Unknown Means (22 page)

discovered that the base substance varied only slightly. None was an exact match for the samples on Grace’s and Frances’s clothing.

Evelyn noted the results absently, her mind occupied. David would arrive after he and Riley had visited the various police departments to schmooze with the suburban detectives and ask for copies of their reports. She was so not ready to see him. This was why work relationships were a bad idea. She occupied herself with backed-up clothing examinations and the vacuumings from Grace’s apartment for three hours until they arrived.

She and David greeted each other soberly, as if someone they knew had died. She would have preferred anger.

The Medical Examiner’s Office building’s single conference room had a large table, threadbare carpeting, and wooden, 1950s-style cabinets, but at least they could spread out. A line of chatter streamed from Records down the hall, and the fluorescent lights hummed.

“Let me guess,” Evelyn said. “The victims were all wealthy and involved in charities.”

Riley made an obnoxious sound, like a buzzer. “I hope you didn’t place any bets on that, Evie, because you’d be busted. Not a rich girl among them.”

Her jaw went slack for a moment. “You have to be kidding me.”

“He not only moved up to murder but moved up to a higher brand of victim.” David slid a report from the Solon PD across the table to her so that their fingers did not touch. “This first rape victim—at least the first that we know of—was a biology major sharing a duplex. A Tuesday night in April, four years ago. He grabbed her from behind as she used her key in the door after a late class. He wore a mask, so she never saw his face and was too trau-matized to tell the detectives any more than that. The second happened in December of that same year, to a married schoolteacher, mother of three, single-family home in Parma.”

“Not an apartment?” Parma had long been the suburb most

picked on for having a high tally of bowling alleys, white socks with loafers, and lawn ornaments, though not violent crime.

“Nope, a house. She went to the hospital and had the kit taken, but only after detectives promised never to contact her at home. She refused to tell her husband or her children, so if we get in touch with her, we’ll have to be careful.”

Evelyn shifted on the thinly cushioned chair as empathy shocked her out of her personal funk. “To go through that and then have to pretend, every day, that you’re fine and everything’s normal . . .”

“It’s been three and a half years, so that might have changed, but we’ll be careful anyway.”

“He wore a mask in that one too,” Riley put in. “She noticed he had duct tape around the neck, even.”

Evelyn pondered that as David went on. “The next, July three years ago, occurred in the victim’s apartment at East Fifty-fifth and Superior, a welfare mom whose kids were at school.”

Riley took off his jacket. The spring weather made it too warm for heat and too cool for air-conditioning, and the room felt stuffy.

“Definitely not an acquaintance of Grace Markham’s.”

“The door lock wouldn’t catch half the time, so he got in that way and surprised her in a dark bedroom. She couldn’t be sure if he wore a mask or not, but she didn’t get a good look at him. She could only remember being terrified—her twelve-year-old daughter would be coming home from school any minute, and the idea that he might attack the little girl made her fight tooth and nail. Literally—she bit him, said he should have a scar on his shoulder.”

“Good for her.”

“Also good for us that the rape kit gave us DNA results, because it apparently didn’t occur to the detective on the case to take the sheets with the guy’s blood.” A huff of breath made it clear what David thought about sloppy work. “The fourth victim, attacked in July two years ago, lived alone in a nice high-rise in Euclid, only a

block from the lake. Not on a par with the Markham residence, but nice enough for a camera in the lobby, which didn’t show any strangers. Of course, the side doors work on a buzzer, and our guy could have just followed a tenant in. She didn’t even know he stood behind her when she opened the door.”

Evelyn shuddered. “Hell.”

“This is not the guy you should be chasing into dark parking garages.”

She glared. It didn’t help when Riley added, “He’s got a point there, Evie.”

“How come when men do something dangerous, they’re brave, but when women do it, they’re stupid?”

“I don’t want you brave,” David said, snapping out the words as if they pained him. “I want you alive.”

It felt good to hear he wanted her at all.

