Trace of Doubt (3 page)

Then my father handed me the cardboard box itself. I peered inside. “What are these?” I asked him.

“Cards and letters she kept—letters I sent. I guess letters from her mother and sister. Birthday cards. Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t stand the idea of reading them, so I stuck them in the box and forgot about them. You’re the one who wants…you know…to figure it out. I thought you should have them.”

My father never could bring himself to say, “Your mother was murdered.” He always said she “passed away,” conjuring images of a woman who went to bed one night and didn’t wake up. And I was the one obsessed with solving her murder. I had files of evidence and theories. My very job was, on some level, chosen because it would enable me to learn more about her death.

“Dad?” I asked, “How come you never gave me these before?” I could only imagine what clues the box might yield.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I kind of thought it was disrespectful to…you know…invade her privacy like that.”

I nodded.

“Why are you giving us all this stuff, Dad?” Mikey asked.

Dad sighed. “Well, with you two living on your own, I been thinkin’ that maybe it’s time I sold the house. I’ve got the condo in Florida and the place at the Jersey shore. Been thinking I might just get a condo around here. Don’t need a big old house anymore.”

“But…” I looked at him. I’d always imagined a someday when I would come home to the house I grew up in with my own children. I mean, I wasn’t anywhere close to having kids myself, but that didn’t preclude the idea from being there. My childhood home had a treehouse in the big oak tree out back, and Mikey and I used to play catch out in the yard. Like every boy, he dreamed of the majors, until, unlike every boy, he started dreaming of hot-wiring cars. “The house?” I swallowed hard.

“I’m just rattling around in there. I mean, there’s no sign on the front lawn yet, but I figured I better finally go through her things.”

I held the box on my lap and nodded. We drank some more, watched the TV set over the bar. When Lewis and I were ready to leave, I kissed my dad goodbye and gave Mikey a hug. Lewis didn’t say anything to me as we walked to where I had parked. When we got to my car, I unlocked it and put the box in the backseat. I climbed behind the wheel, and the first thing I noticed was the glint of the diamond in the sun as I gripped the wheel.

“You okay?” Lewis asked.

I nodded. “I think so. I just don’t know why, after over two decades, my father has suddenly decided to deal with her murder.”

“Maybe he finally needs some closure. Or maybe he can finally face looking through her things. You told me she was the love of his life.”

“She was.”

I looked over my shoulder at the box in the backseat. It felt sacred. I wondered, did that box of relics contain clues that would finally let me put her ghost to rest?

Chapter 3

T
hat Friday at the lab, a television crew watched me analyze the tiny blood sample from the victim in the Marcus Hopkins case.

The crew was part of a news magazine following our investigation of the Hopkins case from start to finish—however it turned out. They filmed me looking through my microscope, and then they taped a mini interview in which I explained how a single blood sample was better than a fingerprint, and how it could unmistakably identify a killer.

When I lectured to college students on occasion, I liked to use the analogy of a bar code, and I used it again with the film crew. Every human being has a unique bar-coded label that is our DNA. The human bar code is different from a dolphin’s. And my personal bar code is different from Lewis’s, but it shares some properties with my brother’s, just like all dresses in a department store have bar codes defining them as “clothing.” But just as a BeBe dress is inherently different from a Dior gown, my bar code isn’t exactly the same as my brother’s, and it is completely unique, unless I happen to be an identical twin—which most of us are not.

After the film crew finished taping me, I went to visit Lewis, who was staring intently out the window of his office with an expression somewhere between angry and depressed.

“What’s got you so glum?”

“I just got a call from Larry Harmon in the district attorney’s office, who was calling after he got his ass reamed by the governor.”

“And?” I sat down.

“And they want us to try to get through the backlog of rape kits. You’ve heard of Scottie Hastings. He’s up for parole.”

“Shit.” Scottie Hastings was an acquaintance-rapist. However, he had a predilection for S&M that truly turned the women’s ordeals into far beyond whatever their worst nightmares were. However, he was also very rich, heir to an immense private fortune—part of the Hastings candy empire. Plus, he had an IQ as high as Lewis’s and read law books and texts on DNA evidence for fun. His dream team hired the most expensive jury analysts money could buy—and they were worth it. He got acquitted on nearly all counts in the only case that even made it past the grand jury. He was serving the end of a short sentence for sexual battery. No one had any doubt that as soon as he got out he would resume his sick hobbies.

