Bitter Past

by Caroline Fardig

  Baxter said to Sterling, “And the only hard evidence we have on Cooper is his print on the lighter from the Marais scene.”

  “Yeah, and I don’t think that’s enough. When we get back the DNA results for the cigar, it should help a little. At least it’ll be another piece of evidence.”

  “What’s up with the cigar and the lighter?” I asked.

  Sterling turned to face me, scowling. “Oh yeah, I forgot you were in here. It’s none of your business since you’re not on that case.”

  “Come on. If you guys are so convinced that the two murders are related, and I’m working on one of them, I need to be kept in the loop about the other one. Keeping me in the dark isn’t going to help either investigation,” I pointed out. Baxter had spoken openly with me about some aspects of the case, but he had yet to share everything with me.

  Baxter sighed. “I agree. You need to know, so here it is. The bulk of the physical evidence we have is what we found at the spot where the killer was standing when he shot Vasti Marais at Carnival Cove. We recovered two spent cartridge casings that were fired from the murder weapon, a rifle we confiscated from Mayor Cooper’s house. Next to the casings we also found an expensive lighter with Dudley Cooper’s fingerprints all over it and the butt of a cigar.”

  Sterling said, “As much as I’d like to nail that preppy professor’s ass to the wall, it seems a little staged to me that his fingerprints would be all over a lighter carelessly left at the scene but not on the murder weapon or the ammunition.”

  “I thought the same thing, but sometimes people do get careless in the heat of the moment,” said Baxter. “Cooper is up to his eyeballs in motive. But even if the DNA on the cigar is Cooper’s, it only proves he was at Carnival Cove at some point, not necessarily at the time of the murder. Since he owns Carnival Cove, his lawyers are going to say it’s not damning that some of his personal effects were found there. We collected several of those blue glass rocks and some pea gravel from the grass where the shooter was standing but didn’t think much of it until the same materials showed up at the other murder scene. We were hoping to be able to tie the two murders together so that the DNA under Vanover’s fingernails would be the incontrovertible proof we needed.”

  I said, “We have the shoeprints on the pizza box and on the chair the killer kicked out from under Vanover when he was hanged.” I asked Amanda, “Did you guys find any shoe impressions at the Marais scene?”

  Amanda shook her head. “The grass was too thick and tall in that area. You could tell it had been trampled down, but there were no impressions.”

  “Are we sure there was nothing on Eli Vanover’s murder weapon, the jump rope? No fingerprints or epithelials besides the victim’s?” I asked.

  Shrugging, Amanda said, “Beck processed it. He said he found nothing.”

  Sterling put his hands on his hips. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that little prick screwed it up. Where the hell is Becky, anyway?”

  “Smoke break,” Amanda and I said at the same time.

  Taking out his phone, Sterling made a call. “We need you in the lab, now.” He listened for a moment and then barked, “I don’t give a shit if you’re on break, Becky. If you’re not in here in sixty seconds, I’ll come and drag your sorry ass in here myself.”

  An awkward silence filled the air until Baxter said, “We haven’t been able to get any kind of confession out of Cooper for either murder. At this point, it’s a waiting game to get the DNA results back from the blood and skin cells under Vanover’s fingernails.”

  “It’s ridiculous that it takes so long to get results back,” complained Sterling. He nodded to me, “Hey, Matthews, why don’t you go over to the state lab and offer the DNA nerds a special favor to speed up the process? It would be a better use of your time and talent.”

  As my response, I flipped Sterling the bird. Baxter didn’t seem too impressed with Sterling’s antics, which made me wonder how tight their partnership really was. Baxter probably got stuck with him by being the only detective nice enough to put up with Sterling’s bullshit on a daily basis.

  Beck came back into the lab, his face red and pouty.

  Sterling began, “Becky—”

  “Don’t call me Becky,” Beck said through gritted teeth.

  “Shut up,” replied Sterling. “We want to know about the murder weapon in the Eli Vanover case. Are you sure you didn’t miss something?”

