She approached the door of the second building slowly, her Reebok-clad feet silent on the thin cushion of snow. A small chock of wood maintained a quarter-inch opening between the door and the jamb. Steady but not heated conversation wafted out to her ears. The cat watched from a safe distance.
Was she legally permitted to eavesdrop? Since she was not a sworn officer, she was not bound by Miranda warnings or any other rules of interrogation. She put her face up to the door. Evan and Jerry worked on either side of a central row of machinery. Jerry threaded a bolt through a curved plastic hood as Evan sprayed the underside of a conveyor belt with a can of silicone spray. The machinery span appeared to be only four feet wide but at least forty feet long. Gas tanks lined one side of the building, and two reality spheres sprawled open on the other side.
Evan, unsurprisingly, did most of the talking. He stopped to gesture with the can of silicone.
But could she be considered, as a defense expert had recently charged, an agent for the prosecution? Would her testimony be admissible?
No matter. Eavesdropping might be legally permissible, but she could not feel comfortable with it. Besides, she didn’t feel like standing in the snow for an hour listening to Evan debate the relative merits of letting the vampires use axes instead of crossbows once in the Sanctum of Sacrifices. She pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Both men noticed her instantly and straightened from their work.
“Hello.” She patted her pockets with her fingertips, searching for the pack of cigarettes that hadn’t been there for over ten years, a residual habit she could not break.
“What are you doing here?” Evan asked, sounding considerably less than friendly.
She forced her hands still and moved to the end of the line of machinery. “We’re still trying to complete your wife’s report, Mr. Kovacic. I had a few more questions about Jillian’s habits and state of mind. I also need to speak with Mr. Graham.”
She had hoped Evan would be courteous, wanting to keep up the pretense of a really nice guy who had suffered a tragedy. He did not seem so inclined. “I’ve got nothing to say to you, and neither does Jerry.”
“I know you’re stressed, Mr. Kovacic, but I’m trying to determine exactly how Jillian came to die.”
He dropped the can of silicone on the conveyor belt and came closer. She resisted the urge to back up, but he stopped on the other side of a low workbench fitted with magnifying lamps, exactly like the ones she used at the lab. “Jillian killed herself, and you and your pack of ghouls won’t let her rest in peace.”
She noticed the two wireless cameras mounted at opposite corners of the building. At least if Evan attacked her, she would have it on tape. If the cameras weren’t just dummies, if they recorded as well as monitored, and if she could figure out where the hell the recorder would be and could get to it before Evan. He would be good at that sort of thing, rewriting the story, making every detail fit his vision.
Jerry Graham had not moved. He spoke in a sympathetic tone, saying, “Evan just wants to bury his wife and raise his child, Mrs. MacLean.”
“I understand that, and we’re doing the best we can, but Jillian didn’t leave a lot of clues as to her state of mind.”
Evan knocked one of the lamps aside, so that it seemed to freeze in the air like a wounded crane. “Jillian didn’t have a state of mind! She was blond hair and implants!”
The words hung in the air, unfortunate and infuriating. Theresa had worked hard to maintain some doubt of Evan’s guilt and now watched it crumble into dust. She no longer considered retreat. In fact, she felt ready to rip his head off and spray the silicone down his neck. “That seems like a rather cold way to describe your late wife.”
He did not become more circumspect at this rebuke. “You cut people open and you think I’m cold? You’re trying to take Cara from her home and you have the nerve to look down on me?”
She didn’t bother to explain that she did not perform autopsies, distracted by the latter charge. “What?”
“Drew Fleming has applied for guardianship of Cara,” Jerry Graham told her, and let his mien do the rebuking. “Evan will have to go to court and ask for custody of his own daughter.”
Oh, boy. “He would have had to go to court anyway, but-I mean-that’s got nothing to do with me. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
Evan moved beyond the magnifying lamps to within two feet of her. Her fingers slipped around the edge of the table, an anchor to keep her traitorous body from giving in to the flight instinct. “Come on. You and I have that little conversation about Cara on Saturday and first thing Monday morning Drew goes to the courthouse? You think I’m stupid?”
“Mr. Kovacic, I have absolutely nothing to do with Drew Fleming’s legal plans. I certainly didn’t advise him to do anything regarding Cara-”
The truth. Technically, and, she hoped, accurately. Even if Drew hadn’t murdered Jillian, he remained an unstable obsessive not to be aimed toward a vulnerable infant. But then you can’t toss a snowball onto a slope, even without thinking, and then deny responsibility for the avalanche.
Apparently Evan agreed. “Yeah, yeah. Get out!”
