Everything to Lose

by Danielle Girard

  “Two cars?” Hailey asked.

  “To the naked eye, the tread is consistent across all three locations,” Schwartzman said.

  “It’s possible two cars have the same tires,” Hal said.

  “But unlikely,” Hailey said.

  Schwartzman didn’t comment. Tire tread was outside her area of expertise.

  Hal frowned. “How did the same car run over him in three places?”

  Again, Schwartzman said nothing.

  Hailey and Hal rose slowly. “Thanks, Doc.”

  “We’ll know more tomorrow.” She glanced at her watch. “Well, I guess that’s today already, isn’t it? I’ll do the autopsy first thing in the morning.”

  Two assistants arrived with a gurney.

  “You can take him,” Schwartzman said.

  She watched as the assistants rolled the victim into a black body bag and zipped him up. They counted to three and lifted him onto the gurney. The rigidity of rigor would make him feel heavier already.

  Once they had taken the body away, Schwartzman scanned the area for anything else that might be relevant to the victim. As she left, she told Chase that she was taking the body and the area was open for the techs to search for evidence.

  With her job done, she spent the next few minutes scanning the dark crowd for Frank. She found him holding a light for the techs who were sweeping the gutters at the far end of the street, probably for pieces that broke off the car after it hit the victim.

  Frank Taylor was a patrol officer who’d been on this particular beat for twenty-plus years. He was married, talked about his wife and their three little girls as often as anyone would let him. He was huge, intimidating, jovial, and totally safe. She’d made it a habit to check for Frank first when she needed an escort to her car.

  Clutching her bag and holding her coat tight to her chest against the wind that had picked up, Schwartzman made her way down the street.

  “Officer Taylor,” she said from a few feet away.

  “Dr. Schwartzman,” he said, smiling.

  “How are those girls?” she asked.

  “They’re doing great, thanks.” He handed the light to another officer. “I’ll be right back, DeSoto,” he said. “I’m going to walk Dr. Schwartzman to her car.”

  “Thank you,” she said, slightly embarrassed. “Jaden’s birthday was coming up last time I saw you,” Schwartzman said to deflect attention from herself.

  “Turned thirteen. Man, it happened overnight,” he said, laughing softly. “Suddenly, she’s practically her mother’s size.”

  Schwartzman stopped at her car. She opened the trunk and set her bag in the back. “You have any new pictures for me?”

  “You know, I don’t. I keep saying I’ll get some, don’t I? Next time, I promise, Doctor.” He gave her a little wave. “You go on and drive safe, Doctor.”

  “Thank you.” She got into the car and locked the doors, put on her seatbelt and started the engine. She moved quickly, her heart rate always racing a little when she got into her car alone.

  Taylor waited on the curb. He would wait until her car was out of sight, and she didn’t want to keep him waiting. It was kind of him to escort her to her car. He seemed to sense her fear but never addressed it. And he never made it seem silly that she asked for an escort.

  Walking to a crime scene, there were always cops milling around on the street, crime scene folks loading and unloading. She liked the scenes. Didn’t mind coming at night.

  When the lights were up and the scene was busy with people, it was like a bright world all its own. By the time she left, though, the streets were quieter, eerie.

  She hated to ask for someone to walk with her, but her fear of whatever else was out there was a thousand times worse.

  Chapter 8

  Roger Sampers stepped off the curb, careful to walk around the plastic orange numbers that marked evidence found beside Dwight Stewart’s body. The body had been taken to the morgue about ten minutes prior. The victim’s blood had darkened to a shade that might be mistaken for oil if not for the distinct spray pattern and the bits of skin and clothing. The smell of blood and burnt flesh, though, was unmistakable and, although subtle, Roger could have found it without any light at all.

