Exposed (5 page)

“It’s already at the lab.”

“What lab?”

“The Delphi Center.”

Brian stared at her. She’d checked his evidence into a private crime lab. Sam was going to flip a lid. The tripod had been his idea.

“Maddie—”

“What’s the problem? It’s already being processed.”

“The FBI forensic lab is the best in the world.”

“Ours is better. And besides, I’m friends with a DNA tracer there, and she offered to put a rush on it for me.” She tipped her head to the side. “I doubt you have that kind of in at Quantico. Being new and all.”

He gritted his teeth. This was just what he didn’t need. He finally had a chance at
physical
evidence against Goran Mladovic’s hired guns, and his witness had rushed it to some private lab, where he’d probably never get his hands on it again.

“You’re not the only one who wants them identified, you know.”

Brian caught the determination in her voice. He
looked at her bruised jaw again and felt a renewed surge of resentment toward the man who had hit her.

“Don’t worry,” she told him. “If Delphi gets anything, you’ll be the first to know.”

She glanced at the clock on the wall. His cue to leave.

And why the hell not? He’d done enough damage for one day. In the last six hours, he’d managed to lose track of a key witness and possibly the only physical evidence they had that might identify Mladovic’s strongmen in time to help her.

“I guess that’s it, then. For now.”

She led him through her living room to the front door, and his gaze landed on the dormant keypad.

“Lock up after me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sarcasm. He looked at her. “You keep any guns in the house?”

“A pistol. Why?”

“Do you know how to use it?”

“Of course.”

He glanced outside, then back at her. She looked worried now, and he felt bad about that, but he needed her to take this seriously.

“Be careful,” he told her. “These people we’re dealing with, they don’t fool around.”

Maddie dreamed about Emma. She woke up with a damp pillow and a vast, aching hole in her chest.

The dreams came in three types. The first year, they were mostly about the accident. Later, she would dream of Emma sleeping, either curled against her in bed or passed out in her arms in the rocking chair, her little cheeks flushed from nursing. The third dream was of Emma in motion—running, swinging, scampering down the hill at the park, or climbing up the slide.

Maddie loved the third dream, but she hated it, too. For a brief instant—that first fleeting moment of consciousness—she’d think the accident was the imagined part and Emma was still alive and happy and growing. But it only lasted a heartbeat, and then her daughter would vanish like a mirage.

Maddie stared at the numbers on the clock. She rubbed her sternum. It was no use trying to sleep again, so she tossed the covers away and decided to start her day.

Arriving early at the lab meant prime parking,
but it also meant she had to bring her own caffeine, because the Delphi Center’s coffee shop didn’t open until seven-thirty. She hiked up the building’s wide marble steps and was surprised to see Kelsey Quinn seated at the base of one of the Doric columns that flanked the entrance. In contrast to the jeans and work boots the forensic anthropologist typically wore when she was going out on a dig, today she wore slacks and a crisp white lab coat.

“You’re here early.” Maddie stopped beside her.

“Waiting on bones.”

“New or old?”

“Don’t know yet. Old, I’m guessing. Some cavers discovered a skull and a long bone over in Wayne County. The sheriff wanted me to have a look.” Kelsey gazed out over the dew-covered grounds. “Pretty morning, isn’t it? You should get your camera.”

Maddie turned to look at the sloping meadow surrounded by tall pecan trees and gnarled oaks. The sun had just edged above the treetops, and the entire landscape was touched with gold. It would have been a picturesque scene, had it not been for the carrion birds circling nearby.

Buzzards gave Maddie the creeps. She didn’t like their bald heads, or their beady eyes, or their huge wingspans. Their constant presence served as a reminder that her workplace sat in the middle of a body farm.

“What happened to your chin?” Kelsey asked.

She looked at her. “Is it that obvious?”

“I have a trained eye.”

Maddie sighed. Problem was, everyone around here had a trained eye, which meant that despite spending
twenty minutes on her makeup this morning, she was going to be fielding questions all day long.

“I got mugged last night. Maybe I should send out a memo.” She nodded at the coffee cup, hoping to change the subject. “Did you get that here? I thought they weren’t open yet.”

Kelsey smiled. “Throw yourself on their mercy, and they’ll sneak you a cup.”

Maddie used her security badge to swipe her way into the building and made a detour to the coffee shop, where she managed to score an extra-large latte and a blueberry muffin. She rode up the elevator to the photo lab, which shared a floor with Trace and QD.

She and Kelsey weren’t the only ones in early. Through a wall of glass, Maddie saw Brooke and one of the trace evidence examiners already at work. The lab seemed to attract people who didn’t mind putting in extra hours. There was a connection between the people here, a shared sense of purpose, even though their specialties were all over the map. The Delphi Center covered practically all areas of forensic science—from DNA to dung beetles—and the list was growing.

Roland Delgado glanced up as Maddie entered the room. “Hey, babe.”

“Hey.”

As part of the Trace Unit, Roland specialized in any evidence that was difficult to see with the naked eye. He had Isabella Simmons’s front door up on sawhorses and was examining it through tinted goggles. With his gray coveralls and black combat boots, he looked like an airplane mechanic.

“What do you think of our door?” Maddie asked.

He shoved the goggles up on his forehead and sauntered over. “I think you’re going to love me,” he said, making a grab for her muffin.

“Hey! That’s my breakfast.”

