He turned the map and leafed through the pages of the files. It was frustrating how little information they had. He’d never seen thinner files on two assumed abduction/homicides where they had identified the victim so quickly. Of course, the complete lab work on Janet Kane would take time. And would add a few more pages. But nature’s skill as a contaminator of crime scenes was considerable.
The cars were the key. If they were going to recover — or had already recovered — anything useful, it would be in the cars. Each was found parked and unlocked, miles from the stores where the women had shopped, on no likely route to their homes. The keys were still in the ignitions.
Then, the women had gotten into other vehicles.
Kemp and Rayborn had realized this, too. Hess read Kemp’s notes. Then he turned to the CSI checklist of Lael Jillson’s Infiniti Q45 and ran his finger down the page. The evidence techs had pulled up hair and fiber, of course, a fair amount of it. Human hair probably belonging to four or perhaps five different people. Based on specimens supplied by her husband, the lab had made likely matches with Lael and two family members — her husband and son. The fourth was Caucasian, dark brown, with some bend in it. The fifth was a red pubic hair that didn’t fit with any of the others. Interesting, he thought.
But Hess knew the uncertainties of hair identification. Alone among the forensic sciences it was still practically unchanged in the latter half of the century. It was really done by eye, and was often inconclusive. The fact of the matter was that you could get a wide variety of colors and textures from one donor. And a hair could blow in from almost anywhere. Sometimes you’d get lucky with hair processing or pharmacological residue that would help narrow the players. Not often.
Hess read in Merci Rayborn’s handwriting that Robbie Jillson had “purposely not washed the car” when his wife went missing because he immediately “knew” there was foul play, “whether you cops would take a missing person report or not.” Good man, thought Hess. So the lab had gotten it in reasonably good condition, the inside at least.
Fingerprints were lifted from the interiors and exteriors of both cars. The lab had easily eliminated the victim and family members but a thumbprint in the Jillson Infiniti was still unidentified. The print had scored no hit from CAL–ID, the FBI or the regional registry in Tucson. The print results on Janet Kane’s BMW were pending.
Soil specimens were taken from the interiors, good.
Not taken from the exteriors, however. Bad.
Hess had once caught a creep because of decorative gravel caught in a tire tread. That was thirty years back. Since then he checked tire treads assiduously, because Hess believed that when something worked you did it again. And Lael and Janet had been somewhere between the time they left the shops and the time they pulled — or someone else pulled — their cars over for the last time. Sometimes tire treads had good memories.
Hess was disappointed to see that neither Kemp nor Rayborn had had the cars examined for basic mechanical problems. It was a rapist’s trick old as the tire itself to let some of the air out, follow the driver and wait for her to pull over.
And no mention of the cars’ alarm systems. Overridden, disabled or functional? It was an obvious question, and Hess had seen it left unasked a thousand times.
Always check the alarm.
Nowhere in the notes on the cars was there any mention or indication of a struggle.
On the back of the Kane Automobile Impound Order Hess wrote:
See dump sites, check Macy’s clerk who saw Janet, check cars for window marks — alarms/problems, ASAP lab on Kane car and CSI results, check ATMs for cash withdraw post abducts, Kane purchase/how paid; where first contact made — in store, in lot, where vehicles found? Ways to get victim to trust/comply: badge, force, weapon, threat reprisal, security guard, impersonating PO, law enforce background or reject? Pure opportunity or victims chosen for specific reasons? Blood checked for drugs or specimen ruined? — How much blood at each site? Saturation tests done with same soil or lab dirt? What viscera exactly? Creep/s organized, efficient... how finding, what doing between abduct and I dump site, what doing at dump site, what doing after? Run blood-hounds in wider radius, drag or dive pond...
That evening Hess watched the sunset from his deck. He snoozed through some of it, listening to the 13th Street surf rolling in and the voices of kids and tourists on the sidewalk below. He remembered what it was like to be a child and how he’d been mostly happy here, zooming through the alleys of the Newport peninsula on his bike, riding the waves with a pair of oversized swim fins that propelled him through the water like a dolphin.
His apartment was an upstairs unit with the garage underneath. It was big and furnished as a summer rental — turquoise Naugahyde couches sitting on bold black-and-white checked floors, a chrome dinette with a yellow tabletop stained by half a century of coffee cups. He liked the jarring cheapness of the place. When he came home at night and turned on the lights it seemed to jump at him. It was oceanfront and almost free for Hess because it was owned by a rich man he had helped once.
An uneaten plate of spaghetti lay on the table beside his patio chaise, an untouched tumbler of Scotch and melted ice beside it. They said he’d lose his appetite during the sessions and he did. They also said his hair would probably fall out and it hadn’t. Hess felt a secret pride in this. The sessions were three days in a row, one session per month, for four months if you could take it. If it killed off too many blood cells you had to stop. Two sessions down as of today, two to go.
He left a message on Merci Rayborn’s machine at work. He said he had started with the Kane site this morning, had some thoughts, hoped he could help her with the investigation. He wanted to get off on the right foot, the fewer surprises the better. He wondered if Merci was still gunning for head of homicide by forty.
Then he called Robbie Jillson, who agreed to deliver his wife’s car to the county impound yard at eight the next morning. He sounded drunk. According to the file, Janet Kane’s car was still being worked over by the lab.
By nine he was in bed. It felt good to set the alarm for 5 A.M. and know you had a reason to get up for it. All Hess asked of life was to be required. He turned off the light.
He thought of his wives as he often did and realized that he wanted to say some things to them, a few things that needed saying. He listened to the ocean across the sand and wondered why waves can sound like cars but cars can never sound like waves.
The last thing he wondered was what the shoe clerk at Macy’s was thinking while he watched Janet Kane leave his store.
Four
“We need to get some ground rules straight,” said Merci Rayborn. She walked half a step ahead of Hess, her hands on her hips and a pair of aviator shades on. This was their first time out of the building and earshot of other deputies.
They moved across the impound yard, past cars last driven by drunkards, thieves, batterers, killers or more moderate citizens who had simply neglected to pay traffic fines. The late morning sun was hot and the sky was dusted with smog. The dirty windshields held the sunlight in opaque planes.