Perfect Grave

by Rick Mofina

  How could that be?

  Maybe she’d forgotten?

  Maybe she’d been out here looking through Jack’s papers and had forgotten? She stood there thinking until she heard Brady’s voice, faint, from the house.

  “Hi, Mom, I’m home.”

  “I’m coming!” she called back.

  This was silly.

  She snapped the file drawer closed, then left, pulling the garage door closed behind her without seeing the stranger standing in the darkened corner next to the refrigerator.

  He was holding a large knife.

  And he was skilled at using it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was relentless.

  Something familiar gnawed at Chuck DePew, something he felt could break this case wide open.

  But what was it?

  At the Washington State Patrol’s Crime Lab in Seattle, DePew studied an enlarged photograph on his oversized computer monitor. He’d seen this before. But when? He thrust his hands into the pockets of his lab coat and ground his teeth; a lifelong habit signaling his Zen-like style of problem solving.

  The image looked like a TV weather map, a confusion of isobaric contours, troughs, and radiating temperature patterns.

  DePew then typed several commands. As the new data loaded, he took stock of his worktable with the evidence collected in and around the scene where Sister Anne Braxton was murdered.

  The key item was a cast of a partial shoe impression taken from the alley behind her apartment, near the blackberry bush where the killer had tossed the knife. The cast was collected by Kay Cataldo’s crew with the Seattle Police CSI unit. They’d done a nice job, producing a little work of art in dental stone that offered a three-dimensional copy of the partial.

  A right shoe impression was the first thing DePew thought when Kay first showed it to him earlier. “Any chance you could help us out here, Chuck?” Kay’s SPD unit was smaller than the WSP team and constantly overwhelmed. But then again, so was DePew.

  “There’s not much to go on here,” he said.

  “I’ll give you my Sonics tickets if you guys can do anything with this and the lift of the partials we took from her apartment.”

  “Are they good?”

  “The impressions?”

  “The tickets.”

  “Center court, fifteenth row.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” DePew winked.

  He was a senior forensic scientist and a certified court expert. After setting aside his own file, he set to work on Cataldo’s case. The nun’s murder had profile and everyone in the building knew the pressure that came with a high-profile case. DePew photographed the cast of the partial shoe impression, then he loaded clean, clear images into his computer.

  Next, he analyzed the information from the alley, comparing it with the cast—the soil, the depth, weather condition, the pressure and stress points of the partial impression.

  Now, where things got tricky was with the partial impressions Kay’s people took from the hardwood floor of the apartment. They’d found impressions in the blood that had pooled around her, but they were smeared, the quality virtually unusable. The curious thing was they were not indicative of a set of exit tracks. The killer likely removed his shoes until he was out of the building.

  Very smart.

  But he never thought about his entrance because beyond the blood, they got lucky. Invisible to the naked eye in the microscopic layer of dust on the hardwood floor, he left something. Something they could work with. Using an electrostatic lifter they got a couple of partials on the clear floor a few feet from Sister Anne’s body.

  A right shoe impression.

  DePew analyzed the sharpest one, along with the field notes, photographed it, loaded it into his computer. And here we are: DePew’s computer screen split and he set to work configuring the two photographs to the identical scale and attitude.

  Good, he thought.

  Then he transposed one image over the other and began looking for points of comparison the same way he would examine fingerprints because DePew knew that shoe impressions can be as unique as fingerprints. The shape of the outsole, its size, its design, the material used to manufacture it, the wear patterns, the weight and gait of the wearer, all serve to create a unique impression.

  And here, DePew thought as his computer beeped, we have a very consistent pattern of these right partials.

  One taken from the murder scene. One taken from the alley where the murder weapon was found. He enlarged the transposed image dramatically, until it felt like the impressions had swallowed him.

  The partials lacked any manufacturer’s logo, lettering, or numbering, but that was no problem. DePew focused on the wear and cut characteristics. The edges had channeling, with an array of lugs and polygons; there was a waffle pattern, but here was the clincher: this mark on the fifth ridge, indicating a stone, or foreign object was wedged into it with this nice little “x” cut.

  It is in both exhibits. DePew was getting ahead of himself but he would duly swear on the Holy Bible that this is the shoe of Sister Anne’s killer.

  Beautiful.

  Now, why was that sense of familiarity gnawing at him even more?

  By his calculations, DePew figured the shoe was a men’s size 11, a North American sports shoe. DePew moved quickly to check the reference books of brands and manufacturers’ designs and outsole producers, importers, and exporters who might know this impression.

  But he stopped cold.

  He had it.

  DePew went to his file cabinet, flipped through case files until he found one in particular, pulled out a computer disk. Inserted it. He clicked through attachments and notes from the earlier case until he found images of shoe impressions.

  He captured the outsole, configured it, then transposed it with the shoe impression from the nun’s homicide. DePew assessed the characteristics. There was no way this was the same shoe. The earlier case was a male size 9, taken from a burglary at a gas station near Tacoma. They’d cleared that one and the offender was back in prison.

