“She was also unpopular,” Krista said, “among certain classmates. But do you really kill somebody who stole your boyfriend away from you ten years ago?”
“Guy can get himself killed stealin’ a woman some other guy met an hour ago. You have those funky cowboy boots on when you went in?”
“I did.”
“Lot of blood?”
“Yeah. Seems confined to the bedroom where she was killed, ceiling and bed mostly, but the killer had to go downstairs and go out. Could have been dripping blood, though I didn’t spot any on the front stairs. Didn’t check the back ones.”
“You did clear the house?”
She nodded. “Nobody in there. Not anybody alive.”
“I’ll trade you some slippery-ass booties for those crazy cowgirl boots.”
“Deal.”
The blue booties all the cops put on, on TV, were only called for when there was a lot of blood or other bodily fluids at the scene. This was borderline, but she knew Booker had a point.
He got the booties out of his trunk. They took turns using the Charger’s front passenger seat sideways with the door open to get into them.
She showed the detective into the house, led him upstairs, and she waited in the hall while the big man went in for a look.
He came out, frowning, shaking his head. “Somebody crazy did that.”
“I needed my investigator to tell me that?”
He folded his arms, leaning against the wall just outside Astrid’s bedroom. He looked like a surly bouncer at a club that could use help like Booker. “No, but I can tell you where we oughta go from here.”
“Listening.”
One eyebrow raised. “Call in the state police boys right now.”
She shrugged. “I’ve already called them for forensics.”
“That’s a good start. But you need, in my opinion, to get them in here right the hell now. Let them have this thing. Also you got other options.”
Northwest Illinois Critical Incident Response — Major Case Assistance, her mind told her. Various other major case assistance teams.
“You don’t think...” She almost said “you,” but instead finished, “... we can handle it?”
“We could handle it. But, first, you knew the victim.”
Krista shook her head. “She wasn’t a close friend. And in Galena, if they aren’t tourists, Booker, I’m going to know any victim.”
He grunted. “Hasn’t been a murder in Galena in twenty years.”
“I worked a homicide not that long ago. Murder was across the river, but we wrapped it up here. Remember?”
“That hasn’t slipped my mind, no. But, Chief — I’m tied up with those three child abuse cases, any one of which could stand my full-on attention. And tomorrow, I got a court date on that domestic. We need help on this one.”
“You’re out?”
The massive shoulders shrugged. “Well, that’s your call. You want me to sideline those child abuse cases?”
She drew in a breath. Let it out.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
“I know where you’re comin’ from,” Booker said.
“You do?”
“You’re a female.”
“You noticed.”
“You’re younger than shit.”
“You noticed that, too.”
“You don’t want to look like somethin’ bad happens, somethin’ big happens, you can’t handle it. I understand that. But you’re a damn good chief. Which I also noticed. You got nothin’ to prove, young lady.”
And yet he called her “young lady.”
Firmly, she said, “If I can’t handle it, Sergeant... if Galena PD can’t handle it... then I’ll call in help. But not till I feel we can’t manage.”
He nodded slowly.
“All I ask,” he said. Then his eyes bored into her. “If you insist on taking this on yourself, we both know somebody you could call.”
She nodded. “We do. Might be tricky.”
“Might be worth it. Would be worth it. It’s well within your authority to bring in a consultant, paid or otherwise.”
She’d been thinking about making that particular phone call since the moment she saw Astrid’s corpse. Now, standing in the hallway of the Lund home’s second floor, the coppery smell of blood still twitching her nostrils, her dead classmate a few yards away, she thought about it some more.
Then she and her investigator went down the stairs and outside, where a silver state police crime scene vehicle was pulling up. With Booker at her side, she briefed the forensics team, showed them to the crime scene, and when they didn’t need her anymore, she returned to the porch of the murder house, from which she made that phone call.
Twelve
When Keith got Krista’s call, he was already up and bathed and shaved, and in a blue Chicago CUBS sweatshirt and jeans and navy running shoes, which already gave him a vague if unintentional police-ish look.
In the middle of eating a slightly stale muffin she’d left him, he told his daughter on the phone, “Honey, I will be glad to head over there. But is it appropriate?”
She had already told him the basic, disturbing circumstances.
“My job description,” she said calmly, “allows me to call in experienced consulting any time I feel like it.”
She sounded very professional. He liked that, of course, but wasn’t sure he wanted to put her on the spot. Fathers outranked daughters, after all, or at least thought they did. And with his decades on the Dubuque department, he might create an uncomfortable work environment for his little girl. For example, he might treat her like his little girl...
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
“We’re on top of it here, but I can use you.”
“Just to take a look at the crime scene and give you my thoughts.”
“Pop, get over here, will you?”
She hung up on him!
He smiled at the phone. He liked that.
Parked in front of the brown two-story frame house on North High Street were two Galena police vehicles — a Ford Explorer and a Dodge Durango — and between them a silver Ford Expedition with ILLINOIS CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATORS over a state seal on the rear side windows. Down the street a ways was a red Dodge Charger.
His daughter stood on the porch talking with her investigator, Sgt. Booker Jackson. Krista wore her bomber jacket and jeans, Jackson his usual natty self in suit and tie (took a real man to pull off a pink-and-white four-in-hand). Both looked a little ridiculous in the blue crime scene booties.
Keith headed their way, exchanging greetings with the officer out on the front sidewalk, a tall kid whose name he couldn’t remember, though they’d been introduced. Then before Keith got to the porch, a crime scene investigator in a blue jumpsuit came out of the house, apparently on his way back to the Expedition for something.
But the average-size guy — whose name was Eli Wallace, an African American CSI who used to work on the Dubuque side — grinned when he saw Keith. The two men met on the sidewalk at about the halfway point, and Eli — teeth very white under a thick black mustache — stuck out a blue-rubber-gloved hand. Keith shook it.
“Is that your kid?” Eli asked, good-naturedly gruff, wagging his head back toward Krista on the porch. She was watching them with a wary smile.
“Yeah,” Keith said.
Eli exchanged the grin for a smirk. “She call Daddy in to help?”
“Just having a looky-loo. They don’t have homicides in Galena every day.”
“No, it’d discourage tourism. Aren’t you on the wrong side of the river?”
“Aren’t you?”
The grin was back. “Naw, I moved over here to the land of Lincoln for the better bennies. Your girl seems to have a good head on her shoulders. How did that happen?”
“Her mom, I guess.”