“Last night, after the game, after everyone has gone, you checked this door?”
“I did.”
“Rattled the chain, checked the lock?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Nope. I looked. I mean it’s pretty obvious if that big old lock is undone, doncha think?”
“I would think so.”
“Besides, the chain wasn’t hangin’ down like that. It was snugged up proper.”
“Mr. Lavin, I hope you’re impressed with how important this is,” Estelle said gently. “Someone either stayed behind in this building after everyone else had left—someone besides Coach Scott—or someone entered, perhaps through this door. Maybe they were invited. Maybe not. But if it’s at all related to the homicide, we have to know with complete certainty.”
He squared his shoulders a little, adding an inch to his five-foot-seven. “Look, Sheriff, I know when I got to cover my ass and when I don’t.” He pointed with authority, stabbing the air, indicting the door and its sagging chain and lock. “That door was locked secure Wednesday night. I know it was, ’cause I opened it first thing on Thursday morning. I locked it Thursday night after the game, after everybody left. Period. End of story.”
“Who has keys other than you?”
“There’s a set on the keyboard in the principal’s office. Central office, for sure. Coach Harvey’s got one, bein’ head coach for football and track.” He paused. “And Coach Scott has one.”
“Would he have any reason to unlock this at the end of the day…once you’d made sure it was secure?”
“Can’t think of one.” He shot a sidelong glance at Estelle. “You’re sayin’ that he let someone in?”
“I’m not suggesting anything, Mr. Lavin.” She pulled the small phone off her belt and touched the autodial for Tom Mears. “Lieutenant, I’m on the landing by the back door. Have you finished the print survey out here?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When you checked back here, was the door open at that time? What was the position of the chain and lock?”
“It was hanging loose, Estelle. I photographed the whole deal, tried for some prints, especially off the push bar, but there were so many people around, the prints aren’t going to mean anything. I have one or two from the brass lock, just partials. Unless there’s something else you found,” Mears replied.
“The back door. It was apparently unlocked sometime after the game.”
“We processed inside and out.”
“What a mess. With the game, there’s going to be herds of people in and out. We’re not going to be able to separate anything out.”
“Well, it’s worth a try,” Mears said. “By the way, you know that photo of the tagger art that’s circulating from this morning? From the NightZone railcar?”
“I have a copy.”
“Right. They got almost the same thing on the back wall of the school. Go out that back door and you’ll see it on the wall. They didn’t finish, but got a good start on it. It’s high enough up that they would have had to have used a ladder.”
Estelle fell silent, digesting that. “I haven’t been out there yet. I’ll look now. You took photos of the graffiti?”
“Yep. I mentioned it to the sheriff, but he wasn’t too excited about it. Did you have a chance to read Bishop’s report on that MVA last night? The one with the Garcia kid?”
“I saw that.”
“A ladder he had stowed in the truck bed went through the back window when he smacked into the utility pole. Bishop found two spray paint cans rolling around in the truck bed, and a backpack with several more in the cab. I told Bishop to follow up on it and talk with the kid whenever he can. He’s in sad shape, though.”
“Bishop should do that sooner rather than later,” Estelle said.
“You got it. I told the sheriff about the back door being open.”
“An easy invite.”
“Yup. By the way, I left the area to meet with Coach Avila and her husband down here at the office. You’ll want to talk with her. And there’s a video you need to see.”
“Of the game?”
“A little more than that, considering the circumstances.”
“I’ll be just a few minutes more. Thanks, LT.”
She beckoned Lavin. “The lieutenant says that you have problems with graffiti.” Using her elbow, she pushed the left side of the double doors open. The shade was cool behind the building. She held the door for the custodian. “Stop here on the concrete, sir.”
“Now and again we get the taggers, but we clean it up right away.” Lavin saw the partial art panel, spread across the difficult surface of the brick. “Well, shit.” He stepped back and regarded the work, his face beet red. The spray painted rendition was complex, even though obviously unfinished, a genuinely artistic mix of rich colors, predominantly yellow, green, and black, with high lights of blue, red, and purple. The tagger had managed to finish only one corner, with a few outlining strokes promising much more.
