Eyeshot (28 page)

“The man's only crime is he owns a hacksaw. Guess how many men do? All you have is a tattooed dead woman who says she saw him kill somebody, and she can't testify, can she?” Crick placed his fingertips together. “So who in this office is ready to jump up and talk to a grand jury?” Caplan put hand to his ear. “I'm listening, but I don't hear any volunteers.”

“What about the rental car?” Sam said.

Crick nodded. “Okay, you're getting warmer, but you're a long way from hot.
Somebody
killed her, but you don't have Caplan's head in the noose. Mr. Caplan has declined to give us hair and blood samples, but we can get them, on down the road. The rental car could be a major screwup on his part. He's too smart to screw up so we figure he was short on time and took a calculated risk. Good. He can't have all the breaks, and we'll get something. We got soil samples, for one, which for reasons we cannot figure are similar to the residue on the shoes found at the scene of one of the Bobo killings.”

Sonora leaned back. “Say what?”

Crick shrugged. “Don't ask, I can't for the life of me figure out the connection. But we will. Or rather, you will. And Caplan, through channels you understand, has made a very good observation. Which is that he's a long shot compared to Julia Winchell's husband and lover. Man has a point.”

“Sir.” Sonora did not like the pleading note in her voice. She cleared her throat. “This hacksaw of Caplan's. It had been scoured clean with Clorox, even though all the other tools had accumulations of dirt and oil and rust. Why is it clean? Everything fits in for Caplan.”

“Give me your theory, A to Z.”

Sam shifted in his chair. “We think he killed her here, in Cincinnati, strangled her in the rental. Then put her in his car and carted her down to the cabin—okay, not the cabin, but somewhere. He cut her up with the hacksaw, put his little packages together, and cleaned up like a DA who prosecutes murders knows to clean up.

“Look at the geography—it fits him. The leg was found right outside of London on I-75 right before you get to Corbin. Another hour or two down the road is the Clinch River which flows through Clinton, Tennessee. He could have thrown that bag with the head, hands, and feet over from the interstate.”

“Why go south? Why go out of his way?”

“Which would you do?” Sonora asked. “Throw body parts on a trail leading to your house, or on a trail leading to the husband of the woman you've just killed? Assuming you don't want to get caught?”

“Where's the rest of her? Arms, another leg, torso?”

“They may still be out there. Maybe they were carried off by animals.”

“Maybe he kept some of her,” Sonora said.

“Then he's got a lair,” Crick said. “But it's not the cabin. Which leaves the rest of the world.”

Sonora chewed a thumbnail.

Crick leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Sighed heavily and opened his eyes. “I made a phone call. Detective Owen Baylor. Know him?”

“His name was in the file. He handled the investigation into Micah's death,” Sonora said.

“Yeah, he's retired now,” said Crick. “Either of you talk to him?”

Sonora and Sam shook their heads.

“Yeah, I know, and he's miffed a little. Plenty enough to talk to you guys about Caplan, if you'd come around, that's how he put it. He thinks Caplan did her, Micah, thought so at the time. It went before a grand jury, but they didn't indict.”

“Why not?” Sonora asked.

“Bad presentation?” Sam said.

“So Baylor says, and he was there. On the other hand, he thinks Caplan did it.” Crick scratched his chin. “Caplan wasn't in the DA's office then. Baylor thinks that the prosecutor didn't think Caplan did it. Didn't feel like he could prove it anyway, and didn't want to go after the grieving husband unless he could really nail it down. He and Caplan seemed to hit it off. That didn't sit too well with Baylor, still doesn't. Anyway, they got to know each other. Caplan kept harping on about catching the killer who murdered his wife, and eventually applied to work as a DA. To put his grief to rest. He gets hired on, and surprise surprise, he does a helluva job.”

“Experience will out,” Sam said.

Crick narrowed his eyes. “The two of you. Both in agreement. You think Caplan did Winchell, you think he did his first wife?”

Sam nodded.

“Absolutely,” Sonora said.

“Work from the other end awhile. The one depends on the other. So you get out there to the university, where Julia Winchell saw whatever it was she saw. And you walk it through. And you make it work, or you leave the guy alone and focus on somebody else. We clear?”

