Crap. She hated how good he was at this game.
Jo rubbed her forehead, trying to think her way out of this paper bag he’d put her in. “There has to be a motive, right? A reason she ended up with a slug in her head. What if she stopped to help somebody whose car was broken down on the side of the road?”
He frowned. “So we’re back to thinking it’s random?”
Jo wanted to bang her head on the table.
She was going in circles like a carnival wheel of fortune, or maybe wheel of misfortune in this case.
Round and round and round it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows.
It took about five minutes to get from Wendy’s to the south campus of Parkland Hospital, where the Institute of Forensic Sciences was located. Jo planned to drop off the evidence bags from the Dielmans’ house at the crime lab while her partner attended Jenny’s autopsy, scheduled for two o’clock.
She decided against being there herself, preferring to meet with Emma and see what forensics had turned up so far.
There was another reason why she was skipping the postmortem, though she would never admit it to anyone else. She couldn’t bear to gaze into the dead woman’s eyes again. She already felt like she was failing Jenny somehow. This case was giving her an itch beneath her skin that wouldn’t stop.
As Hank drove the Ford into the cavelike darkness of the hospital’s parking garage, she blinked at the fluorescent-tube lighting that illuminated rows of cars against the gray.
A shadow darted in their path, a slim figure slipping from behind an SUV, and Hank hit the brakes, sending Jo’s heart into overdrive. The woman wasn’t even looking at them, so absorbed was she in tugging a child along behind her.
Hank cursed under his breath and waved impatiently for them to pass.
Jo had braced her hands against the dash and held on, watching as the pair hurried toward a nearby stairwell. The child turned to stare back at them until his mother jerked his arm, and he slid his gaze from the car to his feet as she dragged him forward.
“Good thing I wasn’t playing Angry Birds on my phone,” Hank said sarcastically.
Jo willed her pulse to slow down.
“God watches over invalids and little children,” Mama had said to her when she was a child herself, and she’d known even then it was a lie.
I believe in the incomprehensibility of God.
The Balzac quote popped into her head again, and this time, she knew where it was from: one of the letters he’d penned to Madame Hanska, the second of his wives, perhaps his greatest love, who’d held his hand as he’d died. That was exactly how Jo felt. If there were a God, He was most certainly incomprehensible.
“Well, shit on a stick,” Hank grumbled, drawing her attention from her own thoughts. “All the good spots are taken.”
“It won’t kill you to walk.”
He muttered something unintelligible, and she pointed to an empty space ahead. It wasn’t as close to the stairwell as he would’ve liked, but too damn bad.
Bum knees and all, Hank still managed to exit the car before she did. He slapped the driver’s-side door closed while she was still working to unfasten her seat belt, hating how much her strained left shoulder restricted her motion.
While she extricated herself, Hank went around to the trunk. By the time she got out, he held the evidence bag with Dielman’s glove and the trash bag with the cat bed.
Jo clenched her teeth as she stretched aching ligaments, glad at least that he couldn’t walk fast enough to get much ahead of her. Between his worn-out joints and her battered ones, she figured they looked like a pretty pathetic pair as they slowly shuffled down the stairwell.
“You ready for this?” Jo asked.
He grunted. “I’m not gonna start getting queasy now.”
“Even after a double cheeseburger?”
“Been here too many times, Larsen,” he said. “Piece of cake.”
“Uh-huh.”
She wondered if the ME could give him a barf bag, just in case.
They picked up visitors’ badges, and Jo relieved him of the bags before they separated. Hank headed for the subterranean floor that housed the morgue, and she toward the Trace Evidence Analysis Lab, where she would meet Emma.
After a quick trip on the elevator, bypassing white-coated personnel who moved through the hallways like ants, Jo found Emma in the hallway outside her office.
The petite, gray-haired lab tech quickly whisked her into the room.
