Exposed
Page 4
She and Kelsey weren’t the only ones in early. Through a wall of glass, Maddie saw Brooke and one of the trace evidence examiners already at work. The lab seemed to attract people who didn’t mind putting in extra hours. There was a connection between the people here, a shared sense of purpose, even though their specialties were all over the map. The Delphi Center covered practically all areas of forensic science—from DNA to dung beetles—and the list was growing.
Roland Delgado glanced up as Maddie entered the room. “Hey, babe.”
“Hey.”
As part of the Trace Unit, Roland specialized in any evidence that was difficult to see with the naked eye. He had Isabella Simmons’s front door up on sawhorses and was examining it through tinted goggles. With his gray coveralls and black combat boots, he looked like an airplane mechanic.
“What do you think of our door?” Maddie asked.
He shoved the goggles up on his forehead and sauntered over. “I think you’re going to love me,” he said, making a grab for her muffin.
“Hey! That’s my breakfast.”
“Thanks for sharing.” He popped a chunk into his mouth. “And you brought coffee, too.” He grinned at her, and she hesitated only a moment before handing over her cup. He took a swig and gave it back. “You owe me. I’ve been here since six working miracles on this thing.”
“It’s true. You’re going to be impressed,” Brooke said, looking up from a worktable. She had pages of black film spread out in front of her, and Maddie guessed she was preparing to do an electrostatic lift of something, probably their shoe print.
“Okay.” Maddie shrugged out of her jacket and tossed it onto a nearby chair. “I’m ready to be impressed. Show me what you got.”
Roland gave her a sly smile, which she pretended not to notice. He flirted with everyone. He was good at it, too, and had managed to “date” many of the single, and probably some of the nonsingle, women at the lab. But Maddie never took him seriously. Besides being five years younger—a definite strike against him—he was also a coworker. Maddie’s professional world was small, and she’d made a firm decision years ago to keep her private life private.
She pictured Brian Beckman walking up her driveway, all broad shoulders and cocky attitude. He was sharp, motivated, and brimming with that natural brand of confidence she couldn’t help but admire. And admire it she would. From afar. She knew better than to let herself get involved with a strapping young FBI agent who made house calls in the middle of the night.
“First off, good job on those photos,” Roland said now. “That’s going to be important. Too often, people rush things, and it comes back to bite us in the ass.” He returned to the door and pointed at the shoe print left in reddish brown dust on the out-facing side of Isabella’s door. “This case goes to trial, the door’s going to be key.”
“Did you find any fingerprints?” Maddie asked hopefully.
Brooke scoffed. “That’s the problem. We found tons—on the door, the coffee table, the million or so fast-food cups in the kitchen. The whole place is covered with prints that don’t belong to the victim.”
“The neighbor woman told Craig she had a busy social life,” Maddie said. “Lot of cars coming and going. Landlord confirms that. He lives down the road, said he’s had noise complaints on and off since she rented the house.”
“So fingerprints, even if we get a hit in the database, may not help us that much in terms of establishing who killed her,” Brooke said. “But look what Roland found.”
Roland directed Maddie to the table beside him, where he had a microscope set up. She peered into it and saw what looked under magnification like light blue rope.
“Carpet fiber?”
“Close. It’s from the rug in the victim’s bathroom.”
Maddie remembered photographing the pale blue bath mat. She’d also photographed the sink, the tub, the toilet, and the medicine cabinet, which someone had rummaged through. Prescription drugs were a popular target for burglars.
“Now look at this.”
Roland handed her a magnifying glass and directed her attention back to the door, where at the side of the dusty shoe print, she saw a wisp of lint, barely larger than an eyelash.
“It’s a match?” She looked up at him, feeling that surge of adrenaline that accompanied a good find.
“You bet.”
“Which puts the ‘burglar’ inside the house before he ever kicked in the door.”
“Which means the scene was staged, like we thought,” Maddie said.
“Here’s the scenario I’m thinking,” Brooke said, tucking a lock of dark hair into her ponytail. Like Maddie, she wore it up all the time so it wouldn’t get in her way. “Some guy, maybe an ex-boyfriend, comes over as she’s getting ready to go out.”
“According to the texts on her phone, she had plans with friends last night,” Maddie said. Craig had discovered the victim’s phone amid the mess in the kitchen.
“Right, so here comes Romeo. He’s got anger-management issues, which we can guess from Isabella’s old bruises. He gets into an argument with her, starts pushing her around, bloodies her nose, and ends up killing her there in the bedroom. Then he freaks because his prints are everywhere—he’s been there so many times he wouldn’t even know where to start wiping the place down. He decides to stage the scene so it looks like the work of some random stranger, goes out to his car, grabs a crowbar—”
“We know it’s a crowbar?” Maddie looked at Roland.
“We need to confirm with our tool marks guy,” he said, “but that’s my take after looking at the gouges. He jimmies the door and gives it a good kick, leaving splinters everywhere, then grabs some of her valuables and takes off.”
Maddie looked at the almost invisible fiber stuck to the door. “Are we sure we didn’t pick that up somewhere? Maybe on the way here, in the van?”