  DePew was not concerned. In fact, he almost smiled.

  The style and brand were definitely similar. In fact, DePew had a photograph of the type of shoe.

  It was a sports shoe, a men’s tennis shoe.

  Standard state clothing that was issued only by the Washington Department of Corrections.

  Whoever killed Sister Anne had done time.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Home from school, Brady came through the door the usual way.

  A pack-drop to the hall floor and a beeline for the fridge.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Have a good day?”

  “Uhh-huh. No math homework. I thought we had chocolate milk.”

  “You finished it last night. How’re you feeling?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “Did you take your medicine at lunch?”

  “Yup, did the doctor tell you what I got, or anything?”

  Brady turned with the orange juice box he’d started at breakfast. “Today, I told Justin and Ryan about the MRI, how it was like going into a deep-sleep chamber in space. They thought it was cool.”

  Rhonda watched his attention go to the papers, then to the booklet as he read the title: Will I Go to Heaven? She watched him blink a few times, open it, and begin reading. Awareness rolled over him and Rhonda felt the light in their lives darken.

  Brady didn’t move.

  She watched his chest rise and fall as he continued reading, understanding.

  His eyes rose from the booklet to hers.

  “Mom?”

  “I know. We need to talk, sweetheart.”

  He set the booklet and the unfinished juice box on the counter.

  “Let’s go to your room.”

  Brady’s room was all hard-core boy: walls papered with posters of Superman, King Kong, Spider-Man, and the Mariners; shelves lined with adventure books, model Blackhawk choppers and Humvees. In one corner, his skate
board rose like a rocket from his clothes heap. On his small desk, the secondhand computer Rhonda had picked up at a church donation sale. It was the best she could do. The N key stuck but Brady never complained.

  Taking it all in, Rhonda succumbed to the reality that she might never see Brady’s life go beyond his world right here and now. That she might never see him with his first girlfriend, his first car, never see him graduate from high school, go to college, start a career, get married, never hold her first grandchild.

  “Don’t cry, Mom.”

  Rhonda sat him on his bed next to her.

  “Oh sweetheart. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m really sick with something and I could die, right?”

  She searched his eyes.

  “Brady.”

  “Mom, am I right?”

  She nodded.

  “How did you know?”

  “By the way you hugged me at the doctor’s office and stuff. I just knew it was serious.”

  She looked at him.

  “And before, at the hospital, by the way everyone was acting and being so nice to me, the nurses, the doctors, like being all extra nice and everything.”

  Her eyes were shiny as she nodded.

  “So is it cancer or leprosy or something?”

  “You have a mass of cells, a tumor in your head and you’re going to need an operation to remove it.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “No,” she shook her head, “but you have to have it.”

  “And if I don’t have it, I could die, right?”

  Rhonda’s chin crumpled, her tears flowed.

  “Yes.”

  “And if I have the operation, I won’t die, right?”

  “Yes, the chances are tons better that you’ll be fine with the operation.”

  “So when do I have it?”

  “In a couple of months.”

  Brady thought for a long moment.

  “How’d I get this tumor? Is it hered—hair—did, you know, was I born with it?”

  “They’re not sure.”

  “Could it be from the time Dad hit me for dropping the drill on his foot?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because the doctor kept asking me if I ever played sports, or got hit hard in the head. I never told him about Dad. I didn’t think it was right.”

  “I understand, honey.”

  “I don’t hate him or anything. Sometimes I miss him.”

  “Me, too.”

  “So how did I get it?”

  “No one knows for sure how people get them.”

  Brady looked at everything in his room, his secondhand computer, his old clothes, aware of how his mother struggled with money.

  “This operation will probably cost us a lot, huh?”

  Rhonda stared at the crumpled tissue in her hands.

  “Don’t worry about that. I’m going to get a second job. Nights likely, just to help us through a tight patch. So I’ll talk to Alice about having someone watch you.”

  “Mom, I’m old enough to watch myself.”

  “I’m not old enough to let you watch yourself.”

  Suddenly Rhonda felt the breath squeeze out of her as Brady locked his arms around her, holding her tighter than ever.

  “I don’t want to die, Mom. I don’t want to go away from you.”

  Rhonda fought to find her voice.

  “I’m not going to let that happen. I’m going to be right here with you. You’re going to be brave and have the operation and be as good as new and I’ll be beside you every step of the way, okay?”

  Brady didn’t answer. He buried his face under her chin.

  “Okay, sweetheart?”

  She felt him nod.

  “We’re in this together,” she said.

  She heard him sniffle before he pulled away, wiped his tears, then took her hand and held it tight. They sat that way for a long time, saying nothing, just sitting there, like the time they sat near the edge of the Grand Canyon.

  Eventually Brady pulled away from her.

  “Mom, there’s something I want to do and I want you to say it’s okay.”