Adam had once told her that Emma had been earmarked on several occasions for an administrative position running the lab, and she’d turned down the offers flat. “She loves going out in the field,” he said. “She’d wilt behind a desk, working on budgets and filling out employee evaluations. She likes to get her hands dirty. That’s the fun of it for her.”
Jo understood one hundred percent.
She turned over the cat bed taken from the Dielmans’ trash along with Patrick’s leather glove. Then Emma flipped open a manila folder, exposing a sheaf of notes, computer printouts, and photographs clipped together between the covers. She thumbed through them, found what she wanted, settled her arms on the desk, and fixed her gaze on Jo.
“Let’s start with your victim’s car,” she said in her no-nonsense voice. “The Nissan 240SX found at the quarry.”
Jo set her small notebook on her thigh, her pen ready to scribble down the information. “Shoot.”
“Wish I could tell you differently, but there wasn’t much we could do with the fibers we pulled from the seats.” Emma frowned. “We’ve got a few synthetic fibers that don’t match anything Jennifer Dielman was wearing. But unless you’ve got a standard for comparison, it doesn’t mean much right now.”
A standard, Jo knew, meant a suspect, or suspects.
“Did you find gloves that matched the imprint on the steering wheel?”
“Nope,” Emma said, “we didn’t find gloves in the car or with the body.” She tapped the evidence bag Jo had delivered moments earlier. “Though I’ll give this a going-over today, see if it’s a match.” The crinkles around her eyes deepened. “We did find a few other things that should interest you.”
Jo sat up straighter.
Emma removed two photographs from the folder and passed them across the desk to her. “Look at the position of the driver’s seat. Jennifer Dielman was approximately five feet five inches tall, correct?”
“Yes.” That’s what was on her Texas DL.
“The driver’s seat was adjusted to accommodate someone with longer legs than that, perhaps a person at least five foot eight to six feet.”
Jo studied the photograph of the interior of the Nissan as Emma spoke, reading the numbers on a tape measure that ran from the pedals to the cushion. All too evident was that the driver’s seat had been moved back farther than the passenger’s seat beside it.
“So someone besides Jenny was driving?”
Emma nodded. “That’d be my guess. But the mirrors weren’t moved. Rearview and side were still angled for someone your victim’s height. So whoever took the wheel must not have had far to go, or at least wasn’t worried much about traffic.”
Jo realized what that meant. Someone else had driven Jenny’s car to the quarry, from a nearby location. A pit stop, like Hank had suggested during their “what if” session.
“There were no bloodstains in the trunk, no trace to suggest your victim was in there,” Emma continued. “The Nissan 240SX has a very small carrying capacity besides. You could transport a child in the trunk, no problem, but you’d be hard-pressed to fit an adult female, even one as petite as Mrs. Dielman, unless she was incapacitated and manipulated into the space.”
“Okay.”
So Jenny was likely killed at the quarry. If she had been killed elsewhere and moved, there’d be a trail of blood.
But that still didn’t answer the question of how their suspect had gotten away from the quarry, unless another vehicle was involved, one whose tracks had been obliter
ated by the rain.
The goddamned rain.
She handed the photographs back, making a few notes in her book. “What about the weapon?” she asked. “Any prints on the twenty-two?”
Emma paused a beat. “No, not a one. Though the water could have degraded the surface, I don’t think it was submerged long enough to polish it this clean. It was buffed shinier than the mayor’s Bruno Maglis.”
“You think it was wiped down deliberately before it hit the water?” That was pretty calculating.
“Inside and out.”
Jo could hardly sit still.
No prints on the gun, not even Jenny’s. Nothing.
“She didn’t kill herself,” she said.
Emma smiled dryly. “Be kind of tricky to pull that off without touching the weapon.”
An ugly realization took up residence in Jo’s mind: someone had deliberately left the gun for them to find, hoping they’d misread the evidence and believe the death to be suicide.
No stranger would do that.
But someone who knew Jenny would.
