Evidence of Murder

by Lisa Black

  “Oh no, my dear. I put him off. I wasn’t going to endure a visit from that weasel all by my lonesome. Besides, I’m not paying you to work closed cases.”

  “Odd. I thought the taxpayers of Cuyahoga County were paying me.”

  “They’re not paying you to work closed cases either.”

  “It’s not closed. It’s still very, very open,” she insisted, but to empty air. Leo had darted off again.

  She took advantage of the quiet to place the tapings back into their envelopes and remove the piece of aqua sweatshirt with the oil stain on it. She carefully smeared the stain onto a round, flat circle made of potassium bromide and dropped this into a slot on the stage of the FTIR. The Fourier transform infrared spectrometer pitched a beam of light through her sample and provided a single colored line on the results graph. The peaks identified the functional groups present in the molecules of the sample. She stared, consulted her library of spectra, stared again.

  It wasn’t oil. It wasn’t paint, adhesive, dirt, or lip gloss. So what the hell was it?

  The only familiar compound seemed to be phenol, a corrosive often used in the DNA process. It hadn’t been strong enough to damage the sweatshirt, but had left just a spot.

  She repackaged the piece of sweatshirt, still puzzled. Now only the envelope Christine had given her remained on the counter, so she examined the tiny pieces of wood left in Jacob Wheeler’s scalp. The particles appeared, under strong magnification, as irregular chunks of dark and bloodstained matter, with sharp edges. Theresa did not consider herself an expert on wood, but she had seen particles over the years-baseball bats and two-by-fours remained popular murder weapons-and though she would not swear to it in court, this did not appear to be treated wood. It seemed too porous, with no trace of an adhering varnish or other polishes.

  Well, Christine had said the wound had been irregular, which would not indicate a smooth surface like a baseball bat. More likely, the killer had picked up a handy, hefty tree branch and brained young Jacob with it. It knocked out premeditation. It also made recovery of the weapon nearly impossible, for where does a wise man hide a stick? In a forest. Preferably a forest where it has snowed all night, so that the murder weapon, if tossed away, would be covered with a layer of white by the time the body was found, and would be impossible to distinguish from all the other fallen branches and leaves and twigs and underbrush around. It probably didn’t have any blood on it either, since the first blow usually doesn’t bleed quickly enough to transfer to the weapon, though it might have hairs or skin snatched up by its rough surface-

  “You remember our trace analyst, Theresa MacLean.”

  She looked up to see Leo guiding three men to her workstation. The defense expert and the defense attorney both glowed in smug victory, while the judge looked irritated. Theresa focused on his shirt, a light blue designer job with minuscule burgundy stripes.

  “Tencel,” she said.

  The attorney stepped back, as if she were raving and possibly dangerous.

  “I beg your pardon?” the judge asked.

  “Tencel. It’s a cellulosic fiber, made of wood pulp but very strong. Retains dye better than rayon and drapes nicely when combined with wool or silk. Good afternoon, Mr. Springer. Awful weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER 12

  The Internet made everyone more independent. Instead of having to pick up the phone and perhaps speak to another human, Theresa had typed what little she knew into Yahoo! Maps and printed out directions to Delta Dynamics, arriving there in less than ten minutes without a single wrong turn.

  The company occupied a second-floor suite in the Hanna Building at the corner of East Fourteenth and Euclid. At this time of day, just before the rush-hour race officially commenced, more people were leaving downtown Cleveland than approaching and Theresa found a vacant metered space. She dropped in a quarter, which might not suffice if the person she had come to see proved as talkative as Drew Fleming.

  A revolving door took her through a little convenience store and out to the elevator banks, where she stared at the ornate ceiling before entering the car. The hundred-year-old building had been well maintained.

  Except for the Delta Dynamics suite. No decor hid the chipped paint and the air smelled like plastic, but the heavy black girl at the counter beamed with welcome.

  Theresa could have called Jerry Graham and asked for his girlfriend’s name, but Evan Kovacic had become her suspect, without doubt, without mitigation, and she saw no reason to announce her intentions to his camp. And so she stumbled through an explanation of who she needed to see, and why. “She’s a black woman, about my height, slender, very pretty.”

