Sense of Deception (13 page)

“All the trees in the hood are about that size,” he said. “I'll bet the builder gave everybody two trees for their landscaping package and you could have them in the front or the back, or one in the front and one in the back.”

My gaze traveled over the fenced-in yard to the neighbor's yard, where a similar-sized tree stood. And then down a few more houses to another tree, also about the same size. As far down as I could look, in fact, I couldn't find a much bigger tree, and then I remembered pulling up to the house and the smallish-sized oak tree in the front yard.

I jotted a note to myself on the cover of the manila folder. “Skylar bought this house right before she moved Noah in. I can ask her if she bought it brand-new.”

I then opened the folder so I could show Oscar what I'd noticed from the photo of Skylar's bedroom. “Oscar,” I said. “Look at this and tell me what you see.”

He edged close to me and peered over my shoulder. After studying the image for a few seconds, he said, “Awful tidy room for a woman who's fallen off the wagon.”

I pointed to him, pleased that he'd picked up on it so quickly. “Bingo. I mean, look at her room. Everything is neat and orderly. Alcoholics aren't neat. They're slobs.” I knew this from personal experience, actually. “So if she'd fallen off the wagon, wouldn't there be signs of her alcoholism in the house? I mean, the fact that the hallway was vacuumed and the house was neat as a pin, especially her room, should've been a sign that she was still abstaining.”

“There was also no sign of alcohol on her breath when Dioli interviewed her,” Oscar said.

I looked sharply at him. “How do you know that?”

“I asked him after you left. His theory for her motive seemed pretty lame, so I asked him if he'd seen any empty bottles in the kitchen or if he'd smelled any booze on her, and he said no, that she'd been careful and had planned ahead of time to make it look like she was still running sober.”

“Right,” I said, rolling my eyes. Focusing back on the photo, I said, “Look at the bed. Notice anything?”

Oscar squinted. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “What am I missing?”

I pointed to the bedcovers. “See how the whole bedspread is perfectly smooth and flat, except for this section where Skylar obviously slept—the covers here have been folded over.”

Oscar continued to study the photo. “Cooper, I'm still not seeing anything weird. She had a neat room and she had a neat bed. What's throwing you off about it?”

“Well, it tells me two things: The first is that Skylar is a deep sleeper. At least she was on the night her son was murdered. I mean, you can see that she did actually lay her head down on the pillow long enough that it left an impression, and the same thing with the sheets, right? She was in bed and sleeping when Noah was attacked, so if she's in a deep enough sleep not to have kicked the covers around, I'm thinking she was in a deep enough sleep to not have heard the beginning of Noah's attack.

“Then there's the covers themselves, especially this section that's been thrown back over to reveal the sheets. If you're fast asleep and you hear a noise loud enough to startle you awake, and you think maybe your son's in trouble, you're going to throw back the covers hastily. Like, whip them off you to get out of bed, right?”

Oscar's brow rose and he began to nod. “Yeah, Cooper, you're right. They do look thrown over.”

“Exactly. The other thing that's bothering me is this,” I said, pulling out the photo of the hallway with its one set of bloody footprints, and a lighter set of prints walking the edge of the hallway toward the back bedroom, and then away from it on the other side of the hallway. “I see a total of three sets of footprints here, and I'm wondering why I don't see four.”

Oscar's brow dipped low again. “Assuming it was an intruder who killed Noah,” Oscar said, “he could've gone out the window and covered his tracks by closing the window and popping the screen back on.”

“I'm not talking about the killer's exit,” I said. “I'm talking about the knife. The CSI report says that knife came from her kitchen, right?”

“Yeah, it did. So?”

“So, if we're to believe Dioli's version of how it went down, Noah calls his dad, tells him he has a big secret. Skylar overhears this, assumes he's about to rat her out, and she waits until two thirty in the morning to go into Noah's room and murder him. So when did she grab the knife?”

“Before she vacuumed,” Oscar said.

I shook my head. “I'm not buying it. According to Dioli, Skylar starts drinking again; then she overhears Noah on the phone to his dad; then she cleans the place all nice and tidy-like, making sure to grab the knife before she vacuums the hallway, and stows the murder weapon somewhere in her room. Then she waits in bed under the covers without moving more than an inch until two thirty in the morning, when she stages it to look as if she was startled out of bed, rushes into Noah's room with the knife, kills him in a fit of rage that she's somehow managed to keep perfectly
contained for the previous five and a half hours, and flees the scene, covered in her son's blood, tracking the only footprints down the hallway away from the scene. What about
any
of that makes
any
kind of sense?”

