“Shit…” He thought about the word, noticed that she flushed. “Excuse me.”
“That's okay. The thing is, because so many printers are in garbage sacks, they don't get seen until they're already in the trash flow, and they wind up getting buried at the landfill,” she said.
“So we're out of luck.”
“Yes. I believe so. There's no way to tell what printer came from where. Even if we found the right printer, nobody would know what truck it came from, or where it was picked up.”
“Okay. Forget it,” Lucas said. “I should have known that.”
She picked up the second pack of papers. “On the unsolved murders, I looked at the five states you asked about, and I also looked at Nebraska, because there are no big cities there. I found one unsolved that looks good. A woman name Claire Donaldson was murdered in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. I told Carol as soon as I found it, but she said I wouldn't have to work anymore on that, because you already knew about it.”
Lucas nodded. “Okay. Good job. And that was the only one?”
“That was the only unsolved,” Sandy said. “But I found one solved murder that also matches everything, except the sex of the victim.”
Lucas frowned. “Solved?”
She nodded. “In Des Moines. An elderly man, wealthy, living alone, house full of antiques. His name was Jacob Toms. He was well known, he was on a lot of boards.
An art museum, the Des Moines Symphony, an insurance company, a publishing company.”
“Jeez, that sounds pretty good. But if it's solved…”
“I pulled the newspaper accounts off LexisNexis. There was a trial, but there wasn't much of a defense. The killer said he couldn't remember doing it, but wouldn't be surprised if he had. He was high on amphetamines, he'd been doing them for four days, he said he was out of his mind and couldn't remember the whole time he was on it.
There wasn't much evidence against him-he was from the neighborhood, his parents were well-off, but he got lost on the drugs. Anyway, people had seen him around the neighborhood, and around the Toms house…”
“Inside?”
“No, outside, but he knew Toms because he'd cut Toms's lawn when he was a teenager.
Toms had a big garden and he didn't like the way the lawn services cut it, because they weren't careful enough, so he hired this guy when he was a teenager. So the guy knew the house.”
“There had to be more than that.”
“Well, the guy admitted that he might have done it. He had cuts on his face that might have been from Toms defending himself…” She leaned forward, her eyes narrowing: “But the interesting thing is, the stuff that was stolen was all stuff that could be sold on the street, including some jewelry and some electronics, but none of it was ever found.”
“Huh.”
“An investigator for the public defender's office told the Register that the case was fabricated by the police because they were under pressure to get somebody, and here was this guy,” Sandy said.
“Maybe he did it,” Lucas said.
“And maybe he didn't,” Sandy said.
Lucas sat back in his chair and stared at her for a moment, until she flinched, and he realized that he was making her even more nervous. “Okay. This is good stuff, Sandy. Now. Do you have a driver's license?”
“Of course. My car is sorta iffy.”
“I'll get you a state car. Could you run down to Des Moines today and Xerox the trial file? I don't think the cops would be too happy about our looking at the raw stuff, but we can get the trial file. If you have to, you could bag out in a Des Moines hotel. I'll get Carol to get you a state credit card.”
“I could do that,” she said. She scooched forward on the chair, her eyes brightening.
“God, do you think this man might have gone to prison for something he didn't do?”
“It happens-and this sounds pretty good,” Lucas said. “This sounds like Bucher and Donaldson and Coombs…”
“Who?”
“Ah, a lady named Coombs, here in the Cities. Anyway. Let's go talk to Carol. Man, looking at solved cases. That was terrific. That was a terrific idea.”
Later, as Lucas left the office, Carol said, “You really got Sandy wound up. She'd jump out of an airplane for you.”
“It'll wear off,” Lucas said.
“Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't,” Carol said.
Amity Anderson probably would not have jumped out of an airplane for him, Lucas decided after meeting her, but she might be willing to push him.
He saw her unlocking the front door of her house, carrying a purse and what looked like a shopping bag, as he walked up the hill toward her. She looked down the hill at him, a glance, and disappeared inside.
She lived in a cheerful postwar Cape Cod-style house, with yellow-painted clapboard siding, white trim, and a brick chimney in the middle of the roof. The yard was small, but intensely cultivated, with perennials pushing out of flower beds along the fences at the side of the house, and bright annuals in two beds on either side of the narrow concrete walk that led to the front door. A lopsided one-car garage sat off to the side, and back.
Lucas knocked, and a moment later, she answered. She was a midsized woman, probably five-six, Lucas thought, and in her early to middle thirties. Her dark hair was tied in a severe, schoolmarmish bun, without style; she wore a dark brown jacket over a beige blouse, with a tweedy skirt and practical brown shoes. Olive-complected, she had dark brown eyes, overgrown eyebrows, and three small frown wrinkles that ran vertically toward her forehead from the bridge of her short nose. She looked at him through the screen door; her face had a sullen aspect, but a full lower lip hinted at a concealed sensuality. “Do you have any identification?”
He showed her his ID. She let him in, and said, “I have to go back to the bathroom.
I'll be just a minute.”
The inside of the house was as cheery as the outside, with rugs and quilts and fabric hangings on the brightly painted plaster walls and the spotless hardwood floors.
A bag sat on the floor, next to her purse. Not a shopping bag, but a gym bag, with three sets of handball gloves tied to the outside, stiff with dried sweat. A serious, sweating handball player…
A toilet flushed, distantly, down a back hallway, and a moment later Anderson came out, tugging down the back of her skirt. “What can I do for you, Mr. Davenport?”
“You worked for Claire Donaldson when she was killed,” Lucas said. “The most specific thing I need to know is, was anything taken from the house? Aside from the obvious? Any high-value antiques, jewelry, paintings, that sort of thing?”
She pointed him at a sofa, then perched on an overstuffed chair, her knees primly tight. “That was a long time ago. Has something new come up?”
Lucas had no reason not to tell her: “I'm looking at connections between the Donaldson murder and the murder of Constance Bucher and her maid. You may have read about it or seen it on television…” Anderson's hand went to her cheek. “Of course. They're very similar, aren't they? In some ways? Do you think they're connected?”
“I don't know,” Lucas said. “We can't seem to find a common motive, other than the obvious one of robbery.”
“Oh. Robbery. Well, I'm sure the police told you she usually had some money around,” Anderson said. “But not enough to kill somebody for. I mean, unless you were a crazy junkie or something, and this was in Chippewa Falls.”
“I was thinking of antiques, paintings…”
She shook her head. “Nothing like that was taken. I was in charge of keeping inventory.
I gave a list of everything to the police and to Claire's sister and brother-in-law.”
“I've seen that,” Lucas said. “So you don't know of anything specific that seemed to be missing, and was valuable.”
“No, I don't. I assume the Booths told you that I was probably involved, that I gave a key to one of my many boyfriends, that I went to Chicago as an alibi, and the boyfriend then came over and killed Claire?”