“This is something new, then?”
“Yeah, it’s new. I check out here all the time. Kids like to smoke out here, you know. Makes a goddamn mess. It wasn’t here earlier in the week, I know that. Most of the time, they like to hit the back walls of the two portables that face the parking lot. Smoother and easier to paint, I guess. ”
“How about last night?”
“Couldn’t tell you. I didn’t step out here last night.”
“This looks like it would take a small fortune in spray paint by the time it’s finished,” she said. By reaching upward, she could touch the bottom border of the rhomboid design. The paint was fresh, but dry. She broke the skin of a tiny rivulet of over-run, and the color was still tacky. An easy match, she thought. Sergeant Howard Bishop was a methodical man, and he would have collected the paint cans from the wrecked truck from the night before.
“Gettin’ this off the brick is going to be a son of a bitch.” Lavin’s head wobbled from side to side. “They think that’s all we got to do, is clean up after ’em.”
“This is a good spot to choose,” Estelle said, more to herself than Lavin. “Odds are good they wouldn’t be seen working at night, but it’s up high enough that people driving by would see it come daylight. They didn’t have a chance to finish. A long way to go, in fact.”
“I ain’t no art connoisseur.” Lavin punctuated the word with considerable venom.
Estelle palmed her phone again, this time reaching Bob Torrez.
“Yep.”
“Bobby, if you have a minute, can you come out back?”
“Yep. I’m lockin’ this place down, anyway. EMTs took the body, but the SPs won’t be able to come for a while. I think we got it covered. Interesting tracks, but ain’t much else to go on.” The sheriff didn’t elaborate, but Estelle knew that he would, at the appropriate time.
As she waited for him, she moved away from the wall, all the way back to the chain-link fence. The sun on the fence was so warm she could smell the hot steel. Lavin remained on the concrete step in the shade of the school, watching the undersheriff’s every move.
When she happened to glance his way, he shook his head. “I ain’t sayin’ to ignore it,” he said, “but it seems like you got bigger problems inside. A good man dead, I wouldn’t think you’d care much about some penny ante vandalism. That’s more our problem than yours.”
“I agree,” Estelle replied. “Except for the timing.” She rubbed her hands together. “Everything points to the tagger—or taggers—being here last night. You have loud gunshots inside, in the quiet of the night. Somebody outside might have heard something, even with the shots muffled by the building. This paint isn’t cured, which means the tagger was here recently. Maybe last night after the game.” She studied Lavin for a moment, and he looked away. “And didn’t finish. Something interrupted his work.”
“Hadn’t thought that way.” He looked up at the graffiti with fresh interest. “You gotta wonder. They carryin’ their own ladder around now?”
>
“That may be exactly what they’re doing.”
“Well, that’s up there a ways.” He snorted. “Next thing you know, they’ll be drivin’ around in a bucket truck like the power company so they can reach the high spots. What a goddamn…” Lavin chopped off the curse as the sheriff appeared in the doorway, opening the door with his elbow against the upper corner of one of the glass panes.
“Huh.” Torrez regarded the graffiti. “Mears told me about this. Sometime since when?”
“The paint is still tacky in some of the thick runs,” Estelle said. “With the dry, hot weather, it had to have been recently. I’m thinking maybe even last night. They wouldn’t work during the daytime. I’m curious about why they didn’t finish.”
Torrez watched Estelle as she took several photos, including a series of the two deep scuff marks where the ladder’s legs had dug into the gravel.
“After the game, maybe. They’d run the risk of being seen any earlier. Sometime during the night. And there’s a possibility that they saw or heard something. Maybe heard what was going on inside.”
Torrez looked dubious. “One thing we ain’t got time to do is chase taggers all over town.” He let his breath out in an exasperated hiss.
“You saw Bishop’s report on the MVA last night?”