  The receptionist nodded her encouragement, but did not fill in a name.

  “I think she’s friends with, or is dating or something, Jerry Graham from Kov-”

  “Shelly Peters.” The receptionist picked up her handset, dialed some numbers.

  “Oh. You know Jerry Gr-”

  “Everyone knows Jerry Graham. The guy’s brilliant. Shelly? Yeah, someone here to see you? Theresa MacLean. I don’t know. Okay.” She hung up, looked up, and went on. “Everyone who’s into video games, I mean, which is about seventy-five percent of the people here. Crazy, I say. We all work on computers all day long and then go home and play on them all night long. I swear I weighed one-twenty before I discovered Ultima Online. Now look at me. Way too big.”

  She didn’t seem bothered by it, however, so Theresa did not comment. “What’s Ultima Online?”

  “It’s an MMO-massive multiplayer online. Totally addictive. You never know what’s going to happen in there. It’s like its own world. Characters have businesses, merge, betray. Last month a bunch of people sent their characters to the castle at the same time and had a sit-down strike until the company gave them a release date for the upgrade.”

  Theresa tried to picture this, and couldn’t. “You mean players went to the factory, or something?”

  “No, in the game.”

  “Revolt is written into the game?”

  “No, the game just defines the world. After that, what happens depends on what the players do.”

  “The players can do things the manufacturers didn’t design?”

  The receptionist laughed. “Yeah, of course! The manufacturer is like God. Once he makes the world and lets people in, the people will do things he didn’t plan on. Just like human beings,” she added, her face growing serious as she pondered this philosophical insight. “They do all sorts of things He didn’t plan on. Sometimes bad things.”

  The woman Theresa had seen kissing Jerry Graham appeared. She wore a formfitting pantsuit and her hair had come loose from its spikes, framing her face. She extended her hand and smiled. “I’m Shelly Peters. What can I do for you?”

  Theresa introduced herself as a medical examiner’s office investigator, which was a lie and not a lie at the same time. Investigators had a specific position, different from hers, but on the other hand all forensic staff were to consider themselves investigators, not robots simply collecting and analyzing and doing only what they were told, according to Leo, so she felt safe with the statement. “We’re still working on Jillian Perry’s death certificate, and I’m trying to determine her state of mind prior to her death.”

  Shelly Peters immediately stopped smiling. “It’s such a tragedy about Jillian. I can’t believe that would happen-it’s so weird. Why on earth would she-why don’t you come back to my office and we can talk there? I have some questions for you too.”

  Theresa thanked the receptionist before following Shelly down a narrow hallway, dodging cardboard boxes. “Please excuse our mess,” the woman explained as they went. “We moved before the painters could get in here, and so we’re trying to unpack only what we absolutely have to have so that we don’t have to move it all again to get at the walls. But we’re so busy, that’s proving impossible, so there’s just stuff everywhere.”

  The walls of her nine-by-nine office remained
blank, but apparently Shelly could not resist installing a few items on her worn metal desk-a teddy bear, a bundle of silk flowers, and three framed photographs, one of herself and Jerry Graham. The rest of the office space had been given over to paper, keyboards, hard drives, two file cabinets, three loose monitors, and more paper.

  “I don’t even have a place for you to sit,” she apologized. “You can try that stack of Office Depot boxes.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Theresa began, finding the cases of copy paper to be more comfortable than Christine’s ammo box. She had heard about Jillian from men; high time to get a woman’s perspective. “Were you close?”

  Shelly seemed to think that over before answering. “We were friends. I saw quite a bit of her, with our men always being together. But we weren’t best friends or anything. I’ve only known her for, oh, two years or so. Maybe a little less.”

  “Where did you meet?”

