Unknown Means (17 page)

noted had been a month earlier, when a squirrel had gotten loose in the air duct and it took the manager and a pest control serviceman two days to catch it. David’s partner nodded at the trash can and said, “Why don’t you bring a ceramic mug in so you don’t have to use those Styrofoam things?”

“I will. I keep forgetting.”

“Maybe you have settlement issues.”

“Come again?”

Riley clasped both hands behind his head, dispensing wisdom like a skinny Buddha. “You don’t have a single personal item on your desk, not a picture, or a plaque, or a damn coffee cup. You toss away money in rent every month instead of buying a place and building some equity. You even lease your car. Sort of the reverse of the nesting instinct—more like the ‘ready to fly the coop at a moment’s notice’ instinct. No wonder Evie doesn’t want to let you move in.”

“Did I miss something? Did you get a mail-order doctorate in psychology without telling me?”

“Just stating the facts. Sometimes it helps to hear things from a disinterested party.”

“Sometimes it helps for people to mind their own business.” David began to stack manila folders, snapping each one down in a precise arrangement. He’d have walked out, taken an early lunch, except that he and Riley had an appointment to talk to Buford Aimes again.

“You want the woman to open her home to you, you’re going to have to make her think you’re in it for more than laundry privileges.”

“And you got all this from a coffee cup?”

“It’s the little things that tell on us, partner. Always. Like when we interview a suspect—he looks up at the ceiling every time he lies, or he taps his foot when we ask about the drugs. It’s the things we don’t even know we do.”

Riley’s low opinion of him came as no surprise to David. “Have you been sharing these theories with Evelyn? Is that why she’s balking at living with me?”

Swooping an X over his chest with one finger, his partner swore:

“Not a word.”

“I have an idea. Why don’t you start dating again, so you can worry about your own love life and stay the hell out of mine?”

Riley gazed at him with the exaggerated expression of a sad puppy. “I’m trying to help the two people closest to me, and this is the thanks I get. Harsh, man. Real harsh.”

“I—” The phone cut David off, and he snatched at the receiver.

“Milaski, Homicide.”

“I’m calling about Frances Duarte.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I think there’s a few things about her that you need to know.”

David had taken several such calls that morning, from a woman who had dreamt about the dead woman to a college student who called from the art museum to say that Frances had left her umbrella there, as well as two TV stations who had fibbed their way past the police department switchboard. But this guy sounded both sensible and serious, and besides, David would grasp at any straw to avoid discussing romantic entanglements with his partner. “Okay. Where are you?”

EVELYN SAT in her well-lit lab, cluttered but roomy and blissfully aboveground, and analyzed evidence from the two crime scenes.

The dirt on the carpeting in Frances Duarte’s apartment turned out to be powdered carbon, with a few additives. She or Bobby Ito must have been careless with the fingerprinting process . . . No, she’d collected the carpet fibers before they began processing for prints. She added the carbon to her mental list of puzzling facts.

“Good night, Evelyn,” Tony called from his office. “Turn the lights out when you leave.”

She looked at her watch: 4:25. “You’re going home?”

“Yes, home. You know, that place that’s not work? That has food and TV sets and my dog?” He detoured through the lab, peering at

her over the top of the FTIR. “Don’t pull another all-nighter. The ME said to put Marissa’s case first, but he’s still not approving any overtime.”

“I won’t stay too late. It’s just that the lines on Grace Markham’s skirt and Frances’s bra seem to be some sort of waxy substance. I’m trying to break it down. Have you heard anything back from CODIS?”

“Heck, no. That will be weeks yet. But the swabs from Duarte came up positive for semen, and the DNA says it’s the same guy. I guess that’s not really a surprise, is it?”

“No, but it’s good to know. If we had two different guys with the same murder weapon, that would be confusing. On the other hand, we wouldn’t have a serial killer. I don’t know which is worse.”

“You’re sure the two women didn’t have the same boyfriend? It could be what connects them.”