  A frown darkening his face, Beck went over to his desk and retrieved a file. He pulled out several photos and handed them to Sterling. “I found partial fingerprints belonging to the victim and to Tristan Sellers. However, most of those prints had been smudged, which would be consistent with the assumption that the last person to touch the jump rope was wearing gloves. That means no prints and no epithelials. Happy now?”

  “Not really, because I’ve got nothing to work with!” Sterling hurled the photos at the nearest wall, succeeding only in scattering them across the floor. “We’ve got about thirty-six hours left before we have to either charge Dudley Cooper or turn him loose. You guys are useless. I’m going to question our suspect again.” He stomped out the door.

  Baxter rolled his eyes. “I need to go play good cop.” He put his hands together, pleading on his way out the door, “Get me some evidence, please, before Sterling kills someone.”

  While an indignant Beck picked up his photos, I noticed Amanda stifling a laugh. She cleared her throat. “You heard the man. What’s next?”

  I said, “I have clothing from the area of the struggle, a fingernail, hairs, and crap from the vacuum filter left to process. I thought I might go take a look at the hairs and the stuff from the filter under the new microscope in my lab at school. Plus I need to do my finished sketch of the crime scene, and I like my CAD program better than the one here. Would you two want to process the clothes and the fingernail?”

  “Did you forget again that I’m in charge of this lab?” Beck snapped. “You don’t get to hand out assignments.”

  Weary of arguing, I said, “It doesn’t matter who’s in charge; it matters that we get our jobs done. I’m taking the hairs and the filter trace, and for all I care, you can shove the rest of it up your ass.” I grabbed my purse and hurried to evidence storage before he could shoot back an insult.

  After I signed out the trace from the filter, the hairs collected at the crime scene, the sample hairs Tristan Sellers gave when he was questioned, and those Dr. Berg had collected from Eli Vanover during the autopsy, I headed for the sanctuary of my lab at Ashmore. There, I wouldn’t have to deal with Beck or Sterling, or anyone for that matter. I was in charge of the school lab, and I could kick out anyone I wanted.

  It was late afternoon, and most classes were over for the day. That meant it was quiet in the science building, which was another plus for me. I decided to make the best use of my time by sorting the hairs recovered at the scene by length and color, hoping to make quick work of finding hairs that didn’t belong to the inhabitants of the apartment. Tristan and Eli both had short, dark hair, so if I found any long blond or red hairs, for example, I would separate those out and give them special attention. Granted, everyone has color and length variations in their hair, so my plan wasn’t foolproof, nor was it a scientific application. It was simply a fast way to wade through the evidence.

  I sat down at the stereoscopic microscope, placing a strand of Eli’s hair and a strand of Tristan’s hair on the left side of its stage. I then took a pair of tweezers and began comparing each collected hair to the sample hairs one by one. Most of the hairs seemed to visually match my control samples, except for one long, blonde hair. I started to get excited, thinking I had found a clue, until I looked at the root end of the hair. There was no follicular tag, which meant the hair hadn’t been yanked out—it had fallen out, therefore was not part of any violent struggle. Worse, no tag meant there was no DNA to be had. There had been follicular tags on a few of the shorter, darker hairs I had found, but I felt it was redundant and friv
olous to have a DNA analysis run on hair likely belonging to the inhabitants of the apartment.

  Needing a break from thinking about murder, I called my sister.

  “Hey,” Rachel answered in a hushed voice.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I’m with my study group. Why didn’t you just text me? Is something wrong?”

  Feeling bad for taking time away from her studying, I said, “No, I was bored and thought I’d call. I’ll let you go.”

  “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?” she asked, her tone suspicious.

  “Everything’s good. Go back to studying.”

  “Okay. See you later, then.”

