“And we’d all be out of a job,” Alison quips.
She has a point.
“Look, Alison,” Hurley says, “I appreciate the info you’ve obtained, but I can’t involve you anymore at this point without compromising my investigation. You already know what we know anyway, and I promise you’ll be the first to know as soon as we have anything new.”
“I’m going to hold you to it,” she says, her shoulders slumping as she turns and heads back to her car.
Hurley and I watch her go, and as soon as she pulls away and drives down the street, we grab some gloves and equipment from the car and head for Tina’s front door. As Hurley tries keys, I turn on a video camera. I have a digital in my scene kit for stills, but these days we try to use video for any formal searches or questioning—lest we end up with another Tomas Wyzinski case. Hurley strikes gold with the third key he tries and we enter the small ranch-style home. While Hurley opens a scene kit and takes out some powder and a brush so he can dust the doorknob for prints, I shoot video of the living-room area off to my left. Hurley finds a couple of prints on the knob and I capture them with the camera before he lifts them. With that done, we shut the front door and I prepare to continue with my video documentation until Hurley stops me with a hand to my shoulder.
“Hold on,” he says. “Before we do anything else here, you and I need to finish our conversation.”
CHAPTER 17
Not for the first time, I curse Hurley’s elephant-like memory and laser-sharp focus, traits that make him a top-notch detective, but an annoying partner at times. I swallow hard and think fast.
“Look, Hurley, it’s getting late and we need to get a move on here. I promise you we’ll continue this conversation, but let’s put it off until later tonight, okay? Let’s do it at home, not in some dead woman’s house.”
Judging from the look he gives me, he’s not pleased with my manipulation—no big surprise. He closes his eyes, takes in a deep breath, and says, “Fine. But we are having this discussion tonight.”
“I promise.”
“I’m holding you to it.”
“I said I promise,” I repeat a bit irritably.
Seemingly satisfied for now, he drops the matter and starts looking around Tina Carson’s living room.
It’s always a sad thing to explore people’s homes when they’ve died unexpectedly. Things are left lying about in a manner that suggests the owners might return at any moment, and the knowledge they never will imbues the places with a tragic sense of loneliness and finality. Such is the case with Tina’s house. In the living room we find a half-finished cup of coffee, now cold, on the table in front of the couch. Next to it is a laptop, its lid open, the screen dark, either from a lack of power or, more likely I think, sleep. Hurley taps the space bar and proves my hunch right. The screen comes alive and reveals a library website featuring new books scheduled for release.
Hurley runs his gloved finger over the touchpad and a toolbar pops up at the bottom of the screen revealing other open programs: e-mail and word processing. Hurley opens the e-mail program and we read several recent ones: two from Hal detailing their plans for today, one from a lady named Edith thanking Tina for a book recommendation, and a couple of spam e-mails. Hurley looks in the deleted mail file, but all we find are more spam e-mails and some work-related stuff.
Next he looks at some of the word-processing files. The one that is open appears to be some sort of novel Tina was working on. A quick peek at several other files shows more of the same. It seems Tina was an aspiring author, and, ironically, a mystery writer, judging from the titles she’s given the works. I doubt she ever imagined she’d end up the victim in her own story.
Hurley closes the laptop, unplugs it, and bags it. Just to be safe, we collect the unfinished coffee in a container and bag both it and the mug, too. The obvious assumption is that it was Tina who was drinking the coffee, but to assume in a murder case risks more than just making an ass out of u and me.
A large-screen TV is hung over the fireplace and its remote is sitting on the table. Out of curiosity, I pick up the remote and turn on the TV. The last thing Tina was watching was the Weather Channel. She doesn’t have a DVR, so there aren’t any saved shows to view, but there is a DVD player on one of two overflowing bookcases in the room. I click the TV off and bag the remote. Then I wander over to the bookcases and peruse the titles. Not surprisingly, given her job, Tina’s reading tastes are eclectic. She has every genre of fiction imaginable, and several shelves are filled with nonfiction titles ranging from self-help and cookbooks to stuff written by Carl Sagan. The fireplace itself is clean and empty, and there’s a basket of knitting supplies and yarn on the hearth.
