Evidence of Guilt (34 page)

"Yeah."

"Stay there, okay? I'll be by in half an hour. Maybe less."

On the way into town I made a quick stop at The Sugar Plum for two coffees and a dozen of their legendary cinnamon rolls. More than Daryl Benson and I could finish, but I knew the rest would be snatched up in short order

by members of the department. It never hurt to have the police think kindly of you.

"How did your detectives happen to be searching the compost bin in the first place?" I asked. We'd settled in Benson's office with our coffee. The box of sweet rolls was between us.

"Curt Willis was interviewing the neighbor, Mrs. Lincoln. In the course of their conversation, it happened to come up that Wes sometimes used the bin to dump his lawn clippings." Benson added sugar and stirred the coffee with the end of his pencil. "Willis asked us to search there for the missing murder weapon."

"Did you find it?"

He took a bite of roll and shook his head. "But we did find the underwear!"

I sipped my coffee, but I couldn't eat. My stomach felt as though it had been tied into a knot. I'd been inclined to believe Wes's story. To feel sorry for him, even. What's worse, there was a part of me that wanted to believe him still.

"Is there anyway to determine whether the clothing actually belonged to Amy and Lisa?"

Benson frowned. "Probably not. Looks like there may be some bloodstains. We should know that fairly soon. But it's going to be difficult to do much in the way of meaningful testing. You've got decomposing lawn clippings, carrot peels, God knows what all in there. The bin's pretty ripe from what I've heard."

"A compost bin seems like an odd place to discard hard physical evidence." Although fabric would eventually decompose, it would take significantly longer than lawn clippings and carrot peels.

'The criminal mind is not always a logical one," Benson

observed. "Particularly in a situation where a person's trying to get rid of evidence in a hurry."

A neighbor's compost bin still seemed to me an unusual choice. "Are the items here at the station?"

"You want to take a look?"

I did, although I wasn't sure why. "Can I?"

'Just don't touch anything. We've had a criminalist go over them once, but I'm sure he'll want to do further testing."

Benson took a last, long swallow of coffee. He led me down the hall, and then down the elevator to the lab. He mumbled an exchange with the technician in charge and we passed through to an interior room. There, spread out on a mesh pallet for drying, were two pairs of underpants--one pink and decorated with kittens, the other a lacy-style black nylon. The pink pair was small, similar to the ones favored by my niece. I felt my eyes begin to sting.

"We've already dried and tested the outer garments, of course," Benson said. He went to a drawer at the back and pulled out a number of transparent, sealed plastic bags. "You want to take a look at these, you can. Without unsealing them, of course. I'm guessing you and Sam are going to have your own experts run through things a second time anyway." He spread the bags on the table.

One bag held Lisa's jeans; another, her jersey top, which was stained with an inky substance I knew must be dried blood. Amy had been wearing a pair of shorts, pink like her underwear.

"It's the victim's blood," Benson said. "In both cases. The two bodies were far enough apart in the barn that the samples weren't cross-contaminated. There's no trace of the assailant's blood."

The knot in my stomach twisted tighter, and I was glad I hadn't eaten. Seeing the physical evidence, clothing worn by a woman I'd known, now grossly discolored by her own blood--it made the crime real in a way even the most graphic photographs had not.

Benson lifted the plastic packet containing Amy's striped T-shirt and held it in his hand, as though testing its weight. "It takes a real sicko to cut the throat of a child," he said at last.

I nodded numbly and turned away. There would come a time, as we got closer to trial, when I would have to immerse myself in the evidence, maybe even stand by while one of our own defense experts examined the bloody clothing. But at the moment I wanted to banish the images from my mind forever.

"I'm no fan of your client's," Benson said as we wound our way back to his office, "but for your sake I'm sorry to see all the chips lining up with the prosecution."

I shook my head to clear it. "I'll let you in on a secret," I told him. "They aren't lining up as neatly as you think." My tone suggested a conviction I didn't feel, but I was reasonably sure the gist of our conversation would make its way back to Curt Willis. And the last thing I wanted was for him to know how desperate we were.

Benson held the elevator door, then smiled at me fondly. "It's a funny position, being chief of police and finding myself rooting for the defense attorney."

"Is that what you're doing?"

Instead of answering he let his eyes linger on my face. "You remind me more of your mother every day," he said at last.

There was a moment of awkward silence. My mother's

suicide was one of the shared memories on which our current friendship had been forged. It was a powerful bond, but an uncomfortable one for both of us.

The elevator came to a stop and we exited.

"What kind of lab work are you doing on the underwear?"

"The usual. We want to see if we can tie it conclusively to the victims. And, of course, to the defendant. We'll look for trace evidence, run blood and semen tests... but the truth is, I don't think we'll find much."

I turned. "There was nothing in the file to indicate that either victim had been sexually molested."

"They weren't," Benson said. "But it takes a certain kind of depraved individual to rip the underwear off a woman he's murdered. The way I figure it, he's a guy with a fetish." Benson scratched his chin. "There was a man in town years ago who used to go around stealing ladies' underwear off the clothes line. By the time we caught up with him he had suitcases full of the stuff. 'Course he was harmless."

I couldn't imagine Wes Harding fueling his desire with a pair of nylon briefs, even if they were black and lacy. Not that I had much to go on but instinct.

