Close to the Bone

by Lisa Black

  ‘Dr Reese died.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and nothing more, though her stomach plunged at least a foot deeper into her body, and she revisited the question of exactly how to feel about the death of a co-worker to whom one had not been especially close. In the next instant she moved on to less selfish concerns. ‘His poor wife. And his daughter, with a new baby—’

  Don simply held her hand, and when she could stand the silence no longer, Elena mercifully interrupted, asking: ‘Did Justin really kill them?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t believe he did, either.’

  ‘Justin was always so nice to me,’ the girl said, eyes as wide as the lake and twice as blue.

  Theresa didn’t point out that all men were nice to her and would continue to be until she hit forty or so. Then all that niceness and attention and helpfulness would drop off exponentially, and she would miss it, no matter how much she had always told herself that her looks weren’t important to her. ‘I heard that he tended to hang out here and talk to you a lot.’

  Elena nodded earnestly. ‘He used to, when he was on days for training. Of course, since he went to nights I hardly see him. Just in passing. But he bought me lunch once or twice – twice – because I had gone over to the medical school food court and he happened to be there too and bought me lunch even though I told him he didn’t have to.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Theresa encouraged. ‘What was he like?’

  She nibbled one fingernail, chipping off some of the hot pink. ‘Nice! Even when he would kind of flirt with me – I know everyone thought he wanted to ask me out, and he did once, but I kind of said no because …’

  Because what? He was black? He had a gap between his front teeth? He snorted when he laughed? ‘Because?’

  ‘He was so much older than me.’

  Justin couldn’t have been more than thirty-five. But then Elena couldn’t yet legally drink, so yes, that was a significant age difference.

  ‘And I don’t like to date people I work with,’ the girl added.

  ‘That is very sensible,’ Theresa assured her. Without irony, even given the direction of her own thoughts at times.

  ‘But Justin was even nice about that. I know people think he was all like, “Hey, baby,” but he wasn’t. We mostly talked about work. He really cared about his job.’

  ‘That was my impression, too,’ Theresa said. Don just listened. A formidable mother and adoring but chatty sisters had turned him into a very good listener.

  ‘He told me that he needed to keep this job, that he had screwed up a few things in the past and didn’t want to do that again. It sounded like drugs, but I didn’t ask. He said he had goals now, and that once he found the right path to them then nothing could be allowed to stop him from reaching justice. That’s how he got past the blood – when he first came here it really made him sick, but he told himself that blood is a trail leading back to the person so that they could never really get lost. In this life or the next, they could never be lost. I thought that was sweet.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘That’s why I can’t believe he’d kill Darryl.’

  Theresa pressed her hand over the girl’s for a moment. She couldn’t believe it either. Yet the talk of blood trails seemed creepily prescient. ‘Did he mention any problems with Darryl? Did they get along?’

  ‘No, but then he didn’t even work with Darryl then. He was still on the day shift when we would talk a lot.’

  ‘Oh, right. Justin’s only been on nights for, what, six weeks?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Any problems with anyone else?’

  ‘No. He seemed to really like it here. He wanted to know everything, who everyone was, how long they’d been working here, how the doctors divvy up the work, what kind of slides they make in histology, everything. Even the paperwork, the reports, the files, how we organize them, how we made the switch from paper to the new digital system. He really seemed interested in what I do. That was a first,’ she added with a surprisingly indelicate snort, and for an instant Theresa could glimpse a spark of snarky intelligence. Elena might never become a doctor, but she might yet become one hell of a something else.

  ‘Did he ever ask to look at some records? A case file, or a personnel file?’

  ‘No … um … well, sort of. He said once or twice that he’d like to – what’d he say? – browse through the records. Just to see how the other deskmen fill out their forms – even though they don’t have that many. The clothing form, the personal property form, the main ledger. The release form—’

  ‘He didn’t ask for a particular person’s file?’ Don asked.

  ‘No, no. Just wanted to look at some at random. But of course Janice would never go for that.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Theresa agreed.