“David and Riley have asked everyone who knew these women.

If either one of them had a man in the wings, it’s the best-kept secret since Roswell.”

“You call that well-kept?” He glanced toward the window. “I’m getting out of here before that rain breaks. Have a nice evening, and remember one thing.”

“What?”

“Working late without approval is not overtime. It comes from the goodness of your heart and you can’t put a dollar value on that.

Or even comp time.”

“Thanks for the tip,” she said, but he had already left. She knew she should follow his example or Angel would eat Pop-Tarts for dinner—again. But Grace Markham’s skirt caught her eye.

With a fresh disposable scalpel, she scraped along the waxy line just until a few flakes appeared on the glass slide beneath the fabric.

Then she made a dry mount by placing a coverslip on top and moved the whole thing carefully to the microscope stage. After all that, the flakes appeared to be just that, flakes, of a consistently pink color.

She still had no idea what they were.

She transferred one of the flakes to the tiny, round salt window for FTIR analysis and flattened it to the surface with a small metal roller. The resultant spectrum told her that the sample contained mostly paraffin, with a number of pigments.

Crayons?

She analyzed the lines on Frances’s bra, listening to the last few members of the Toxicology Department file to the stairwell. Even Ed—the only staff member who bothered to wait for the slow elevator—had left.

Same result—not exactly the same pigments in the same proportions, but similar enough. The killer had crayoned on Grace’s skirt and Frances’s bra. Why?

Crayons meant children to Evelyn. Neither of the two dead women had children, though Grace had been pregnant and Frances had her great-nieces. Had they gone to the same ob-gyn? Had Frances been struggling with the last few ticks of that biological clock, thinking about having a baby at forty-five? What about Marissa?

Were her clothes intentionally omitted from the killer’s crayoning schedule, or did he run out of time when the doorman appeared?

They could have had a number of connections to children, but Evelyn simply didn’t know enough about the two dead victims to guess.

Or maybe they had nothing to do with children at all, and the wavy marks were the work of an artist who used victims as canvases.

The loops formed no picture or letters that she could see, just heavy-handed scribbles.

She moved into Tony’s office. He had the only computer with Internet access and, as usual, had been too lazy to shut it down since he could never remember his password. She put “crayon” in the search engine subject line and hit Search, hoping to find a chemical formula—an idle hope, of course. No manufacturer would post their product’s formula on the Internet unless they wanted to go out of business. She did turn up more brands besides Crayola, and more

types besides paraffin—crayons now came from soybean oil, all-natural beeswax, and washable materials. Too bad she hadn’t known of those when two-year-old Angel decided to practice her art on the new wallpaper.

Angel would be home from school by now. Evelyn picked up the phone and dialed her own number, listening to it ring four times before the machine picked up. Perhaps she’d gone somewhere after school. Perhaps I should rethink that cell phone idea.

Evelyn left a message, telling her daughter to go next door for dinner. Evelyn hadn’t discussed this plan with her mother, but Dorothy never minded an opportunity to feed people, and Angel would heed any order relating to her softhearted grandmother. It might distract her from the fact that she hadn’t seen her own mother in two days. Then again, it might not.

The crayoning made no sense that Evelyn could see, and it did suggest children. Grace had been trying to get pregnant for years.

Marissa’s fiancé was a pediatrician.

Suddenly Evelyn thought of the children’s hospital. Grace and Frances both worked for its fund-raising effort, and the article in Marissa’s purse had mentioned the hospital as well as Frances Duarte.

Evelyn had a few minutes, and Angel wasn’t home anyway . . .

She typed “Cleveland charity children’s fund-raising” into the search engine. This produced an overwhelming number of sites, but most dealt with either the organizations seeking the funds or indi-vidual philanthropic foundations. In either event, she couldn’t find a list of fund-raising committee members before growing impatient.

She could call David and ask him to find out, but David and Riley were busy with interviews, and besides, the main Butterfly Babies hospital building sat not four hundred feet from the back door of the Medical Examiner’s Office. Why not just walk over there?