“What does the D.A. want you to do?”

“Jailhouse informant says the guy brags he’s got tapes. That he didn’t only rape acquaintances. I guess raping people he knew got old. So he started raping and torturing strangers. Wore a mask. The D.A. is hoping he got sloppy somewhere and we can pin a rape on him. Preferably before he’s out on the streets. The D.A. hopes there’s a match in one of those kits.”

“But the backlog is immense.”

“Yeah, well, we just have to do it. I don’t want this sick bastard out there.”

I stared at Lewis. He rarely cursed, and the anger on his face was visible. “Okay…” I said slowly. “But something else is bothering you. I can tell.”

He shrugged.

“Out with it.”

“All right,” he sighed. “Mitch Stern just offered me my own television show. A cold-case kind of program on their cable network. Five times the money I make here and probably a tenth of the aggravation. Says my appearances as a talking head are getting me network notice.”

My mouth dropped open. “You wouldn’t consider it, would you?”

When we were trying to secure David’s release from prison, Lewis and Joe Franklin went on a number of legal analysis shows and cable programs to tout his innocence. Lewis on television was pretty much the same as Lewis in real life—dry humored, urbane, witty and at times mischievously ghoulish. He was also very telegenic, with his head of silvery hair and pale eyes, and that rascal-imp smile of his.

“‘Consider’ is too strong a word.”

“Oh, God,” I felt myself panic a bit, “you are thinking about it, aren’t you?” My voice was a little accusatory.

“Billie, every day someone at this lab is bitching about something—you being the lead bitch at times. We’re underfunded, overworked and then we get calls like today asking us to do the impossible. Our testing is scrutinized more closely by the second because no D.A. or attorney wants to go to court and endure another OJ fiasco, and thanks to
CSI
and a half-dozen TV shows, everyone thinks he or she is a DNA expert, including juries. I’d be crazy
not
to think about it.”

“But you’re the driving force behind this lab.” Lewis never lost his dedication to science.

He slumped in his chair. “I don’t know what drives me anymore.”

I thought about turning on my television and seeing Lewis, with Ripper on his desk, discussing maggots and blowflies with visiting experts, or maybe leading a roundtable discussion on how to dismember a body. What was the world coming to?

“Enough of my miserable existence. You read any of your mother’s letters yet?”

I shook my head. “It feels creepy. I will, though.”

“Want to grab some dinner tonight?”

“Can’t. I’ve got to meet Joe and go over the Hopkins case with him. Want to join us?”

“Sure.” He sighed.

“You know, Lewis, you’re worse than a hound dog with those expressions. Unrequited love on you is ugly.”

I stood and left his office, saying over my shoulder, “I’ll let you know where and when for dinner when Joe calls me.”

I walked back to my desk and answered e-mail. Then I called up the schedule to see where I could squeeze extra hours from the criminalists and technicians I supervised to process more rape kits.

About a half hour later, Ziggy came by with the mail. I’m not sure what Ziggy’s real name is. It could be Ziggy, I suppose. I just know he’s a major Bob Marley fan, and by attrition loves Ziggy Marley, too. At some point, with his dredlocks and faintly Caribbean accent, someone probably called him Ziggy and it stuck.

He handed me five or six pieces of mail.

“Thanks, Zig.”

“When you gonna run away with me?”

“Zig, you know I have a boyfriend.”

“Yeah. My dumb luck.”

“Give me a break. Your girlfriend is stunning. She puts the rest of us females to shame.”

“Yeah…and Shiana believes my band is just one break short of superstardom. She’s a righteous lady.”

“Yes, she is.” Actually, I’d heard Ziggy’s band, and Shiana was right. They were awesome.

Ziggy left, and I opened my mail—several flyers from a publishing company advertising new texts in the science of DNA, genetic testing and crime-scene investigations. Most of the textbooks were twice as thick as dictionaries and cost hundreds of dollars. Lewis used them to keep the lid on Ripper’s tank.

