Unknown Means (33 page)

“And I’m still really baffled by this. Listen: I had the elevator guy at Grace Markham’s apartment take two samples from the top of the elevator, and they don’t match the smear I gave you.” She explained, to his back, where she had picked up the oil on her lab coat.

“Does that mean that the sample on Grace had to come from the salt mine, or can there be more than one type of oil used in the mechanics of an elevator?”

Silence. The set of his back managed to convey his utter lack of interest in her difficulties.

“Marissa is still in danger, Ed. This guy is too determined to stop. And she’s sitting right where Grace Markham sat, like a fish in a barrel.”

A short pause, then finally: “Of course more than one type of oil would be used. Heavy machinery doesn’t work on WD-40.”

She pulled up a chair.

“Different lubricants would appear at different spots. To put it in layman’s terms”—he made the words sound like an expletive—

“imagine your car. The oil added to the engine to lubricate the cylinders is not the same as the heavy grease added to the wheel bearings or the thin pink fluid used in the transmission.”

“So depending on where he took the samples from, I might get more than one result.”

“You might have ten distinct lubricants used in one machined

process. And that’s not even considering contaminants, which could vary greatly from one mechanism to another. You let someone else collect your samples?”

She didn’t care for criticism of her technique from a guy who never left the lab, but she let it slide. “Would it be the same for all elevators?”

“I doubt every elevator in the country buys exactly the same brand of oil, though if they do, I’d get some of that manufacturer’s stock. In this case, it’s a product called Vitalube. But the chemical composition wouldn’t vary too greatly from brand to brand. Unless you have a petroleum-based versus a synthetic, of course. The synthetics would show up as a quite different composition.”

“I’ll have to get a sample of the cable oil used at the Riviere to make sure, but for the moment I’ll assume that, since Grace Markham had a smear of cable oil on her arm, and since the elevator opens directly into her apartment, the killer used the elevator to make entry.”

“Bravo,” Ed said, without inflection. “Truly brilliant.”

“Sarcasm is not becoming in a man of your stature, Ed.” The elevator man in Grace’s building had been named Jack. What about the man at the salt mine? And hadn’t he said something about carbon? Carbon brushes, that was it. They could be the source of carbon that the killer tracked across the carpeting.

Also, they both wore green uniforms, when neither the salt mine workers nor the Riviere employees wore uniforms at all. What did that mean?

We wasted all that time trying to find employees that the Riviere and Gold Coast had in common, she thought, when the elevator repairmen don’t technically work for the building at all. The same elevator company could easily service a number of buildings, though that did not guarantee the same repairman would go to all of them.

“Do you think only an elevator repairman would be able to do that, get in and out through the elevator?”

“I would not know from personal experience. Thanks to my parents and a decent education, I have been spared a life of manual labor.”

“Your best guess?”

“I’ve seen articles that say children in New York City ride the tops of elevator cars as a dare.”

So it could be anyone with a little pluck and a vague knowledge of mechanics. Like the building manager, or Gerard, though he had demurred from joining her on the roof and a fear of heights would have kept him out of an elevator shaft. She tried to find a question that would eliminate some possibilities but came up empty. Besides, as soon as Mrs. Sinclair provided a name and description for her husband, finding the killer should be as easy as taking a drive to his house.

But would he be home?

“One other thing, Ed. This guy has it in for Marissa.”

He deigned to glance at her. “You’re positive he wants her, specifically? Do you know who your killer is?”

“Yes and no. If we’ve located the right motive—and I’m going to assume we have—then we will know who he is very shortly. Can you look up a DUI case for me?”

He gave a heavy sigh but moved himself over to the Digital terminal. The Toxicology Department had always been slightly ahead of Trace in modernizing and systematizing their analyses and results, partially because of Tony’s reluctance to change, but also because of the nature of the work. Ninety-eight percent of the Toxicology Department’s work was to analyze blood, urine, and gastric contents. The Trace Department, by contrast, might analyze blood spatter on a wall, gunshot residue on a victim’s shirt, or a pollen spore. Their daily tasks were too unpredictable to regiment successfully.