“Nope. You got it on film, back at the house.” Roland squeezed her shoulder. “Nice work. This chump’s lawyer’s gonna have some ’splaining to do.”
“If we ID the chump. And if we get him to trial.” Maddie was a pessimist. She’d seen too many slam-dunk cases get botched over a technicality.
“Craig will get him,” Brooke said. “He spent his entire night interviewing Isabella’s coworkers from the bar where she works. One of those women is bound to know if she’d been seeing someone, especially if he was pushing her around. Maybe he’s been stalking her or hanging around outside her workplace.”
Maddie’s phone chimed. She checked the screen and muttered a curse.
“Problem?”
She looked at Brooke. “It’s the bride-to-be from yesterday. She wants to know where her engagement pictures are.”
“Did you tell her they’re gone, along with the fifteen-hundred-dollar Nikon you just bought?”
“Not yet. She’s probably going to want me to comp the portrait sitting.”
“After you got mugged? What a bitch.”
“Which means I’m going to have to go back to that damn park for the third time this week—” Maddie froze. She looked down at her phone as the call went to voice mail. “Oh, my God.”
Maybe he’s been stalking her or hanging around outside her workplace.
“What?” Brooke asked.
“I just thought of something.”
Brooke arched her eyebrows.
“Not this case. The other.” Maddie grabbed her jacket and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Sorry, gotta run. I might have a lead.”
Brian had just taken a booth at the Smokehouse when Sam walked through the door.
With Maddie at his side.
She wore jeans and boots again, along with a loose white sweater that draped over her breasts. She had a purple scarf around her neck, and her cheeks were pink—from cold or excitement, Brian couldn’t tell.
Sam spotted him, and they made a beeline for Brian’s table.
“Look who I found,” Sam said, scootin
g into the booth. Maddie slid in beside Sam and unwound her scarf.
“Hi.” She smiled across the table, and Brian’s heart gave a kick.
“Hi. You went by our office?”
“Yeah, and it’s a lot harder to get a visitor’s pass than I expected. They wouldn’t even let me past the guardhouse.”
“Next time, call ahead,” Sam said. “We’ll get you right in.” He looked at Brian. “She’s got something on Mladovic.”
Brian watched with interest as she unzipped her bag and pulled out a laptop computer. “I got a call from my client this morning, and it made me think of something.”
“Who, the bride?” Brian asked.
“That’s right.” She powered up the computer and keyed in a password. “You know, I had another photo session earlier this week at the park. Right in front of the bank, where Jolene Murphy works. And I got to thinking—”
“Can I get y’all some drinks?”
They all turned as a smiling waitress stepped up to their table.
“You ordered yet?” Sam asked.
“Just did.”
Sam asked for his usual brisket sandwich, and Maddie distractedly ordered a salad. When the waitress left, Maddie shifted the screen to face the booth.
“Check it out. Ninety-two images of CenTex Bank, exactly forty-eight hours before Jolene Murphy disappeared.”
Brian leaned forward on his elbows to scan the row of photographs.
“Look at this.” She clicked on one of the images, and a family of four filled the screen. All of them wore jeans and matching plaid shirts. The backdrop of the photo was a grassy corner of the park, and Brian recognized the building behind it.
“Can you zoom in on the bank?” he asked.
She was a step ahead of him, already cropping and enlarging an image of the bank’s front door.
“Hey, that’s her,” Sam said, leaning forward.
“That’s what I thought, too, based on the picture you showed me.” She looked at Brian.
“What time was this taken?”
A few more clicks, and she pulled up a file.
“According to the metadata . . . looks like this image was taken Monday at five thirty-four P.M.”
“Jolene usually gets off at five-thirty,” Sam said. “She was supposed to meet us at Starbucks right after work yesterday.”
“Go back to the camera roll,” Brian said. “You have any more shots of the bank?”
“Not the bank,” Maddie said, “but the area around it. Let me find it . . . wait . . . sorry, that’s blurry . . .” She kept scrolling, racing through dozens and dozens of photos. He caught one of some grass, a shoe, a whole series that were completely black. “Damn, where’d it go?” she muttered.
“Don’t you ever erase anything?” Brian asked.
“Never.” She glanced up at him. “Force of habit. I never delete a picture.”
“Even if it’s junk?”
“I don’t delete anything,” she said. “That creates a gap in the photo record. Not that it usually matters with portraits, but for forensic work, it can be important. If some defense attorney sees a gap in the record, it can blow a case wide open. Which means even if I leave the lens cap on or take a picture of my feet, the photo stays. The jury understands a bad picture. What they don’t like is missing evidence.”
“Wait, back up,” Sam said. “I saw something.”
“You’re right, that’s it.” She clicked on an image. “This is the one I wanted to show you. See the street corner here? Look at that car.”
Brian squinted at the family portrait. In the background, over the head of the grinning kid, was the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the park. And beyond that was a gray sedan. Inside it were two passengers, visible from behind, and one of them was holding something up to his face.
Brian looked at her. “Any way to zero in on that?”
“I already did,” she said. “This is exactly what I wanted to show you guys, but I wanted you to see it in context first.” She clicked out of the camera roll and opened up a new file. “Check this out. I enhanced this with software. Look.”
