Okay, one last ugh. “What do you mean by ‘occupied’?” I’d asked, which earned me another foot stomp from Ema.
So what exactly were we going to look for in Chief Taylor’s files? Beats me.
Ten minutes later we watched Rachel approach the front door. She rang the Taylors’ doorbell and then did that thing with her hair that some might call “fix,” but it always made my mouth go a little dry. Next to me I heard Ema sigh.
Troy opened the front door, leading with his chest, like a preening rooster. My hands, working on their own, formed two fists. Troy invited Rachel in and the door shut behind them.
“Let’s go,” Ema whispered.
We headed to the back via the house next door and then cut over into the Taylors’ yard. The truth was, I loved this idea. I loved the idea of getting into Chief Taylor’s files and figuring out what he was up to because I knew, knew, that he was covering up something.
I just didn’t like the idea of Rachel in there alone with Troy.
Ema and I ducked behind a bush by the back door. I knew that we were both thinking about Spoon, but we both also knew that we didn’t need that distraction right now. There was nothing we could do for him, other than figuring out who’d shot Rachel.
So that was what we would do.
I thought again about the twenty-fifth anniversary of Dylan Shaykes’s disappearance. I didn’t tell Ema about it because with everything else going on, it could wait. But the Abeona Shelter was growing murkier and murkier. First, there had been the touched-up photograph of the Butcher of Lodz. Now I had the photograph of that sad-eyed little boy to consider.
No time for that now, though. There was a sound coming from the back door-a slide bolt sliding open.
“You ready?” Ema said.
I nodded. We had agreed that we would not speak or even whisper once we were inside unless there was an emergency. Ema would stand by the office door and let me know if Troy started toward us or if anyone else came home. I would be the one to go through Chief Taylor’s desk.
When my hand hit the doorknob, a new thought hit me: fingerprints. I should have worn gloves. There was not much I could do about that now, and besides, who was going to dust for fingerprints? We didn’t plan to steal anything and if we got caught in the act somehow, no one would need to check for additional physical evidence.
I turned the knob and pushed the door. It opened with too loud a creak that made me stop. Then I heard Rachel make a horrid giggling noise.
“Oh Troy!” Rachel exclaimed in a too loud, too sickeningly sweet voice. “That’s sooo funny!”
I made a face like I’d just gotten a whiff of something that really reeked.
Rachel giggled some more. Not laughed. Giggled with a tee-hee. I confess that suddenly Rachel seemed less attractive. Then I remembered that this was just an act, an ingenious one to cover up my clumsy entrance, and she became mega-hot all over again.
Ema and I slipped inside and closed the door behind us. Rachel had already informed us that Chief Taylor’s office was to the left after we entered. I tiptoed in that direction. Ema followed. The office door was wide-open, so I just stepped inside. Ema turned around and pressed her back against the kitchen wall. From there, she could see the back door, the office door, and the corridor leading to the den where Rachel was currently tee-heeing with Troy Taylor.
Chief Taylor’s office was loaded up with trophies and plaques and citations, all involving law enforcement. Two of the trophies, featuring bronzed guns, were for marksmanship. Terrific. There were also tons of photographs of various teams Chief Taylor had coached in baseball, basketball, and football. On the far wall, there were certificates and citations from his own sporting days, including being named All State in football and…
Hello.
I couldn’t help it. I moved over to take a closer look. It was a “State Champions” photograph of the Kasselton High School basketball team from twenty-five years ago. There, in the front row holding a basketball, were the team cocaptains, Eddie Taylor and Myron Bolitar. Yep, Uncle Myron. The two now-nemeses looked chummy in the picture, and I wondered what went wrong.
But that wasn’t my concern right now.
I sat at Chief Taylor’s desk and worried for another second or two about fingerprints. No time. I saw a basket full of files. As I reached for one, I heard Rachel’s voice from the other room say, “Troy, don’t do that.”
There was a quick flash of rage. I got ready to stand up and go out there, but then I stopped. What was I going to do, bust in on them? Besides, Rachel seemed pretty much in control. If she needed me, she’d call for help, right?
I didn’t like it, but this had been part of her plan. If I went out there now, she’d probably kill me. Time to get back to the task at hand.
The first folder I grabbed was fairly light. I checked the right tab. There were only three words written on it: nora caldwell-homicide.
Bingo. I considered finding the file so easily a stroke of luck, but then again, the Caldwell murder was far and away the biggest case in the town. Why shouldn’t it be front and center?
Ema looked in on me. I gave her a big thumbs-up and opened the file. Paper files-talk about old-school.
The top sheet of paper read: BALLISTICS TEST REPORT. It was dated today.
There were three columns, one for Gun A (the one that had shot Spoon), one for Gun B (the one being carried by Scarface), and one for Gun C (the one used to shoot both Mrs. Caldwell and Rachel). There was a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo, terms like sample type, shot sequence, weapon type, projectile weight, cartridge/projectile type, impact velocity, impact energy, you get the idea. None of this would do me any good, so I skipped down to the finding: neither gun a nor gun b is a match for gun c.
Whoa. If I was reading this right-and the conclusion did not seem all that difficult to understand-neither gun was a match for the murder of Mrs. Caldwell.
This was huge.
Or was it?
While it would have been excellent physical evidence against Sunglasses and Scarface, it certainly did not prove that they were innocent. Unless you’ve never watched a television show in your life, you’d know that if you committed a crime with a gun, it would be best to get rid of it. Wasn’t that the most logical conclusion? Sunglasses or Scarface had simply replaced the murder weapon with a new one.
Except, of course, that Chief Taylor hadn’t mentioned this finding in that press conference. In fact, he made it sound just the opposite. They had, he’d said, the physical evidence to lock these guys away for the murder of Nora Caldwell.
But if it wasn’t a match on the bullets, well, what other “physical evidence” could there be? Or was he lying? And this report wasn’t a copy. It was the original. Why would it be in Chief Taylor’s private office?
From the den, I heard Troy say, “Let me get us something to drink.”
I froze.
Rachel said, “That’s okay. I’m not thirsty.”
I could hear a creak from the couch, as if Troy was getting up. “I’ll only be a second, babe.”
Babe?
“Troy?” Rachel’s voice sounded coquettish, and I’m not even sure what coquettish means.
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t leave me right now.”
Oh man. I had to hurry.
I paged through the next sheets until I reached one titled MEDICAL EXAMINER REPORT. The name on the top was NORA CALDWELL. There were two sketches of the human body-front and back. I skimmed it over, trying again to ignore the scientific mumbo jumbo. According to the findings, the death was due to massive injuries sustained by a bullet wound to the head. I already knew that. The medical examiner could tell by the “burn patterns” that it was a “contact shot”-that is, the barrel of the gun had been pressed against the victim’s head. Rachel had told me that too, and something about that still bothered me.