Kelly Alexander’s name brought up a nonfatal case folder. Two samples had been submitted—a blood sample from Kelly Alexander and a swab of blood from the steering wheel. The second sample

had been submitted to the Trace Department for DNA analysis.

Evelyn wondered if this roundabout submission explained why no one had indexed Kelly Alexander’s name in their daybook.

“Her blood alcohol content did, indeed, register below a point oh-six. I did the analysis myself.”

“Did you testify?”

He clicked the cursor to bring up another screen. “No notation of it here. It probably didn’t go to trial.”

“No, it did. Marissa testified, and I bet she presented your blood alcohol results.”

“Why would Marissa be presenting a toxicology report? That’s like the flower girl tossing the bridal bouquet. That’s like the bus boy flambéing the cherries jubilee—”

“Watch it there, bub.”

“Besides, I doubt any defense attorney would stand for it. They barely let you guys present each other’s results. They’d never let us cross departments.”

“The defense wouldn’t object in this case. Marissa had good news for them—the woman wasn’t legally intoxicated. At the same time, all the prosecution had left was the DNA proof that Kelly had driven the car and lied about it, so they wanted Marissa to testify. No point dragging you out to the Justice Center just to clear the DUI charge. She probably read your report into evidence. And for that, Craig Sinclair’s father wants her dead, and he isn’t going to stop until she is. So don’t complain, Ed. She kept you off his hit list.”

C H A P T E R

33

DAVID BROWSED THE C GATES NEWSSTAND AT

Cleveland Hopkins Airport, not for reading material but to keep himself awake while waiting for the plane from Miami.

Craig’s mother—first name Joan—had left the beachfront city more than four hours before, but violent lightning over northern Ohio had kept the plane circling. Riley snoozed in a seat by the assigned gate.

The Cleveland police officer assigned to airport detail paced around him in wide circles.

In the midst of picturing what he thought would happen to a plane struck by lightning in midair, David remembered that Evelyn wanted him to move in with her, and a warm flush began in his belly and spread out. He might have pushed her a little, and he had no doubt that Angel’s approval had been and would continue to be vital, but what the hell, he’d take his breaks anyplace he could find them.

A Continental gate agent suddenly scurried into Gate C-17, and David followed. The lightning must have let up long enough to allow the plane to land before it ran out of gas.

The Cleveland police officer explained to the gate agent how they needed to find a woman and had nothing but a grainy DMV

photo to go by. She called the plane and had the flight attendant

bring Joan Sinclair forward before a crush of departing passengers could block her in. The gate agent disappeared down the Jetway and shortly returned with their object in tow.

The dark-haired woman looked both dog-tired—she had spent the entire night on airplanes—and healthily tan. Clevelanders in spring resort to sitting on a curb during their lunch hour with their faces tilted to the sky, letting the UV rays work on their winter white skin. A few late-life wrinkles were an acceptable price to pay. Joan Sinclair positively glowed.

She dropped a bulging black canvas tote bag with “Mexico” in tie-dyed, sunny letters at their feet and said, “What?”

“Joan Sinclair?”

“Yeah. What is it? Is Craig okay?”

“Craig is fine,” David assured her. “At least—”

Her eyes narrowed at his hesitation. “There’s no change, is that what you mean?”

“Yes. We’re here about your husband.”

Joan Sinclair hefted the tote bag onto her five-foot-three frame with visible effort. “Whatever my ex-husband has done, it isn’t my problem.” She turned to follow her fellow passengers making a bee-line for baggage claim.

Riley stuck his arm out. “You can spare us a couple minutes. It takes forever to get all that luggage off these planes.”

“Get your hands off me! I’ve got nothing to do with him. I’ve been flying all night, and I just had to land in the middle of a damn thunderstorm. Leave me alone.”

“Three women are dead,” David said. “And one barely escaped.”