  “What is it?”

  “I have to show you something. Wait here.”

  He ran down the hall to his bag and rummaged through it before returning with a hastily folded page ripped from the newspaper. He unfolded it and passed it to her.

  Slain Nun’s Memorial Will Be at Shelter

  After she’d finished reading the story under the headline in the Mirror, she looked at Brady.

  “I want to go to Sister Anne’s funeral at the shelter.”

  “Why?”

  “She came to our school once with these other nuns.”

  “I know, and they helped with the big auction for charity.”

  “Sister Anne had asked me to help her move some boxes and she started talking to me. I didn’t even know her, but she was asking me about Dad, and how we were doing. I guess a teacher told her that he had died and stuff. She seemed almost worried, like she knew me or something.”

  “Nuns can be nice like that.”

  “She was really nice and I liked her. She said she was going to pray for us.”

  “That was kind.”

  “I never told anybody this, but because she was so nice, and taking a picture, smiling, talking like she knew me and stuff, it kinda felt like she was my guardian angel.”

  “Oh, honey.”

  “So can we go? It’s going to be downtown at the shelter.”

  Rhonda reviewed the time and location of the memorial service for Sister Anne Braxton.

  “You really want to do this?”

  Brady nodded.

  “All right.”

  Brady took the newspaper from her and reread it.

  “Mom, why would anyone want to kill her?”

  “That’s a question only God can answer, sweetie.”

  “And one other person.”

  “Who?”

  “The person who killed her.”

  She pulled him close and looked out the window. Outside, a gentle wind lifted the branches of the elm trees, carrying a few dead leaves down the street, where they skipped over the sedan parked at the end of the block in the shade of a big-leaf maple tree.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Nothing was working.

  Jason was on his phone in the newsroom holding for a cop source. The tenth one he’d tried today. And here it was early in the evening, the clock ticking closer to the first-edition deadline and nothing.

  Absolutely zip for a fresh angle to advance the story of Sister Anne’s murder. Tapping his pen, he noticed that his hands were sweaty.

  Wait. He had an idea. A long shot but worth a try. He could—

  “You there, Wade?”

  “Yeah,” he squeezed the phone, “you hearing anything? Anything new?”

  “Just what I see in today’s Times and the P-I.”

  “Thanks.”

  He tossed his pen and cursed.

  He did not need to be reminded that his competition had killed him with reports about investigators building a suspect pool of violent ex-cons who’d had run-ins with the nun. Both papers played their stories big today on their front pages. And all day they mocked Jason like a victorious middle finger.

  What goes around, comes around.

  Yeah, well he’d beaten them earlier with his story about the knife from the shelter being used as the murder weapon.

  Jason’s boss didn’t care. Yesterday’s news was today’s fish wrap and Reep had been in his face to break another exclusive.

  “The Mirror has to own this story, Wade. Anything less is unacceptable.”

  Jason had tried everything. Right from the get-go. This morning his old man had gone to his own sources to try to coax the names of any new potential suspects from them. So far, every effort had dead-ended. And Jason’s calls to Grace Garner had not been returned.

  For a moment, Jason let his thoughts go to his dad’s revelation abou
t his past.

  What really happened to him?

  “Wade!”

  Reep stood at his office doorway beckoning him with a crooked finger, then rolled up his sleeves, as if preparing for a fight.

  “You’re still not on the sked. What have you got for me?”

  “An idea.”

  “And how do I get that into the paper?”

  “Listen, it’s going to take time—”

  “No, you listen. You’ve got jack. And sitting in here on your ass just doesn’t cut it. I want something for tomorrow’s paper. Something that will put us back out front. You’ve only got a couple of hours.”

  “I’ve got to try to find a guy who—”

  “You’re taking Cassie with you.”

  “Eldon, it’d be better if I go alone, it could be dangerous.”

  “Stop the horseshit. You’re forgetting that I assigned Cassie to this story with you. Do as you’re told.”

  Cassie was wearing a V-neck sweater, jacket, and form-fitting jeans that complemented her figure as they headed across the Mirror parking lot to his Falcon.

  She never smiled as she sipped from her Styro cup of cafeteria coffee.

  Before Jason started the car, she opened her notebook. The sound of her flipping pages filled the awkward silence. Jason stared at her for a moment.

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” he said. “I had no part of your screwup with Brian Pillar.”

  She looked away from him and out the window.

  “That’s not how I remember it.”

  “Then your credibility with me is dead.”

  “Why don’t you let me handle my credibility?”

  Jason looked at her.

  “I’m searching for a man who may have talked to the nun’s killer. This is my story, you’re just along for the ride.”

  “You’d better start the car.”

  Jason shook his head then slid “Radar Love” into his player and laid six feet of rubber pulling out of the lot. Like most reporters, he functioned with a nearpsychic connection to his deadline. He never wasted time. The clock was ticking on him.

  It always was.