Little here appears to be of any evidentiary value, but I shoot video of it all anyway. Tina’s life may have been a largely solitary one for most of her years, but I get the sense she was content with it and had built a peaceful, cozy hideaway for herself.
Once we are done in the living room, we move into the adjacent dining room—a formal table and chairs that look like they haven’t been used in forever, and a china cabinet in one corner that holds some fancy champagne flutes and wineglasses—and from there into the kitchen.
A large window over the sink looks out into the backyard, which is beautifully landscaped. A small stone patio extends off from a door at the far end of the kitchen, and a small mosaic-topped table with two chairs sits on it. Off to the side of the patio is a small barbecue grill, utensils hanging from one end. Tina’s yard isn’t fenced, but the backyard of the house behind it is, creating a convenient border. All along the length of the fence is a huge flower bed bookended by a Japanese maple tree on one end and two large lilacs on the other. A colorful riot of flowers is in bloom: irises, wild phlox, forsythias, red and purple monardas, and several others I don’t recognize or know the names of. At the center of the yard is a majestic old oak tree, which will turn the yard into a roller-skating rink once the acorns start to fall. Walking in a yard filled with downed acorns is like walking on hundreds of ball bearings. But for now it provides a lovely shaded area Tina obviously enjoyed. A white wooden rocker sits near the trunk, a tiny, white, wicker-topped table beside it. On top of the table is an open book, pages down, waiting for Tina to pick it up and continue her read. It tears at my heart knowing she’ll never finish that book or see this beautiful yard again. It makes me wonder what Hal’s place is like, and which house—if either—they planned to live in after they were married.
The kitchen is spotless, like the rest of the house, and there is nothing of interest in the trash, the fridge, or the sink, though we grab the trash so we can go through it more thoroughly later. We move on to a bathroom off the main hall, which appears to be a guest bath. There are some generic bottles of over-the-counter allergy and pain medications in the medicine cabinet, but no personal items. The master bedroom at the end of the hall has its own bathroom and here we find some of Tina’s stuff. Based on the brands of shampoo and bath soap, Tina was a sale shopper, not a brand devotee. In the medicine cabinet, I find a prescription for an antibiotic, which is only half gone, and birth control pills. The one thing I don’t find is the usual stash of makeup most women have. There is one tube of lipstick on the counter and a compact with some blush, but nothing else.
In the bedroom, I find a stack of books next to the neatly made bed, all of them current fiction. Tina’s closet is as neat and organized as the rest of the place, her shoes lined up and paired on the floor, her hanging clothes arranged according to color. The color spectrum doesn’t vary much—it’s almost all browns, blues, blacks, and grays—and the styles are basic. Jonas was right about Tina and jewelry. The only baubles we find are two pairs of clip-on earrings sitting on top of a dresser. For all intents and purposes, Tina Carson was a plain and simple woman.
Hurley and I spend an hour and a half searching through the rest of the place, bagging some items, but finding little that looks to be of interest. When we’re done, we check to
make sure all the windows are locked—particularly the one over the sink where the man was seen peering in from outside—secure the house, and move on to search Tina’s car. It’s as tidy and neat as the house was, and we don’t find anything that appears to be useful. From there, we go out to the backyard and, using our flashlights now that dark has settled in, we search for footprints. We find two of them—one full and one partial—in some soft dirt beneath the kitchen window. Gloria was right: whoever was peeking in through Tina’s window had huge feet.
“These look to be a fifteen or sixteen,” Hurley says as we shoot video and take pictures. Once we have photo documentation, we set the cameras down and go about making casts of both prints. While waiting for the casting material to dry, Hurley dusts the ledge beneath the window for prints.
“Who do you think was the target here, Hurley?” I ask while he dusts. “Tina or Hal?”