“It’s all hindsight,” Riley said. “If you succeed, then you were brave. If you fail you were stupid.”

She held up her right hand in weak protest. “All right. I promise not to chase this guy into dark parking garages . . . if I can help it.

Go on.”

“The fifth case, September of last year: victim came home to the near West Side from the night shift at the Ford plant. She passed her husband in the parking lot, they chatted, he headed off to work, and she went inside. She thinks the guy followed her from the stairwell and wished she’d listened to the little warning bell in the back of her mind, according to the report, but she was tired. He grabbed her before she even got her key in the lock, and that’s all she could remember. He must have smashed her skull into the doorjamb, or else he brought a weapon with him, because she came to two hours later on her living room floor with one hell of a headache.”

He stopped. The three people in the room mulled over these stark facts. Up the hall someone burst out with a harsh laugh.

“He got more violent with the last one,” Evelyn observed. “Perhaps

he escalated to murder even before Grace Markham—or Frances, I keep forgetting she died first. There could be bodies out there we haven’t found, in wooded areas or landfills.”

David shook his head. “I get the feeling he likes getting to them on their own turf. It turns him on.”

“Let’s not forget Marissa,” Evelyn said. “He attacked her in the parking garage, so he’s not always perfectly consistent. If he could get into Grace’s apartment, why not Marissa’s?”

Riley pulled out a cigarette and rolled it between his fingers without lighting it. “Maybe he thought the boyfriend would be home. The architect’s a nine-to-five guy, but like you said before, the doc’s hours are less regular.”

“Do we know how he got into Frances’s building?”

“No,” David told her. “We canvassed every family there. No one admitted to holding the side door for a person who wasn’t a tenant.

One of them might have forgotten or is embarrassed to admit it, but that’s what we’re left with. The camera in the lobby didn’t pick up any strangers.”

“They’re all in apartments except the teacher in Parma.” Evelyn started to put the end of her pen in her mouth, then stopped herself.

She could never keep her “dirty” pens—ones she’d used after touching bloody bodies or clothing—separate from the “clean” ones.

“Did any of the last two victims mention a mask?”

“The fifth never saw him, obviously. The fourth—” David paged through the reports, now spread over the worn table. “Yes. Ski mask.”

“Taped on?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“I wonder. That attack in Parma is the only one in a single-family home and the only one that mentions the mask being taped on—two factors that don’t match the other incidents. He wanted to be extra-sure she didn’t get a look at him.” Evelyn shrugged.

“You think she knew him?” David asked.

“It’s possible. Unless he taped on the mask in every case, and the victims just didn’t have a chance to notice it. He could be a neighbor, or an acquaintance. What grade does she teach?”

“Doesn’t say. You think it could be a student?”

“Or the father of a student, or another teacher. The victims were a college student and two mothers, one a teacher. Grace wanted a baby and worked with the children’s hospital charity. Frances spent time with her great-nieces. But two of the victims had no children at all, and the college student wouldn’t have been at the same school as the children of the other two. It’s probably nothing.”

“Nothing is about all we have to go on,” Riley said. “That’s why we can’t make this information public yet. The city would panic.”

Evelyn passed the reports back. “Maybe it should.”

“Yeah, that’s all we need. I’m going outside for a smoke.”

David gathered his folders. “Marissa has no children or any connection to a school. Did you say she worked for the children’s hospital charity?”

“No. The man who heads fund-raising now worked in pathology when she did her internship there. Maybe there is no connection between the women at all and we’re chasing our tails. He might just follow them off the bus. Maybe he worked in their buildings.”

“We could check. Seven buildings in four years—that’s pretty short-lived employment. Other staff might remember him if he caused a problem, got fired. But the Parma one wasn’t in a building but a private home. And the duplex wouldn’t have had maintenance staff on the premises.”

Evelyn rubbed the bridge of her nose. “There’s got to be something. The problem is that whatever the connection is, it might be so bloody obscure that we’ll never find it. We need to track him down another way, don’t ask me how. We don’t even have a general description, just a series of DNA amino acids.”