“Was there any skin tissue beneath her fingernails?” Jo asked. Had Jenny put up a struggle, or had she given up?
“Just the yellow dirt from the quarry.”
“No defense wounds?”
“None.”
Jo pinched her eyes shut.
Did you want to die, Jenny? Did you just let him take you and kill you without a fight?
“There’s something else that might be significant,” Emma remarked, and Jo forced her attention toward another photograph, this one of Jenny Dielman’s fleece pullover, or at least a small portion of it. “See there?” Emma’s pinkie fixed on a smudge on the sleeve.
“Is that blood?” Jo asked, though it was too dark, more an inky black than rust.
“It’s lubricant.”
“From the car?”
“No, like WD-40,” Emma said.
“Could she have brushed up against door hinges?”
“That’s a possibility.”
Jo figured the grease could have come from anywhere. Maybe the pullover had been worn another day without a washing in between, and the stain was old. Although she kind of doubted that was the case after seeing the spotless state of the Dielmans’ house.
“What about human hair? Any that weren’t Jenny’s?”
“I have to tell you, Detective, that was one extremely clean vehicle.” Emma clasped her hands, settling them in front of her, atop the papers and charts. “We didn’t find much, except the synthetic fabric fibers that I mentioned and a few strands of hair on the driver’s seat and the passenger’s side that matched the decedent. But there were a number of black animal hairs.”
Jo had a pretty good idea about those. “Were they feline?”
Emma gave her a long look. “They were.”
“Jenny has a black cat.”
Had a cat.
“That would explain it. She transferred what the animal shed from her clothing onto the cloth seats in her car.”
“Did you find a silver locket in the car anywhere?”
Emma scanned the papers in front of her, although Jo was sure the woman had each report memorized, stored in her brain neat as computer files. “No, no locket.”
Maybe Patrick Dielman had been wrong about Jenny always wearing it. She could have taken it off, packed it away, or buried it in the backyard. Hell, it could be in the pocket of her missing coat.
“Her watch did prove helpful,” Emma continued. “It’s stainless steel with a chronograph. No watches are entirely waterproof, and this one had a relatively low threshold for water resistance. So it leaked.”
She had Jo’s full attention.
“The watch died in the water,” the evidence tech said. “It was stuck on Monday’s date, and the hands stopped at eight forty-five, though that’s not necessarily time of death. It probably took a while for the case to fill and the movement to stop. The autopsy should confirm it, but Jennifer Dielman was dead in the quarry the night she disappeared. There’s no way she could’ve tossed a brick through her neighbor’s window.”
“Are you sure?”
“The car was driven out to the quarry before the rains came. Your vic wasn’t going anywhere.”
Jo could hardly breathe.
There was no suicide.
Jenny was killed on Monday night.
The .22 had no prints.
It wasn’t so much that she felt in the right; but she felt justified, sure that Jenny’s death hadn’t been by her own hand. There was something more to this case, a reason for everything that they didn’t understand, not yet. But they would.
“I still need to look at that blue scarf, so I’ll get back to you on that soon.” Emma paused before sifting through the file to grab a page. “I did get the vic’s phone running, but there wasn’t much there.” She handed the paper to Jo. “She mostly used it to call Des Moines, Iowa, a number listed as Kimberly Parker, as well as a local veterinary clinic, and”—Emma arched her brows—“a recent call to a pay phone at Presbyterian Hospital.”
“A pay phone?” Jo stared at the number on the sheet. It seemed familiar. Was it the one Jenny Dielman had jotted down with a question mark in her appointment book?
“Any texts or e-mails?”
“No. It’s like the vic hardly used it.”
“I can’t thank you enough,” Jo said, heart skidding so fast behind her ribs that she felt a little light-headed. “What about the final reports?”
“It might take a while to get them transcribed. We’re a little backed up these days.”
Jo shoved her notebook and pen inside her coat pocket and started to rise, but Emma gestured with a small hand.
