“Everything’s good,” he told her, stretching a smile. “Your staff was very cooperative.” He sobered and added, “Everyone is obviously deeply affected. But they were all able to bear up. An impressive group.”
She nodded, wringing her hands, and looked out the window. He followed her gaze to the blackout tent in the parking lot. The evidence techs were almost done working the car and Harriet Fogarty’s body had finally gone to the morgue for autopsy where Terry, her husband, refused to leave her side. Mike had to go talk to him next and wasn’t looking forward to it. Talking to the bereaved was often the worst part of the job, not just because of their grief, but his own.
“Have you found anything?” Her expression was earnest but there was a trace of irritability in her tone.
“Right now we don’t know much, Ms. Rankin. This was a brutal crime. Haven’t seen anything like this in a long time. I’d say though that whoever did this has a lot of anger.”
“Was anything stolen? Was it a robbery? I keep thinking it’s unusual this would happen at eight o’clock at night if it wasn’t a robbery; if it was random. Some of the staff leave at four, some stay until five. But after five, everybody is gone.”
“I can’t really discuss that. But what I can say is I think this person felt they had a reason to be upset.” He pulled a business card from his wallet and passed it to her. “I’ve left quite a few of these, but here’s another.” He’d already asked her, but it couldn’t hurt: “Can you think of anyone, at all, who would want to do Harriet harm?”
“Well, like I mentioned to you and Detective Overton – unfortunately we upset some people in this business. Regardless if they’re putting their child in danger, parents typically don’t like it when those children then get taken away.” She bit at her bottom lip for a moment. “What about…?”
He waited.
“What about Roberta Noelle?” Rankin asked. “She was supposed to be here; it was her case…”
“We’re looking into everything,” Mike said. He moved toward the door.
She went on, following him. “Was the car broken into?”
“I really can’t say anything else, I’m sorry.”
He opened the door to leave and Rankin said, “You know, caseworkers are responsible for a lot. Assessing the safety of children, investigating allegations of abuse or maltreatment—”
“Yes, for sure. Thank y—”
“If it’s occurring, then we access the necessary interventions to teach families how to do it differently.”
“Right…”
“We can access parent aids, or for drug issues we help them with… There are cases where the judge can court order services. Or the extreme, which is foster care.”
He let go of the door and resigned himself to listen until the end.
“In the assessment process, we interview all parties but families can refuse. We conduct home assessments, talk with and work with collaterals to monitor the situation. So there are a lot of people involved in what we do. That’s my point. A lot of people.”
He nodded, feeling slightly sparked. “And then there’s also the family involved – the Fullers – and whoever they may be associated with. Which is why we’ll need to see everything from the Child Welfare Unit.” She started to object but he held up a hand, adding, “We’ll obtain a writ so we can have a look at what she’s been working on. What I’ve gotten is that Harriet didn’t do a lot of direct casework as a supervisor, but she was overseeing quite a lot.”
“As a supervisor she had a smaller caseload. That’s why I think it’s possible that—”
“I understand. We’re looking into it. Thank you, Ms. Rankin.”
“Okay…” She seemed suddenly wistful and held up the business card, studying it as he finally pushed out through the door.
* * *
The afternoon was a scorcher, but he was grateful for the fresh air.
Brit Silas, a crime scene technician who oversaw the processing of evidence, was next to the tent. A few reporters remained beyond the crime scene tape and saw Mike. They called questions and aimed their cameras but he headed for Silas first.
“We’ve gone all through the vehicle for trace evidence,” she said as Mike neared. “It’s a deluxe model, leather interior. So far, no fingerprints. But we’ve got swabs for DNA processing.”
Mike held up a hand toward the reporters – in a minute. “And you’ll get elimination prints from the victim and her husband along with their DNA samples...”
Brit nodded, the afternoon sun glimmering in her eyes. “Step in?”
“Sure.” He followed her through the flap into the tent. Lights had been rigged to illuminate the small area, turning the dried streaks of blood on the windscreen to black. One crime scene tech was still inside the vehicle, hunched over in the back. There was just enough room to walk around the car, but Silas was standing still, pointing at a yellow marker on the ground. “Partial boot print there,” she said. “That little bit of blood has tread on it. It’s amazing with all the blood in the car there aren’t more tracks. But the spatters are mostly on the windshield and dashboard. I’d say about four pints of blood in that car. At least fifty percent blood loss, class four hemorrhaging; she probably died of hypovolemic shock. But you’ll get all that from Dr. Crispin.”
He looked down at the shiny splotch of dark red fluid on the asphalt. It held a slightly rectangular shape – like Silas had said, from the tread of a shoe. “Did they break in?”
“Doesn’t look like it. No scratches, no obvious sign of forced entry. But we’ll have to take apart the door to be sure.”
She pushed back out of the tent and Mike followed. There was another crime scene marker on the ground, and another red splotch, but smaller.
“This is her blood,” Mike guessed.
“I think so, yes. We’ll know soon enough. There’s only the two marks forming the trail. I’d say the doer got it on his shoe while he was in the car, just a little bit, and then tracked it, got rid of it on his walk away.”
Mike followed the trail of two blood drops, looking into the parking lot and at the woods beyond. He could see a K-9 officer moving amid the trees, pulled along by his German Shepherd. He thought about Jessica Rankin saying that employees regularly cleared out at five. If the killer had targeted a specific caseworker, it wasn’t chance; he’d known she was working late.
“Thank you, Brit.”
Mike headed for the barricade, the reporters and microphones stretching toward him.
* * *
The dog was straining against its leash. Officer Crudup emerged from the trees just as Mike, finished talking to the TV people, reached the edge of the parking lot. They walked to the K-9 unit van together on the far side of the building.
“So he was picking up on something, for sure,” Crudup said, referring to the dog. Crudup opened the rear of the van and let the German Shepherd off the leash. It hopped up into the vehicle where it circled around and stared back out at them, panting in the heat.
Crudup was perspiring too, breathing heavy. He pointed back into the woods. “So right up there, you go about fifty yards, you come out on River Street. Runs all along the back of the woods. Frenchie took me all the way there, really straining. Walked me down the road shoulder a ways, stopped in between two houses.”
“Like someone had parked there,” Mike guessed. “Parked up on River Street, came down through the woods, did the stabbing, and went right back out the same way.”
“Could be.”
Mike rotated around to face the front entrance. Lake Haven PD had viewed footage from the security camera, only to confirm that Harriet Fogarty had left at seven forty-nine the previous evening and walked out of frame. The camera had an angle on the access road, but no vehicles were recorded arriving or leaving.
He left Crudup and circled the L-shaped, single-story building, taking his time, just looking at everything. He saw the yellow excavator and made a note in his little black notepad. By the time he wound up back at the K-9 van, he was sweating like everybody else.