Sense of Deception (34 page)

I reached out and hugged her. “He was,” I told her. “He really was.”

A
few hours later Dutch and I walked through the door of our home, both of us beyond exhausted and too upset to talk. AFIS had come back with not one single hit on our bloody fingerprint, which meant that the killer had no prior record, and until we discovered on our own who he was, we had no way to identify him other than the clues already left to us.

As Dutch headed into the kitchen to fix us both a small snack before bed, I bent down to pick up Tuttle, who'd come out of her bed and was nuzzling my shin. Tuttle is a cuddle bunny, and really,
really
good at lavishing me with kisses. Eggy, on the other hand, snored away in his bed, with nary a nod of acknowledgment. I took Tuts out on the back porch and let her water the lawn, then settled down with her in one of the patio chairs. It was a nice night, still a bit warm, but dry with just a little breeze. Dutch found me outside and handed me a plate with a sandwich. I took it from him and shared a bit of the roast beef with Tuts.

“We tried, dollface,” he said, when he saw that I wasn't so much eating as feeding the pup.

I laid my head back on the cushion, hugged Tuttle, and looked
up at the stars. It was like staring right up into heaven. “We missed something,” I said, my voice hitching a little. I was struggling to hold my emotions in check. It'd been a terrible day.

“Maybe,” Dutch said. “But we're probably not gonna find it before the appeals hearing tomorrow.”

Tuttle began to tug on the end of the sandwich. It was supercute. She was trying to be really subtle about it. I fed her another piece of beef.

“You feed her the good stuff and she won't want her dog food,” Dutch said.

“She's a good pup,” I told him. “She can have some of the good stuff now and then.”

“Yeah, well, there's horseradish on the bread, babe. Probably not good for dogs.”

I gave her another bit of beef. “She doesn't seem to mind.”

Dutch polished off his sandwich and regarded me. “Come to bed, sweetheart.”

“In a minute,” I told him.

He got up, lifted the plate holding my sandwich from me so that Tuttle couldn't gobble it down, and set it on a side table nearby, so that I could reach for it if I wanted it. He then kissed me lightly on the lips and headed back inside.

I lay curled up with my pup for a long time, going over and over the details of the case, trying to figure out what the heck we'd missed, because the nagging feeling that we had missed something wouldn't leave me. But what it could be, I had no idea.

Dutch shook me awake as dawn was making its way across the horizon. “What time is it?” I said, jerking awake and startling Tuttle, who proceeded to cover me with kisses again.

“It's six thirty,” he said. “Come to bed, babe.”

I sat up and set Tuttle on the grass so she could water the lawn
again. I felt groggy and out of it, but I forced myself to shake that off. “No,” I said, inhaling a deep breath and getting to my feet. “I need to work on the case.”

“What's there to work on?” he asked me. “Until we get some forensics back on the bullet that killed Gallagher to see if it matches anything registered, we're at a dead end.”

I leaned into his chest for a moment, gathering my resolve. “I missed something. I don't know what it is yet. But I missed something.”

He hugged me, then released me. “Okay,” he said. “Go inside and take a shower. I'll get the coffee on, make you some breakfast, and text Candice, and then we'll head into the office and sort it out piece by piece.”

*   *   *

T
hree hours later, with tears in my eyes, I stood up from the conference table where Dutch, Candice, Brice, and Oscar were all poring over the case, and walked to the corner of the room.

I looked at my watch. It was nine thirty-five. Cal was most certainly at the courthouse, about to go in front of the appellate court and fight for Skylar's life. It was a fight I was certain he'd lose.

“Abs?” I heard Dutch call.

“I'm fine,” I said sharply. Of course I wasn't, but I didn't want to hear him or anyone else tell me that we'd done our best, but these things happen. Nothing could be done. It'd been a long shot anyway.

Fuck that. (And for that matter, fuck the swear jar.)

I wanted to save Skylar. I wanted her legacy to reflect what a brave woman she'd been to have overcome her addictions and tried her hardest to create a life for herself and her son, in spite of all the odds and people against her, from her mother, to her ex-husband, to her in-laws, to her former pimp, to . . .

