As a rookie uniformed cop, Lancaster had worn no makeup, as though to make herself less conspicuously female. She was the only woman on the entire force who didn’t sit behind a desk and type or go make coffee for the guys. The only one authorized to carry a gun, arrest people, and read them their rights. And to take their lives if it was absolutely necessary.
She hadn’t taken up her smoking habit yet. That would come when she began working as a detective with Decker, and spent more and more of her time with dead bodies and trying to catch the killers who had violently snatched away those lives. She was also heavier back then. But it was a healthy weight. Lancaster had gained the rep of a calm, methodical cop who went into every situation with three or four different plans on how to manage it. Nothing rattled her. As a beat cop she’d earned numerous commendations for how she handled herself. And everyone had come out of those situations alive. She’d conducted herself the same way while working as a detective.
Decker, on the other hand, had a reputation as the quirkiest son of a bitch who’d ever worn the Burlington police uniform. Yet no one could deny his vast potential in law enforcement. And that potential had been fully realized when he became a detective and partnered with Mary Lancaster. They’d never failed to solve a case to which they’d been assigned. It was a record of which any other police department, large or small, would have been envious.
They had known each other previously, having come up in the same rookie class, but hadn’t had much interaction professionally until they exchanged their uniforms for the civilian clothes of a detective.
Now Decker went step by step in his memory from that night as Lancaster watched him from a corner of the living room.
“Cops were radioed in about a disturbance here. Call came in at nine-thirty-five. Two squad cars arrived in five minutes. They entered the house a minute later after checking the perimeter. The front door was unlocked.”
He moved over to another part of the room.
“Vic number one, David Katz, was found here,” he said, pointing to a spot at the doorway into the kitchen. “Age thirty-five. Two taps. First gunshot to the left temple. Second to the back of the head. Instant death with either shot.” He pointed to another spot right next to the door. “Beer bottle found here. His prints on it. Didn’t break, but the beer was all over the floor.”
“Katz owned a local restaurant, the American Grill,” added Lancaster. “He was over here visiting.”
“And no evidence that he could have been the target,” stated Decker.
“None,” confirmed Lancaster. “Wrong place, wrong time. Like Ron Goldman in the O. J. Simpson case. Really shitty luck on his part.”
They moved into the kitchen. It was all dirty linoleum, scarred cabinets, and a rust-stained sink.
“Victim number two, Donald Richards — everyone called him Don. Forty-four. Bank loan officer. Single GSW through the heart and fell here. Again, dead when he dropped.”
Lancaster nodded. “He knew Katz because the bank had previously approved a loan to Katz for the American Grill project.”
Decker walked back out into the living room and eyed the stairs leading up to the second floor.
“Now the last two vics.”
They climbed the stairs until they reached the second-floor landing.
“These two bedrooms.” He indicated two doors across from each other. He pushed open the door on the left side and went in. Lancaster followed.
“Victim number three,” said Decker. “Abigail ‘Abby’ Richards. Age twelve.”
“She was strangled. Found on the bed. Ligature marks showed that some sort of rope was used. Killer took it with him.”
“Her death wasn’t instantaneous,” Decker pointed out.
“No. But she fought hard.”
“And got Meryl Hawkins’s DNA under her fingernails,” Decker said pointedly. “So, in a way, she beat him.”
Decker moved past her out of the room, across the hall and into the bedroom there. Lancaster followed.
Decker paced over to a point against the wall and said, “Victim number four. Frankie Richards. Age fourteen. Just started at Burlington High School. Found on the floor right here. Single GSW to the heart.”
“We found some drug paraphernalia and enough cash hidden in his room to suggest that he wasn’t just a user but a dealer. But we could never tie any of that to the murders. We tracked down the man supplying him, it was Karl Stevens. He was a small fry. There was no way that was the motivation to kill four people. And Stevens had an ironclad alibi.”
Decker nodded. “Okay, we were called in at ten-twenty-one. We came by car and arrived here fourteen minutes later.”
He leaned against the wall and glanced out the window that overlooked the street. “Four neighboring homes. Two were occupied that night. No one in those houses saw or heard anything. Killer came and left unseen, unheard.”
“But then you found something when we went through the house that changed all that.”
Decker led her back down the stairs and into the living room. “A thumbprint on that wall switch plate along with a blood trace from Katz.”
“And the perp’s skin, blood, and resultant DNA under Abby’s fingernails. In the struggle with her attacker.”
“He’s strangling her with a ligature and she grips his arms to make him stop and the material gets transferred. Anybody who’s ever watched an episode of CSI knows that.”
Lancaster’s hand flicked to her pocket and she pulled out her pack of smokes.
Decker eyed this movement as she lit up. “You cashing in on tomorrow’s allotment?”
“It’s getting close enough to midnight. And I’m stressed. So excuse the hell out of me.” She flicked ash on the floor. “Hawkins’s prints were in the database because the company he had worked for previously did some defense contracting. They fingerprinted and ran a background check on everyone who worked there. When the print matched Hawkins in the database, we executed the search warrant on his house.”
Decker took up the story. “Based on the print, he was arrested and brought to the station, where a cheek swab was taken. The DNA on it matched the DNA found under Abby’s fingernails. And he had no alibi for that entire night. And during the search of his home they found a forty-five-caliber pistol hidden in a box behind a wall in his closet. The ballistics match was spot on, so it was without a doubt the murder weapon. He said it wasn’t his and he didn’t know how it got there. He said he didn’t even know about that secret space. We traced the pistol. It had been stolen from a gun shop about two years before. Serial numbers filed off. Probably used in a string of crimes since that time. And then it ended up in Hawkins’s closet.” He glanced at his old partner. “Which raises the question of why you think we might have gotten it wrong. Looks rock solid to me.”
Lancaster rolled the lit cigarette between her fingers. “I keep coming back to a dying guy taking the time to come here to clear his name. He has to know the odds are stacked against him. Why waste what little time he has left?”
“Well, what else does he have to do?” countered Decker. “I’m not saying he came to this house to murder four people. Hawkins probably picked this house to commit a lesser crime of burglary and it snowballed from there. You know that happens, Mary. Criminals lose it when they’re under stress.”
“But you know his motive for the crime,” said Lancaster. “That came out in the trial. Without really admitting his guilt, the defense tried to score some sympathetic points on that. It might have been why he didn’t get the death penalty.”
Decker nodded. “His wife was terminal. He needed money for her pain meds. He’d been laid off from his job and lost his insurance. His grown daughter had a drug problem and he was trying to get her into rehab. Again. So he stole credit cards, jewelry, a laptop computer, a DVD player, a small TV, some watches, and other miscellaneous things from this house and the vics. It all fits. His motivation might have been pure, but how he went about it sure as hell wasn’t.”