Then there was one with no return address. I turned it over in my hand, then turned it back to the front. I didn’t recognize the handwriting. “Ms. Billie McNamara Quinn.” How odd, I thought. I never used my middle name—actually my mother’s maiden name—because it was unwieldy, and people thought it was a married name and tended to hyphenate it.

I opened the letter. Inside was a simple, typewritten piece of paper with the words:

I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO HER

Then my heart stopped as something fluttered to my desk. A tiny scrap of fabric. Lavender roses on it. A piece of the dress my mother was wearing when she disappeared.

Chapter 4

“J
esus Christ!” I stifled a scream, then instinctively looked around as if the person who sent me the letter was there somehow, watching me, seeing how freaked out I was. But of course no one was there.

My hands shook, and I immediately put down the envelope and letter so that my fingerprints weren’t all over it. I buzzed Lewis on the phone. We have Caller ID, so he knew it was me.

“Lewis LeBarge, resident genius speaking.”

“I need you to come to my desk. This second.”

“You all right?” His voice changed from playful to earnest.

“Just come,” I managed to squeak.

Lewis was at my desk in under a minute. In that time, I’d donned rubbed gloves. I showed him the letter and the fabric.

“My mother’s dress,” I whispered.

“Are you sure, Billie?”

I nodded and looked up at him. I knew I had no color in my face. “You and I know serial killers don’t retire. They may appear to stop killing, but they’ve either changed locations or MO, they’re in prison somewhere on an unrelated charge. Or they’re dead. All these years, Lewis, even as I’ve obsessed over this case, I told myself he’d met some gruesome end somewhere. It was how I slept—when I can sleep, that is. I told myself he was dead. And now…now I know he’s not only alive, he knows who I am.”

“Maybe a witness?” he offered hopefully, though I could hear how he didn’t believe it himself.

“A witness who has a scrap of a murder victim’s dress?”

“Could it be some elaborate hoax?”

I shook my head. “I don’t see how. I’ll need to have all this tested. The envelope, letter, the type and font, and the dress fabric itself.”

“Whatever you need. You know that.”

“Why now, Lewis? Whoever sent this, why now after all these years?”

“I don’t know.”

I got the evidence together and submitted it for processing, assigning it a lab number. About thirty minutes later Joe Franklin called.

“You want to meet at the sushi place in Ft. Lee?”

“Sure.”

“What’s the matter, Billie?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. Lewis is coming.”

“Great. See you both around seven?”

“Fine.”

I went through some more lab results. We processed everything from DNA samples to drug samples. If the police find a kilo of white powder, they need to be eventually be able to tell a jury if it’s cocaine, heroin, or talcum powder. But I really couldn’t concentrate.

My mother was the total antithesis of my father, but somehow what they had together worked. She kept a garden, read the classics, went to church every Sunday and she was from the old model of Carol Brady housewife—ever cheerful, running her household with enthusiasm. She was an amazing cook and absolutely breathtaking. My father said he was a goner the minute he laid eyes on her. At first, he didn’t tell her what he did for a living…which was run a family within the Irish mob in Jersey. By the time he did sit down and tell her, she was already so in love, she made fragile peace with what he did even as she said a rosary each Sunday for his soul.

When she disappeared, the cops paid very little attention. They reasoned that she had tired of being married to the mob and had simply decided to take a hike. “Thousands of people walk away from their lives every year. They don’t want to get found,” was what one of the detectives told my father.

But her disappearance was so out of character, and even if she had tired of his involvement with “the life,” my father knew—and always told us—that she never would have left Mikey and me behind. Ever.

And by the time the authorities took his claims seriously, the trail was cold. Her body turned up—what little remained of it—in a secluded wooded area six months later. Animals had consumed parts of her bones. There was evidence that she was tortured, some ligature marks worn into the bones that were there. And though it would have been convenient for the cops to dismiss it as a mob killing, the fact is the mob, while not a bunch of choirboys, has its own code. You don’t touch the family of a mobster, no matter what he’s done, and my dad hadn’t been lying when he’d told the cops things were peaceful in his “business” at the time she disappeared.