Oscar glanced at the window with the loose screen. “Yeah, but, Cooper, the knife only had
her
prints on it, old prints and ones made during the murder. I mean, if she didn't grab the knife from her kitchen before she vacuumed the hallway, who did?”

“Someone who knew where to look for a weapon in her kitchen. I mean, we have no idea when the knife was taken, only that it was by someone who was familiar enough with Skylar and her belongings to know where to locate it. And this same someone also knew that screen could be pried loose. And he also knew which bedroom her son slept in.”

Oscar stared at the house for a long moment, and I could practically see the wheels in his head turning. “But why?” he said at last. “Why kill the kid, Abby? I mean, you gotta be a special kind of monster to do that to a nine-year-old boy.”

“I agree,” I said, feeling a well of anger curl up around my insides. “And that's why, no matter what happens to Skylar, we're not gonna stop until we hunt his ass down and make him pay.”

O
scar dropped me back at the house a little after nine. I found Dutch spoon-deep into a bowl of ice cream in front of the TV. After dropping a five note into the swear jar (it'd been a long day and I might've taken some liberties), I sat down next to him and leaned my head on his shoulder. “Hey, beautiful,” he said to me, kissing my forehead. His lips were pleasantly cool from the ice cream. “Tough night?”

“You could say that.”

“What happened?”

“Oscar and I went to the crime scene and met this sweet old lady who lives there now. She let us look around the place and in doing that, we became convinced that Skylar didn't murder her son.”

“Really?” Dutch asked, his deep baritone going up an octave. “Oscar's convinced?”

I smirked. “Heaven forbid you should be surprised that
I
was convinced too.”

“I thought you were already convinced.”

“No. I was just ninety-nine percent sure. Now I'm one hundred percent sure.”

“What put it over the line?”

I sat up and pulled the folder back out of my purse. I went over the contents in detail with him, telling him what we'd found at the scene and comparing it with the photos taken. “Even though we have no physical evidence of an intruder, I'm still convinced that there was one.”

“You're right,” he said once I'd finished. “We don't always find physical evidence tying an intruder to a crime scene. Think about the hard time we're having finding anything on Corzo.”

I nodded. Yeah, it was more the rule than the exception to not find a killer's physical evidence at a crime scene these days. Too many psychopaths were big fans of the CSI shows.

“The knife is the tough part,” Dutch said. “Everything else you're describing would fit an intruder except for the fact that the murder weapon came from the home, and there were no signs of forced entry and no signs that the intruder used the hallway to access the knife from the kitchen.”

“But what if it was taken in advance of the crime?” I said to him. “What if someone who knew Skylar took the knife without her knowledge and brought it back to the scene when he decided to commit the murder?”

Dutch scratched the back of his head absently. “That's one elaborate plan there, Edgar. I mean, stabbing someone is a highly personal crime. And to stab a little kid, you gotta be one hell of an evil son of a bitch.”

“You gotta be the worst kind of evil son of a bitch,” I agreed, feeling a white-hot anger burn inside me. “And one that I'm gonna hunt down and hold accountable.”

Dutch turned his head to consider me for a moment. “Be careful on this one, dollface. If this guy really did kill a little kid and framed the mother for it, he'd think nothing of doing you in.”

I smiled confidently. “I've got Oscar
and
Candice on this one, cowboy. Let this asshole
try
to get past that posse.”

Dutch hugged me and kissed my cheek. “And yet, I'm still worried.”

“Shocker,” I said.

“In my defense, I'll point out that, on several prior occasions, you've managed to get into trouble even while in the company of Candice and Oscar.”

I cocked an eyebrow at him. “And on a few other occasions I've also managed to get into trouble with
you
as my chaperone.”

Dutch made a face. “Noted,” he said. Then he appeared thoughtful. “You know what I wonder?”

“What a great girl like me is doing with a worrywart like you?”

That won me a smile. “That, and if it's truer that you find trouble or trouble finds you?”

I hugged him. “It's not me. I never go looking for trouble.”

Dutch pointed to my legs. “Hey, liar, liar, I think your pants are on fire.”