Jerry Graham moved closer to her as well, but he seemed more of a comfort than a threat. At least until he said, “Evan is very upset about even the idea of losing Cara, Mrs. MacLean. I’m sure you understand, as a mother.”
She looked at his face, smooth with calm, even the expression in his eyes nothing but gentle.
“Perhaps you should leave now,” he added.
Oddly enough, this more subtle deflection made her stubborner than Evan’s leashed violence. “When was the last time you saw Jillian, Mr. Graham?”
“The Saturday before she died,” he answered promptly.
“When you went out to dinner with Shelly and Evan and Jillian.”
“Yes.”
“No.” The color flushing Evan’s pale skin receded only slightly. “You saw her on Sunday when we were putting together the booth for the tech show.”
His partner thought, without any change of expression. “That’s right. She brought out some hot coffee.”
“And then Monday morning, when you picked me up for the downtown meeting.”
“Yeah, you said good-bye to her. But I thought Mrs. MacLean meant the last time we really spoke, and that would have been Saturday night.”
“What did she say?”
“You’re not getting this.” Evan reached her before she could turn her face from Graham. He sank both hands into her forearms, but instead of pulling her closer he pushed her back, cracking a few vertebrae against the edge of the worktable. His breath smelled of curry and beer and, she thought, hate. “We’re through answering your questions. You can hold my wife’s body hostage until she starts to smell, you ghoulish bitch, but I’m still done talking to you. Get out.”
“Evan, calm down.” Jerry Graham came to her side, one hand held out as if trying to restrain his partner by force of will, and gestured to her with motions that shepherded without touching. “Come on, Mrs. MacLean. I’ll walk you out.”
She stepped carefully to the side to remove herself from Evan’s range. His hands shuffled as if they itched to strike her and her feet shuffled as if itching to run. She did not turn her back on him. Her mind might not be convinced that Evan was a killer, but her body certainly was.
With this unsteady gait she made it to the door and reentered the snowy night, aware that Evan did not seem to fear her tête-à-tête with his partner, and aware that the controlled Jerry Graham could be an even more formidable foe, should he choose to be. But they were in an open area and the glimmer of light left in the sky reassured her. Besides, if Jerry Graham had anything to hide, he deserved an Oscar for his acting talents.
“I’m sorry if Evan seemed irate, but he’s just lost his wife.”
“The one who had blond hair and implants,” she couldn’t resist pointing out, even though she wanted Graham to talk to her.
“Evan has a lot more finesse with superconductors than he has with people, I’m afraid, but don’t take that to mean he didn’t love Jillian. He won’t talk about it, but he’s having a real hard time with the idea that she was unhappy enough to die.”
The snow made a creaking sound as it compressed beneath their feet, and flakes turned to water as they touched her flushed face. “Do you think she did this purposely? Committed suicide?”
“I can’t believe that, though I suppose people always say that after something like this happens.”
“What did she say, when you were at dinner on Saturday?”
He stopped as they reached Theresa’s car. “I hate to admit that I don’t even remember. Just small talk-Cara was starting to crawl, the locks on her car doors had frozen shut, wasn’t it great that Polizei had won the year’s top slot from Gamer magazine. That kind of stuff.”
“What kind of mood was she in?”
“Typical Jillian. Sweet, upbeat, otherwise quiet. If she harbored bad thoughts, she kept them to herself. But Jillian kept a lot to herself, so-” He shook his head, the few lines he had on his face settling into sadness. “I just can’t believe it.”
Her heartbeat slowed to nearly normal. “I’m sorry to have to ask you these questions, but as I said, I’m trying to find out what happened to Jillian. I-I didn’t have anything to do with Drew Fleming’s guardianship petition and I didn’t even know we still had Jillian’s body.”
“That’s Fleming too. He’s petitioning the court to get custody.”
“Of Jillian’s body?”
“The guy’s nuts.”
Theresa secretly agreed. Drew might have a slight legal chance with Cara’s custody, but Jillian’s body would be released to her legal next of kin-her husband, period. The idea of what Drew might want to do with Jillian’s body made Theresa shudder. Poor Cara-lost among a possibly murderous stepfather, an obsessed stalker, and grandparents who refused to acknowledge her existence. For the first time, Theresa felt a sense of urgency. This case needed to be resolved, and fast. It wasn’t just about her feeling a little guilty anymore. Cara could be in real danger.
“I’m sorry to hear that. No wonder Evan isn’t pleased to see me.” She waved her hand at the beat-up Dodge. “I didn’t even think he was here, but I’d already stopped, so I came in anyway. I assume that’s not Evan’s car.”
