her purse, with its wallet intact. Her phone had been plugged in on the end table next to her bed, still neatly made. Jewelry, real and costume, filled the wooden box on her dresser, and a fairly current video game console sat tucked under the large flat-screen in the living room. Robbery had not been the motive.
At least not the garden-variety kind. Tyra’s briefcase yawned open on the kitchen table with papers fanned out beside it—impossible to tell if Tyra had been working while munching on her corn flakes, or if the killer had been looking for something and then possibly took it with him. Maggie photographed and then studied the pages, but they might as well have been written in Greek—mostly numbers, listed with acronyms that meant nothing to her. Next to those entries there were columns labeled “R factor,” “10 y proj,” and finally something she could read: “rating.” The ratings ranged from A to AAA.
“Must be a list of Sterling’s financial products,” she said to Jack, who stood reading over her shoulder.
Another page had been ripped from a legal pad and covered in handwriting—Tyra’s, Maggie assumed. In looping letters she had repeated the first two columns of letters and numbers but then written in her own R factors and ratings. She had not graded the products as highly—CCs and Cs.
The next page had been printed by a computer. The heading read “Carter & Poe,” but then the rest of it devolved into the same hieroglyphics as the first two.
“I have no idea what this means,” Maggie confessed. “This could be completely normal take-home work for her.”
“Maybe not.” Jack summarized Ned Swift’s allegations about Joanna’s cozy relationship with the ratings agent from Carter & Poe. “Maybe Tyra had her suspicions, and made her own calculations about what rating Sterling’s products actually merit.”
“Could she even do that? She was a lawyer, not an accountant.”
“An investment bank lawyer. She’d have to know at least the fundamentals.”
Maggie nodded. “And if she got suspicious, started crunching some numbers herself, then whoever killed Joanna to keep this a secret might have come after Tyra.”
“And went all Ginsu on them to keep from paying a slap-on-the-wrist penalty to the government?” Riley interjected, coming up behind them. “Stripped these girls naked and cut their guts out in the name of corporate espionage?”
Maggie remembered something else An
na had told her. “Financial firms like Sterling pay year-end bonuses based on that year’s profits. These can figure into the millions.”
Jack said, “So if a bad report comes out and their products are devalued, the bonuses this year could be short a few yachts or private islands along the equator.”
Riley said, “People have had their guts cut out for a lot less. Hyper little Tyra was a straight shooter and might spill the beans once she cottoned on. But if Joanna was paying off the ratings agency to overvalue her stuff, she’s not going to tell anybody, so why kill Joanna?”
“More year-end bonus to go around?” Jack said.
“She had an attack of conscience?” Maggie suggested. “If she fessed up it would kill the deal with DJ Bryan and Sterling would stay small-time?” But she knew that didn’t sound right. Every description of Joanna didn’t seem to include a conscience.
“Or Tyra was in it with Joanna,” Jack said. “That’s why she’d been nervous, worried that DJ Bryan’s due diligence process would find it. With discovery imminent, a coconspirator needed to cut ties.”
“Or Mr. Pierce Bowman of New York discovered their little subterfuge and went into a rage that they dared to screw with the venerable firm of DJ Bryan. I could see that guy slicing a woman open and then going out to play nine holes.” Riley glanced toward the dining room, where most of Tyra’s body could be seen from the kitchen table. “I don’t know. It still seems like …”
“Overkill,” Maggie finished.
“In every way.”
“We need to talk to Joanna’s favorite Carter & Poe rater,” Jack said.
“Absolutely,” his partner agreed.
*
But first they had to finish up at the scene of Tyra Simmons’s murder. Jack freed Anna Hernandez from the back of their police car. Maggie and the IT guy examined Tyra’s electronics. Her phone didn’t have a passcode, and neither did her laptop, and with guidance from IT they had checked her e-mails, voice mails, and texts. No threats, no warnings, no pleas. She had sent her last text at eight-forty the previous evening, to her mother, to remind her of an aunt’s upcoming birthday. She had missed calls from people in her contacts list at nine and nine-fifteen.