“The Garcia kid? Yeah.” She saw the flash of connection cross his handsome face. “Well, shit.”
“Bishop will check the contents of the truck. But so far, we have a ladder, and we have spray paint cans. And the timing fits.”
Torrez glowered at the wall, eyes narrowed. “That little rat.” He turned and nodded at Estelle. “Did you talk to Waddell in the past few minutes?”
“No. Did everything go all right with the train ride this morning?”
“I guess. I ain’t heard otherwise. But he’s got one of these up top.” Torrez nodded at the graffiti. “Right on the face of the big dish.”
Estelle stared at the sheriff in astonishment, and he shrugged. “That’s what he says. I was thinkin’ of takin’ a run out that way after a bit. I don’t really give a shit about what some tagger’s been up to, but the drive will give me some time to think.”
“It’s not like that dish is just sitting out in the middle of the prairie unguarded, Bobby. That’s serious trespass. They cleared the chain-link and all?”
“Yep. That ain’t a big deal for some little squirrel.”
Estelle stood still for a moment, gazing at the graffiti. “Maybe they’ll be back here tonight to finish,” she mused.
“Not with all the cops around,” Torrez grunted. “And not if it was the Garcia kid. He’s beat up pretty bad. If he’s the tagger here, he ain’t going to paint anything for a long time.” He turned his back on Lavin and lowered his voice even more. “We’re gonna do another sweep in the shower when things dry out, but what we got now is the one slug that hit the wall, and a few chips of tile that cracked off. Nothin’ else until Perrone is finished with the autopsy. Nothin’.”
He stretched up to his full height. “Remember, like you ain’t got enough to do, we got us a mom that’s gone missing on top of everything else. Where are you headed now?”
Estelle hooked her hand through Torrez’ elbow and walked him to the corner of the building, out of Lavin’s earshot. “When I’m finished with Lavin, I need to talk with Coach Avila. And LT says that I need to look at the game video. I don’t know what he’s found.”
“Some bad guy sittin’ in the bleachers, givin’ Scott the evil eye?”
“Who knows, Bobby. I’ll tell you one thing…we don’t need Coach Scott’s last moments going viral on the Internet.”
“Who shot the video? Don’t one of the kids usually run the game camera?”
“There you go. My point, exactly. The contents of that camera chip could already be spread around the world via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, you name it. Maybe we’ll be lucky and catch it before that happens. That means talking to the camera kid to make sure he hasn’t burned a copy.”
Torrez shook his head slowly, frowning at Estelle. “Tell him that if you see anything from the game tape showin’ up on the Internet, we’re going to put his sorry ass in jail.” He glanced back toward the doorway. “I keep bein’ reminded that Frank Dayan is outside. You want to talk to him on your way?”
“I’ll make it a point.” Estelle was surprised that the sheriff had given any thought at all to the editor’s presence. “And I’ll make sure that I touch bases with Leona as well. I’m surprised she’s not standing at the front door right now, pounding on the glass.”
“She does that, and her sorry ass will end up in jail,” he harrumphed, but he softened it with the faintest of grins. “Maybe she’s learned a few things over the years.”
“Maybe.” But surely, Estelle thought, County Manager Leona Spears would not be denied basic information that she could feed to the hungry press. “Give me a few minutes with Lavin to finish up.”
Torrez held out a hand to stop her as she started to turn. “We looked hard down in the locker room. Lavin ain’t cleaned the locker room yet, like he usually does right after a game. He was fixin’ to do it today. We got footprints on the tiles, all over the place, most likely from the girls.”
The sheriff locked his fingers through the chain-link fence and rocked it gently in frustration. “The killer didn’t step in the water that was runnin’ when he fired that last shot, and then he didn’t track it over the dry tile floor in the locker room. We ain’t going to get that lucky. We looked everywhere that the overflow wouldn’t have flushed away. Scott didn’t step out of the shower to greet his visitor, or to grab a towel and cover up. I’m thinkin’ that whoever shot him just did it before Scott had any chance at all. He might have been able to take a couple of steps—about from the shower to the center floor drain—before the first shot was fired. And that was it.”
