“Right, but you know as well as I do that it’s a lot harder to prove a case without DNA or fingerprints, and he’s gone to great lengths to make sure we don’t have either.”
“I have a better explanation,” Diane says through the speakerphone; I’d forgotten she was still with us. “There are, right now, hundreds of thousands of rape kits across the country that have never been processed for DNA due to lack of resources. Jails and prisons have also been collecting DNA for years, and the Supreme Court expanded that in 2013 when they ruled that DNA is no different from a fingerprint, and anyone being booked into jail on any charge can have their DNA collected. Of course, every jurisdiction is going to have different rules on how that’s carried out, but my point is that there is a huge backlog of DNA that has been collected and never analyzed—huge.”
“And you think Sad Face’s DNA is in the backlog somewhere?” Jimmy asks.
“It explains the bleach,” Diane replies. “He thinks he’s already in the system.”
It’s sobering; frustrating.
“Makes you wonder how many unsolved cases would be cleared if that backlog was caught up,” I say, each word biting, heavy with disappointment. “Imagine; we’d have a suspect right now. We’d know his name.”
Jimmy’s quiet, working it around in his head, processing it. When he eventually speaks, it’s classic Jimmy: “We’ll have to just do it the hard way,” he says.
*
At a quarter after nine Walt calls, and we brace for the news.
“After three hours of surgery and a couple hours in the recovery room, Matt Swanson has been upgraded to serious. The doctor says he should make a full recovery. It’s just going to take some time.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time,” Jimmy says as we exhale a collective sigh. “Thanks, Walt.”
Matt Swanson, an unlikely victim of Sad Face—and inadvertent victim. The serial killer may not have pulled the trigger himself, but he initiated the circle jerk that got the kid shot for doing nothing more than holding a remote.
And there are other victims: mom, dad, and the brothers.
There’s also the Redding PD officer who pulled the trigger when he saw a flash of silver in Matt’s hand swinging in his direction. He’s a different type of victim. He didn’t make the call to raid the Swanson house. He didn’t even know all the facts. All he was told was that a woman was missing in Butte County and that the license plate of a supposed serial killer named Steven Swanson was caught on surveillance video. He acted on the information he had.
Regardless, his life will never be the same.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
July 7, 9:47 A.M.
Days often fade into one another as a case unfolds; time becomes meaningless, unhinged. Jimmy says it’s because we’re focused on the mission, not on the clock, but it’s still hard to believe it’s been two days since Susan Ault disappeared so completely. Worse still, we’re no closer to finding her—or stopping Sad Face.
On top of that, yesterday was a media disaster for Walt. He spent the better part of the day locked away in his office either talking heatedly on the phone or yelling at the TV as it broadcast repetitive, mind-numbing news stories about the Swanson family, Susan Ault, and the search for a serial killer who seemed impossible to find.
As bad as it was for Walt and the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, it was worse for Redding PD.
“How much longer are you going to be in D.C.?”
“Not long,” Heather replies. Her voice is sweet in my ear, soothing. Though three thousand miles separate us, I can almost feel her lips near my cheek, projecting whispered words toward my ear. “I should be able to wrap everything up in another couple days; a week at the most,” she adds.
“Then back to Seattle?”
“Yes, provided nothing else pops up. How about you?”
I open my mouth, but the words don’t come. It’s an easy enough question, I just don’t know how to answer. Frankly, I don’t want to think about it. Sad Face has us up against the wall; he’s playing games with us, and the life of Susan Ault is the prize. It’s not a game we can forfeit. The pause drags into an uneasy silence, and then Heather’s voice is in my ear again.
“That bad?”
It’s only two soft words, but the compassion attached to them is palpable. I feel a sudden ache inside my chest—an emptiness in my gut—and all I have is the sweetness of her voice and the three thousand long miles between us.
“Yeah.” I barely manage to get the word out, but once I force it past my teeth it’s like a logjam breaking loose and I pour out my hopes and fears in long breathless sentences strung together with angst. “It’s like Leonardo all over again,” I say at the end, then cringe at my own words.
“Don’t do that,” Heather says.
“Do what?” I say the words, but I know perfectly well what she’s going to say.
I hear her sigh, and then her voice is soft again. “You break my heart sometimes, Steps. You have this yoke you wear around your neck with great bags hanging off each side and whenever you don’t solve a crime, or don’t find someone in time, it’s like you pick up the biggest rock you can find and put it into one of the bags. You punish yourself for something that was never your fault to begin with.”
“I’m not punishing myself—”
“You are.” The words are more forceful, direct. “And the greatest punishment of all is that you won’t let anyone help; not Jimmy, not me.” She lets the words sink in. “Your dedication to the victims, to all of them, is admirable, but you have to know when to let go or it’s going to break you. That yoke is going to drive you right into the ground and bury you. Remember where the blame lies, and that’s with monsters like Sad Face, and Mohawk, and Main Vein, and…” She pauses. “And, yes, Leonardo.”