Boxes checked on the form and blanks filled in indicate the sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide were stored in the warden’s office, then moved into the execution room at five p.m. but never used.
“Mean something? You’re looking like you’re thinking something,” Mandy can’t resist asking, as I hand the computer notebook back to her.
“As far as you know, these are the only items of clothing belonging to Lola Daggette?” I answer her question with one of my own, as I pick up the evidence bag of prescription drugs, checking labels on the orange plastic bottles. “In other words, no shoes.”
“If this is what Colin’s got, what the GBI still has stored, then that’s all there was, I feel sure,” she says.
“As bloody as the killer would have been, impossible to think the shoes weren’t bloody, too,” I comment. “Why wash your clothes in the shower but not your bloody shoes?”
“One time Colin scraped gum off the bottom of a high-heeled shoe that came in with the body and recovered a hair, then the DNA of the killer. We had T-shirts made. Colin Dengate the Gum Shoe.”
“Would you mind finding him? Tell him I’ll meet him outside. I’d like to take a ride. Do a retrospective visit, if possible.”
Lola Daggette didn’t wash her shoes in the shower, because a pair of shoes wasn’t included with the bloody clothes planted in her room. She didn’t murder anyone, and she wasn’t inside the Jordans’ antebellum mansion the early morning of the murders or on any occasion. I suspect the troubled teenager would have had no reason to meet the distinguished and wealthy Clarence and Gloria Jordan or their beautiful blond twins and probably didn’t have a clue who they were until she was interrogated about their murders and charged with them.
I strongly suspect Lola also didn’t have a clue who to blame, a person or persons motivated by more than drugs or petty cash or the thrill of killing, a monster or a pair of them with a grand plan that a mentally impaired teenager in a halfway house wouldn’t have had any reason to know about. Or if she did, she’d probably be dead, too, just as Kathleen Lawler and Jaime are. I suspect there was an orchestrated scheme that included framing Lola, just as someone is trying to frame me now, and I don’t believe these manipulations are the sole handiwork of Dawn Kincaid.
I dig my phone out of my shoulder bag and enter Benton’s number as I emerge from the lab building, finding a spot near bottle-brush bushes with brilliant red blossoms where I’m eye to eye with a hummingbird, and the blazing sun is a relief. I’m chilled, even my bones are cold from being inside the air-conditioned conference room surrounded by evidence so obvious it seems to shout its grotesque secrets, and I’m not sure who’s going to respond.
I can count on Colin, and, of course, Marino and Lucy will pay attention, and I’ve sent both of them text messages asking if the name Roberta Price means anything, and asking what else can we find out about Gloria Jordan? There’s very little about Mrs. Jordan in news stories I’ve read, few personal details and nothing to suggest there were problems, but I’m sure there were, and the timing couldn’t be worse.
If Benton weren’t my husband, I have no doubt he wouldn’t listen to what will sound like a tale of horror, a sensational yarn, something made up. What I strongly suspect happened nine years ago isn’t going to be of interest to the FBI or Homeland Security right now, and I understand why, but someone needs to hear me out and do something about it anyway.
“Sounds like your friends from Atlanta arrived,” I say to Benton, when he answers his cell phone, and voices in the background are loud, a lot of people with him.
I’m about to try his patience. I can feel it coming.
“Just getting started. What’s up?” Distracted and tense, he is moving around a noisy room as he talks.
“Maybe you and your colleagues could look into something.”
“What’s that?”
“Adoption records, and I need you to pay attention,” I reply. “I know the Jordan case isn’t a priority at the moment, but I think it should be.”
“I always pay attention, Kay.” He doesn’t sound annoyed, but I know he is.
“Whatever pertains to Kathleen Lawler, to Dawn Kincaid, although that wasn’t her name when she was born and I have no idea the name of the first family who adopted her. Dawn was passed around to a number of different foster homes or families, and eventually ended up in California with a couple that died. Supposedly. Anything you can find that the FBI hasn’t already found, specifically relating to Dawn’s contacting someone. She had to have contacted someone, possibly an agency down here in 2001 or 2002, when she decided to learn the identities of her biological parents. She had to have gone through the same process anybody else would.”
“You don’t know that what Kathleen Lawler told you is true, and it would be best to discuss this later.”
“We know Dawn paid a visit to Savannah in early 2002, and we need to discuss it now,” I reply, as I envision Kathleen Lawler in the contact interview room, talking about being locked up in the big housewhen she went into labor, and I keep thinking of her comments.
Something about being locked up like an animal and having to give your children awayand what was she supposed to do, give themto a twelve-year-old boy, to Jack Fielding?
“That really hasn’t been proven, either,” Benton says, and when he’s in a hurry and doesn’t want to have a discussion, he gets contrary.
“Retested DNA places her in the Jordans’ house in 2002,” I say to him. “But you’re going to have to request different testing, and I’ll get to that. Did she come all the way from California to meet her biological mother, or was there another purpose?”
“I know this is important to you,” Benton says, and what he means is Dawn Kincaid’s alleged visit to Savannah in 2002 isn’t important to him. The Bureau and the United States government, perhaps even the president, are preoccupied with potential terrorism.
“What I’m suggesting is the possibility of someone else she wanted to meet in addition to her mother.” I go on anyway. “Maybe there are records no one has thought to check into. This is important. I promise.”
He’s moving around, and a voice in the background says something about coffee, and Benton says thanks and then to me, “What are you contemplating?”
“How it’s possible to leave bloody fingerprints on a knife handle and a bottle of lavender soap at a crime scene if you had nothing to do with the crimes.”
“What about the DNA of those bloody prints?”
“The victims’ DNA and also an unknown donor, a profile that we now know is Dawn Kincaid. But the prints aren’t hers,” I answer. “The Jordans’ DNA and Dawn’s, supposedly. But some other person’s prints.”
“Supposedly?”
“Bloody transfers by whoever had bloody hands and touched the kitchen knife, the soap bottle, but the fingerprints aren’t Dawn Kincaid’s. They’ve never been identified, supposedly from contamination, from a lot of people being on the scene, including journalists, maybe walking through blood and picking up evidence, touching it, or even cops, crime scene techs. Apparently the scene wasn’t well contained. That’s the explanation I’ve been given.”
“It’s possible. If people didn’t have their prints on file for exclusionary purposes and they handled things. I’m going to have to go, Kay.”
“Yes, it’s possible, especially when everyone involved is eager to accept such an explanation because they’ve got Lola Daggette and aren’t looking for anyone else. That seems to be the problem across the board, overlooking, not questioning, not digging deep enough because the case is solved, the murders committed by someone who was caught washing bloody clothes and told all sorts of lies that bordered on nonsense.”