“It looks that way.”
“What I’m sayin’ is that there didn’t look to be no conversation goin’ on before the shots. No threats, no negotiations, no nothin’.”
“And that’s unusual. Shooters usually have to work up the courage to pull the trigger.”
“Yep.” He glanced over at Lavin. “I got some things I got to do, so when you’re finished, lock up with a sheriff’s seal. Ain’t no doubt that we’re going to be spending more time back in here. Perrone said he’d push the autopsy as fast as he could. Tox is going to take forever, but I’m thinkin’ that’s not going to tell us much. Not this time. We might get some help from the State Police, but it ain’t going to be before tomorrow.”
Chapter Fifteen
The custodian had his back to them, gazing out into space, studiously avoiding the appearance of eavesdropping. As Estelle approached, he glanced at his watch. She opened the outer door for him and beckoned.
“You want everything locked up now?” he asked.
“Do what you usually do.” She watched as he made a great show of snugging the interior chain tight, snapping the hefty lock in place.
“Ain’t nobody comin’ in now,” he said. “You folks going to need a key?”
“If we don’t already have one, we’ll borrow one from Dr. Archer.” She steered him gently toward the stairs. “Tell me what you did today, when you found the body. What time was that?”
“Look, you don’t need to tell Dr. Archer this. I took the morning off. Well, that ain’t true. I decided I was gonna take the day off. But then I come in right around lunchtime, maybe. The front door. I was feelin’ a little guilty that I hadn’t cleaned the showers and locker room, see. Each time they’re used, we disinfect ’em. Squeegee down the tiles, spray the floor. It don’t take long, and I was going to do that so they wouldn’t sit dirty over the weekend, both sides. Boys’ and girls’.”
They walked down the stairs and stopped in front of the locker room doors. “These doors were locked when you came in today?”
“Yes. But unless you shoot the pin to lock ’em open, they always lock by themsel
ves. Never had trouble with ’em.”
“Then…”
He pulled the right-hand door open, away from the rubber stop on the floor. “I went in, and right away, I could hear the shower running.” He held out a hand as if leading the way to the locker room, but remained rooted in place. “I walk in, and I see water’s overflowing out onto the main locker room floor, the river headed right to the floor drain, and I think, What the hell? And I go to see, stayin’ clear of the water overflow, and there’s coach lyin’ in the middle of the shower room floor, naked as a jaybird, right over the drain, water just like Niagara Falls comin’ out over the threshold. It looks like he’s floatin’ in the Red Sea or something. And it don’t take no rocket scientist to see that he’s got to be dead. I mean, dead.”
“Did you enter the shower room?”
“Not me. Not this kid. I know better’n that. I mean, I knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do for him.”
“But the shower was still full on?”
He nodded vigorously. “But I’m not about to go sloppin’ through four inches of water to turn it off. I know better. So I just go into the boiler room and shut things down.”
“Just the one showerhead?”
“Well, sure. Just the one. Hell of a lot of water, though. Them are those old-fashioned institutional showerheads with a hell of a flow. Damn near knock you down.”
“And you didn’t step into the shower room, maybe walk around the body? To turn off the water.”
“Nope.” He nodded vehemently. “I already told you I didn’t. I know better than that, see. Just turn it off in the boiler room.”
“When you left on Thursday night, when you last spoke with Coach Scott, would you have been able to hear the showers if they had been running?”
“’Course. They weren’t. And I could tell from his voice that he was just workin’ in the office. I could hear him talkin’ on the phone.”
“Show me where you turn the showers off.”
“Right in through here.” Across the locker room foyer, across from the coaches’ offices, Lavin opened a plain, gray steel door with a No Admittance sign. The hardware all looked decades old but spotless, and he bent down near the far wall. He touched a large bright-blue valve. “This right here? All it does is control cold water to the showers and the bathrooms. That’s why it’s painted blue. On, off. That’s all. Just cold.”
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