“Wait a minute,” I whispered as a thought occurred to me. Turning in a circle, I raced back to my chair. “Wait a damn minute!” Two random clues had just come together in my mind and I was so excited I was shaking.

“What's up, Sundance?” Candice asked.

I shuffled through the array of photos from the crime scene. My hands were trembling and that made sorting through them difficult, so I finally just dropped them on the table and pushed the ones I didn't need out of the way. “Where is it? Where is it?” I asked, frantic to find the one I was looking for.

“Abs?” Dutch said again.

I ignored him. Instead I pushed photos aside until I got to the back of the stack and there it was. “Oh . . . my . . . God,” I said.

Oscar got up and came around to my side of the table to look over my shoulder. “What?” he asked. And I understood that he didn't see what I saw yet. We'd missed it a dozen times already, but I needed to show him a comparison before it would make sense.

Without answering him, I dug back through the stack and easily found the other photo I needed. Pushing back from the table again, I walked over to the whiteboard against the back wall and moved the little magnets we used to secure photos and such to the board over the two photos. Turning to the other four in the room, I said, “Notice anything?”

Everyone squinted at the two photos. The first was an image that captured Noah's bed, and the second was the view that captured Skylar's bed. “No,” Candice and Brice said, while Dutch shook his head and Oscar stared at me like he didn't get it either.

I pointed to the bedcovers on Noah's bed. Then to the bedcovers on Skylar's bed. Still everyone stared as if they had no idea what I could be hinting at. “It was there all along,” I said. “Right under my freaking nose.”

“Abs,” Dutch said a bit impatiently. “Just tell us.”

“Do you see how Skylar's covers have been tossed to the side?” Everyone nodded. “It's because she heard a noise coming from Noah's room. She said she woke in a panic because she heard a noise and raced out of bed. That's what you do when you've been jarred awake and have to run out of bed. You throw over the covers.”

Brice frowned. “Okay, so what's your point, Cooper?”

I pointed to Noah's bed. “His covers haven't been thrown to the side,” I said. “They've been pushed down and shoved to the end of the bed. Noah was a high-energy kid,” I went on, seeing they weren't following me at all. “I figure he slept like most little boys with lots of rolling over and thrashing limbs. And that's what his covers show. That he moved around a lot when he was asleep and got tangled up in his legs a little. What they don't show is someone else's presence in the room, grabbing him out of bed.”

“I'm still lost,” Candice said.

Oscar raised his hand. “Me too.”

I got down on the ground and lay back to mime it out. “I'm Noah,” I said. Then, I sort of flopped around on the floor a little, kicking my legs a bit. “Now, it's two thirty in the morning, Noah is asleep, and Dennis Gallagher's girlfriend told us that at that exact time he was around the corner of the house hiding, and then he heard tapping on the window.
Tapping.
”

Candice's mouth dropped. “He let the killer in,” she said breathlessly. “Noah let the killer in!”

I nodded and got to my feet. Pointing again to the photo of Noah's bed, I took them all through it. “Noah hears tapping, and he's tangled in the covers, so he kicks them free and they end up mostly pooled at the bottom of his bed. He then gets out of bed, opens the window, and lets the killer in. The killer didn't sneak into the room, grab him out of bed, and murder him. Noah's
bedcovers would've been pulled all the way to the side after being tangled in his limbs if that'd been the case.”

“Okay, so who was it?” Brice asked. “Who did Noah know well enough that he'd let him into his bedroom at two thirty in the morning?”

I moved over to pick up the baseball from the center of the table. “What do we know about this ball?” I asked. Oscar had had one of our techs do some background on the baseball to make sure that it lined up with what Skylar had told us about it coming from Noah's bedroom.

I'd read the report about an hour earlier, as I knew everyone else had. The results were a bit surprising, but I didn't think of its supreme importance until that moment. Oscar said, “World Series ball from game five, nineteen sixty-nine, signed by Yogi Berra, Nolan Ryan, among others. It's worth about eighty thousand dollars. Purchased by Grant Miller at auction in nineteen eighty-six for twenty thousand.”