“It’s hard to know,” he says. “Maybe it was both of them. Maybe it was a modern-day pirate type of thing where someone went to rob them and then got mad because they didn’t have anything of value.”
“They had the boat,” I point out. “And Tina was wearing a diamond ring. Granted, the stone in it wasn’t huge, but it’s still worth some money. And if you’re going to kill the people on the boat, why not just hijack the boat?”
Hurley shakes his head and doesn’t answer.
“I think one of them had to have been the target and the other one was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Maybe,” Hurley says. “Probably. But so far we have no reason to think either of them would have been targeted. We need to find a motive.” He shines his flashlight on the window ledge and sighs. “Though I would have settled for a fingerprint or two.”
“We have those two phone calls on Tina’s phone to Tomas Wyzinski’s brother,” I point out. “That seems like an odd coincidence.”
“True, but I suspect it may have been nothing more than research for one of her writing projects,” Hurley points out. “I think for once we might have a real coincidence. Let’s see if anything else pans out first.”
We leave Tina’s house around nine-thirty and head back to the station. I’m hungry again—not an unusual state for me—and even though I know it’s likely useless, not to mention dangerous, I sneak a peek in the station’s breakroom fridge. On the bottom shelf is a large plastic jug half filled with an amber-colored liquid. The bottle’s original label says it’s apple juice, but a second label taped over it says URINE—DO NOT DRINK. I wonder if the second label is accurate or simply an attempt to get other people to quit drinking it. On the shelf above the questionable liquid is a plastic take-out container with a clear lid that appears to be some sort of science experiment. Green, blue, and black fuzzies decorate the remains of whatever food is inside it, and the plastic top bulges threateningly. I’m tempted to remove it and toss it out, but I’m afraid if I touch or jostle it, it will explode.
The only other items in the fridge are a box of bullets, an open half pint of 2 percent milk, with an expiration date from six months ago, and a Baggie holding two pairs of folded men’s underwear—tighty-whities. I spend a moment or two trying to come up with a logical reason why a man would want his undies chilled in the fridge, but decide it’s the stuff of nightmares and move on. With a sigh, I close the door and head for the vending machine down the hall, where I pay five times the normal price for a bottled iced tea and a tiny bag of chips.
I head for Hurley’s office and see Bob Richmond is there, seated at a desk just in front of Hurley’s. They used to share a desk, but when Richmond returned to full-time work, he inherited a desk vacated by another detective who moved away.
“Hey, Mattie,” Richmond says as I walk in.
“Hi, Richmond.”
“Bob has been in charge of the search at Hal’s house,” Hurley says. “He was just about to fill me in on the results.”
“Anything of interest?” I settle into a chair and rip open my bag of chips, tearing it down the side and laying it open-face style on Hurley’s desk.
“We bagged a laptop and a bunch of home office files,” Richmond says. “Dropped them off to Jonas a bit ago and he said he’ll probably get to them in the morning, unless Laura has time tonight. Jonas said he already talked to you two about what he found in Hal’s truck.”
“He did,” Hurley says, shooting me a pointed look, a subtle reminder of the conversation we still need to have. “We found Tina’s purse and keys in the truck and just finished going through her place. There wasn’t much there, but we took her laptop, just in case it has anything to offer. One of the neighbors said she saw a guy peeking in Tina’s window earlier today and we did find some shoe prints, but no fingerprints.”
“Interesting,” Richmond says. “One of Hal’s neighbors said he saw some guy poking around Hal’s house earlier this afternoon.”
Hurley perks up at this. “What kind of description did you get?”
“Big guy,” Richmond says. “Taller than any of us and quite big in the chest and gut, but with thin legs. The neighbor who saw him said he was built like SpongeBob SquarePants. Mid-to-late fifties, dark hair but balding, with one of those comb-over jobs.”
“That same guy was seen at Tina’s house,” Hurley says. “We need to find out who he is. Anyone see him get into or out of a car?”
Richmond shakes his head. “The neighbor who saw him said he appeared from the backyard of the house behind Hal’s and then left the same way. So if he had a car, it was parked on the next block over. We canvassed those homes, but no one recalls seeing anything.”