The new image was much sharper. It clearly showed a gray sedan with two people seated in front. The car was parked on the street perpendicular to the bank entrance, facing the door where Jolene would emerge when she left her job as a teller. One of the men was holding binoculars.
“They cased the scene,” Sam said.
“Looks like it to me. I think it’s the same car from yesterday, the one that tried to run me down.” Maddie glanced at Brian, and he could see the pride glinting in her eyes. This was useful evidence, and she knew it.
Sam looked at her. “You have any more shots like this? Maybe something that shows a license plate?”
“I do, but the light’s bad, and it’s completely in shadow. But look at this.” She opened yet another file, which showed a cropped and digitally enhanced image. In this picture, the car’s side mirror reflected the passenger’s face. “Part of his face is obscured by the brim of his hat, but still. At least, it’s something. I mean, we can tell he’s Caucasian, right?”
Brian exchanged looks with Sam. They’d already known their suspects’ ethnicity. Mladovic was Serbian, and so were his hired guns. What they needed was a name, an address, a location.
“Any chance you got a vehicle tag somewhere?” Brian asked. “Maybe when they were pulling away?”
The waitress appeared with a tray of food and frowned down at the table. “Uh—”
“Sorry.” Maddie slid the computer aside to make room for two big platters, plus her salad.
“Yeah, or maybe when they were parking,” Sam said, digging into his sandwich.
“Believe me, I looked. I’ve been in the photo lab all morning poring over these.”
“We should try the bank.” Brian looked at Sam. “They’ve got security cams on every corner of the building.”
“We already went through all that. No footage of her abduction, just her leaving work and heading for the parking lot.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t see the film for Monday. Maybe this gray car—what is it, a Buick? Maybe this Buick passed by, and we can get something.”
“Not a bad idea,” Maddie said, and he detected surprise in her voice, as if she’d thought he was too much of a rookie to come up with a lead.
“It’s a good thought,” Sam echoed. “And you know what? I think I’ll get this to go. I’ll head back, see what I can get on the surveillance tapes.” He flagged the waitress and asked for a to-go box, then looked at Maddie. “You mind making us a copy of those pictures?”
She scooted out of the booth and fished a brown envelope from her purse. “I burned you a disc.”
“Maddie, you’re a gem.”
“Well. I just hope it’s useful.”
Brian looked at her, then at Sam. “You need me to come?”
“Nah, you two finish your lunch.”
After Sam took off, she slid back into the booth, looking slightly flushed. She shut down her computer and zipped it into the bag.
“It’s a good lead,” Brian said. He went to work on his barbecued ribs as she picked at her salad.
“I hope it helps.” Her brow furrowed. “I can’t stop thinking about Jolene Murphy. What do you think the chances are of finding her?”
Brian watched her carefully. She meant finding her alive, and he put those chances at slim. “We’ll find her,” he said firmly, but Maddie looked unconvinced. “How’s that tripod coming?”
“It’s coming.” She poked at lettuce, avoiding his gaze.
“Think we’ll hear something today?”
She scoffed. “Get real.”
“I thought you had an in.”
“I do.” She eyed his plate and looked up at him. “She’s fast, but it’s still going to take a few days. Which is better than Quantico, I’m guessing.” She paused to watch him as he licked barbecue sauce off his thumbs. “What’s your typical lead time on DNA evidence?”
“I am.”
He gave her a baleful look, and she picked up the rib.
“Typically, a few weeks, maybe a month,” he told her, which was stretching it. That was if they had a comparison sample provided by a suspect. Blind DNA tests were much lower-priority and could take months.
“Well, we can do better than that. My friend Mia will probably get us something in the next few days.”
“It still might not be fast enough,” he said, watching her. She nibbled the rib clean, and he added another one to her plate. “Anyway, knowing who took her doesn’t solve our problems, because we still need to figure out where she is.”
Brian tried to read her expression as she stirred her iced tea. He wondered if she knew what had most likely happened to Jolene Murphy by now.
“Maddie.”
She glanced up at him. He held her gaze, and he saw it. She knew. She wasn’t kidding herself about the victim.
“We’ll track them down one way or another,” he said. “This is a major case involving half a dozen agencies.”
“An alphabet soup,” she said, and there was that cynicism again. He was sure of it now—she didn’t like cops, for some reason.
“We’ll track them down. You can count on it.”
She looked at him, and he felt that pull again, the one he’d felt when he first met her. He’d felt it again at her house last night, and now she was sitting right across from him, tempting him in that soft white sweater and watching him with those bottomless brown eyes.
He should ask her out. He asked women out all the time, and most of them said yes. But she had her guard up, and he knew she’d find some reason to turn him down. His gaze dropped to her mouth. There was barbecue sauce on the corner of it, and she caught him staring.
“What?” She dabbed her lip with a napkin.
He should ask anyway. Otherwise, he was an idiot, and he deserved what he got, which was guaranteed to be nothing. But he kept quiet.
“So, who is this guy, anyway?” She pushed her plate aside. “The one you’re investigating?”