“Sit, sit. I’m not done with you yet. I’ve got one more thing to share.”
There’s more? Jo arched her brows but did as asked.
“It’s interesting what you don’t notice until you take your time,” Emma started. “Once the vehicle’s impounded and we have better lighting and a more controlled environment, it’s amazing what turns up.”
Jo tried not to fidget.
“We recovered a piece of paper, crumpled up pretty thoroughly and wedged beneath the driver’s seat. It was stained with coffee, which is probably why it ended up trashed.” Emma withdrew a sealed plastic bag from the opened folder. She extended it to Jo, who took it with trembling fingers. “Still, I think you’ll find it very interesting.”
Oh, God.
Her mouth went dry.
It couldn’t be.
The paper was thoroughly rumpled and most of it a dingy, tea color. The ink was blurred but legible, the edge ragged, as if hastily torn from a notebook so the damp wouldn’t soak through the other pages.
“We got a print off a corner, and it matches your vic,” Emma went on, but Jo barely heard her. “Figured you’d want to take a look, and we’re done with it here. So there you are.”
“Oh, God,” she breathed, fingers shaking as she ran them over the words encased in the plastic, making certain it was real.
It was a page from Jenny’s missing journal.
It’s happened again.
I can smell it in the house. That stale scent that isn’t Pat’s or mine.
Has someone been here while I was at the library? Do they know my schedule and break in while I’m gone?
But how? The doors were locked. I checked. Yet there were crumbles of mud just inside the back door, like they’d been tracked in on shoes. The floor was clean when I left for work. Pat doesn’t like messes. And I know he wouldn’t have worn muddy shoes inside. He’s phobic about germs.
This time, I didn’t call him. I didn’t get so hysterical I had to take a pill and lie down. What I did was carefully look around, making notes of what seemed off. First, the dirt, then my bureau drawers, not quite closed, the things I folded so carefully mussed like someone had riffled through them. Someone searching for something? What did they want?
I was sitting at the kitchen ta
ble when Pat got home. I was calm as could be. When I told him I was sure this time someone had been here, he sighed. “It’s easy to forget little things,” he told me, like I was imagining things or maybe responsible for them.
“Can we change the locks?” I asked, because it made me nervous to think anyone could get in and walk around while we weren’t home.
Patrick sat down beside me and took my hand. “It’s the anniversary coming up, Jen. I’m sure it’s got you in knots again. No one’s wandering through the house just to mess up your underwear. Everything’s fine. You’re just stressed out.”
Did my blue scarf disappear because I was stressed out? It was gone from my dresser drawer. Patrick had given it to me for my birthday last month. It was the prettiest color, bright blue like a peacock.
I told Patrick the scarf was missing. I thought he’d believe me, that he’d suggest we call the police right away and report an intruder. Instead, he said I’d probably misplaced it, and it would likely turn up soon.
But I hadn’t misplaced it. I’d been so careful with it. Lisa had made a point to tell me how much it cost.
“I’m not making this up,” I said for all the good it did.
Unless Patrick didn’t want to call the police because he knew who’d come into our house.
Or even worse, had let her in.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jo knocked on the door to Adam’s office. When no one answered, she tried the knob. It turned easily. She let herself in and paused, sighing as she looked around.
The room was in its usual state of chaos, with books filling every available nook and cranny. There weren’t enough shelves to hold them all, so Adam had stacked them on the floor between the simple furnishings.
Holding the bag with the page from Jenny’s journal against her hip, she went over to his desk, noting the number of files piled in the in-box. There were so many papers, mail, and photographs scattered about, she wondered how he ever knew where anything was. He’d told her he had his own filing system and never had a problem finding what he needed.
Jo resisted the urge to straighten up.
She did a quick scan of the desk for Finn Harrison’s file, wondering if he’d had a chance to pull it for her yet. Then she gave up the futile task. Only a psychic could locate it amid the clutter.
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