  I had an idea. “Hey, do you mind if I pick up Nate from daycare and take him to dinner? I’ve been missing that kid this week.”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  After we hung up, I was in better spirits, even though I had the disgusting task ahead of me of sifting through the vacuumed debris. I emptied the container onto a new piece of butcher paper on my work surface and began combing through dust, dirt, food crumbs, hair, fibers, and tiny bits of paper. There was nothing out of the ordinary here.

  Once I was finished, I repackaged the evidence and used one of the lab’s computers to create my finished sketch of the crime scene with a computer-aided design program. My CAD skills weren’t the best, but it didn’t take me long to rework my rough sketch into a finished version that was neat and precise and would be easy for jurors to understand. Forensic science is becoming more and more advanced by the moment, but at the end of the day, if the evidential findings cannot be presented in clear enough terms for a jury to understand, they can become practically useless. I saved my finished sketch to a flash drive and stored it in my bag with the other evidence. After closing up the lab, I headed across campus to pick up my nephew.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Ashmore College ran a daycare for employees’ children, and I was able to get Nate in the program because he lived with me. He went there while Rachel and I were in class, which was perfect, because whoever was done first could pick him up on the way home for the day.

  When I got to the daycare center, Nate was playing with his “girlfriend,” Emma. They were adorable, playing chef with a kid-sized toy kitchen.

  “Hey, kiddo,” I said, kneeling down beside him.

  He whined, “Oh, is it time to go?”

  “Yeah, buddy. But I thought we could go somewhere for dinner on the way home.”

  Nate’s eyes got as big as saucers. “Can we go to McDonald’s? Can we? Can we?”

  Groaning to myself, I said, “Yes, of course.” McDonald’s was the only place he ever wanted to go to eat. Rachel and I were sick of it, but we usually caved, since it was never a fight to get him to eat the food there.

  Nate and I had a lovely time chatting over dinner. It did wonders for my mental state to disconnect from my rigorous schedule. When we left the restaurant, I picked him up to carry him across the busy parking lot.

  Eye-to-eye with me, he asked, “Auntie Ellie, are you going to be doing your new job forever?”

  I had just been ready to step off the sidewalk, but stopped so I could give his serious question my full attention. “Absolutely not. As soon as I help the police figure out who the bad guy is, I’m done.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek. “And then everything will go back to normal.”

  Nate smiled. “Yay. I don’t like your new job. You have to stay out past bedtime.”

  I laughed. “That’s right. Auntie Ellie needs her sleep, doesn’t she?”

  I hugged him to me and started walking across the parking lot. A moment later, an ear-splitting screech cut through the air, and I looked to my right just in time to see a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle careening toward us, having to skid to a halt in order to avoid running us over. I screamed and jumped back, but if the car hadn’t stopped when it did, Nate and I would have been on the way to the hospital.

  Nate burst out crying.

  My whole body shaking, I yelled, “Hey!” and slammed my hand down onto the hood of the car. “Watch where you’re going, you—” I managed to stop myself before cursing in front of my nephew, who was clinging to me and trying to crawl up my shoulder. Stomping around to the open driver’s side window, I yelled, “You nearly ran us over! Didn’t you see us?”

  The girl driving gaped at me in horror. It was Maddie from my Intro to Forensics class, who was the girlfriend of our missing person of interest, Tad Ogelsby. Maddie’s wild eyes darted from me to Nate and then around the parking lot, as if looking to see if anyone else had witnessed the incident.

  “Maddie, I asked you a question,” I snapped, trying to get her to respond.

  She opened her mouth as if to speak, but then without a word she zoomed away. I was in shock, and Nate was whimpering; I could feel his wet tears trickling down my shoulder.

  I stroked his hair. “Shh, baby. It’s okay. We’re just fine.”

  “That was scary!” he wailed.

  It was scary, especially with it being my second close call with major bodily harm today. More troubling, though, was Maddie’s reaction. The poor girl looked scared out of her wits, and for some reason, I didn’t think it all stemmed from the near accident we’d just had.