“You get any sleep?”

“Not as much as I need. How about you?”

“The same.” He studied her with a weary squint.

She wanted to say she was sorry, but she wasn’t sure what for.

This whole moving-in thing was a bad idea, she decided, bound to create one conflict after another—Angel, money, space. She should write him off. Say good-bye.

But she couldn’t say good-bye. Not now, not ever. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” His resigned manner made the hairs on her arms stand up. Was it really over?

Riley strode back in. “You ready, partner? Indians at Twins tonight. I’ve got to be at Flanagan’s by eight to place my bets.”

David stood up. Evelyn asked what they planned to do.

“We’re going to reinterview the five victims, try to find out what they had in common with Grace Markham and Frances Duarte. If we don’t come out of that with a solid lead, then I want to talk to this Kelly Alexander.”

“You think this could all be about money?”

David paused at the door. “Probably not. But we haven’t got much else to go on. What about you?”

“I’ve got hairs, I’ve got fibers. I hope they have something interesting to say.”

“Evelyn?”

“Yes?”

“Stay out of dark parking garages.”

C H A P T E R

20

THE VACUUMINGS FROM GRACE MARKHAM’S APARTment consisted of fibers from her wool carpet, hairs, other fibers, bits of popcorn, one dead fly, and a tiny rhinestone button. Most of the hairs seemed consistent with Grace and her husband, but seven seemed inconsistent. Human hairs could be

“matched” only if they had attached skin cells, which could be analyzed for nuclear DNA. The hair shaft could be identified with mitochondrial DNA, but it would have to be sent to the FBI lab for that more complicated analysis, and results could take months. No two hairs were ever the same, but if the range of characteristics—color, medulla, cortical fusi—in the questioned hair all fell into the same range of characteristics of hairs from the known sample, then Evelyn could say the questioned hair could have come from that person. She could not get more definite than “could have,” an answer that most cops and prosecutors did not care for, so hair comparisons were a quickly dying art.

Four of the seven were short and dark—she could check if they might be the cleaning woman’s. Of the other three, only one had a root, a dried-up anagen bulb, which meant that the hair had stopped growing and probably fallen out of its own accord. The remaining two, a dirty-blond color, could give up mitochondrial DNA, but

they already had DNA at the scene. Talking the FBI lab into mitochondrial analysis simply to find out if the hairs matched the semen made little sense.

The too-numerous fibers were no more help. They would be helpful only when compared with the killer’s clothing, which of course they didn’t have. She poked through them anyway, in case one seemed particularly unusual. At 40× magnification, one fiber, a thick, blackened thing, resembled a tree branch with the rough, irregular surface of a natural plant fiber. From the slide filing cabinet, a squat, unlovely metal box with skinny drawers to accommodate glass slides placed on their ends, she retrieved a few examples from her reference collection of mounted fibers. After a few minutes, she decided it must be hemp.

Hemp is a remarkably useful plant fiber, related to but markedly different from the marijuana plant. Hemp fibers can be found in items from rope to oil. Hemp jewelry had become increasingly popular in recent years. Grace Markham didn’t seem to go for the surfer look, but supporting hemp allowed people to feel they were pro-marijuana mavericks without actually breaking the law, so doing so might appeal to wealthy types wanting to keep it real.

This hemp had been dirtied. Using a stereomicroscope, which functioned as a very powerful magnifying glass, Evelyn scraped a trace of the contaminant from the fiber onto the gold plate for FTIR

analysis. In no time at all she found herself staring at a spectrum matching the oil on Grace Markham’s arm. The grease that didn’t match the elevator or the safe lock mechanism or the fire door lock mechanism. So the hemp fiber had come from the killer.

Their case consisted of crayons, grease, two dirty-blond hairs, hemp, blue fibers, and the DNA of a serial rapist, now murderer.

And no apparent connection among the victims, except for Grace and Frances, and that could be a coincidence.