As she had hoped, he seemed relieved to discuss anything besides Evan and Jillian. “My girlfriend dropped me off. Evan’s car is having its bath at the SuperWash. We usually park in the garage around back anyway. It keeps us from having to scrape the windshield.”
“The joys of Cleveland in the winter,” she said, and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Graham.”
“No problem. Just-if you can help it-”
“Yes?”
“Don’t come back.”
Every item of clothing the kid at the SuperWash wore had a stripe running down the side. Shirt, pants, jacket, in an attempt to be either fashionable or too unfashionable to pilfer.
She had no idea what Evan drove, but Jerry had mentioned SuperWash, and when she reached the corner of 117th, lo and behold, there sat a SuperWash facility, WHERE YOUR CAR IS TREATED LIKE A HERO, and if one had to leave one’s car, it would certainly make sense to leave it somewhere within walking distance. She approached the kid. “Excuse me.”
His black skin shone with effort. Either he really liked waxing cars or he had to finish this one before leaving for the day, because he didn’t seem to care for the interruption. “What?”
“Do you have Evan Kovacic’s car here?”
“Yeah. That one.” He waggled the chamois in his hand toward a jet black Escalade slated to be next in line through the indoor pit of hoses and sprayers.
She studied the setup, an idea forming in her mind. Evan Kovacic had killed his wife. Theresa didn’t know how or when or precisely why, but he had, and she was going to catch the bastard. He had used Jillian and then dismissed her. He would not find Theresa so easy to get rid of.
The rest of the small building had been abandoned, the lights in the glassed-in office turned off. The work bay, however, remained bright enough to hurt the eyes. “What are you going to do to the car?”
He stood up with an irritated leap, having finished one side of a vintage Mustang and moved to start on the other. “Wash it, lady, what you think?”
“Just wash the outside?”
He attacked the hazy wax covering the paint with the limitless energy of youth. “Full detail. And before I leave tonight too. You see anyone else still stuck here? No, they’re home with their dinners. Lucky for him I need the overtime-”
“What does that mean, full detail?”
“Why you want to know? You thinking of bringing your car here?”
“It’s kind of a long story. Do you vacuum the inside?”
“Inside, cargo area, Armor All the dash, scrub the tires. At least he ain’t got no whitewalls. Anything else you want to know?”
“Then you throw out the vacuum bag?”
“No vacuum bag. There’s sort of a filter in that big thing there that gets replaced every so often. Don’t know, it ain’t my job.”
“You scrub the tires?”
“Get the treads clean as a whistle. Mr. Kovacic insists. That’s us. Service above and beyond. Anything else you want to know, lady?”
“How many people ask for their tires to be scrubbed?”
“You takin’ a survey?”
“Sort of.”
His biceps tightened and relaxed in sequence as he finished up the passenger door. His entire body language spoke of his annoyance, and yet he remained either too polite or too incurious not to respond. “Only him, that I know of.”
“Is this the first time he’s brought his car here?”
“Hardly. Every week. He thinks a lot of that car, I guess.”
“But this is the first time he’s asked for the tires to be scrubbed.” That sounded like circumstantial evidence to her.
“Nope. Insists on that every time.”
Maybe not.
“Says the salt ruins the rubber. It don’t, you know.”
“Would you mind if I removed some of the dirt for you? Just the stuff in the tires, and the lint on the upholstery.”
He drew himself up to his full height, a good head taller than hers. “You some clean car fairy or something?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what…exactly?”
“I work for the medical examiner’s office. I want to collect any loose hairs, fibers, soil from Mr. Kovacic’s car. It will be less for you to vacuum up, look at it that way.”
His shoulders fell a bit, and the lines in his forehead smoothed out. “You mean, like clues? You looking for clues?”
“Yes.”
“You a detective?”
“No, I’m a forensic scientist.”
He nearly broke into a smile. “Like you work with all those test tubes and stuff. Like you get DNA out of a bloodstain. Right?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
“Let me get the keys.”
She retrieved her crime scene kit from her car and met him at the Escalade. The young man held up a key fob shaped like the triangular Star Trek logo and jangled its four keys in triumph.
“Thanks.” She smiled and introduced herself.
“My name’s Antwan. You know if you put a scratch on this thing, it’s my ass, right?”
“I won’t get anything scratchy anywhere near it, I promise. I’ll tape the trunk and the seats and then vacuum, and then I’ll clean the treads. But I’ll use a plastic scraper for that. It won’t damage the rubber.”
He unlocked the doors and opened the rear hatch for her. “What are you looking for?”
“I’ve been asking myself that all week,” she muttered as she placed a strip of clear tape on the carpeting in the empty cargo area. Evan either kept an obsessively clean car or else he removed his personal items prior to dropping it at the car wash.
