Blind Spot (34 page)

“Right about that.” Garcia peeked under another clip and another. Some were four layers thick. Four murders deep. He kept talking while he read. “On the other hand, you have to wonder if Quaid’s right. These scum should get drawn and quartered. Personally, I’m a big fan of the death penalty.”

“So we should let him go about his business. Play judge and jury and executioner and God and whatever else he wants to play.”

“I didn’t say that. I can see why Quaid thinks they should get what they deserve. That’s all. Why should some piece of garbage walk around—live and breathe and eat and take a dump at taxpayer expense—while his victims are six feet under? Hell. Some of them don’t even get time. Look at the judge. Don’t you tire of the bad guys getting off so light?”

“I see what you’re saying.” She was tired of looking at the newspaper wall. Too depressing. She turned around and stared at the other walls, decorated with a motley collection of crosses and icons. The crucifixes were plastic, and the tapestries were the sort of rags sold by street vendors. The velvet painting of the Last Supper would have been right at home next to a velvet Elvis portrait. Quaid’s basement efficiency reminded her of the bargain basement of a religious bookstore. She blurted something she’d normally contain in her head: “All this Catholic paraphernalia. My mother would have loved it, God rest her soul.”

Garcia pulled his eyes off the collage and snapped his head around to stare at her. She stared right back and asked him: “What?”

He returned his attention to the clippings. “A spiritual utterance out of your mouth. You don’t seem particularly religious.”

She was offended. “I was raised Catholic, you know.”

He turned away from the wall and pointed to the computer. “Think you can do anything with that? You know how those boxes work better than I do.”

She ran her eyes over the monitor. It looked tempting—a treasure chest waiting to be cracked open. Memories of her past rash decisions at crime scenes—and the discipline that resulted—reeled her back in. “I’d hate to accidentally mess up some evidence.”

“Your call,” he said.

She thought Garcia sounded disappointed. “I don’t know spit about computer forensics,” she added.

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s snoop around the Vatican the old-fashioned way.” He pulled some gloves out of his jacket and snapped then on. He started with the furniture, getting down on his knees and checking under the couch. “Pretty clean for a bachelor pad.”

She went over to a weight bench, parked against one wall with dumbbells and barbells on the floor around it. “He keeps in shape.”

“Girlie weights,” spat Garcia without turning around. “I saw that equipment when we walked in.”

She eyed the bar positioned over the bench and added up the numbers stamped on the side of the round plates. “Counting the bar itself, I’ll bet he’s pressing close to two hundred pounds.”

“I do that in my sleep.”

She went over to the apartment’s only closet and pulled open the door. A row of footwear covered the floor. Each sneaker or dress shoe was with its mate, and all the pairs were lined up with toes pointing to the back of the closet. Over the shoes, a solid wall of clothes hung from a bar. The short-sleeved shirts were together, facing the same way. Then all the long-sleeved shirts. Then the slacks. Last came the blazers. “I wonder if he’d come over and do my closets.”

Garcia crawled to his feet and stared at the rope art hanging on the wall behind the couch. “Did you catch this? The knot-tying that you were talking about. That Father Pete confirmed.”

“I noticed,” she said, still eyeing the jammed but neat closet. Most of the stuff was black or gray. Even if Quaid was no longer a priest, he was dressing like one. A flowery panel of material hiding amid the dark ones caught her attention. Wrestling it out of the wedge of clothes, she held the oddball up by the hanger. She blinked three times before her eyes registered that it was one of those aprons beauty salons draped over customers to protect their clothing.

“Find something?” asked Garcia. He went over to the kitchen and started opening and closing drawers and cabinets.

“Apron from a beauty parlor.” She crammed the drape back into the closet, making sure she returned it to its spot between the blazers and the slacks.

Garcia opened the refrigerator and held his nose while he looked inside. “Apron? Wonder what the hell that’s about.” He closed the refrigerator and opened the top freezer compartment.

She glanced over at him. “Any body parts on ice? A hand or two?”

“Frozen peas and fish sticks. Blue Bunny Rocky Road.”

She took down a jacket hanging from a door hook and checked the pockets. Found only lint. “What’s the worst thing you ever found in a freezer?”

He lifted up the bag of peas and pushed aside the box of fish sticks. “Does a walk-in freezer count?”

“No. That’s really a room.” She hung the jacket back on the hook.

“Chest okay?” He started to close Quaid’s freezer door and then reconsidered. He reached inside and retrieved the ice-cream bucket.

“Works for me.” She crouched down and lifted the lid off a shoe box. Empty.

“Found a guy and his parrot in a commercial chest freezer. Frozen solid. It was a Mafia thing.” He wrestled with the ice-cream bucket’s slippery top. “Your turn. Worst thing ever. Same rule. Chest freezer or fridge freezer. No walk-ins.”

“Fridge freezer. A guy’s privates.”

Garcia grimaced. “Ouch.”

“At first I thought it was fake. You know.”

He stopped struggling with the lid for a moment and looked at her with raised brows. “Fake?”

“One of those hollow dildos people fill with water and stash in the freezer.” She quickly added: “I only know about those because I went to a bachelorette party. Instead of regular cubes in the punch, they had ice shaped like penises.”

“Hilarious.”