She dropped the bag again and stared at him with wide eyes. He took her elbow and guided her into a molded chair as her knees slowly gave way. Riley got the bag.

“No.” One hand covering her mouth, she spoke through her fingers. “No way. He’s no killer.”

“We believe he is, ma’am. Now, we could be wrong, but we need

to talk to him to clear this up. We don’t want anyone to get hurt, but—”

“He’s a lot of things. Mostly a lying, cheating, jerkish son of a bitch, a crappy father, and I’ll wish to my dying day that I never set eyes on him, but he’s not some kind of psycho.”

“Ms. Sinclair, what is your husband’s name?”

“Ex-husband.”

“Sorry,” David said through gritted teeth. “Ex-husband.”

“John Tufts.”

David waited for bells to ring. They remained stubbornly silent.

“When your son was hurt—”

“I left him before that! What the hell kind of father— All he ever taught Craig to do was tinker with electronics and read Playboy. At ten. He—” She stopped, kneading her temples with long, thin fingers. “He loved Craig, as much as he’s capable of loving anyone—which, believe me, isn’t much. But he had no clue about what was and was not appropriate to discuss with a child.”

She stopped, causing David to prompt, “Was he ever violent?”

“No—not exactly. When we first got married, things were fine.

He was calm and funny. Then after a few years, after Craig was born, he was calm most of the time but started blowing up about little things, like if I bought the wrong brand of butter. He lost interest in me entirely—in every way.” She looked up at the two men listening to her, blushed, and turned her gaze to the wide windows.

Her eyes followed the lights of a jet taxiing to the runway, backlit by a sheet of lightning that bounced across the low-hanging clouds. “I sound like an idiot, but it happened slowly. He stopped going to family parties or out with friends. He talked mostly to Craig or stayed in the basement, tinkering with things or watching TV. He’d watch the local news obsessively for a while and then it would be nothing but old sitcoms for a while and then back to the news. Oh, and I wasn’t permitted down there; he put a padlock on the door. I don’t know why—after I threw him out I broke it, and there wasn’t

anything down there but the TV and some tools. Wire, duct tape.

Normal stuff.”

“You asked him to leave?” David asked gently.

“Oh, yeah.” The woman gazed with disdain at her own reflection in the black windows. “I went to get his lunch pail out of his work van—he couldn’t be bothered to do it himself and I didn’t want it molding in there all weekend. In his cup holder, he had some jewelry that wasn’t mine. Dainty gold necklaces, one with a floating heart. I realized why he’d lost interest in me.”

“You thought he was having an affair.” David wondered if those partners had still been willing ones at that point in the man’s history.

Had the divorce pushed him over the brink to rape, or had there been earlier attacks not linked to him? And what pushed him from rape to murder—did it take him two years to catch up with the three women, to find a way into their secured homes? “When was this?”

“It will be six years next month.” Joan Sinclair’s gaze alternated from one detective to the other. “As much disgust as I felt for him, I felt three times that for myself, that I had been so blind. I went back in the house, told him to leave, and called a lawyer.”

“You got custody.”

“Complete custody. I changed my name back and Craig’s too, and applied to terminate his parental rights on the grounds that he was a total pervert. My lawyer told me it wouldn’t work, but then he got on the stand and blamed his screwing around on work stress or some baloney like that and said he needed to discuss this with his son so Craig would know what the real world was like. The more he talked, the weirder he sounded. He gave the judge the creeps. Plus there were some complaints in his employment file—which, gee, he’d never mentioned to me—and when it was over, the judge gave me full custody and told him not to come near us until he’d had a thorough psychological evaluation.”

“Did he?”

“He ignored the restraining order right and left. He didn’t want it to apply to him, so in his mind it didn’t. The cops told him time and time again, threatened him with jail. That’s what made the judge fi-nalize the custody order. I finally moved, unlisted my phone, and gave my job and my family strict instructions not to tell anyone anything about me, ever, no matter what kind of song and dance he gave.”

“But he came to see Craig after the accident?”