  “At a trade show.” She gestured at their surroundings. “Delta handles all the data-management needs for trade shows. A lot of business gets done there, and the attendees need networking, Internet access, printers, et cetera, beyond what the hotels can provide and beyond what the vendor’s representatives are familiar with. They’re salesmen, not IT guys. So we come in, and not just in Cleveland. I travel all over the country. Anyway, I met Jillian at the Outdoors Expo. She was leaning on a Hummer and we got to talking.”

  “We found the phone number for these offices on a piece of paper in her pocket. I assume you gave it to her?”

  “Yeah, we had the phones installed only last week, so I wrote the number down when we were at dinner last Saturday, I think it was. I didn’t have a direct line. Still don’t, as a matter of fact,” she said, chuckling. “I wanted her to have it in case…”

  “In case what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, and from the look on her face, she really didn’t. “I just figured, all alone in that big place, with a baby, Evan and Jerry gone all the time either setting up those other buildings on the campus or downtown at meetings. You had to know Jillian, really. She always struck me as too sweet. Vulnerable, you know? Not dumb-she was smart enough to handle her own life and take good care of Cara-just too…sweet.”

  “Did she seem depressed? Maybe have the baby blues?”

  The woman smiled at the idea. “No, not at all. Cara enchanted her, totally. She thrilled at every single thing about that baby. She said she couldn’t wait for Cara to wake up from her naps because she missed her. That is why I can’t really believe Jillian killed herself.”

  “I’m having a hard time explaining that too, how she could have frozen to death. Did she drink at all? Do any drugs?”

  Shelly scowled, and Theresa held up her hands. “We’re not looking to prosecute anybody. I’m trying to find out why Jillian walked three miles from home in six degrees without a coat or hat.”

  “I understand, and you must hear this a lot, but no, Jillian didn’t do anything like that. She’d have a glass of wine once in a while, after Cara was born, but nothing stronger than that. She didn’t even smoke. That was one of the reasons I introduced her to Evan, to get him away from all those nerdy little VG groupie girls. At least Jillian lived in the real world.”

  “You’re not into video games?”

  “Sure, I like them. But I’ve been to conventions with Jerry, and let me tell you, you get the feeling some of those people have lost the ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Of course you could probably say the same thing about Trekkies.”

  “So Jillian wasn’t into video games either?”

  “Nah. She tried Polizei, since Evan talked about it all the time, but she didn’t see the attraction. Besides, Cara kept her pretty busy.”

  So Jillian wouldn’t have frozen to death trying to re-create a scene from the game, the way Dungeons & Dragons had been blamed for a few accidents over the years. “You introduced her to Evan?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t know she was pregnant. She told him right away, but he didn’t care. That’s quite a guy who will take on someone else’s child. I spent a few years raising my sister’s kids, and in my heart of hearts I hold it against her. Can’t help it. But Evan, as far as he was concerned, Cara was his. He’s a good guy.” She held Theresa’s gaze when she said that, as if defying her to argue. “Jerry wouldn’t be his friend if he wasn’t.”

  “And they were married only three weeks ago?”

  “Four, now, yeah.” Her eyes grew damp at the recollection. “One of the prettiest weddings I’ve ever seen. Small, but perfect.”

  “Any honeymoon?”

  “No, not with Polezei Two still not done. All leaves canceled, that sort of thing. Besides, Jillian didn’t want to either leave Cara or travel with her; she’s still too little.”

  A young man in a fuzzy sweatshirt zoomed in, dropped a thick file on Shelly’s desk, said, “Bath and cosmetic products, Atlanta, April twenty-second,” and zoomed out again.

  “Goody.” Shelly opened a Day-Timer, made a note. “I love those free samples-one of the perks of the job.”

  Theresa tried to think of her own job perks. Only the prodigious supply of latex gloves and an appreciation of anything that smelled nice came to mind. “Were Jillian and Evan having any problems?”

  “That would make her suicidal? I doubt it. At least I don’t think so…”

  Theresa waited.

  “Not with Evan, I mean. But Jillian said once that she was the only family Cara had. I think she felt bad that her parents wouldn’t even come to see her.”

  Theresa, not for the first time, gave silent thanks for having a mother who would have supported her if she had borne Adolf Hitler’s baby. “What’s up with them, anyway?”

