Unknown Means (10 page)

“That’s it?”

“That’s all they really want.”

Riley got to his feet. “Thanks for your time.”

Outside, the rain had paused but the mud still ran. The workers began to open lunch pails or line up at the hot dog stand parked on the sidewalk. An ironworker descended from the heights and unlocked his

safety harness. David detoured across the site to step over exposed spikes of rebar. “Look at this.”

The stained khaki harness consisted of mesh fabric straps, an inch and a half wide, and heavy metal buckles. Velcro closures kept the harness from shifting around on a moving body. The attached cable disappeared into the heights above. “What do we know about the guys that work here?”

“We’ll go back, ask for a roster.” Riley pushed his cigarette into the mud with his toes. “We could run all the names for past records.

If Markham doesn’t want to give us the roster, we’ll try to get a judge who’s easy on search warrants. There’s nothing to indicate this job has anything to do with the crime. Little Willie wasn’t even here that day, and there could be three other sites just like this that he’s also involved in.”

David let go of the harness, watching it swing gently in space.

“We’re looking for a strap of mesh in a haystack of rebar.”

“Sort of.”

“Hey!”

They turned. One of the guys who had been looking at blueprints with Markham stood there, and all three hundred pounds of him glowered. “What are you two doing in there?”

“Just—”

“Get out of there!”

“We’re the—”

“This is a hard-hat area! You want to get brained?”

Since they didn’t, David and Riley filed out to the mud-filled expanse. They located the construction manager, asked for a roster of employees, and received a polite refusal. The manager was very sorry for what had happened to Grace Markham, but it had nothing to do with them and cops made his guys nervous. They had not, he admitted, always been angels.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” David said. “I’m going to have to go home and change clothes.”

“Too bad you don’t live right across the river, like Markham. Oh, that’s right, he doesn’t live there anymore. So what do you think of his theory of bagging women, Milaski? Do you listen to Evie? Really listen?”

David unlocked the car. He tried to listen. He tried like hell to hang on her every word.

Then maybe you should listen to what she’s telling you now.

She’s saying no by not saying yes.

No. She just wasn’t sure yet.

Then when?

She’s got Angel to think about.

And she always will. Convenient, isn’t it?

David knew he couldn’t respect a woman who would put her boyfriend above her child. Problem was, he wasn’t sure he could love a woman who didn’t put him above everything.

Selfish, yes, but human beings were a selfish lot.

“Well?” Riley demanded.

“Sorry. I wasn’t listening.” He threw himself into the driver’s seat and started the car.

C H A P T E R

8

EVELYN TRIED TO REACH ANGEL AT HOME, BUT NO ONE

picked up. She tried Angel at her grandmother’s next door. No answer. Perhaps she should have bought her daughter a cell phone for her last birthday, as she’d asked, but the way Angel could talk, the first bill would have taken out the entire household budget.

Evelyn’s ex, Rick, refused to buy one on the same grounds, despite pulling down twice her salary. Evelyn had suggested a pager, but Angel had balked. Pagers were so last millennium. Evelyn put the phone back in her purse and returned to the old teaching amphitheater she now used as a work space.

At first glance, Grace Markham’s clothing didn’t tell her much.

The victim had been wealthy enough to afford designers whose names Evelyn didn’t even recognize, and slender enough to wear said designers in a size 4—the more enviable of the two conditions, in Evelyn’s opinion. She spread the items, one by one, on an examination table covered with fresh brown paper.

Under an alternative light source, the sweater showed no signs of semen or other bodily fluids. She did notice some odd, gleaming streaks on the skirt—not semen but thin lines of some reflective substance. She cut an inch-square swatch and placed it in a manila envelope before she taped the skirt, pressing clear packaging tape to

the surface. She then smoothed the tape onto a sheet of clear acetate, to examine later for hairs and fibers.