My father was never the same after that. He wasn’t home when it happened—and he told himself he should have been. I was never the same. Mikey was never the same. Her absence left this gaping hole in our lives. We were never at home. Dad couldn’t cook much more than spaghetti or hot dogs, and if Mom haunted us, reminding us of the vacant empty spaces inside, we haunted diners. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, we ate out every day, usually at Greek diners, sliding across red leather seats into booths, plugging quarters into juke boxes on the table.

My brother followed Dad into the family business, but I tested off the IQ charts and was soon attending a snooty private school, with my father pushing me to go for it and become a doctor with my straight-A average and love of chemistry and biology. For me, science was about escape. And facts. I could write down a formula in black and white, and it was irrefutable. DNA fascinated me. And in that fascination was born an idea. I could become a criminalist…and maybe someday solve her murder.

Dad was disappointed. But I’m nearly through with my doctoral thesis, so I tell him that he’ll have a Dr. Quinn in the family, anyway.

After most of the lab had gone home that evening, Lewis came to collect me.

“Why don’t we go park your car at your place? You leave your car there, and I’ll drive us to the restaurant. You can get good and drunk. I think you need to.”

I was too drained to argue and nodded.

“Is David home? Why don’t you call him and see if he’ll join us?”

“No. He’s drywalling his father’s basement. Finishing off an area for his dad to do some woodworking.” David’s mother had died of cancer while he was in prison, but he and his father were exceedingly close. His father had never once given up hope that the real Suicide King killer would be found.

I followed Lewis to my place, then got in his car, and we took the New Jersey Turnpike and headed to Ft. Lee, a bedroom community for Manhattan just across the Hudson via the George Washington Bridge.

“Are you going to tell your father and Mike about the letter?”

“I have to. I just have to figure out how. You know how Dad gets.”

Lewis smirked. “Yes, I do. Two words—Tommy Salami.”

Tommy Salami was the overgrown steroid-huge pit bull of a bodyguard my father saddled me with when he was worried about me. When we were working the Suicide King case, Tommy had even taken a bullet for me. Which meant I was now forever indebted to a man who loved salami, as well as all other Italian cuts of meat. I often sent him gift baskets as a way of still trying to say thank you. But the last—and I mean the very last—thing I wanted to have happen was for my father to decide my mother’s murderer was after me. If Dad thought I was in danger, I’d once again be riding to work with Tommy Salami in my passenger seat—I refused to let him drive.

“We’ll have to call the police, too,” Lewis said. “We can run the tests, but you know, tracking down the postmark and so on, we’ll need to involve them.”

I sighed.

“What?”

“Trust me. Finding anyone on the police force interested in solving my mother’s case will be impossible. No man hours will be devoted to it. Nothing. Why? Because her last name, and mine, is the same as Dad’s. And Mikey’s. And their collective rap sheet is miles long. The Quinn name means they won’t be looking to help us, Lewis.”

“But it’s a murder.”

“An old murder. A cold case. You see how many rape kits we need to process. There are more pressing things for the police to do than find her killer. And to be honest, they botched it. When the trail was fresh, they should have looked more intensely for her. You know the department is loath to admit mistakes.”

He pursed his lips. “What if I try to find a cop to help us? I’m not director of the lab for nothing. More than a few detectives owe me.”

I shrugged. “You can try.”

“Good. Because I was going to whether you agreed or not.”

I smiled to myself and looked out the window. We arrived in Ft. Lee and spied the Japanese place Joe loves, and then circled the block four times until we found a spot.

We put change in the meter and entered the restaurant. Joe waved to us from the back. He’s hard to miss. He used to play football for the New Orleans Saints. A bum knee meant he was sidelined permanently, but they still had to pay out his contract. Unlike a lot of guys who might blow their proverbial wad on women and cars and bling, Joe went to law school. His mother had always wanted him to be a fancy lawyer anyway. Soon, he was negotiating multimillion-dollar deals for some of his old buddies, but a case he took pro bono to free an innocent kid changed him. Now he balances the big money with the Justice Foundation.

Joe half rose from his seat and kissed my cheek. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I have,” I said.

Our favorite waiter, Huang, came over, and I ordered sake and Lewis ordered a ginger ale.

