“They’re all her,” Ordway says, “or the two of them together. Maybe he got angry with her for leaving and did all this.”
“Or maybe he did it yesterday before he went to her place and killed her. Let me take a photo, then you can bag those, too.”
I leave him to it and head down the hall. In the bathroom, there are wet towels on the floor and a can of shaving cream on its side by the sink, a puff of foam clinging to the cap. No prescription drugs behind the mirror, though. A slatted door down the hallway conceals a stacked washer and dryer. The dryer’s empty. I pull the washer door open.
“Hello.”
“What you got?” Bascombe calls.
“Take a look.”
He and Ordway both appear over my shoulder. I step back so they can see what I’ve found. A pair of jeans twisted into a ball by the spin cycle, a knotted white shirt.
“How much you want to bet he was wearing these when he came home this morning? Aguilar can say for sure.”
“Did we not check the washer?” Bascombe asks.
Ordway ignores him. “Let’s see what we got here.”
He tugs the shirt and spreads it open in the air between us. “That’s the thing about bloodstains. You can’t just throw something in the washer and get rid of them.”
The dark rusty blots across the front of the shirt do have the look of blood, but not as much as I would have expected from holding Simone against his chest as he stabbed her. Still, blood is blood.
“If this comes back a match for her,” I say, “then I guess we’ve got him.”
“Put that in a bag,” Bascombe tells Ordway.
I pull the jeans out myself, letting the heavy fabric uncoil, then work my hands into the front pockets, turning them inside out. Nothing but lint. From the back pocket, though, I remove a soggy rectangle of card stock about the size of a postcard.
“Someone’s been a very naughty boy,” Ordway says.
The showgirl on the card has been surgically enhanced, her face heavy with makeup, the lips parted suggestively. The words along the bottom read EXOTIC ENTERTAINMENT, with the club’s name in thick cursive across her body: SILK CUT.
“Lieutenant,” Ordway says, snatching the card from me. “I’d like to volunteer personally to follow up this lead.”
Bascombe smiles. “So now we know why the boy was going to church this morning. There was more than one sin he had to confess.”
While the two of them talk this new development over and try to figure out how to check the laptop’s history for any Silk Cut searches, I go through the place one more time with increasing impatience. There’s one thing missing. One thing I was certain to find. I look under the bed, in all the drawers, even digging through a couple of cardboard boxes in the closet.
“You notice something?”
Bascombe shuts the laptop with a frown. “There’s nothing on here.”
“Look around,” I say. “There’s not a single book in here.”
“People don’t read anymore.”
“Can you remember the last time you did a house search and didn’t find a single book? There’s always something. And this guy doesn’t have any.”
“What did you expect?” he asks. “A copy of The Kingwood Killing with a little sticky note saying ‘gotta try this sometime’? Get over it already. I’m all in favor of hunches, March, and your instincts have been good in the past. But trust me, no district attorney is going to hold those pictures up side by side and try to convince the jury there’s a connection. It’s not gonna happen.”
He’s right, but that doesn’t make it any easier to let go.
“You got the autopsy to worry about now, March. Why don’t you go home for a couple of hours, get your head down, and then go to the medical examiner’s office. As of now, you don’t have enough to charge him.”
“I don’t agree. He’s lying about his movements last night.”
“That’s not enough. What this case needs is physical evidence. We’ll get that shirt tested, and if the blood comes back a match, then great. If a witness comes forward to put him at the scene, great again. Maybe forensics will get something, you never know. In the meantime, we can’t keep this guy sitting in an interview room indefinitely.”
“I’ll take another run at him,” I say. “Confront him with the scene photos. Tell him we’ve matched the prints on the table to him.”
“Have we?”
I shrug. “I’ll follow up on it.”
He ponders my suggestion, or at least pretends to, then shakes his head. “You look beat, March. For real. Take a break and let me handle this. I’ll bring the clothes in, hit him with the photos, and if he talks, he talks. Meanwhile get some rest.”
“Sir, I’d rather interview my suspect.”
“I’m serious, March.”
“What exactly is the problem with me continuing the interview?”
He rises from the couch and looms over me. “Can we not get into this right now? Can you just listen to me for once without giving me lip? Most guys would be grateful for the help, you know that? But you wouldn’t know gratitude if it came up and bit you. Just back off and listen to me for two seconds, okay?”
“Fine.”
“Maybe he’ll roll over when he knows we’ve got the clothes.”
“I said fine. I’ll check back in after the autopsy.”
“You do that.”
Outside, the wind is bracing. Most days in Houston, you walk into a cloud of steam and want to retreat back inside. But the cold wakes me up, brings me to my senses a little. That’s twice the lieutenant has flared up on me suddenly, and over nothing. Something’s eating at him and I don’t know what. But he was right about one thing: most guys would be grateful for the assist. Bascombe’s a good cop. There are half a dozen detectives on my shift I wouldn’t trust to handle an interview like this. He’s not one of them.
But he was right about something else, too. My instincts are usually good, and what they tell me is that Jason Young is our man. He has books somewhere, maybe in storage, and when I find them, The Kingwood Killing will be there. The thing about instinct is, you follow without knowing where it’ll take you. You can’t explain why, and along the way nothing adds up, making you look like a fool. But working homicide, looking like a fool goes with the territory. That’s the job: getting it wrong until you finally get it right.
Back in the car, I scroll through the saved contacts on my phone until I reach Brad Templeton’s number. He picks up on the third ring.
“Roland March,” he says. “You’re finally returning my call.”
“Have you been calling?”
He laughs. “You’re so used to dodging me, you do it on autopilot now.”
“I didn’t catch you in church, did I?”
“Right. I hope you’re calling to buy me lunch. It’s your turn, if you remember.”
“I don’t, but lunch is fine.”
“How about the Black Lab? You like that place.”
I check my watch. “Fifteen minutes?”
“I’ll be there.”
CHAPTER 4
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6–1:47 P.M.
The prized spots up front are all taken, forcing me to park in the garage around back and walk through the breezeway past the closed bakery. Brad Templeton waits at an outdoor table, the only one occupied, bundled up in a corduroy sport coat and a tartan scarf. He spots me and raises a finger, like there’s a chance I might miss him.
“We could go inside like normal people,” I say.
“Are you normal? ’Cause I’m for sure not.”
I drop into the chair opposite. The ten years I’ve known Templeton have been no kinder to him than to me. He’s grown pudgy and soft, and his ginger hairline has receded far enough to expose a patch of freckled scalp. He clutches a plastic-coated menu with spotted, swollen fingers and makes a periodic sniffing sound.