The bra showed nothing. Either Grace had not worn nylons or the killer, for some reason known only to himself, had taken them away with him. The panties glowed brightly, indicating the presence of semen. Evelyn wet a piece of sterile filter paper with distilled water and pressed it to the inside of the crotch, holding it flat with a firm, gloved hand, while in the other she thawed a microtube full of frozen acid phosphatase reagent. She had a few minutes to kill while waiting for the filter paper to absorb any bodily fluids present, and used them to make mental notes: buy cat food and stop by the hospital to see Marissa on her way home. Then she flipped the filter paper over onto the clean brown paper that covered the table. She shook the tube of reagent—this motion had become so ingrained that she now shook everything before use, from lip gloss to milk, with sometimes disastrous consequences—and used a disposable pipette to drop the reagent onto the filter paper. The light brown liquid immediately turned to a deep purple as it reacted to the acid phosphatase found in semen. She excised a piece of the panties’

crotch for Tony to analyze.

The killer had—thank God—not had time to leave any DNA on Marissa. Only the pattern on her neck could tie the two crimes together, and pattern comparison could be iffy. A mark in skin wasn’t like a rigid tool mark left on a piece of metal. Evelyn had photographed it as best she could, snapping pictures of Marissa’s skin as her fiancé held the ruler. By the time a trial rolled around, only the photographs would remain. Grace’s flesh would have decomposed, and Marissa’s neck would have healed.

And Marissa would heal, Evelyn told herself. Marissa was stronger than she was, smarter, better. Able to outfox Tony with a single word, to ease Evelyn’s workday with just a grin. Evelyn needed her.

She broke down and called the hospital to find out if Marissa’s

condition had changed, only to be told that she remained intubated, under heavy sedation.

She hung up the phone and got back to work.

The two straps holding Grace Markham to her kitchen chair had been cut rather than untied, to preserve the knots—though they were simple square knots, the kind any schoolchild could tie. Evelyn pulled a few loose fibers out from the cut end and mounted them on a glass slide with a drop of Permount. The circular green tubes appeared too uniform to be natural fibers like cotton or linen. Under a polarizing microscope, they gave off the rainbow hues of nylon.

The fibers appeared dirty, with dark blobs clinging to their sides.

A drop of xylene washed them off and quickly evaporated, leaving an irregular film on the glass slide. The microscope provided a close-up look but no more clues as to what it might be. Probably inorganic, since it did not appear to have cells.

With superfine tweezers and a stereomicroscope at its highest setting, she put a fresh fiber on the gold FTIR plate and mashed it around until some of the contaminant smeared off onto the gold.

Then she made another trip to the tank of liquid nitrogen.

A voice interrupted her analyses. “I did it.”

Tony stood in the doorway, holding a sheaf of paper with colored charts.

“What?”

“I ran the DNA from the Markham vaginal swabs.”

Despite the fact that Marissa did the same thing every day without expecting a medal for it, Evelyn summoned up a congratulatory smile. Her boss seemed so damn pleased with himself, and perhaps with some positive reinforcement he’d consider similar tasks—tasks other than drinking coffee and berating his staff—in the future.

“That’s great. Really great.”

“Don’t you want to know what I found?”

“What did you find?”

He actually threw his arms out, as if appearing in the finale of a Hollywood musical. “She had semen in her!”

“Wow.” Evelyn didn’t know what else to say.

“Even one with a tail, so it was pretty fresh. And it’s not her husband’s.”

She stopped smiling. She had figured as much after finding the acid phosphatase in the panties and the mysterious streaks on the skirt. Unlike most sex killers, he had taken the time to re-dress his victim—creating the death pose had been that important to him.

“That poor woman. At least she was probably already unconscious or dead, or she’d have some sort of defense wounds or bruising.”

“Unless he was her boyfriend,” Tony pointed out. “It would explain how he got in.”

“Or she had a boyfriend visit earlier, and the killer arrived afterward. But why wouldn’t the boyfriend come forward now?”

“Because he’d be the obvious suspect. Or maybe he’s married too.”

“But I didn’t find any unknown fingerprints. A boyfriend wouldn’t be that careful.”

“I sent the semen results to CODIS.” Tony referred to the national Combined DNA Index System database of DNA profiles.

“Maybe it will hit there. If it is the killer, that’s kind of odd—to have a guy who’s careful enough to use gloves but not a condom.”