“You think he killed somebody?”
She moved the piece of tape up and down, from left to right, getting a fresh piece when the adhesive became clogged with detritus. If she said yes, was that slander? If she didn’t say he did kill someone, only that she thought so…really, she needed her own attorney just to help her with these issues. “I don’t know. I’m only trying to reconstruct what happened over the last week.”
“I saw on TV, they used a light. This light attached to a box with a hose.”
“An alternate light source. We use that mostly to find semen.”
He snickered at her matter-of-fact use of the term. “And you’re not looking for that here?”
“Nope.”
“So you don’t think he raped nobody.”
“No, I don’t. Really, this is quite routine-”
“Doing your job in a car wash?”
She moved on to the backseat, repeating the taping action, not relishing the thought of examining all those strips of tape, now stuck to sheets of clear acetate. Long hours at the stereomicroscope could get hard on the eyes. Long hours at any microscope could get hard on the eyes.
Antwan followed her. “Are you going to spray that stuff that makes blood glow? What’s that called?”
“Luminol?”
“That won’t ruin the leather, will it?”
“It wouldn’t hurt it, but I’m not going to use luminol anyway. Just tape and a vacuum, as I said.”
“So you don’t think he murdered anybody either? What are you doing here?”
This was why she tried not to converse with people on the job. “I’m not looking for any blood.”
“So he offed someone without blood?” The young man put a hand to his chin. “Hmm. That’s cool. Are you looking for hairs? I saw hairs on the Discovery channel. They have that special DNA in them, right?”
“Mitochondrial.” She finished the taping and hooked up the vacuum. At least the noise put a stop to the kid’s questions, for a while.
Nothing about Evan’s car stood out as suspicious, but then, why would it? If involved at all, it had only been as a cargo transport, moving Jillian’s body from the apartment to Edgewater Park. The best she could hope for would be some hairs of Jillian’s where they shouldn’t normally be, like in the cargo area. But even that wouldn’t prove anything, not really.
And diatoms in the tires. She folded the nylon netting from the vacuum’s filter and sealed it in a manila envelope, taking care not to lose any of the trapped fibers and dirt. Then she turned to the tires. The sky grew darker than pitch and Antwan’s overtime meter continued to click, but he had stopped complaining.
It took a while, but she cleaned out every valley of every inch of each tire’s circumference accessible to her with a plastic probe, trying not to leave even a scratch in the rubber that Kovacic could complain about.
“Did he run her over?” Antwan guessed. He did not seem upset that Theresa refused to confirm or deny any one scenario; instead he seemed to enjoy brainstorming as to what her little foray implied. “Like a hit-and-run? Left the scene of an accident?”
“No. Look, I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything about an open investigation-mostly because I’m not even sure it is an investigation. It’s more of a fact-finding mission. I’m trying to-”
“Reconstruct the events, yeah, you said. But let me ax you this. You’re going to want to keep your little project between us, right? As in don’t mention nothing to Mr. Kovacic, right?”
Was he going to blackmail her? “I can’t ask or tell you what to say or not say. I have no authority to do so.”
“Neat answer, but you’d rather I didn’t, right?”
She honestly didn’t know. Perhaps if Evan felt pressured, he’d make a mistake. In any event, she could not hide her actions. In forensics, mistakes could be dealt with, but covering up, even appearing to cover up, even covering up nothing, would kill your career faster than being found with kiddie porn. It was the Point Beyond Which One Could Not Go. “I’m not going to ask you to tell him or not tell him or not tell your boss or anyone else. I’m not hiding anything here, Antwan. I can’t.”
He kept nodding with a knowing smile, and it worried her. “Yeah, yeah, I got that. But let me ax you this-this place you work, the M.E.’s office, what would I need to work there? A college degree?”
“At least a bachelor’s in the natural sciences, biology, chemistry, or general forensic sciences, yeah. That would be good.”
“So if I got one-I’m going to Cleveland State in the fall-I could apply for a job like yours?”
She couldn’t help but smile. Forensic junkies. They were everywhere. “Certainly.”
“And you’d remember this little favor, if I did?”
She pulled out her card and handed it to him. “There’s no guarantee. Lab staffs are a lot smaller than you’d expect from watching TV, and everything depends on the budget, but if there’s anything I can do to help, a tour of the lab, explain the application process, don’t hesitate to call me.”
He studied the card carefully before storing it in his back pocket. “Thanks.”
“No, Antwan. Thank you.”
On her way home, she stopped at Don’s house and borrowed his copy of Polizei. The time had come for her to enter Evan’s game.