“Vehicle…?”
“Okay, the victim’s car – 2012 Kia Sportage. This is where it gets interesting. Speaking of cleaning, we discovered a substance in the back seat, a chemical commonly found in those clean-up and protectant wipes, like Armor All.”
“He tidied up after himself,” Mike said.
“It could explain the lack of sweat secretions.”
“But that stuff – cleaning stuff – doesn’t get rid of DNA, does it?”
“Well, it can, yeah. Armor All contains diethylene glycol.”
“And that will do it?”
“Sometimes. I mean, DNA is not indelible. Bleach, hydrochloric acid, even soap and warm water can work in some cases. But we’re still looking. Otherwise, we got dirt. Bits of leaves and moss. We took samples from the woods, and they’re a match. And we’ve determined the imprint is a size twelve or thirteen work boot. So, the guy’s big; big feet anyway.”
Mike heard a key hit the lock downstairs and got up from the bed. “What about the door, breaking in?”
“So, power locks, as you know, are activated by the remote fob or standard key. The door is untouched and doesn’t really tell us anything except if he did clone the fob, it’s not hard – this is not high security but pretty standard.”
“Okay, Brit. Thanks.”
“Sorry I don’t have better news.”
“No, it’s good.” He stuck his phone in his pocket and started for the stairs, thinking about a killer with the foresight to bring protective wipes along. It might mean he was in the system and working hard to cover his tracks. Or he was just being extra cautious in general.
“Dad?”
He called down, “Yeah, up here. Hang on.”
Mike ducked into the bathroom, stuck his face in the mirror. His hair was flat on one side. He ran the tap and tried to reshape it a bit, smooth things out. He breathed into his cupped palm and made a face. Took down his toothbrush, went for the toothpaste, found the tube squashed and empty.
Did the wipes prove the killer had every intent to murder Harriet right there in her car? No. But cleansing wipes weren’t going to do much with fabric upholstery – maybe he’d known Harriet’s car had a leather interior. More points on the scorecard that he knew her, unless he always walked around in a body suit with Armor All wipes in his pocket.
Mike managed to squeeze a pea-sized dollop from the tube. He brushed with haste.
Also, the DSS building was remote, on the edge of town, tucked against the woods, but how could the killer be certain there wasn’t a nighttime cleaner hanging out inside, someone who’d see him? There were no other cars in the parking lot, but some people took the bus, or taxi. Mike knew there was no one working when Harriet was murdered – he’d looked at all the employment records for that Thursday, and the penultimate person to leave for the day was the other supervisor, Jessica Rankin, at 5:43 – but had the killer known that, too?
Did he know the typical schedule of the caseworkers? Had he been watching for a while? Sitting up in that house? In 120-degree heat in the attic? Waiting for Rankin to leave, then Harriet two hours later? Maybe not that hot as the sun fell, but still. Pretty hot. And big as he was – local PD had done all the door-to-doors – nobody had seen some large man coming and going from the vacant house. Canvassing photos revealed what Mike had seen with his own eyes: depressions in the long grass that, on further thought, could’ve been made by a dog or a deer.
Rankin said they rarely worked late. Maybe then, if the killer wasn’t watching from the nearby vacant house, he otherwise knew Harriet would be detained. That pointed back to the Fullers; that the killer knew Harriet was staying late because of the emergency placement for the boy, Grayson. But the Fullers were locked up and had no known associates – unless they’d hired someone to kill Harriet… and that was really stretching it.
Fuck.
Or if not the Fullers – hell – maybe Pritchard had been the one to hire someone. Just because he was lying up at Marlene Blackburn’s place didn’t mean he was off the hook. He could’ve used someone else, just like Chelo had used someone to gun down Mike’s dad.
Mike set the toothbrush aside, ran some water into his palms to rinse his mouth, thinking if Harriet staying late was an anomaly, and if the killer wasn’t up at the house on River Street, how had he known when to strike?
Mike heard his daughter walking around downstairs, the floor creaking. “Dad…” Her voice drifted up. “It smells in here. Open a window…”
He spat in the sink. “Be right down!”
Maybe the guy was just down in the woods, skulking around in the trees until the time came. He didn’t have a broad view of things because he didn’t need to; he could stay hidden and just wait for the time to come.
Because maybe – and this was a big one – he had other ways of knowing who would be leaving, staying, and when. Other ways of watching.
* * *
Mike bounded down the stairs, giving his armpits a sniff. Good enough. Kristen was in the kitchen. She kept her back to him as she fiddled with the coffee machine. “What did you do to this thing?”
“Haven’t been using it,” he said. “Been heating water on the stove, having green tea.”
She left the appliance alone and turned around. Seeing her was always his greatest joy – and at the same time carried a familiar weight: hellos and goodbyes were when Molly’s absence was the hardest, even after all these years. He could see in Kristen’s eyes that it was the same for her.
They met in the middle of the room and he hugged her, probably too tight, and she put her head on his shoulder. “Dad, you look terrible.”
“You want coffee? We can go out for some. Or there’s instant.”
She pulled away, scrunching up her nose. “No thanks.” She backed up from him, not quite meeting his gaze until she bumped against the sink. He stayed in the middle of the room, disarmed, as ever, by his little girl. Not so little anymore.
She looked like him through the eyes, her mother through the mouth. Tall like him, though, scraping the sky at almost six feet. Not bad for a grown woman of twenty-two, hard for a school-aged girl of twelve who’d just lost her mother and for whom every normal adolescent challenge had been more acute.
“How’s the job?” he asked.
She seemed to be looking around for something and walked to the adjoining counter, picked out an apple from a wooden bowl, gave it a look, set it back. “Job’s good.”
“I’m sorry I don’t have anything more to eat. There’s this case that just… ah, man…”
“I know. I read about it.” She scanned him up and down. “Sleeping in your clothes?”
“You’re here before I expected. You got an early start, huh?”
“It’s after nine; I’m up early. There’s a little drool there on your sleeve.”
He walked to the sink, ran the tap over his arm.
Kristen drew closer. “Here. Let me do it.” She scrubbed the white shirt sleeve with her thumbs.
When she was finished he said, “I gotta change anyway.”
She moved to the bar stools perched where the second counter overhung. The way she sat there, Mike flashed back to her as a little girl, feet dangling. They’d bought the place in 1999, when Kristen was just three. After Molly died, he’d almost sold it. He’d wanted to start over – Molly’s ghost was everywhere. But Kristen, by then twelve, didn’t remember any other home. For her, reminders of her mother were a good thing, not something to run from.
Then the recession hit, kicked off by the housing crash, and Mike had decided to stay put. Keeping the house became a way of hanging tough, surviving the loss of Molly, surviving the severe economic downturn. Sometimes he’d felt like he and Kristen were the last two people left on earth, and their home was their refuge.
She stared at him. “You not telling me something?”
“No.”
“You said that we were always… You know what you said.”
“I’m okay.”