The thought of Charlotte opening up like that, though, baring her soul to these people. Not just her soul but ours, throwing out our shared tragedy like it’s nothing more than an issue in scare quotes that needs working out in therapy. That I can’t bear. We were three once and now we’re two, and if there’s anyone she needs to talk to, it should be me, the only person who shares the loss.
Giving it to them, not just Carter and Gina but whoever else was present for the spectacle, handing it over to strangers is like betrayal.
No, it is betrayal.
Everything’s public, of course, and always has been. Every reader of The Kingwood Killing reaches the part of the story where March, the intrepid detective, learns of the car crash that put his wife and daughter in the emergency room, on the very same day the Towers fell and his plane was grounded in New Orleans. Wilcox and March driving the wife-murderer Donald Fauk across the Atchafalaya River, capturing his confession on a handheld recorder.
There’s a reason my copy of the book appears unread. At least I’ve never had to sit there before as someone read the passage, never had to endure the reader’s prurient sympathy.
Fingerprints are old school, a technology I understand completely. I lifted my first set at age thirteen using a kit jury-rigged from instructions found in a library book, then eyeballed a match with the only subject who’d submit to ink, my long-suffering uncle. Without the aid of computer databases or trained crime scene technicians, I can still develop prints from a variety of challenging surfaces, and if push comes to shove make side-by-side comparisons with the aid of an honest-to-goodness magnifying glass.
“Which is why,” I tell Lt. Bascombe, “I cannot understand how the Houston Police Department, which the last time I checked does have computer databases and does have trained crime scene analysts, still can’t tell me after thirty-six hours whether the prints on that table are a match with my suspect or not.”
He glances up from a stack of overtime forms he’s been autographing, acting surprised to find me still in the room.
“What do you want me to do? I’m sure they can tell you if there’s a match. They just haven’t yet.” From a wad of newspaper on the credenza behind him, he withdraws a creased copy of the Chronicle from sometime last week. “You realize, don’t you-and I’m quoting here-that ‘a criminal investigation is under way into alleged wrongdoing at HPD’s fingerprinting comparison unit,’ end quote.”
“Yes, I know,” I say, snatching the paper from him. I skim the article and give up halfway through, slumping into a chair. “Can I just say one thing? Throughout all the closings and openings and re-closings of the DNA section, all the inquiries and panels and reshufflings, you know what I did? I did like the poster says: kept calm and carried on.”
Entertained, Bascombe allows himself a faint smile.
“When I had to, I pulled some strings and got my DNA work done through back channels, and when I couldn’t, I’d grin and bear it. Was it frustrating to farm out lab work? Check. Was it humiliating to work for the fourth largest city in America and be reduced to that? You bet. But I told myself this DNA thing was newfangled stuff. I told myself they were overwhelmed, they were still working out the kinks. Hey, listen, I don’t understand how it all works, but then I’m not a scientist. But you know what? I can dust for prints-”
“That’s what you said. Thirteen years old.”
“And I can hold two prints next to each other and tell you if they look the same or not. That at least is not rocket science.” I ball the Chronicle up in my fist. “That’s basic. I mean, Sherlock Holmes could process fingerprints, right? And that was the eighteen hundreds. So why all the sudden can the Houston Police not do it?”
“Amen, man, but you’re complaining to the wrong person.”
Disgusted, I shoot the newspaper off the rim of Bascombe’s trash can.
“Don’t just leave that there,” he says.
I scoop it up and make the dunk.
“I’m gonna go watch the tapes of your interview yesterday.”
“You do that,” he says.
“And if I don’t hear back on those prints, heads are gonna roll.”
“Let ’em have it.”
Outside my cubicle, I run into Captain Drew Hedges, a file folder under one arm and an HPD mug in the opposite hand, his usual plain gabardine suit traded in for an expensive-looking pinstripe model. He still has the weather-beaten leathery appearance of an old-time Texas lawman, still the same piercing gaze, but the hair is different, too. The gunmetal salt-and-pepper is gone, replaced by an even patrician white.
“Morning, sir.”
“Oh, March,” he says, making it sound like we’ve just been talking and he’s remembered something he wanted to add before I left. “I just wanted to say. .” Then his voice trails off. He reaches with his free hand and pinches the lapel of my sport coat, rubbing the fabric back and forth. “Where did you get that?”
“What, this old thing?”
Aguilar’s head pops above a nearby cubicle wall and doesn’t retract when he sees I’ve spotted him. Clearly anticipating some kind of show.
Hedges drops my lapel thoughtfully, his eyes still lingering on the fabric. “I just wanted to say, good work this weekend. I knew you were fast, but that was something else.”
A fishhook of a smile digs into Aguilar’s poker face.
“I haven’t closed mine, sir. Not yet. In fact, I’m having a hard time getting all the forensics back from the scene.”
“Ah,” he says. “I must have heard wrong.” He gives my shoulder a pat. “Keep your nose to it, March, and get that thing cleared.”
The thing I’ve always liked about Hedges is that he stays on top of cases. The higher up you go in the food chain, the harder it is for a sworn officer to stay true to the calling. The pressure to manage, to be an armed administrator, comes at you from all sides. For as long as he’s run the Homicide Division, his sights have been set on what’s happening underneath him, not up on high. To see him with his head in the clouds all the sudden, confusing one case with another and not being bothered about it, really throws me.
Not Aguilar, though. He wanders over with a glint in his eye.
“Is he gonna help you with your fingerprint conundrum?”
“He didn’t even offer.”
“So what’s up with Hedges, anyway?”
“Maybe Bascombe knows.”
“Ask him if you want, but I wouldn’t. All you gotta do these days to get the lieutenant sideways with you is bring up the captain’s name. Used to not be that way.”
“Right, I know.”
A glance behind me confirms what the tingling along my neck already suggested, that Bascombe is staring at me right now through his open door. I raise my eyebrows in his direction, then retreat into my cubicle to make another futile round of phone calls in search of reports that haven’t arrived. Once I’m done, I lay everything out before me-the photos, the paperwork, the notes-doing my best to work out what happened.
What I know so far is that on the afternoon or early evening of Saturday, December 5, Simone Walker went outside to have a smoke. She brought her laptop and phone outside with her, and I have a request in for phone records. Either she was sitting facing the house or the pool-I don’t know which, but if I did, it would help figure out which direction the killer came from. He might have entered through the house, but he might also have come through the garage or over the fence, even though there are no signs of forced entry or the inevitable broken foliage if he’d landed in the bushes.
Simone was wearing white shorts and some kind of top. The fiber recovered from the wound appears to be a light blue cotton. According to Dr. Hill, Simone often wore a baby blue Lacoste pullover that now is missing from her room. She might also have been wearing sweats on top of the shorts because of the cold.