Moberg squinted through a rip in the screen.
“I saw your picture in the paper,” he said. “I shouldn’t have sent that.”
“But you did. Can I come in?” she asked, attempting a smile.
“I don’t have anything for you.”
“Don’t you at least have coffee?”
“Coffee,” he said. He thought for a moment. “I do have that.”
Moberg didn’t invite her in, but he did turn around and walk purposefully down the hallway. Lydia took this as an invitation and pulled open the screen door. The floor was industrial linoleum so filthy with grime that for a moment she thought it was gray carpet. The wood-paneled hall bowed with water damage. She could hear him clicking on a gas stove and opening cupboards. Out of politeness she heeled off her snowy sneakers and left them by the door.
“Wait in there,” he said from behind a wall.
In there, past the kitchen, was a single room with a small wooden table and two wooden chairs. A woodstove hunkered near the table. An empty aquarium sat on the floor. Books—mass-market mysteries—were stacked eye-high against all four walls.
Moberg appeared, holding a weathered spiral notebook.
“Be a few minutes on the coffee,” he said.
He smirked at something above her head.
“You here for you?” he said.
“I guess so.”
“It’s yes or no. Is this for some newspaper article or true-crime book? My Night with the Hammerman. Or you here for you?”
“Just for me.”
“Not to solve it, I hope.”
“To solve it?”
“Are you playing detective or just sorting out your head?”
“I don’t know that there’s a difference.”
“Shit,” he laughed, then laughed harder. “Shit!”
When the coffee was ready Moberg presented it on an orange plastic cafeteria tray. He offered her sugar cubes.
“You want answers,” he said, “but if I had answers the case would be closed instead of twenty years cold. Can I just tell you that during my whole career I saw maybe five murders get solved this long after? Time passes. People forget. Evidence is tainted. Once a murder loses its context it’s nearly impossible to find anything new. Sometimes science will catch up but don’t count on it here. DNA this and DNA that. Everyone wants it. Worse than faith healers. Snake handlers. I hope you’re not counting on anything like that.”
“I’m not sure what I’m counting on,” she said.
“Maybe just peace of mind. You won’t get it but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth seeking. I’ll give you all I got. Then you go.”
And he did. As easy as that, Lydia was listening to Moberg recall his memories of working what he called the O’Toole Family Murders. His tone was cold but his words were clear. Not a story, but a case. Not an experience, but a file. The act of watching him scan through his notebook, then comment on his notes out loud was unlike anything Lydia had ever been through. She appreciated his rationality because it allowed her to view the evening, for the first time ever, with something close to detachment, and she periodically had to remind herself that she’d been there, in the house, on the night when all of these details gained relevance.
Like the talcum powder: traces of it on the O’Tooles’ back doorknob, the light switches, the kitchen counter. Likely from latex gloves, packaged with talc to keep them from sticking together. No viable prints, so he apparently wore the gloves the whole time, even as he rinsed his hands after. Probably didn’t take them off until he was well outside the house.
The murder weapon: A standard twenty-ounce claw hammer, manufactured at a plant in Gary, Indiana, and owned by one of the victims, Bart O’Toole. He’d scratched his initials on its oval base, just as he had on most of his tools: beo. The hammer had likely been removed from the metal toolbox on the covered back porch, or possibly from the victim’s plumbing truck, or even his unlocked garage, at some point before the murders.
The pot: two grams of low-grade marijuana found in Dottie O’Toole’s dresser drawer, along with a film canister of seeds and a Proto Pipe.
The boom box, or whatever you want to call it: sitting atop the fridge, no longer working. Nothing immediately peculiar about it, but under closer inspection it was discovered to be wet inside: drips tipped out of it when it was tilted to the side. Possibly it had been brought inside after being left in the snow.
The footprints: Left by a pair of Sears & Roebuck work boots, steel toe, heavy traction, size 10?. Common size. Footprints throughout the house showed no irregularities in the soles. Investigators found that no fewer than 116 pairs of that boot, in that size, had been sold at locations around the city in the six months before the attack, and an exhaustive series of interviews found that not a single clerk had noticed anything anomalous about any of said transactions.
The coat: Bart O’Toole’s hooded utility jacket, which turned up in a roadside ditch on the north side of the city two months after the killings. The jogger who discovered it found O’Toole’s name on a receipt inside a pocket and called the police. Trace bloodstains on the sheepskin lining suggested the Hammerman put it on before leaving the house to cover up the blood staining his own clothing. All of the blood could be traced to the three deceased.
The flashlight: an Eveready economy model, ribbed aluminum, well used, found on the kitchen floor. No initials, but like the hammer, the flashlight could have been taken from the toolbox or plumbing truck or garage. According to the survivor (“That would be you”), the Hammerman turned off the only light before beginning his attack, leaving the house entirely dark. Inconclusive whether he used his flashlight to illuminate the killings.
The hole in the drywall in the hallway: Not so odd, except the presence of gypsum dust along the top of the baseboards below and granules on the carpet showed that the hole had likely been made within a week or so of the attack and the dust had been mostly, if not effectively, vacuumed up. Someone had hung a framed family photo over the hole, but the picture of course shattered and fell that night, leaving shards of glass in the hall.
The survivor, specifically the survivor’s blood: Drips of it found in a smudged path on part of the living room carpet and across the kitchen floor. Blood came from the forehead laceration suffered when she was crawling to hide and bashed into the corner of the coffee table. Much of the blood trail had been smeared around by the time the police arrived, but that night, when the drips were fresh, the killer had somehow missed seeing them. Even with the aforementioned flashlight— “Wait,” Lydia said. “What are you saying exactly?”
Moberg looked up from his notebook.
“Just that you cut your head pretty bad and bled a path from the living room to the kitchen sink. But somehow the Hammerman didn’t notice it.”