  Elena thought a minute, her frown causing a furrow in her perfect skin. ‘But if he didn’t kill Darryl, then what happened to him? Do you think the real killer kidnapped him?’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible. But for what? Ransom?’

  ‘Yes! They could make the county pay. That’s what they do in Mexico all the time – families don’t have any money, so they ask the victim’s employers to pay up.’

  ‘True, but—’

  Elena’s eyes had begun to glisten again. ‘I hope he’s okay. Even if he did kill Darryl – I still hope he’s okay.’

  ‘So do I.’

  Janice appeared in the doorway, managing to express great displeasure using only one eyebrow, though whether it might be directed at her, Elena, their momentary lack of constructive labor, the current crisis or simply the disruption in the day’s routine, Theresa couldn’t guess.

  Janice said, ‘Elena, customers are lining up.’

  The girl got up and left without another word. Janice gave Don and Theresa another sharp look – interlopers in her territory, which custom forced her to tolerate. Then she turned away, and Don asked Theresa what the hell she was doing, though not in so many words.

  ‘Looking at our ex-Property-clerk’s case file.’

  He raised an eyebrow to express curiosity that she might choose this moment to revisit history when current events had overwhelmed them.

  ‘His house is packed to the gills, but it’s not messy. Not messy at all.’

  Don leaned over the pictures. ‘I’m not following you, kiddo.’

  ‘Someone’s looking for something. He’s not interested in clothes, food, prescriptions or money. He’s looking for something.’ Theresa looked into her friend’s deep brown eyes, and for once they didn’t make her feel better. ‘And he’s going to keep killing us until he finds it.’

  NINE

  They told Shephard. He had gone home and freshened up – to judge from the freshly (and hastily, leaving two tiny scabs at the back of his jaw) shaved face and the clean smell of Coast soap – and then come back, somehow assigning the case to himself. Apparently, he could do that. Two detectives had been put on it as well, of course, Williams and Conroy, called Ying and Yang both in and out of earshot. Williams’ skin was dark enough to have been sprayed on with a can of paint only that morning, and Conroy was so pale that if he fell naked into a snow bank he might be lost forever. They had always been friendly to Theresa, and today were even more so after learning that her cousin Frank was currently floating around the Caribbean and so would not be available to peer over their shoulders and home in on their case simply because it involved Theresa. Then they had gone off to speak to Dr Banachek.

  Now they were busy interviewing the other deskmen and the dieners, so Shephard alone got to hear her great theory. To wit: somehow George Bain, Hubert Reese and Darryl Johnson were connected, other than simply by working in the same building, and someone had attacked them for some reason, which might be because he wanted something.

  ‘And that something would be?’ Shephard asked drily, drinking a cup of coffee Theresa had graciously provided him. Neenah, the Trace Evidence secretary, had arrived as well and sat at her desk but with her chair turned toward them, watch
ing their verbal volleys with wide eyes. (Her bet still rested on Mrs Johnson, Darryl’s long-but-not-quietly-suffering wife. Neenah’s verdict: ‘Man had it coming for a long time now.’)

  ‘I have no idea,’ Theresa told Shephard. ‘But it’s something small, maybe a piece of paper, since he – the attacker – gravitates toward file cabinets, jewelry boxes and dresser drawers.’

  Shephard studied the photos from George Bain’s death on their computer, since Janice wouldn’t let her leave the file room with the prints. Just as well, because then she could use the zoom feature to make certain points such as: Bain’s house might have been a wreck, but it was a neat wreck.

  ‘But Bain died of a heart attack,’ Shephard pointed out, his voice carefully neutral.

  Theresa said, ‘Yes, he did. But it might have been brought on by the stress of being punched in the stomach. And the areas of his home which were disturbed—’

  ‘Given the condition of his home that’s a complete guess, and you’re making it entirely from photographs.’

  ‘—are the same as Dr Reese’s house. Nothing out of place, except for the home office and a jewelry box.

  ‘Which could indicate an interrupted burglary.’

  ‘Who looks for valuables in a filing cabinet?’