“Well?” Joe asked, using his chopsticks to pick up a piece of cucumber from one of the small spicy salads offered in sample-size dishes when customers sat down.

I told him about receiving the letter.

“You better be careful,” he intoned. “You know, we nearly lost you on the Suicide King case. Have you thought about—”

“Don’t say it,” I snapped.

“I was just going to suggest Tommy Salami.”

“I know. And I’m not interested in being babysat by Mr. Salami. I think I’ll go to the firing range instead.” I had, after the Suicide King case, gotten a carry-and-conceal permit. But I was still unsure as to whether I really wanted to carry a weapon.

Joe leaned back. He was dressed in one of his usual custom suits—you don’t find clothes for an NFL physique in a standard department store. He had his shirts hand-tailored by a former Hong Kong shirtmaker, right down to the JRF embroidered on the cuff in elegant script. “This is getting tiring sometimes. Dealing with this shit.”

“It’s not the penthouse boardroom of some NFL team headquarters,” I said. “It’s the ugly and dirty side of life.”

“Yeah. Well, I for one am tired of dealing with murderers and prisons. And I miss C.C.” He looked at Lewis. “And not in the way you miss C.C. I just miss her calming presence. She was my anchor, man.”

“How’s Vanessa?” Lewis asked. He and I hated her. She and Joe started dating three months before. She was an entertainment reporter for a television tabloid show. She was stunning—and ambitious. And Vanessa clearly had no use for Lewis and me. The two of us wondered what Joe saw in her beyond her obvious beauty.

“She’s after me to shut down the foundation and, swear to God, take a stab at politics.”

I exchanged glances with Lewis. I could just see Vanessa taking over Gracie Mansion with Joe as mayor of New York City.

“You wouldn’t do that, would you?” I found I was grateful for my hot sake, which had arrived, and I downed the first cup, then another.

“I won’t say I haven’t thought about it.”

“What about Marcus Hopkins? What about men like him?” I asked Joe.

“I know. I haven’t made any decisions yet, honest. I wish C.C. was here, though, to talk things over with.” He paused. “You going to visit Marcus Sunday?”

I nodded. “I feel like I have to make the drive. David told me the worst thing in prison when you’re innocent is the lack of hope. You just feel like it’s a never-ending nightmare from which you can’t wake up.”

The three of us ordered sushi and spent the rest of the dinner discussing the Hopkins case, plus looking at files and applications of other possible cases to take on. I lost track of how much sake I drank. All I know is Lewis kept signaling for another one of those cute little sake bottles, and I kept filling my tiny ceramic cup. By the time dinner was over, I was definitely feeling less pain over the stress of getting the letter.

Lewis drove me to my apartment. Before I met David, I regularly crashed on Lewis’s couch. Now I made sure I got home most nights. Before I climbed out, he took my hand in his.

“Be careful, Billie.”

“I will.”

“If it’s your mother’s killer, he wants to play some sort of game with you. Cat and mouse. And guess which part you’re supposed to play? The mouse.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve spent enough time with The Mob that I’m more like a very street-smart rat. You don’t want to mess with a Jersey rat.”

I exited the car and opened the door to my building and let myself in to my apartment. David was asleep in bed. I sometimes wondered if, after prison, with its inherent lack of privacy, he slept better when I wasn’t in the bed next to him.

Bo came over to me and accepted a few pats. My cat slunk over and nudged his head against my knee. The two of them got along surprisingly well.

I flicked on the light in the kitchen and opened the fridge and poured myself a tall glass of apple juice. I was convinced hydration was the secret to avoiding a hangover. I opened a cabinet and took out three Advil. Hydration and over-the-counter pain relievers. I hoped I wouldn’t hate the morning too much.

But they didn’t have a pain reliever for what was really bothering me.

Lewis was considering leaving the lab for stardom on the boob tube.

Joe was considering shutting down the foundation for his ambitious girlfriend’s career plans for him.

C.C. was still MIA.

My father was considering selling my childhood home.

My brother was again dabbling in the same sort of things that got him arrested before.

And my mother’s killer had decided I would make a nice mouse.

No, there wasn’t a pill big enough to fix what was wrong with my life.