  All that aside, my only priority at the moment was taking care of my nephew. I tightened my arms around him. “I know, sweetheart. Auntie Ellie was scared, too, but it’s over now and we’re safe.”

  He didn’t reply. Instead, he put his head back down on my shoulder and wrapped his tiny hands around the back of my neck in a vise-like grip.

  ***

  I deposited Nate at home with Rachel. Something had nagged at me since I came into contact with Maddie. I headed to the Sheriff’s station, mulling over what had happened in the parking lot. I went to talk to Baxter about it and found he had run out to grab dinner, but Sterling was there. Much as I loathed interacting with Sterling, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to clue him in to my information on Maddie since he was the one in charge of searching for Tad Ogelsby.

  “Hey,” I said, sitting down in a chair next to his desk.

  “What do you want?” he growled, not looking up from his computer screen.

  I sighed to myself. He was great at what he did, and if he were easier to work with, we could get a lot more done. I decided not to return an insult. “Have you found Tad Ogelsby yet?”

  “No.”

  “Did you talk to his girlfriend?”

  “We’ve reached out to her, but she hasn’t returned our calls.”

  “She’s a student of mine, and she didn’t show up for my class this morning.”

  Snorting, he replied, “So? It’s college. No one goes to class.”

  “I’m worried something’s going on with her. We had a test, which she knew about. She was the only student who didn’t attend.”

  “BFD. Maybe she didn’t study for the test or she felt like skipping,” he replied. He was not working with me here.

  “It’s not like her to miss class. Just now, I saw her in the McDonald’s parking lot over in Carmel, and she nearly ran me over.”

  “Good for her.”

  “Damn it, Sterling!” I exclaimed. “If we’re going to work on this case together, we need to be able to talk like adults. Quit being such an ass.”

  Turning around to glare at me, he fired back, “I don’t need you on this case. In fact, I don’t know why you’re even here, except Baxter thinks—”

  “What does Baxter think?” asked Baxter, appearing beside me.

  “Baxter thinks he better give me my dinner before I die of hunger,” Sterling snapped, snatching a greasy paper bag out of Baxter’s hand.

  “If only,” I said under my breath, getting up and following Baxter to his desk.

  “I heard that,” Sterling said.

  Baxter sat down and got out his food. “You two can’t have a civilized conversation, can you?”

  “It would seem not,” I said, on edge from my close c
all with the front end of Maddie’s car and from having to deal with Sterling’s attitude. “I’ll tell you what he didn’t want to listen to. Tad Ogelsby’s girlfriend Maddie missed my class this morning. I saw her about thirty minutes ago when she almost ran over my nephew and me with her car. She looked frightened when she saw me, and I have a feeling it wasn’t because she was worried about cutting my class. I wonder if she’s somehow involved with what’s going on. Sterling said you hadn’t been able to talk to her yet.”

  “No, not yet. I’ll check up on her.”

  “Thanks.”

  I left Baxter and went back to the lab. Beck was nowhere to be found, again, but Amanda was there, hard at work examining a pair of pants under a stereoscope.

  “Is Beck gone again?” I asked.

  Amanda looked up from her work. “He went home for the day.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I wish I were. He tried to get me to leave also, telling me if I didn’t he’d write me up for insubordination.” She let out a laugh, but then sobered quickly. “He can’t do that, right?”

  “No, he cannot.” I walked over and looked at the pants she was examining. “Find anything useful?”

  After taking off her gloves, she rubbed her eyes. “Not really. I found a combination of food stains, crumbs, random fibers, hair, and general dust and ick on the clothes from the struggle area. No blood or other bodily fluids, and none of the hairs had follicular tags. Oh, and everything reeks of pot and cheap cologne.”

  “Disgusting, but neither useful nor surprising. What do you have left to process?”

  “These pants are the last of the clothes. Beck processed the fingernail and maybe one shirt, then got tired and went home.”

  I shook my head. “He’s such a hard worker. So now that all of the evidence has been processed, I guess that means we get to start over.”