*   *   *

T
he next morning I was up crazy early. I had a lot on my mind and hadn't slept well, so around four a.m. I got up, crept out of bed and into the kitchen, where I huddled over the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the grisly pictures of Noah Miller's crime scene.

Something about the photos in the file was bugging me, but I really couldn't put my finger on it, until I got to a group of photos taken of the back wall, where Noah's bed was.

There was a series of photos showing the blood spatter, and I tried not to think too much about the actual pattern dotting the walls, until I looked at one photo in particular. It was my
Eureka!
moment.

Hurrying through the kitchen and into our bedroom, I found
Dutch on his stomach, snoring softly while hugging my pillow. I debated with myself for a solid minute about waking him up before I shook his shoulder. “What's happening?” he said, jerking to a sitting position and looking around blearily.

“I need help,” I said.

Dutch shot out of bed. Grabbing the gun he kept on his nightstand, he held it up with his right hand, and shoved me behind him with his left. “Intruder?” he said quickly. “In the house? Did you see him? Is he armed?”

“Uh, cowboy?”

“Yeah?”

“How about you ask questions first this one time, okay?”

Dutch turned his head to look over his shoulder at me. “No intruder?”

“Nope.”

“Are you okay?”

“Ducky.”

Dutch blinked and glanced at the clock. “It's four forty-five in the morning, Edgar.”

I offered him my biggest, most apologetic smile. “There's coffee.”

Dutch made an indelicate irritated sound and moved to put his gun in his shoulder holster, which hung from the bathroom door. Yawning, he got back into bed, curled around my pillow, and pretended to ignore me.

“I'll make you breakfast,” I sang.

He turned his head away from me.

“And I'll even do the dishes,” I sang some more.

“Edgar?”

“Yes, oh love of my life?”

“Remind me later to call Cal and ask him for the name of a good divorce attorney.”

“I will if you'll help me,” I said sweetly.

With a giant sigh Dutch pushed himself up to a sitting position again and switched on the bedside light. With drooping shoulders he said, “What is it that can't possibly wait three hours on a Sunday?”

I offered him the photo I'd pulled from Skylar's folder.

“What's this?” he asked, with a yawn.

“It's a photo taken from Noah Miller's murder scene.”

“It's a wall,” he said, eyeing the photo with no small amount of impatience.

“Yes.”

“There's blood spatter,” he said.

“Yes.”

And then he dipped his chin a little to look a bit more carefully at the image. “And a void on the curtain.”

“And on the window,” I said, moving over to one of our windows. Undoing the latch, I lifted the sash all the way up and took the curtain and shoved it up between the screen and the top pane to show him visually what I thought had happened. “The screen in that window is about an eighth of an inch too small to fit securely. It falls out with just a little prying. I think an intruder popped the screen, opened the window, and then maybe the wind pulled the curtain out, leaving a void right there.” For emphasis I made a hand motion around the left-hand portion of the wall where the curtain obscured the wall. “That's how the blood spatter avoided staining the curtain and the window, but got the wall and the windowsill and everything else in that area.”

“Could Skylar have had the window open while she killed Noah, then shut it after the deed was done?” he asked, rubbing his eyes to get the sleep out.

“No.”

“I like how you take the time to consider the scenario,” he said.

“Actually, I have considered it, but I rejected it for three reasons. First, it makes absolutely no sense for Skylar to claim that an intruder killed her son, then shut the window to make it look like the intruder came in from . . . where? The front door? Or the sliding glass door? Neither of which had any obvious signs of forced entry. No way.

“Second, what about the screen? It had to have been out for the curtain to have been pulled through and avoid the blood spatter, so how did it fall out, then get put back in? She couldn't have reached over the windowsill to get at it, because there'd be blood all over the sill from her clothes, and she couldn't have gone down the hall and outside to the backyard to put it back in, because there's only one set of bloody footprints down the hallway, and they turn toward the front door, not the back.

“And third, look at the curtain, Dutch. There aren't any bloody fingerprints on it. If Skylar had pulled the curtain back through, somehow managed to replace the screen, and then shut the window to boot, where are all the bloody fingerprints? And yet, photos of Skylar at the scene show her hands smeared with blood. Did she kill Noah, wash her hands, pull in the curtain, replace the screen, shut the window, and then get her hands bloody again? It makes no sense.”