“Thanks for sharing.” He popped a chunk into his mouth. “And you brought coffee, too.” He grinned at her, and she hesitated only a moment before handing over her cup. He took a swig and gave it back. “You owe me. I’ve been here since six working miracles on this thing.”

“It’s true. You’re going to be impressed,” Brooke said, looking up from a worktable. She had pages of black film spread out in front of her, and Maddie guessed she was preparing to do an electrostatic lift of something, probably their shoe print.

“Okay.” Maddie shrugged out of her jacket and tossed it onto a nearby chair. “I’m ready to be impressed. Show me what you got.”

Roland gave her a sly smile, which she pretended not to notice. He flirted with everyone. He was good at it, too, and had managed to “date” many of the single, and probably some of the nonsingle, women at the lab. But Maddie never took him seriously. Besides being five years younger—a definite strike against him—he was also a coworker. Maddie’s professional world was small, and she’d made a firm decision years ago to keep her private life private.

She pictured Brian Beckman walking up her driveway, all broad shoulders and cocky attitude. He was sharp, motivated, and brimming with that natural brand of confidence she couldn’t help but admire. And admire it she would. From afar. She knew better than
to let herself get involved with a strapping young FBI agent who made house calls in the middle of the night.

“First off, good job on those photos,” Roland said now. “That’s going to be important. Too often, people rush things, and it comes back to bite us in the ass.” He returned to the door and pointed at the shoe print left in reddish brown dust on the out-facing side of Isabella’s door. “This case goes to trial, the door’s going to be key.”

“Did you find any fingerprints?” Maddie asked hopefully.

Brooke scoffed. “That’s the problem. We found tons—on the door, the coffee table, the million or so fast-food cups in the kitchen. The whole place is covered with prints that don’t belong to the victim.”

“The neighbor woman told Craig she had a busy social life,” Maddie said. “Lot of cars coming and going. Landlord confirms that. He lives down the road, said he’s had noise complaints on and off since she rented the house.”

“So fingerprints, even if we get a hit in the database, may not help us that much in terms of establishing who killed her,” Brooke said. “But look what Roland found.”

Roland directed Maddie to the table beside him, where he had a microscope set up. She peered into it and saw what looked under magnification like light blue rope.

“Carpet fiber?”

“Close. It’s from the rug in the victim’s bathroom.”

Maddie remembered photographing the pale blue bath mat. She’d also photographed the sink, the tub, the toilet, and the medicine cabinet, which someone had
rummaged through. Prescription drugs were a popular target for burglars.

“Now look at this.”

Roland handed her a magnifying glass and directed her attention back to the door, where at the side of the dusty shoe print, she saw a wisp of lint, barely larger than an eyelash.

“It’s a match?” She looked up at him, feeling that surge of adrenaline that accompanied a good find.

“You bet.”

“Which puts the ‘burglar’
inside
the house before he ever kicked in the door.”

“Which means the scene was staged, like we thought,” Maddie said.

“Here’s the scenario I’m thinking,” Brooke said, tucking a lock of dark hair into her ponytail. Like Maddie, she wore it up all the time so it wouldn’t get in her way. “Some guy, maybe an ex-boyfriend, comes over as she’s getting ready to go out.”

“According to the texts on her phone, she had plans with friends last night,” Maddie said. Craig had discovered the victim’s phone amid the mess in the kitchen.

“Right, so here comes Romeo. He’s got anger-management issues, which we can guess from Isabella’s old bruises. He gets into an argument with her, starts pushing her around, bloodies her nose, and ends up killing her there in the bedroom. Then he freaks because his prints are everywhere—he’s been there so many times he wouldn’t even know where to start wiping the place down. He decides to stage the scene so it looks like the work of some random stranger, goes out to his car, grabs a crowbar—”

“We know it’s a crowbar?” Maddie looked at Roland.

“We need to confirm with our tool marks guy,” he said, “but that’s my take after looking at the gouges. He jimmies the door and gives it a good kick, leaving splinters everywhere, then grabs some of her valuables and takes off.”

Maddie looked at the almost invisible fiber stuck to the door. “Are we sure we didn’t pick that up somewhere? Maybe on the way here, in the van?”

“Nope. You got it on film, back at the house.” Roland squeezed her shoulder. “Nice work. This chump’s lawyer’s gonna have some ’splaining to do.”

“
If
we ID the chump. And
if
we get him to trial.” Maddie was a pessimist. She’d seen too many slam-dunk cases get botched over a technicality.

“Craig will get him,” Brooke said. “He spent his entire night interviewing Isabella’s coworkers from the bar where she works. One of those women is bound to know if she’d been seeing someone, especially if he was pushing her around. Maybe he’s been stalking her or hanging around outside her workplace.”

Maddie’s phone chimed. She checked the screen and muttered a curse.

“Problem?”

She looked at Brooke. “It’s the bride-to-be from yesterday. She wants to know where her engagement pictures are.”

“Did you tell her they’re gone, along with the fifteen-hundred-dollar Nikon you just bought?”

“Not yet. She’s probably going to want me to comp the portrait sitting.”

“After you got mugged? What a bitch.”

“Which means I’m going to have to go back to that damn park for the third time this week—” Maddie froze. She looked down at her phone as the call went to voice mail. “Oh, my God.”

Maybe he’s been stalking her or hanging around outside her workplace
.

“What?” Brooke asked.

“I just thought of something.”

Brooke arched her eyebrows.

“Not this case. The other.” Maddie grabbed her jacket and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Sorry, gotta run. I might have a lead.”