  He had been there for more than an hour, first walking the entire scene and beyond to ensure the boundaries had been established correctly. Next, identifying evidence outliers while his team placed small orange markers to note debris that might be related to the crime. He was in charge of making certain that every potential piece of evidence was mapped, photographed, collected, and labeled, then transported to the lab for processing. As always, he would be the last to leave. The Sweeper. There was a certain natural frenzy to a crime scene, but getting it right meant lasting beyond the frenzy. Finding the calm. Roger could do that.

  He sometimes thought of a crime scene as a woman’s body. Every man naturally took interest in a few specific locations and largely ignored the rest. It was those other places—the skin at the base of her neck, the dimple on her lower back, the pad of her palm—where he could make a difference. A crime scene was no different. It was a woman who deserved to be explored completely. This was not an analogy Roger had ever shared with his wife.

  With the evidence collected and his team heading back to the lab to begin processing, Roger’s last task was to talk to the homicide team. Most of the teams would have been badgering him for the past hour for his theories on the case, but Hailey and Hal were patiently waiting for him to process the scene completely first. He found them in the street, staring at fresh tread marks.

  Hal turned as he approached. “Hey, Roger.”

  Hailey studied the tire marks. Roger had done the same thing an hour earlier. What did the homicide inspector make of the fact that the car veered to the right side of the street before Dwight Stewart was run over?

  Veered toward him rather than away.

  Roger had worked more than a dozen hit-and-run homicides. There was definitely something strange about the tire marks. Normally, there was a heavy brake pattern behind where the body was found. In this case, though, there was heavy tread beyond Dwight’s body. And then a second lighter set behind it.

  “Can we tell which of these tread marks happened first?” Hal asked.

  Roger stopped in the street. “I used a gelatin lifter on the tread marks. Once we have that in the lab, we will be able to create a cast and identify the layers of the tread in the order they occurred.”

  Hailey pointed to the reddish-orange powder on the tread. “This looks like fingerprint powder.”

  “It is. I had them use the electrostatic device, too,” Roger said. “Otherwise, we don’t get enough dimensionality to the photographs when they’re taken in the dark.”

  “So, you willing to take a guess on how this tread happened?” Hal asked.

  “I can’t speak with one hundred percent certainty,” Roger began.

  Hailey and Hal waited for him to go on.

  “It looks to me like the heavier tread happened first,” Roger told them.

  Hailey studied the tread again. “If the darker set happened first, then the driver didn’t brake until after he’d run over the victim.”

  “Or she,” Hal corrected.

  “Or she,” Hailey conceded.

  Roger nodded. “It does look that way.”

  “So maybe she/he didn’t see Stewart,” Hal suggested.

  Hailey squatted down at the spot where the tread started to darken. “But it’s like the driver sped up before hitting him.” She touched the asphalt right before the void in the tread that would have been the victim’s body. “He hit the gas.”

  Hal got down, too.

  “That’s how I’m reading it as well,” Roger said.

  “Damn,” Hal said.

  “So, what do you make of this second set of marks?” Hailey asked, pointing to the set of lighter tread marks that started past the body.

  “It appears that he,” Roger glanced at Hal, “
—or she—backed up.”

  “He backed up over the body?” Hal asked.

  Hailey stared down the street. “What about where the girl was hit?”

  Roger shook his head. “The tread there swerves away from the body and there is one long, unbroken tread that suggests a single effort of hard braking.”

  “So, he braked for the girl, but sped up and ran over Dwight Stewart, then backed up to run over him again?” Hal repeated.

  “That would explain why Schwartzman found three tracks across the victim’s body,” Hailey said. “The front tires went over twice—once forward and then back again—and then the rear tires when he left the scene.”

  “That should have been four,” Hal interrupted. “Forward, back, forward, and rear.”

  “It’s possible that the third set is overlaid on the second, so we didn’t notice the difference,” Roger suggested. “He would have backed up and then the same tread would have gone forward over the body again. We should be able to identify all four at the lab.”

  “That might explain it,” Hailey agreed.

  “But why?” Hal asked.

