Wanda Therrieult, fiftyish, short, and round, was sitting at a desk in the corner of the room, tapping away at a keyboard and drinking from a Big Hug Mug when Duckworth entered the room.
“You want a coffee or anything?” she asked when she saw him, taking off a pair of reading glasses. “I got one of these single-cup things where you can pick what flavor you want.”
She got up and showed him the machine, and a rack filled with various kinds of coffee that came in tiny containers the size of restaurant creamers.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, examining the labels. “What the hell is Volluto? Or Arpeggio? What’s that supposed to be? What do you have that’s closest to what I get at Dunkin’?”
“You’re hopeless,” she said. “I’ll just pick you one.”
She chose a capsule, put it into the machine, set a mug in place, and hit a button. “Now it’ll work its magic.”
“You should think about getting a doughnut machine, too. Why hasn’t Williams-Sonoma come up with one of those? A gadget you put on your countertop where you touch a button and out pops a fresh chocolate glazed.”
Wanda studied him. “I was about to say that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, but then thought, I would buy one of those.”
“It’s twenty years today,” he said.
“What’s twenty years?”
“I’ve been with the department two whole decades as of today.”
“Get out.”
“Would I lie?”
“So, what, you joined when you were ten?”
“I’m a trained investigator, Wanda. I can tell when someone is bullshitting me.”
She smiled. “Congrats. Was there a thing? A little ceremony?”
He shook his head. “No. You’re the only one I’ve told. I didn’t even mention it to Maureen. It’s no big deal.”
“You’re one of the good ones, Barry.” The machine beeped. She handed him his coffee, raised her own, and they clinked mugs. “To twenty years of catching bad guys.”
“To catching bad guys.”
“And you’ve got a pretty bad one out there now,” she said, tipping her head in the direction of the body.
“Show me.”
Wanda set her mug down, went over to the examining table, and pulled back the sheet, but only as far as the top of the dead woman’s breasts.
“I wanted to show you something first,” she said, pointing to Rosemary Gaynor’s neck. “You see these impressions here? This bruising?”
Duckworth took a close look. “Thumbprint there, on this side of the neck, and four fingers over on this side. He grabbed her around the throat.”
“With his left hand,” she said. “If she had been grabbed by the front, the thumbprint would be a little more to the front of her neck, not so far down the side.”
“So he throttled her from behind. You suggesting he’s left-handed?”
“Just the opposite.”
Wanda pulled the sheet back further, exposing the woman to her knees. The body had been washed clean of blood, making the gash across her abdomen graphically clear. It ran roughly from hip bone to hip bone, dipping slightly en route.
“Our boy put the knife in and basically sliced his way across, going from her left to right side. The cut runs at a fairly consistent depth all the way, about three inches. Now, you’d figure, if someone was being attacked that way, they’d try to pull back, or fall, something, but that’s not the case here.” She turned and faced him and held out her arms, as though inviting him to dance. “May I?”
She came around behind him. “This won’t be quite right because you’re taller than I am, and I figure the killer was a good four or five inches taller than the victim in this case, but this will give you the right idea.”
Wanda pressed herself up against his backside, then, with her left hand, reached over his left shoulder and grabbed his neck, pressing her thumb onto the left side, her fingers digging into the right.
“Once he was holding her tight up against himself,” she said, “he reached around like this. . . .”
And she brought her right arm around his right side, reaching as far as she could, and made the motion of driving a knife into the left side of his abdomen, then moved her arm across to his right.
“The knife was in, and while he held her firmly, he just sawed right across.”
“Got it,” he said.
“I’m gonna let you go now before I lose control,” Wanda said flatly. She went around the examination table, across from Duckworth.
“Jesus,” he said.
“Yeah. This guy’s a nasty piece of work.”
Duckworth couldn’t take his eyes off the wound. “You know what it looks like?” he said.
Wanda nodded. “Yeah.”
“A smile. It looks like a smile.”
TWENTY-NINE
David
ETHAN had already returned the watch to his grandfather, even before he and Carl had disappeared into the basement to see the trains. Once Samantha Worthington and her son had left, I went back into the house and found Dad in the kitchen holding the item that had once belonged to his own father.
He looked at me and said, “I’m confused. Was that woman Sam?”
“Yeah,” I said.