“What now?” Dunn asked.
“We have a strong circumstantial case, but not beyond a reasonable doubt. Certainly we can get a warrant to search his house. Maybe we can turn up some bloody clothes or something that puts her DNA on his clothes, or…” Decker thought a moment. “Or even better would be something that put his DNA on her body.”
“The body was nude, Loo,” Oliver reminded him. “Someone had cleaned her up.”
“Well, she had a full head of hair. Someone at Mission Road must have combed through it by now.”
“They did,” Marge said. “We checked. The loose hairs that they pulled were consistent with her own hair.”
“There was matter under her fingernails. Lombard ’s arms were clear, but I couldn’t check his back or his legs. We need a DNA profile from the scrapings.”
“The labs are backlogged.”
Decker frowned. “Anyone on good terms with a DNA geneticist who does private testing?”
“I know someone who works for Biodon,” Oliver said.
“Him or her?”
Oliver smiled.
“Good terms with her, Scottie?”
“She never complained.”
“Take her out to dinner on the department. Impress upon her the need for speed.”
Oliver grinned. “I know a great bistro with a dynamite pinot noir. Quiet, dark, a good place to conduct business.”
“What place is that?”
“Geraldo’s.”
Marge said, “That place is around seventy-five a person, Scott.”
“I know. I take my job very seriously.”
The woman who answered Decker’s knock was around five foot eight, with a full bosom and curves. Her hair was strawberry blond, and a sprinkling of freckles dotted her nose. She wore faded denim jeans, a long-sleeved cotton blouse, and a red bandana around her neck. Her eyes went wide when Decker showed her his badge.
“Police?”
“Yes, ma’am. Are you Laurie Lombard?”
“Yes. What do you want with me?”
“Who said I wanted anything with you, ma’am?”
The woman went silent. Decker produced the search warrant. “This says we’re allowed to come inside your house and search it. We also have separate documents for your car and your husband’s car.”
“You can’t come in here now. My husband’s at work.”
“He doesn’t have to be home for us to execute the warrant. But you can call him if you want.”
Laurie said, “I’m calling my lawyer, that’s what I’m doing.”
“It’s up to you, Mrs. Lombard. But we don’t have to wait around for either one of them to get here.” Decker turned to his detectives. “Let’s go.” He gently grazed Laurie’s shoulder as he sidestepped around her.
Laurie stared as a stream of official interlopers invaded her private space. “I was just about to go out.”
“You can’t use your car, ma’am,” Marge Dunn told her. “We have to search it. It may be impounded.”
“But I have to pick up my children at school!”
“Not at ten-thirty in the morning.”
“But what if you’re not done?”
“Call a taxi.”
Decker said, “Oliver, go over her car first. First of all, the body had to get from the apartment to the house-”
“Body?” Laurie interrupted. There was panic in her eyes. They darted from person to person. “What body are you talking about?”
Decker didn’t answer her and went on with his instructions. “If her car interior is clean, you might as well let her have access to it. I’ll do the bedrooms, Lee and Wanda can do the rest of the house.”
He marched down a small foyer that led to a series of bedrooms. The first belonged to her sons, two beds separated by a nightstand. The bookshelves were repositories of trophies from Little League, toys, CDs, DVDs, and an iPod.
The next room was Matt’s office. His bookshelves actually held books. It was neat, clean, and dusty, as if it hadn’t been used in many months. Decker suspected that Matt had been doing some of his take-home work at Solana’s apartment.
The master bedroom was in the back and was about twice as large as the other two. It had an enormous walk-in closet. Laurie’s clothing took up three-fourths of the space, relegating Matthew’s portion to one shoe rack and a couple of poles for suits. It would have been easiest to start on Lombard ’s side, but that wasn’t the focus of Decker’s attention. Instead, he began by looking at Laurie’s sneakers. Solana had been strangled, meaning there probably wouldn’t be big puddles of blood to step in. But Solana did have a big scrape on her head that had bled, and Decker remembered the rusty blob in the corner of the room. The murderer might have stepped in something.
Laurie had decided that Decker was in charge, so she addressed her pleas to him. “Please, Detective, I’ve got a house to run. I have to get groceries for dinner.”
“You might think about doing takeout tonight… with delivery.” There was a pair of athletic shoes hidden in the back recesses of the closet. Hands encased in latex gloves, Decker pulled out the shoes and studied them. Suede and leather top, with dirty gray laces that had once been white. He sniffed the tops: They smelled of dishwashing soap. The bottoms gave off a slight foul odor. Lucky for him that today’s athletic shoes were made with a topographical map’s worth of grooves and ruts. Decker could see specks of brown crud lodged inside one of the furrows. It could have been dirt, it could have been dog turd, or it could have been human waste. He turned to Laurie.
“The police have chemicals that can pick up tiny, tiny droplets of human matter-blood, waste, urine, skin. And there are scientists who can get an entire DNA profile from these tiny droplets. What do you think about that?”
Laurie opened her mouth, then closed it.
“Would you mind taking off your scarf for me, please, Mrs. Lombard?”
Her hands flew to her neck. Then her mouth tightened and her chin jutted out in an expression of defiance. “I don’t have to do anything for you.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to come to the station house with us.”
“I’m not going to talk to you.”
“That’s your choice. But before I do the tests on this material that’s stuck inside the treads of your shoes, you might want to tell me your side of the story. You see, we’re already doing tests on the human skin that was found under Solana’s fingernails. And I suspect that you have scratches underneath your scarf. You might think about cooperating now, while there’s still a question mark. Because once this shoe is tied to Solana’s DNA, and the human material under Solana’s nails is tied to you, there won’t be room for negotiating anything.”
Laurie’s bottom lip began to quiver.
“But sure, call up your lawyer, if you want.” Decker shrugged. “Did you call your lawyer?”
Slowly, Laurie shook her head.
“Well, if you want your lawyer, now’s the time to call him or her.”
“Him,” she whispered.
“You can’t tell me anything, if you want your lawyer. You know that. So I guess the powers that be won’t hear your side until your lawyer wants us to hear it.”
“And if I don’t want a lawyer?”
“Well, you’ve watched enough TV to know the drill, Laurie. You’ve got to sign a card saying that you were offered a lawyer and you didn’t want one. Then you can talk to me.”
There was no reaction from the woman. For a brief moment, Decker thought that she might lunge at him and try to wrest the shoes from his grip. Then her mood turned as gray as her skin tone.