“Yes sir.”

Crick stood up and his voice deepened. “Good. 'Cause I don't like assholes in the prosecutor's office playing games with my people. Rest assured there will be no more subpoenas. You better be right, and you better bring him in. I'm counting on you two to see I get the last laugh on this.”

Sonora took a deep breath and scrambled out of Crick's office behind Sam. He leaned close and muttered in her ear, “It's not that I don't trust Crick, but if I see a sheriff's car in the front of the house, I'm not going to the door.”

56

Sam leaned against the wall and Sonora sat in a metal folding chair. The man behind the desk was relaxed, not in any hurry. He had a mustache that was going gray, and wore the blue uniform shirt of campus security.

The office was tiny, desks and cabinets scarred and old, like the ones in the bullpen. Sonora wondered why it was a given that anyone who had anything to do with law enforcement got crappy office furniture.

She'd seen janitors with better accommodations.

The drawers in the filing cabinet had not been closed in years—much too full. Boxes of papers and forms and computer printouts were stacked chest-high in every corner, and the folders on top of the file cabinet were an exercise in balance.

A round metal trash can had been turned upside down so the security guard, P. Fletcher Hall, could use it as a footstool. Sonora wondered where they threw trash. Although it was possible, looking around the tiny office, that they kept it.

“That clock keep good time?” Sam asked.

“Yeah,” Hall said, attention on the cabinet he was searching.

Sam grinned at Sonora. The clock was missing a minute hand.

The guard nodded his head. “Yep. Here it is. Thought he'd have it. Lieutenant don't throw nothing away.” He read it first, while they waited, which irritated Sonora, then handed it across to Sam, which annoyed her again.

He seemed amused, mouth set smugly. “The girl was clearly a nutcase, unless it was one of those sorority things. She causing trouble?”

Sonora looked up. “That what the guy said in the report? Nutcase?”

Sam leaned over and showed her the acorn that had been drawn in the top right-hand corner of the form.

The call had been logged at 10:48
P.M.
According to the security guard, Marsh, he'd been standing on the top of the concrete bridge that led from the fifth floor of the Braunstein Building, taking advantage from the let-up in rain for a smoke break, when a young woman who was later identified as Julia Hardin of Clinton, Tennessee, and a student at UC, had come tearing out of the fourth floor exit in a condition described as hysterical.

Marsh had watched her, alarmed. She was clearly in a panic, screaming for help. He had been about to call out when she spotted him. It was dark, but the embers of his cigarette were glowing, and there was light spillage from building security lights. She had run in circles for a moment, trying to find the outside staircase that led to the bridge, and was out of breath by the time she made it up.

Sonora knew who not to call in an emergency.

Marsh had clearly been suspicious of drug-induced hysteria. He had spent some time describing her physical appearance, including bloodshot eyes, and respiratory distress with a cough and a runny nose.

She had been crying and nearly incoherent. She had told him that a pregnant woman was being murdered in the women's bathroom on the third floor.

She had specified the third floor, which, in addition to her appearance, had put him on guard. The third floor was a parking structure.

He led her back into the building and took the elevator to the third floor. When the elevator opened onto the parking structure, she had become hysterical, and in order to placate her, they had searched all of the women's bathrooms, working from the top down.

Nothing out of the ordinary was found.

She had settled on the fourth floor as where the alleged murder occurred, convinced by the presence of the Resource Room/Multimedia Lab and the mannequins in the fashion design classroom. But there had been nothing to see in the bathroom. No blood. A little water on the floor, but that could easily have been caused by a toilet overflowing.

He had questioned her carefully on drug use, but other than saying she had taken Contac for a sinus headache, she swore she was clean.

He had suggested taking her to a hospital emergency room, and at that point she had given up, except for insisting on an escort back to her dorm.

Sonora shook her head. No wonder Julia Winchell had never forgotten.

“Marsh still work here?” she asked.

“Dead two years ago, over Thanksgiving. Pancreatic cancer.”

“We take this, or get a copy?” Sam asked.