  He didn’t answer that.

  ‘Who responded to Bain’s house?’ she asked.

  Don said, ‘Patrol officers. Detectives declined to respond.’

  Shephard scowled, forming wrinkles across his forehead that pulled taut the skin over his cheekbones.

  ‘That wasn’t unreasonable,’ she consoled him. ‘With no signs of forced entry, no signs of a struggle and his valuables still in place, it looked like a heart attack.’

  ‘Which it was,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Except that it looks like someone was looking for something.’

  ‘And that couldn’t have been the victim?’

  Theresa stopped. Of course, George could have been searching through his own belongings for some item, getting frustrated when he couldn’t find it, dumping more strain on an already overloaded heart. It began to seize up, and he stumbled around … ‘Except that most self-inflicted stumbling injuries will be to the arms, elbows and shins. Not the ribs and the shoulder, unless he actually fell on to something.’

  ‘Which he could easily have done.’

  ‘But even so, three deaths with a workplace in common? That feels like way too much coincidence to me.’

  Shephard went on: ‘But why would the same person who attacked two men in their homes alone also attack two – if we assume Justin is not the killer – men in a workplace? There’s no evidence of searching in the deskmen’s office.’

  Theresa couldn’t tell if he was arguing, playing the devil’s advocate, or simply brainstorming. ‘No,’ she admitted with reluctance.

  ‘Which would indicate Justin is the killer. He didn’t need to search the deskmen’s office because he’d had access to it for months already. He knew they wouldn’t be disturbed, that there were no bodies on the way, that he’d have all night to do what he wanted.’

  So. He’d thought of that.

  Theresa said, ‘Do we know that Justin was even here and not home with the flu? Maybe he got sick or felt like taking the night off and nothing was happening, so Darryl told him to go ahead.’ Though she couldn’t picture Darryl covering for another employee without a few dozen phone calls, a hefty bribe and maybe a signed agreement.

  Shephard told her, ‘He was here at eleven when a heart attack victim came in. The driver from the hospital spoke with him. And we checked the apartment he’s renting – his car isn’t in the lot, and no one answers the door. We’re getting a warrant to go in, but that will take a while.’

  Theresa couldn’t say why she felt so reluctant to believe that Justin was their killer. ‘But George Bain retired before Justin was even hired. They never even met.’

  ‘Because, as you say, he’s looking for something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. It’s your theory.’

  Don said, ‘Where does Dr Reese come in?’

  But Shephard had moved on to something else. ‘Since Justin did work here, though, and already had access to everything in the building he needed—’

  Don and Theresa cocked their heads at him in unison, quizzical starlings that had encountered an oddly colored speck of birdseed.

  ‘—then why would he still be here after most of the blood had dried? When he knew you would be coming back from the hit-and-run … or, at least, he should have known. All he had to do was check the CAD screen.’

  He had thought of that, too.

  ‘So maybe it isn’t Justin,’ Don said, taking the words out of her mouth. ‘The killer got Darryl out of the way so he could search the rest of the building. But of course all the offices were locked and Darryl didn’t have the keys. By the time the killer figures that out, Theresa is coming in the back door.’ He put one hand on her arm, his lips pressed together. He had just realized how closely the killer and Theresa had passed in the night, and it scared him.

  That would have warmed her to her toes, had she not been scared as well.

  Shephard said, ‘Except that the deskmen’s office wasn’t searched and there’s no blood smears through the rest of the building. He didn’t rattle the door knobs or check the drawers. So how did he know that what he wanted wasn’t in there if he wasn’t Justin?’

  The man worked in challenging syntax, but she saw what he meant. ‘If we’re lucky we might be able to find out one way or the other.’

  The two men and Neenah stared as she got up and went to her desk.

  ‘The prints I lifted from the gurney. In the – event – of finding Dr Reese, I’d almost forgotten about them. Let’s see if they belong to Justin, or not.’

