Kent holds the umbrella higher so it covers them both, just not that well. He has to take his shoes off at the door and put on a pair of nylon booties. The body is in the hallway, just inside from the front door. Hutton comes and joins them.
Schroder feels like he’s back on the job. The smells and sights and sounds all confirm he’s in an authentic crime scene and nobody is going to draw a chalk outline around anything and ask him if he thinks the dialogue could be tightened. He’s cold and wet and miserable, which completes the sense of realism. He can see down the end of the hall into the lounge. Dark brown carpet and plush sofas and warm color walls. All very homey, except for Tristan Walker himself, who is lying on his side with one hand on his chest and the other hand pinned beneath him. It’s been twelve months since he last saw Tristan Walker. Walker was staying with his parents at the time. Schroder went there to tell him they’d made an arrest.
Kent and Hutton couldn’t be more opposite. Hutton is overweight. He wasn’t that way when he joined the force, couldn’t have been because he never would have been accepted, but now the guy consumes so much sugar he has to stay out of the rain for fear of dissolving. Hutton remains on the force because he’s so large it would almost be like firing two detectives—though, ironically, it was simple for the department to fire Schroder. Back when Caleb Cole made him kill somebody.
Kent is attractive. Stunning, even. The kind of woman you look at and would give up a week of your life just to see her smile. No doubt half the guys here are in love with her.
“This is the third victim,” Kent says.
“Huh?”
“The third victim,” she repeats.
He lets the information settle for a few seconds. “You’re telling me you’ve got two others like this?” he asks.
Kent smiles at him. “I’m glad your mind has stayed sharp since leaving the force, Carl. That’s some quick addition.”
“You should see me with crayons,” he says. “I always stay within the lines.”
“Sounds like you’re living on the edge.” She steps around the body so they can talk to each other, the three of them forming a triangle with a dead guy in the middle.
“Victim one was last week,” Kent says. “Guy by the name of Sam Winston.”
“I read about him in the papers. He was found in an abandoned building in town. From what I read it looked like he was killed by a drug dealer.”
“That’s what we thought too. Name mean anything to you?”
Schroder shakes his head. “Should it?”
“Probably not. He used to be in the army until he was discharged five years ago. He had a pretty big drug problem, hence why we believed that was related to the way he died. He wasn’t even in the army for long. Two years. After that he spent his days being unemployed and earning unemployment checks.”
“And now you think there’s a connection.”
“It looks the same. As soon as the bullets are pulled from Walker we’ll send them to ballistics and check for a match.”
“So you only have a theory?” Schroder asks.
Hutton shakes his head. “We have a time line,” he says. “People get killed in all sorts of strange ways in this city,” he says, “but not often by guns, and here we’ve got three victims within a week all with the same gunshot pattern.”
Schroder nods. It’s too much to ignore. “No connection between Walker and Rivers?”
Kent answers the question. “We’ve got a guy who sells guns and explosives, and another guy who’s trained in using them. But no connection between them.”
“Not yet anyway,” Hutton says.
“And nothing between either of those two and Walker,” Schroder says.
“Just the way they died,” Kent says.
“Walker didn’t have a drug habit?”
“If he did, he kept it well hidden. There’s nothing here to suggest he was using.”
“So what do you want from me?” Schroder asks.
“We want you to help us with Walker,” Kent says. “You knew him. You spent time with him and his family. What would a guy like Walker have in common with Rivers and Winston?”
“I didn’t know him, I just interviewed him. Several times,” Schroder says, and that was because there were indications that Walker used to beat his wife, and indications that perhaps the wife hadn’t been killed by Joe Middleton. For a while there Walker was a suspect. But ultimately Walker had an unshakable alibi for her murder, and they came up with no other suspects.
“Come on, Carl,” Kent says, “you were the lead on the Carver investigation. You know why we’ve asked you down here.”
Schroder nods. He knows this is why he’s here. Like Hutton said, it’s all about the time line. Three killings all within a week, all within days of Joe’s trial starting. Hutton and Kent think it’s related to the Carver.
“Okay,” he says. “Tell me where you’re at.”
“We have a theory,” Hutton says.
“An ex-con, an army dropout, and Walker,” Kent says. “They were planning something together, or working with somebody who is planning something, and it involves explosives.”
“We have forensics,” Kent says. “Shell casings. We have hairs. Long hairs. Same blonde hairs at each location. No DNA, because they’re synthetic.”
“So the killer was wearing a wig,” Schroder asks.
“Seems like it,” Kent says. “And most likely a woman. Men don’t tend to wear wigs that are shoulder length. Plus the hairs were found in the lounge too. Which means if they belong to the person who shot him, then she didn’t just knock on the front door and shoot him when he answered. It means she was inside. Of course it could be two different things. They could belong to somebody who he talked with inside, and it could be somebody else who came to his door and shot him.”
“Fingerprints?”
“All over the place,” Hutton says, “and most of them we’ve ruled out. Nothing so far with any matches.”
“And you want to know if I think Melissa is involved,” Schroder says. “That’s why I’m really here. Because Joe’s trial starts next week.”
“None of the prints we’ve found so far match hers,” Kent says. “But do you think it’s possible? She’s staying hidden somehow. It only makes sense she’s using some techniques to change her appearance. Of course she’s probably wearing a wig.”
“It’s a completely different MO if it is her,” he says. “Different signature. None of these people were in uniform. None were tortured. If it’s her, why is she targeting these people?”
“Because of the time line,” Hutton says. “We’re less than a week out from Joe’s trial.”
“We’re running background checks on all of them,” Kent says. “We’re seeing what they have in common. Where their lives intersected. The problem is they may not intersect. It’s possible they don’t know each other, but they know a common denominator.”
“Okay,” Schroder says. “Okay. Let’s think about it. Think it through,” he says. “Let’s play with the idea that it’s Melissa. What reason has she got? Let’s break it down one victim at a time. Let’s start with Sam Winston,” he says. “Why work with him?” he asks, and he wonders what the scriptwriter for The Cleaner would make of this. Not realistic enough? Not fast-paced enough? Too much standing around and thinking?