“A lot of them don’t like condoms.”

Tony gave her a skeptical glance. “You just don’t want Grace Markham to have had a hand in her own destruction.”

Evelyn tapped the computer keyboard in front of her, sending a beam of light through the contaminant from the fibers. “You scare me when you’re insightful like that. I hate blaming the victim.”

“Sometimes it’s justified.”

“A lot of the time it’s justified. But this is a medical examiner’s office—we’re all about the victim. I can give Grace Markham the benefit of the doubt and assume she didn’t invite this guy in. At least if we find him, we’ve got him. DNA tells all.”

Tony swayed a bit, balancing on the balls of his feet. “Do you want to call your boyfriend and tell him, or should I?”

“No, you call him.” She had to smile as he bustled off. Sharing a forensic find with law enforcement was one of the satisfactions of the job. Otherwise, all the facts and figures they established were written into a report, put in a file, and stored in a cabinet. A great deal of their work never helped, never made a difference, because it didn’t find its corresponding unknown on the other side of the investigative equation. It just passed through and kept on going, into a vacuum.

As this DNA evidence might, if they never found the guy.

EVELYN MOVED through the self-opening doors at Metro General Hospital, promising herself she would stay only ten minutes. It would not help Marissa for Evelyn to sit and stare at her, and Evelyn had a daughter at home waiting for their traditional Tuesday taco night.

She entered the elevator, lost in thought, not noticing the other occupants until one with a small notebook and very high heels stepped closer.

“Hi!” the woman said brightly. “Clio Helms, Plain Dealer.

Aren’t you Evelyn James?”

“Um, yes.”

Clio Helms had toasted-almond skin, dimples, and way more energy than Evelyn felt like coping with at the moment. “Are you here to visit Marissa?”

“Yes.” And it’s Ms. Gonzalez to you, honey.

“Was she attacked by the same man who killed Grace Markham?”

Evelyn forced her features to relax and spoke calmly. “All questions should be directed to the medical examiner, Elliott Stone. The office will be open in the morning.”

“But you’re investigating the case. How about an update?”

“The case is being investigated by Homicide Detectives Riley

and Milaski. I’m sure the Cleveland PD spokesperson can assist you.”

“Marissa Gonzalez’s future mother-in-law isn’t too crazy about the upcoming nuptials, is she?”

Evelyn looked at the woman now, with narrowed eyes. “I’m not sure what you’re implying, but it sounds pretty absurd so far.”

The reporter gave a ladylike snort. “Hey, my sister was knifed by one of her bridesmaids—nothing gets emotions going like a wedding.”

Evelyn shook her head. “Sorry, but I can’t see it. Is this four?

Could you push four, please?”

“Don’t police have a duty to let the tenants of the Riviere know that they are under attack?”

I think having cops there all day probably tipped them off, Evelyn thought. The doors parted, at last, letting in a puff of antiseptic air. “Excuse me.”

The reporter stood between Evelyn and the hallway. “Do you have a suspect? Why does he attack rich women?”

“Excuse me.”

“Come on, Evelyn, help out a fellow working woman here. It’s tough being in print media. I’m up against the talking heads on Channel Fifteen.”

Any shred of patience Evelyn had left evanesced like fog in sun-light. “You ain’t my sister, honey, and I’m not the spokesperson for the Medical Examiner’s Office. I’m a working mom who hasn’t slept or seen her kid in two days, so how about helping me out?”

“Does the suspect work at the Riviere?”

Words, obviously, were useless. Evelyn pushed forward to sweep past Clio and her notebook into the fourth-floor hallway. She did not look back until she had reached Marissa’s room. A phalanx of nurses had stopped Clio Helms at the border of Intensive Care.

Inside the room, Mama Gonzalez kept an exhausted watch over her child. The setting sun crept around the edges of the draperies, casting a rose tone onto Marissa’s pallor; her chest moved up and

down and the EKG monitor reported a steady heartbeat, but the patient’s skin seemed to have sunk onto her bones until her cheekbones stood out, stark and cold.