“I guess I better make you a copy,” Hall said. “Believe it or not, I let that out of here, lieutenant will know somehow it's gone.”

Sonora took a last look at the office before she walked out, grateful that there were one or two places left in the bureaucracy that had not been computerized for efficiency. They'd never have found it otherwise.

57

Sam's pager went off while they were in the student center, looking for a place to pick up a sandwich. He headed to the bank of phones near the stairwell.

It was quiet inside, dark and cool. The lunch hour was long over and the fast food outlets were dark, locked behind metal grills. Midsummer, hot as hell in the late afternoon, very little activity.

Sam was making notes. Sonora sat on a bench and crossed her legs. Her jeans were getting looser. Had the weight-loss fairy finally come?

Sam hung the phone up, and sat down beside her on the bench, flipping open his notebook. “That was the maintenance supervisor, returning our call. Here's what we got. Braunstein Building stays open and unlocked twenty-four hours a day, people in and out at all hours. Classrooms, offices, and labs for biology, chemistry, fashion design, genetics, and biochemistry.”

Sonora tapped the bench. “Sam, it's all falling into place.”

“Just because the building's unlocked twenty-four hours a day doesn't prove he did it. If you think I'm going back into Crick's office with anything less than solid, you think again.”

“All I'm saying is it shows opportunity. So far, so good.”

“May as well forget lunch, everything's closed down. Let's have at it.” He flipped his notebook shut, stuck it in his pocket. “They got maps at the information counter.”

The campus could not have been called crowded. The occasional students wore loose shorts, sandals, backpacks hanging off their shoulders. A few suits here and there—administrative types. No one else dressed like that in the heat. A background cacophony of jackhammers and beeping machinery kept a film of grit in the air. Construction workers in yellow hard hats were grimy with heat and sunburn.

Sam studied his map, stopped in front of the ground floor entrance to the Braunstein Building. A truck pulled up. Sonora saw Sam's mouth move. She waited till the truck, brakes squeaking, lumbered away.

“What'd you say?”

“I said she probably came in right here.”

Sonora pointed. “Concrete bridge, right up there. Probably where she saw the security guard.” Sonora tried to imagine the place at night, in the rain. “You really think she saw him in the dark?”

Sam scratched his chin, stepped off the curb, looked around. “Yeah, probably. There'd be lights on. She might even have noticed him as she went in. I'll buy it. Come on, let's find us some air-conditioning.”

The double glass doors led into a foyer, dark tile, staircase to the left, and a drink machine glowing
DIET PEPSI
in the right-hand corner. Sam opened the metal doors on the right, like he knew what he was doing.

“I think we should go left,” Sonora said.

“Are you serious? Go right, come on.”

The metal doors slammed behind them, making an echo, like prison. The walls were beige, concrete block. Ugly mustard-yellow doors led into the
FRESHMAN RESOURCE ROOM
&
MICROCOMPUTER
LAB.

“See that?”

Sonora looked inside. Bookshelves, tables, plastic chairs. Study carrels, and to the left a computer lab. The room smelled old.

“It's where she left her purse,” Sonora said. “I've got the weirdest feeling. Like she's right here beside us.”

“It's the heat, girl. Fried your brain. Do us both a favor and don't mention things like that to Crick.”

A girl in a study carrel looked up. Sonora and Sam ignored her. Police business. They left the lab and moved back into the hallway.

A door squeaked loudly and boomed shut, making what Sonora knew her son would call reverb. Their footsteps were loud. Sonora's Reeboks squeaked. The hall had a yellowed look, linoleum buffed over a heavy wax buildup. Big round clocks stuck out from the wall, like in elementary schools and hospital rooms. The minute hands jerked with the pulse of every second. The lighting, fluorescent and harsh, spilled squares of reflected light on the overwaxed floor.

Sam stopped at the floor directory, studied it for a minute, went left down the corridor. Voices echoed, Sonora could not place where. She imagined Julia Winchell, coming into the building from the dark, rain-swept campus. She would be drenched, her feet wet, sandals squeaking like Sonora's tennis shoes. She would pass the glowing drink machine, the metal doors would clang behind her, and she would stand, worried, in front of the resource room.