On the other hand, Wes saw himself as a man whose advances had been spurned. A guy like that just might be thinking in terms of power rather than passion. Strip your victim of her dignity as well as her life.

So I supposed it might have fit--except for the fact that I didn't want it to. Maybe it was the gypsy magic Sabrina had talked about, or maybe it was simply seeing Wes as the man he really was, without the posturing. Whatever the reason, I found I didn't want to believe he was a killer.

I'd spoken to Mrs. Lincoln earlier, when I'd canvassed Wes's neighborhood in the hopes of establishing an alibi. But I couldn't recall the woman specifically until I pulled up in front of the address Benson had given me, a small, white frame house immediately to the south of Wes's. Then I was able to recollect a woman in her late fifties, bone thin, with almost lashless eyes. She hadn't been home the Friday night of the murders, but she'd told me she had no complaints about Wes as a neighbor.

As I was getting out of my car, she came down the front path from the house, her purse over her arm.
_r
I met her halfway.

"I remember you," she said when I introduced myself. "We talked a week or so ago."

"I'd like to ask a couple more questions, if I might." "I'm afraid I'm on my way out at the moment." "I'll make it quick." I followed her down the driveway to the garage. "It's about the compost bin. Can you tell me about your arrangement with Wes Harding?"

"It wasn't an arrangement, really. We just let him use it."

"On a daily basis?"

"Heavens no. My husband and I, we dispose of most all our organic waste by composting, but lawn clippings and leaves were about all Wes ever brought over. And not that often." She paused and glanced toward his place. "He didn't care much for yard work, as you can probably tell."

I glanced next door. The grass was mowed--probably Jake's doing--but the weeds were abundant, the shrubs overgrown and the flower beds empty. It looked a lot like my own yard had when I'd first moved in after my father's death.

"Was this a recent arrangement?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No, Wes has been using it almost as long as he's lived here. The couple before Wes kind of kept to themselves, so we were happy to have a neighborly sort move in. He was handy too. Helped Herman install a new vanity in the bathroom."

I was surprised. I hadn't imagined Wes as the neighborly sort. But I was coming to realize that I'd been wrong about a lot of things where Wes was concerned.

"Did he check with you each time?" I asked.

"Before he brought stuff over?"

I nodded.

"It wasn't anything formal like that. He was welcome to use it anytime he wanted."

Willis must have loved learning that. Wes could easily have walked next door, disposed of the evidence--and no one would have noticed anything unusual.

"How come you didn't tell me about the compost bin when I talked with you before?"

Mrs. Lincoln opened the garage door, then dusted her hands on her slacks. "I didn't think about it," she said.

"You told the DA, though."

She looked me in the eye. "He asked." Then she scowled. "If I'd known I was going to end up with a bunch of heavy-hoofed cops poking around my yard, I wouldn't have told him either."

"Do you mind if I look as well? I'll be careful."

She hesitated. "I guess it's okay. Just watch out for my tomato plants."

When Mrs. Lincoln had driven off I walked around the garage and into the rear yard. There was a small patio close to the house, rimmed with roses and well-tended flower beds. Farther to the back was a large vegetable garden, and behind that, partially screened by raspberry vines, were several wooden frames for composting. Nearby I noticed a matted area where the police had apparently raked through the compost mounds, spreading them thin. I could see how their efforts to restore order had fallen short of Mrs. Lincoln's expectations.

Turning, I followed what I thought was the most likely route between the two yards. There was no fence separating the Lincolns' property from Wes's, but a row of pines ran along what I assumed was the property line. Along the street in front a dense hedge obscured the yards from public view.

Wes could no doubt have hidden evidence in the compost bin without raising suspicion. But it would have been almost as easy for anyone approaching from the street, particularly at night. For that matter, with Wes in jail and his house empty, anyone could have followed the same path between the houses I had.

From my position near the corner of the house I surveyed Wes's rear yard. It was largely scrub brush and dry,

wild grass. There's a fine line between neglect and natural, and I thought Wes had probably crossed it. On the other hand, Jake had said he was focusing his efforts on the interior remodeling. He could hardly be expected to tackle a major landscaping job at the same time.

Out of curiosity I approached Wes's house and peeked through the rear windows. I could see a laundry room and an enclosed back porch that served as a storage area, and next to that the breakfast nook where Wes had begun stripping off layers of wallpaper. I knew from experience what a chore that was, especially when you reached those early papers that had been applied with hard-drying paste. It looked like Wes's efforts had become stalled there, at an era when kitchen chic meant walls of watering cans and stenciled geraniums in pots.

When I got back to my car I checked my watch again and decided it was late enough to call Sam. Someday, when I was no longer scraping by, I was going to get myself a car phone. My perpetual search for pay phones had gotten old, fast. At the Chevron station I found a phone booth, but no phone. My luck was better at the convenience store next door.

I reached Sam and told him about the underwear discovered in the Lincolns' compost bin.

"Have they made a positive link to Wes or either of the victims?" he asked when I'd finished.

"Not so far. Benson thinks it's unlikely the forensics tests will turn up much."

Sam sighed. "We'd better keep our fingers crossed all the same."

"I'm not sure how much it matters. Willis is going to play this for everything he can. And the press is going to have a field day."