  “Am I safe to use the pronoun ‘he’?” Roger asked.

  Hal chuckled. “Of course. Although let’s be honest, this kind of driving makes the suspect seem like a woman.” He winked at Hailey, who rolled her eyes.

  “Go on, Roger,” Hailey prodded, while Hal smiled.

  “The existence of tread marks in front of the body means the car was going at a significant speed before it stopped. The hard braking is what created those marks.” Roger leaned down and pointed to dark marks past the victim. Then, he pointed to the set in front of the body. “But if he had simply backed up over the body slowly, accidentally, it’s unlikely that he would have left tread marks like this. These, again, imply hard braking.”

  “So he backed over the body intentionally?” Hailey asked.

  “Obviously, I can’t know that for certain, but that is one theory,” Roger said. “That, or he didn’t realize he was in reverse and was trying to speed away and ended up going backward.”

  “Which would mean maybe he got out of the car,” Hailey said.

  “I checked this area closely,” Roger said. “No fresh shoe marks.”

  Hailey frowned.

  “It’s possible,” Roger said. “It’s possible his shoes were very clean, but it’s unlikely that he would have been able to walk around the car and back without leaving some evidence.”

  “Which means, the best guess is that he ran over Stewart twice on purpose,” Hal said.

  Roger shrugged. “Like I said, it’s a valid hypothesis.”

  “What about the girl?” Hal asked. “Any sign she was run over twice?”

  “No,” Roger said. “We see brake marks. Like the driver tried to stop.” The scene where the young girl had been hit was also cordoned off, but it wouldn’t be Hailey and Hal’s case—she wasn’t a homicide unless she died. As the first priority was to save the girl’s life, the paramedics had little concern for preserving Roger’s scene. His team would document it fully, but saying what had happened was complicated by the disruption of the paramedics and the ambulance.

  Hal gazed in the general direction of the place where the girl was struck down. Perhaps wondering if the case would be his after all. Perhaps hoping it would not.

  “Okay, Hal,” Hailey said. “Let’s find out who had a beef with Dwight Stewart.”

  “We also retrieved evidence of paint from the victim’s pants,” Roger said.

  “What color?”

  “White.”

  “What kind of paint?” Hailey asked. “If you were guessing,” she added.

  “It’s consistent with the location where the car struck him,” Roger confirmed.

  “Will you rush the paint so we can try to find the perp’s car?” Hailey asked.

  “Will do.”

  “Thanks.” Hailey spun in a slow circle, scanning the buildings that surrounded the victim. She was scanning for traffic or surveillance cameras in the vicinity. A good spot to run someone over. “I’ll put a call in to Traffic and request any images they have from surrounding traffic cameras,” Hailey said. “Maybe they caught him.”

  Hal pointed to a Chevron sign visible behind the low apartment complex. “Maybe the gas station camera caught something.”

  “Worth a try,” Hailey agreed.

  “I could use a cup of coffee anyway,” Hal said.

  “Roger?”

  “Not for me, thanks.”

  Hailey frowned at her partner like he was nuts. “Coffee?”

  “Sounds good, right?” Hal said, bumping her shoulder with his.

  “Are you crazy? After we talk to the gas station attendant, I’m going home to bed.”

  “Remember, it could be a woman,” Hal said.

  Hailey gave him a look and Hal laughed his deep, loud laugh that made it impossible not to smile. Roger watched as they started to walk toward the gas station. What an odd lot they all were, the people who worked these crimes.

  “I got five bucks says it was a woman driver,” Hal said as they walked down the road.

  “What? That’s just stupid. You might as well hand it over now.”

  Hal responded, but they were out of earshot by then.

  How could Roger ever explain to Kathy that he had stood at the site of a gruesome hit-and-run in the middle of the night and laughed?

  No. Some things about his job were not suitable for sharing in his home life.

  Perhaps most things.