  “You ask me, it’s a control thing. Daddy controls the universe and his wife has to do what she’s told. Then baby girl has the nerve to not only not marry the football hero Daddy had picked out for her, but she leaves the house, works at a job he doesn’t want to explain to his friends, and gets knocked up by some mystery man she won’t even name.”

  “Who is Cara’s father?”

  “No idea.” Shelly shook her head. “I asked once or twice, encouraged her to get child support, and she said, ‘That knight’s armor has tarnished.’ That’s all, subject closed. When I said Jillian was sweet, I didn’t mean she made herself an open book. She hardly talked about herself at all. I liked her, but I can’t say I really knew her. I’d like to ask you, though, what about that woman found in the Cultural Gardens? Channel Fifteen says there may be a connection between her and Jillian and that teenager.”

  “Channel Fifteen is wrong.”

  “But this black woman was murdered?”

  “Definitely.”

  “And you’re investigating Jillian?” Who probably wasn’t, Shelly’s expression said. Because a white girl always got more action than a black chick, even if they were in a similar line of work.

  “We’re investigating both of them, of course, but I don’t believe they’re connected. Sarah’s crime scene was quite different from Jillian’s.”

  “Sarah?”

  “Sarah Taylor. I’m sorry, but I can’t say more than that about an open investigation.” Shelly’s shoulders relaxed a bit, apparently reassured that Theresa at least knew the dead prostitute’s name. Theresa moved on. “Are you acquainted with her friend Drew Fleming?”

  Shelly wrinkled a pert nose. “The comic-book guy? Yeah, I’ve met him.”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “I guess he’s okay. Seems like a nice guy.” Shelly pressed her lips together, cutting off any further comment.

  So Theresa pressed. “Seems?”

  Now Shelly nibbled on the bottom lip. “Weird. Way too obsessed with Jillian. He came to the wedding, standing in this room full of people, and he never stopped staring at her. I tried to talk to him, he answered in monosyllables, never looked me in the eye. She made a beautiful bride, but come on. It seemed creepy to me.”
r />   “Did Evan resent this?”

  “Another man worshipping his woman from afar? Why would he?”

  That fit, in more genteel language, with what Evan had let the boys at the tech show assume. “Because Drew didn’t stay afar. He kept seeing Jillian, even after the wedding.”

  “Look at Drew and look at Evan. No contest. Nothing to worry about there.” The idea made her smile, but then the grin faded, changed to something worried. “You don’t think Drew could have done something to her, do you? Picked her up, had an argument, dropped her off at the beach and told her to walk, and she couldn’t make it?”

  It didn’t sound as if Shelly knew where Drew lived, and Theresa didn’t see the need to enlighten her-yet she had to stop feeling protective of Drew just because he reminded her of a few geeky cousins and uncles of her own. His proximity to the scene, his moodiness, hung in her mind, a faint but persistent fog of doubt. “Even from the beach it’s a short walk to the street. She could have gotten to a warm store or a gas station, used the phone.”

  Another young man, this one wearing a dress shirt and too much facial hair, stopped in the doorway. “Shelly, we need-”

  “I’ll be there in a sec.”

  “I’m sorry,” Theresa said. “You’re busy.”

  “That’s all right. Anything I can do…I really want to know what happened. Jillian was my friend.”

  Theresa pulled out the picture of the letterhead on Evan’s nightstand. “Just one more thing-do you recognize this logo?”

  “Yes. It’s one of the company’s investors-Evan and Jerry’s, I mean, not Delta. Why?”

  “What’s their name, this investment group?”

  Shelly’s parents had obviously taught her to tell the truth, but right now Theresa wondered if the girl wished they hadn’t. “Griffin Investments.”

  Theresa looked again at her own photo with genuine surprise. “And they don’t use a griffin as their logo?”

  This non sequitur must have reassured Shelly, who laughed and added, “They’re out of Detroit, I think. Why?”

  “Just curious, really.” Theresa stood. “I’d like to talk to Jerry too. Do you think he’d mind?”