Evelyn chose the cleanest lab coat from the community closet.

It hung on her like a tent, but it had no loose threads or faded

bloodstains. She stepped into the ladies’ room to blot her face and brush her hair. Butterfly Babies took a dim view of law enforcement and would be more cooperative with a fellow science professional. A touch of sheer lipstick, and she looked . . . She looked like a civil servant who hadn’t slept in a week.

Oh well.

The soaring atrium at the University Hospital’s facility always made Evelyn wonder what the designers had been thinking. Did they assume that the beauty and elegance would reassure parents, make them believe their children were in the most competent hands possible?

If my kid came here, I’d look at this glassed-in beauty and start worrying about the bill. Obviously the people here make way too much money.

The development office sat on the fourth floor, behind huge oak doors with gold lettering. A frizzy-haired woman about Evelyn’s age stood at the reception desk, a cell phone propped on one shoulder, placing items one by one into an oversize handbag. Her name tag identified her as an administrative assistant. Down a silent hallway to the left, one office remained lit. With a sinking feeling, Evelyn realized how late in the day it was. Surely everyone had gone home for the night.

“The six-quart pan, Jimmy. Look at the bottom of it, the size will be engraved right in the metal. Spaghetti is not that hard.” The woman looked up at Evelyn without enthusiasm. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Evelyn James, from next door. I need some information about your fund-raising committee.”

“Which one?” To her shoulder, she added, “She’s six, Jimmy.

She can’t tell the canned stuff from the jar. Just pick a flavor.”

“You have more than one?”

The woman motioned with her right ear, without losing the phone wedged under her left. “Mark Sargeant might still be back there, the third door on the right. If he’s gone, there’s some brochures

on the end table that explain the committee’s work— Jimmy? Don’t forget the garlic bread.”

Evelyn picked a color brochure from a Lucite rack. Behind her, she heard “Take it out of the freezer, that’s all. I’ll take care of—”

And the door clicked shut. She turned. The woman had left.

Holding the brochure, Evelyn explored the hallway. Besides one small conference room, she found four offices. A brass name plaque on each desk identified the occupants, from capital campaign director to special events director. Except for the woman at the front desk, there did not seem to be any staff under the level of director. Spotting the file room, Evelyn wondered if there was a filing director.

The lights still shone in the capital campaign director’s office. A collection of promotional items, from tiny stuffed bears to tricolor highlighters, cluttered the top of the desk. Wilting balloons drifted against one wall. A framed picture of a handsome man with former mayor Mike White rested on a shelf. Papers lay on the desk, tempting her.

Well, weren’t charitable contributions public records? And if they weren’t, they should be.

She peeked at the top of the stack. A balance sheet for a recent charity auction detailed costs, which were astronomical, and the intake, even more so. A profit glowed at the bottom, in bold. How could a hospital be considered a charity anyway, now that nearly all of them were for-profit concerns—signaling the end of reasonably priced health care in America, in Evelyn’s opinion.

Names of the seven members of the Butterfly Babies Capital Campaign Committee edged the paper. Grace Markham was third from the bottom.

“Can I help you?”

Evelyn jerked to attention. The man in the doorway had dark hair, narrowed eyes, and very broad shoulders. He had a pleasant

expression and a friendly smile, and yet every cell in her body wanted to run like hell. “Are you Mark?”

“The one and only. Something fascinating about my desk?” But he didn’t come closer to see what she had been looking at, merely stayed in the doorway with the same amused look her cat got when he spied a mouse away from its hole.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to be nosy. I wanted to ask about your fund-raising committee. Is Frances Duarte still a member?”

He did not flinch at the name; either he did not yet know she had died or he had some talent as an actor. “Yes. Lovely woman.

She’s in our Campaign Cabinet, which I chair. Our current focus is adding a new wing to the neonatal unit. Perhaps you would be interested in our pledge program? Gifts usually start at one million.”