I smiled. “Grant had that ball for all those years. I'd imagine that he wanted the baseball to go to his grandson because it was one of his most treasured possessions. He and Noah shared a passion for baseball. And so did someone else in the family.”

Oscar and Candice shared a look. “Chris?” she said.

I nodded. “Chris.”

Oscar swiveled his chair and looked like he had something to add. “Cooper, did you know what business Chris is in?”

“Uh, no,” I said.

“He buys and sells sports memorabilia.”

My brow shot up. “For real?”

“Yeah. When I went to ask him about his mother-in-law, I found him in the office above his shop.”

“So Chris would've not only known the value of the ball, but he would've been hard-pressed to leave it behind.”

“Especially if it'd once belonged to his dad,” Candice said.

I pointed to her. “And the night that Noah was murdered, Skylar told me that Chris had called, she'd given the phone to Noah, and then she'd headed to the shower, so she hadn't heard what they'd been talking about.”

“According to court testimony,” Candice said, “Noah had insinuated that he had something important to tell him but didn't feel comfortable telling him anywhere his mom could overhear, and Chris had taken that to mean later that Skylar had fallen back off the wagon.”

“But why would a kid be worried about his mom overhearing him if she's in the shower?” I said. “I mean, you can't hear anything in the shower.”

Candice went back to typing rapidly on her computer.

“So what was it that they talked about?” Dutch asked.

“I think I know. I think that what Noah said to his dad was that he wanted to go on living with his mom. I think Chris Miller was trying to talk his son into changing his mind, and coming back to live with him, and Noah let him know that he wanted to stay put. And since Skylar and Chris were due back in court at the end of the month to meet with the judge, who was going to take Noah's wishes into consideration when they met to either continue the custody ruling or change it, I'm guessing Chris knew that night that he'd lost custody for good.”

“Chris Miller has a hunting license!” Candice said suddenly. We all looked at her. “And,” she added, “look what photos I found on his Facebook page.” She swiveled the computer around so we could see. On the screen were several photos of Chris proudly holding a hunting rifle, standing next to a wild boar he'd obviously killed.

Oscar grabbed her computer and enlarged the image. “That's a Remington,” he said knowingly. “Thirty caliber.”

“Same caliber we pulled out of Gallagher,” Brice said.

“Any military background?” Dutch asked, and I knew he was wondering whether Chris would be ruled out based on the fact that there was no print match from the baseball.

“No,” Candice said. “No military record that I've found yet, but he is an excellent marksman, as these pictures show.” She leaned forward across the table where Oscar still had her computer to click her keyboard again, and a photo of Chris holding his rifle and a blue ribbon at some sort of marksman tournament popped up.

I felt the back of my scalp tingle. It was all falling into place.

“Okay,” Dutch said, adopting his best devil's advocate face. “So, Chris crawls into his son's bedroom, murders him, and slips back out the way he came, taking the ball with him when he went. But what about the knife, Abs? How did he make it to the kitchen and back without leaving any footprints?”

I smiled the smile of someone so relieved to finally have the missing puzzle piece in hand. “Easy,” I said. “He'd taken it a few weeks before.”

Everyone looked around at one another. Oscar said, “Huh?”

I fished through the murder file again to a page that inventoried the contents of the kitchen drawer where Skylar had kept her kitchen knives. “Skylar told me that the murder weapon was part of a larger high-end knife set she'd gotten as a wedding present. I looked up the knives, and they're crazy expensive, made by a Japanese manufacturer named Shun. According to Skylar, when they split up the marital assets, she got the knives in the divorce settlement. So, not only did Chris know what knife set to buy to swap out for the one in the drawer; he also had an opportunity to do that when he came to Noah's birthday party. My guess is that he switched the knives when he passed through the kitchen when no one was looking, because Noah's party was on the back porch.”

“To what end?” Candice asked. “Why swap out a knife when he could've just brought his own to the scene?”