  Chapter 9

  Tony was making dinner when Jamie came home the next evening. Exhausted, Jamie had spent the day trying to pin down the Bordens, trying to locate Delman, and trying to shift the workload of her other cases off her desk to focus on this one. Most of the efforts on all fronts had been unsuccessful. She’d returned home after 1:00 a.m. and missed seeing Z, then had left again early this morning. The only good news was that it meant there was no worrying about how she would keep the secret about his father. Keep it from Tony, too, for that matter. That was something she’d have to worry about tonight, though. He respected her need to keep aspects of her case from him, but this fell outside of that. They shared everything. This related to their son.

  Everything seemed normal, except there was no music.

  Recently, that was more common than not.

  Tony always used to blare music when he was cooking. For a year and a half, it was the Black Crowes. Z liked them, too, so that made it easy for everyone but Jamie. Then, the lead singer of the band—Chris Robinson—went off on his own and his music replaced the blaring Black Crowes. The music was slightly more acoustic, slightly less like someone screaming in her, and, therefore, slightly easier to tolerate.

  Since announcing the move, though, Tony played music less often. When he did, it was Sam Cooke or Al Green. Maybe there was nothing to it. Maybe he’d finally gotten as sick of his selections as Jamie was. But she worried. There were other signs that Tony was uneasy about his move to Ohio. In the past month, he’d gone out alone after dinner twice. For a drive, he’d said. That was what he used to say when he was sneaking out for a drink. As far as she knew, he’d been sober almost five years—from within months of when Jamie officially became Z’s foster parent. Tony had wanted shared guardianship, but their attorney warned that Tony’s record might reduce their chances of a successful adoption.

  He’d turned around then. He was accountable, went to meetings. He attended a few a week—or said he did—usually straight from work. Other than those first few months of his sobriety, Tony didn’t share his feelings often. Jamie didn’t either. In fact, most conversations about emotion revolved around Z. For whatever emotional dysfunction they recognized in themselves, they were determined to help Z work through his own issues.

  But Jamie recognized that a move had ramifications far beyond what would happen with Z. There was no doubt that Z was an important part of the equation for Tony, but he certainly wasn’t the only fa
ctor. For instance, never once had Tony brought up how the move, especially alone, would threaten his sobriety, but it would. He had to be thinking about it. As usual, in their awkward sibling-like relationship, Jamie watched closely, worried as little as she could, and waited for Tony to bring it up, which would likely never happen.

  Jamie set her purse on the little bench by the door where the mail was stacked in piles. Jamie’s, Tony’s, anything for Z, and a household pile at the end. Computer bag still over one shoulder, Jamie picked up her pile and the house’s and came into the kitchen, flipping through the stack. Nothing interesting. She checked her phone one last time for any new insights on the case.

  Michael Delman’s sister, Tanya, had called in sick to her job at Jack in the Box, which was odd because she wasn’t at home either. Patrol went back to her house, but the only ones home were three children under six. Left alone. The patrol officers had called Social Services who were sending someone to pick up the kids. Jamie also received Charlotte Borden’s credit card statement. She’d made the underwear purchase herself, five weeks prior to her attack.

  Five years ago, Jamie would have stayed late, pored over the material again, and hunted down a new angle. There was a list of things she could pursue. First off, find out as much as she could about the Bordens and, second, look more closely at what Michael Delman had been up to lately. Plus, Tony had offered to pick Z up again; so, technically, she had no real home responsibilities tonight. With Tony’s move coming, Jamie came home earlier. These evenings together were numbered and the closer it came to the move, the less willing she was to miss one.

  When Z was younger, the three of them had made an effort to eat together most nights. Even with Jamie’s crazy schedule, she tried to be home so they could act like a family. Everything she read about adopting a child in grade school—and she had read obsessively on the subject—supported the idea that a strong family unit was vital. As Z grew older, though, he was busier. More time was spent on school or activities and while they had standing movie nights most Fridays and family dinner on Sundays, many nights Z was with one or the other, instead of both.