  Fingerprints are the second most important piece of forensic evidence (actually, the first, since even identical twins with identical DNA will have different fingerprints, but just get a DNA analyst to admit that) while ranking, quite possibly, the first most tedious. Fingerprint examiners spend most of their time sitting in front of a computer monitor looking at black lines on the screen, which is exactly as exciting and glamorous as it sounds. But it’s the pattern of where those lines end and divide that distinguishes one finger from all the other fingers on earth. Or palms, or feet, as the case may be.

  From a little fabric basket Theresa kept on her desk she pulled out two loupes, small magnifying glasses about two inches in diameter, with their own adjustable stands. Then two pointers, pen-like, evil-looking spikes with wooden handles. Examiners rest the tip against the ends or divisions in the ridges of the unknown print (these areas are called ‘points of minutiae’) to keep their place while their attention switches to the other, known fingerprint. If they find a corresponding ‘point’ in that print, they move on to another set of points, until they find one that doesn’t correspond. Or if they don’t find a set that doesn’t correspond – in fact they don’t find any significant differences at all – they can then be sure that those two prints, the known (collected at arrest or, as in Justin’s case, employment) and the unknown (collected at a crime scene or from a piece of evidence), were made by the same finger.

  It takes a couple years of practice and a lot of patience and attention to detail. It’s also hard on the neck, Theresa reflected as she bent over Justin’s finger and palm prints and the copy of the print she’d lifted from the gurney. Theresa wondered if she could get either Don or Shephard to rub it for her … after all, if they were going to hover over her like that, they might as well make themselves useful.

  ‘You can sit at the table and wait, you know,’ she pointed out. ‘This isn’t going to go any faster just because you’re standing there.’

  ‘But I love watching you work,’ Don said.

  ‘I’m good,’ Shephard said.

  There were times, certainly, when she could appreciate a little bit of attention – it didn’t come her way that o
ften any more, nothing like when she wore the skin of a twenty-four-year-old – but not while she worked. ‘Seriously, this could take a while.’

  ‘I didn’t think you could work from a copy,’ Shephard said. Theresa had given the original lifted print to Jen for the CPD case.

  ‘Sure. As long as it’s a one-to-one reproduction. A copy is fine, a scan is fine, as long as you don’t change the scale by enlarging or shrinking it and the resolution is good enough. An emailed scan is fine. Anything except a fax.’ She slid the loupe along Justin’s fingerprint card.

  Of course he asked, ‘Why not a fax?’

  ‘It sort of digitizes the image at one end and reassembles at the other. You can’t be sure it reassembled it correctly.’

  After another few minutes he said, ‘I thought you did this by computer now.’

  ‘We keep the database on a computer. All the arrestees’ prints are entered, and the latent prints, from crime scenes and suchlike, are also entered. Then the computer looks to find the most closely matching pattern it’s got. Unlike what you see on TV every day, the computer just comes up with the best it’s got. It does not light up with a big banner that says ‘Match!’. Computers do not match people,’ she added primly. ‘Only people match people.’

  ‘Same with DNA,’ Don put in.

  She continued: ‘The computer is a tool to narrow down possibilities and point us in the right direction. But if we’re already pointed in a direction, then there’s no need to go through the extra and pointless work of involving the computer. Since I still have to go through the same process, it doesn’t save any time.’

  ‘Oh,’ Shephard said, probably making a mental note not to ask any more questions.

  Plus, it was a palm print. She liked working with palm prints because they were usually larger than fingerprints and therefore one had more information to work with. They were also easier to orient. Theresa had never quite gotten the hang of looking at a fingerprint and knowing right away which finger it probably came from. She could guess a little finger (examiners don’t write pinkie) from a thumb based on size, and loops most often slant toward the outside of the hand so that the lines on a right-hand finger come in and go out toward the right and the left toward the left, but after that it became strictly a guess for her. But palms are chiral, or mirror images, and what with that and the permanent creases and the differences in the three main areas, it could be fairly easy to hone in on the right area of the corresponding print. And that’s what she was trying to do while sandwiched in between the heat of the two men at each of her shoulders.