She frowned. “Where did I leave off with this? Oh yeah. The guy’s ex-girlfriend separated the guy from his privates after she killed him. Then the psycho took the penis home with her.” Bernadette pushed aside the shoes and felt around the back of the closet, behind the wall of clothes. She sat back on her heels and looked over at Garcia, who was working the lid again. “Found it in an ice-cream bucket, as a matter of fact. An empty pint of Ben and Jerry’s.”

“I’ll be really impressed if you can remember the flavor.”

“Chunky Monkey.”

The top popped off, and Garcia looked inside. “No hands. No parrots. No penises. Not even a frozen dildo.” He snapped the lid back on the bucket and returned the container to the freezer.

She got up off her knees and stood on her tiptoes to check the shelf over the clothes bar. Sweaters and sweatshirts, folded into neat rectangles and stacked like sandwiches. “I’m coming up with a whole lotta nothing so far.”

Garcia headed for Quaid’s bathroom. “I’ll see if the john’s got any goodies.”

“Grab some hair while you’re in there,” she said after him. “Got a bag for it?”

“Yes, Mom.” He walked through.

She closed the closet. “Anything jump out at you?”

“A woman’s dressing table,” he said from the other side of the bathroom door. The sound of dresser drawers being opened and closed.

“Weird.” She crossed the room to investigate a collection of electronic equipment he had parked in a corner. A cheap television set sat on a wobbly stand. Next to that was a cheap stereo system. On the floor next to the stereo was a CD wallet. She picked it up and paged through it. Classical religious music. Bach. Handel. Mozart. Beethoven. A smattering of country gospel by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Some religious sets by Elvis. The score from
The Passion of the Christ.
None of it was to her taste. She closed the wallet and set it down.

Bernadette turned around and looked at the computer monitor again, gritting her teeth, as Quaid’s self-righteous screen saver scrolled across repeatedly. “Maybe I
could
check out the history of his Web searches. That shouldn’t mess up anything too badly. I hope.”

“What’d you say?” Garcia called from the bathroom.

“Nothing.” She walked over to the desk and sat down on the edge of the office chair. She reached for the mouse and stopped, contemplating the gloves on her hands. No. She didn’t want to take them off; she wasn’t ready to use her curse of sight. Not now, not here. She needed her energy to concentrate on regular investigative work. She pulled the leather tighter over her fingers.

“We gotta move this operation along,” Garcia said, poking his head through the bathroom doorway. “Our guy could show up any minute.”

“Something tells me we have some time,” she said over her shoulder.

He watched her cup her hand over the mouse. “Change of heart?”

“Yeah.”

Garcia popped his head back inside the bathroom. “It’s your show, Cat.”

“Maybe this time it really is,” she said in a low voice. She rolled the mouse and noticed what was under it. The pad showed a man dressed in a dark suit and tie topped by a dark hat and sunglasses—like one of the Blues Brothers guys. The words printed across the pad read:
On a Mission from God.

“Delusional maniac.”

She jiggled the mouse again, and Quaid’s desktop appeared, as spare as his apartment. Only a handful of icons on the screen, and all neatly stacked to one side, on the left. At the bottom of the totem pole was his e-mail. She wondered if she could check it without messing up anything. She braced herself, set the cursor over the icon, and opened his mail.

“Zip,” she said. Nothing in his out basket. Nothing in his in basket. Even his wastebasket of deleted mail was empty. Either he never corresponded with anyone, or he’d been meticulous about cleaning out his files. The bureau’s computer geeks would have to dig deeper. She hit the “X” on the top right of the screen and returned to the desktop.

She clicked on the Internet Explorer icon and it opened to Google. She moved the cursor to the top of the screen and clicked on the arrow curled in a counterclockwise direction. The history icon.

The screen split, with Google still open on her right and Quaid’s Internet history on the left. She stared at the hunk of screen on her left. “Son-of-a-gun,” she said, louder than she intended.

Garcia came out of the bathroom, stuffing a plastic bag in his pocket. “What?”

“His history—what he’s looked at while on the Net—is cleared except for today.”

Garcia stood behind her, with a hand on the back of her chair. “Do most folks know how to do that? Why would they do that? Who would do it?”

“A guy surfing for some porn would do it, so his wife or his girlfriend or his officemates wouldn’t see what he’s been into.”

Garcia: “Why would a guy living alone erase his history?”

“Maybe he’s just naturally neat and meticulous and anal and secretive,” she offered.

“Or maybe he’s worried about getting caught one day,” he said.

“Today could be that day.” As she moved the cursor to Quaid’s Internet file folders, she sensed her boss leaning over her shoulder, breathing down her back. “Tony.”

“What?”

“Why don’t you keep sniffing around this joint while I poke around here? When I’m done, I’ll give you the executive summary. It won’t take long, since I’ve only got today’s history.” She checked her watch. “Soon to become yesterday’s history.”

He took his hand off the chair. “I’m making you nervous.”

“Hell, yes.”

He resumed his sweep of the apartment.

Fifteen minutes later, she summoned him back. “Tony.”

“Be right there.” He dropped a cushion back on the couch and went over to her. He took his former position, with one hand clamped over the back of her chair. He glanced at the monitor. The screen saver was back on; she’d already finished. He took his hand off the chair and took a step back, shoving his hands in his jacket. “What’d you come up with?”

She spun around in the office chair and faced him. “Quaid did some checking on Stannard. Most of it seemed superficial. He just plugged in the guy’s name. Looked up some professional stuff. An article Stannard wrote for a medical journal. A piece on cancer treatments.”

“What else?”

“He also looked up OxyContin.”