Dutch looked at me, blinking a little. “I stand corrected. You have considered it. Carefully.”

I came to sit down on the bed in front of him. “So, tell me something, Agent Rivers. If this here photo raises such huge red flags for you and me, then why didn't it raise any red flags for either the detectives working the scene or Skylar's defense team?”

Dutch shrugged. “You know how circumstantial cases go, Abby. Once an investigation focuses on a suspect, anything that doesn't fit the scenario becomes invisible or nothing but a distraction. We can never explain every single bit of circumstantial evidence at a scene. We go with a preponderance of the evidence to help us point the way to the killer, and I gotta be honest here, babe. . . . If I'd walked in on that scene with that little guy in the bedroom butchered like that and only one set of bloody footprints leading out from the bedroom, and his mother covered in her son's blood with a knife from her kitchen with only her prints on it, I can't say that I would've gone a different way than Dioli.”

I frowned at my husband and lifted the photo out of his hands. “Yes, you would've, Dutch. You would've because not only are you a great detective, but it took you all of five seconds to pick out a discrepancy in one photo of the crime scene. And you did that half-asleep! These guys ignored a major piece of evidence because it was more work to go look for an unsub than it was to arrest the traumatized mother at the scene. That's not overlooking evidence because there's so much more in favor of another scenario—that's ignoring the elephant in the room because you're too fricking lazy to get off the couch.”

Dutch sighed. “I don't think it was laziness, doll,” he said gently. “I think that whenever you have the violent murder of a child, there's a hell of a lot of pressure from up the ladder to solve the crime as fast as you can. And their scenario made sense to a jury, and to two appeals courts, who found Skylar Miller guilty, and then upheld that conviction.”

“And because of their shoddy investigation, an innocent woman could get the needle,” I said angrily.

Dutch put a hand on my shoulder. “Sometimes, innocent people become victims of the system.”

I patted Dutch's hand and got up off the bed. “I know. But it still sucks.”

“Agreed. But now Skylar's got the best advocate I can think of in her corner, and if you take that photo and your argument to Cal, maybe he can use it to get the appeals court to give her a new trial.”

My brow lifted. “You think?”

“Worth a shot.”

I glanced at the clock. It was now only a little past five a.m. “It's probably way too early to call Cal, right?”

Dutch chuckled. “I think it's too early to be awake period,” he said, sliding back down on the bed and wrapping himself around my pillow again. “Wake me in two hours for that coffee and breakfast you promised me.”

Three and a half hours later I called Dutch's cell. “Rivers,” he said, his voice froggy with sleep.

“Hi, sweetheart. Listen, coffee and breakfast are in the kitchen, for you. I'm at the office waiting on Candice.”

“You left?”

“Yes.”

“You're not having breakfast with me?”

“No.”

There was a pause (in which I detected no small amount of disappointment), then, “Okay. Call me later to let me know when you'll be home and what you'd like for dinner.”

“Will do!” I said cheerfully, then hung up.

“You made Dutch breakfast?” Candice asked, sauntering into my office to drape herself elegantly into a chair.

“‘Made' is a rather loose term here,” I said. “But, yeah.” I'd set a package of powdered doughnuts on the kitchen table and a mug for the coffee that I'd prepared myself a few hours earlier next to
the box. The coffeemaker had probably turned itself off by now, and the brew was likely to be cold, but when I'd promised Dutch coffee and breakfast, he hadn't demanded that it be anything specific, so technically I figured I could get away with the bare minimum, especially since I had far more important things to do.

“Is Oscar joining us?” Candice asked.

I shook my head. “His niece's
quinceañera
is today, so he won't be able to join us till later if at all.”

“Ah,” she said, crossing her legs and getting comfortable. “Then fill me in, Sundance.”

I talked for the next hour, taking Candice carefully through everything that Oscar and I had discovered at Skylar's old house, and then I showed her the photo of the blood-spatter void on the curtain and she took the photo and studied it closely without saying a word. At last she whispered, “Holy shit, Sundance. She's innocent.”

A small weight that I hadn't known was even there lifted from my shoulders. It was one thing to convince others of my gut feelings, but when Candice got on board, it felt like charging into battle alongside Joan of Arc. “She is,” I agreed. “And if we don't move quickly, she'll die for the murder of her child.” I couldn't imagine a worse injustice.