“What time was he there?”
“Around ten-thirty, according to the neighbor,” Richmond says, reaching over and swiping a couple of my chips.
“He must have gone to Hal’s place first,” Hurley says, “and when he didn’t find him there, he went to Tina’s house.”
“What about Hal’s office?” Richmond asks. “Have you gone through his desk yet?”
“Not yet. That’s next on our agenda. After that I think I’m going to call it a night and start again early in the morning. Hopefully, we’ll have some information by then from those laptops or that USB drive Jonas found in Hal’s truck.”
“We should hit up the library tomorrow and talk to Tina’s coworkers,” I say. “Since we don’t know who the primary target was, we should consider motives and suspects for both of them. Maybe they know something about why Tina was talking to Tomas Wyzinski’s brother.”
“Agreed,” Hurley says. “Though based on what we know about Hal and Tina, I’d be surprised if she turns out to be the primary target.”
“Anything new on the Abernathy case?” Richmond asks, shifting subjects. “Figure out a cause of death yet?”
Hurley frowns and scratches his head. “Nope,” he grumbles. “Got the report on her initial tox screen this morning and it was negative, so I’ve got Arnie looking into some of the more obscure poisons and testing for what he can. If it wasn’t for the fact that the boyfriend has flown the coop, I’d be inclined to say she died of some natural cause we can’t identify and call it good. But there is the issue of the dead insects, and the boyfriend seems a little off to me. I feel like I need to keep plugging away at it, do what we can, though obviously Hal’s case is the priority for now.”
The three of us sit in silence for a minute until Richmond says, “Do you think this thing with Hal could have been a random attack of some sort?”
“It’s possible,” Hurley says, “but I doubt it. The way they were killed seems a little too personal to me. Not to mention the fact that they left Hal with a wallet full of cash. And Tina was wearing a diamond ring.” Hurley pauses and looks at me with a sad expression of sudden dawning. “Oh, jeez,” he says. “I just realized . . . diamond ring . . . that ring box in Hal’s pocket . . .”
I nod, fighting back tears.
“What am I missing here?” Richmond asks, looking back and forth between the two of us.
&nb
sp; “I’m pretty sure Hal proposed to Tina while they were on the boat this morning,” I tell him. “He told me he had something fun planned for the day, and I’m guessing that’s what it was.”
“Damn,” Richmond mutters with a frown. “That sucks.”
It does indeed and I spend a moment contemplating the unfortunate series of events that turned one of the happiest days in Hal and Tina’s lives into their last one on earth.
CHAPTER 18
Hurley tells Richmond to head home for the night so we can all start fresh again in the morning.
Richmond agrees—he’s got a hot date with Rose Carpenter, a divorcée he’s been seeing for the past two years.
Hurley and I walk over to my office and use my key fob to get in. There are a few basic night-lights on, but the place is eerily quiet and dark. Being here at night when there’s no one else around should be scary, but most of the time I find it soothing. I don’t believe in ghosts—at least not the malevolent spirits that want to harm the living kind of ghosts—so I’m not bothered knowing there are dead people in the cooler downstairs. Those people are why I’m here and why I do what I do. I work to find out what killed them, hopefully so the same fate won’t befall someone else.
It’s the living that frighten me, but here in my office, with all the doors locked and the security alarms in place, I feel safe. Hurley, on the other hand, looks a little creeped out, so I flip on a couple of extra lights for his benefit as we make our way to the library.
The top of Hal’s desk is neat and orderly, like everything else in Hal’s life, and the only item of interest is his computer.
I settle into Hal’s chair and turn the computer on. “You realize with everything that’s happened, I’m going to have to pick up a lot of extra shifts,” I say as we wait for the computer to boot up.
Hurley nods. “Hopefully, it will only be temporary.”
“Hard to know. With Izzy out for who knows how long, I have no idea when we’ll find a replacement for Hal. I’m not sure Otto will want to take on the hiring process.”
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