Hide, p.12
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“Detective Lonergan. You again,” Grant said, not sounding at all happy about the reunion. She then glanced over at Foster, who stood beside him. “Only this time you brought the A-Team. Good for you, not so good for her.” She winked at Foster, then peeled her gloves off, padded over to the sink, and scrubbed her hands with harsh soap—hands, wrists, forearms. “I got to it sooner. I didn’t want that child to lie on my table any longer than she had to. I didn’t think I needed to wait for a quorum. Besides, you’re the main one always ragging on me to speed things up. Now you’re complaining. Typical.”
Foster knew Lonergan was in no position to complain too loudly. This was Grant’s world, and she ran it like she knew it. Grant turned and looked over at Foster standing stoically, her eyes on the sheet under which Beth Birch’s child lay cold, having just endured Grant’s meticulous probing. Foster had been here so many times doing exactly this. Grant had conducted Glynnis’s autopsy, though there’d been no question as to the cause of death. She’d also conducted Reg’s, and she had been kind, caring. Neither of them, Foster knew, would ever mention it.
Grant plucked up her paperwork from the desk. “Immediate cause of death, exsanguination, but . . . well, you could have guessed. Twenty-two stab wounds to the chest and abdomen, some deeper than others. Two missed the heart by millimeters. One got it right on the money.”
She stepped away from the desk and arched her back to work the stiffness out of it. Too many hours leaning over the table, Foster deduced. “No evidence of sexual assault. Nothing significant under the nails, and by ‘significant’ I mean skin, blood, hair, saliva, semen. DNA. Perfectly healthy nineteen-year-old. All parts working as they should. Preliminary toxicology: No drugs. No alcohol. She wasn’t impaired in any way at time of death.”
“You’re sure?” Lonergan again.
Grant lasered in on Lonergan with those big, steady eyes. “Can you think of any reason why I wouldn’t be?”
“Just asking the questions, Doc.”
“Wrong ones,” Grant shot back. “If the words come out of my mouth, I’m sure.”
His eyes bore into Grant’s. “You’re readin’ too much into it, I’d say.” He jabbed a thumb Foster’s way. “Lot of that goin’ around. Must be a woman thing . . . or somethin’ else. Either way, they don’t pay me for dealin’ with it. We got witnesses that put her in a bar before she was killed.”
Grant said nothing. The silence was for Lonergan, and judging by the scowl on his face, he was bothered by it.
“Stomach contents?” Foster asked.
“She consumed Thai hours before she died. Pad thai would be my educated guess. I found noodles, peanuts, peas, the whole nine. And cola. Coke. Pepsi. That variety. That might help you retrace her steps, but without prints or DNA, you don’t have much of a jump start.”
Lonergan shifted his weight. “Did you check the—” He stopped himself. “What about the wounds? Rosales says we’re lookin’ for a hunting knife. You got anything more specific?”
“Rosales was correct. The wounds appear to have been made with a large, serrated knife. A blade at least thirty centimeters, judging by the cuts. That’s a little over eleven inches for the layman. A hunting knife would fit. If you find it, I might be able to match it to some of the nicks on her bones. Like I said, some of the cuts went deep.”
“What about the blood on the jacket?” Lonergan asked.
“Not Birch’s,” Grant said.
“You’re jokin’!” Lonergan’s eyes widened.
“Now I’m a clown?”
He stared at Grant as though she had just grown two heads, as though what she’d said didn’t make a lick of sense. “That’s impossible.”
“No, Lonergan, that’s science—and all I can comment on. The blood on that jacket is not a match to Birch’s. One last injury. A superficial scalp hematoma, right at the base of the skull. No distinctive marks from a foreign object. No evidence that she had been struck.”
“Maybe she hit her head when she fell back after the first strike?” Foster said.
“The wound would be consistent with that.”
Lonergan looked like he didn’t know which way to go, what to think. His instincts had been wrong. None of the physical evidence tied Keith Ainsley to Peggy Birch. “Tests can be wrong,” he said.
“Not when I run them,” Grant said. “Unless I completely blew med school hematology, which I absolutely did not, there’s no way to mistake the inconsistency in blood types. Birch was O-positive. Common. The spot on the jacket, B-positive, also common. And it was old blood, not fresh, as you’d expect. Several major arteries were either nicked or sliced clean through, which flooded her chest and abdominal cavities with blood. But your killer didn’t stop there. He dug down and sliced through the abdominal wall, opening her up, and, well, you saw her intestines. All her organs are accounted for. Whoever did this didn’t take souvenirs, at least not anatomical ones. Bottom line: your killer left quite a mess behind.”
“What about the lipstick around her ankles and wrists?” Foster asked.
“I can confirm it’s lipstick. And strange. But it’s unspectacular, except for its placement. Not only strange but a little creepy, though I can’t offer an explanation. Did you find a tube of lipstick at the scene?” Foster and Lonergan shook their heads. “Then you’ve got another mystery to solve. I have a bad feeling about this one. No prints. No DNA. What’s that say to both of you?”
“Gloves,” Foster said. “He was careful.”
Grant turned to Lonergan. “And what’s that say?”
Lonergan didn’t answer. They both knew what it said. Peggy Birch had likely been picked out, targeted, and lured to the Riverwalk, and that would mean that in addition to the gloves, the killer had likely worn something to cover their clothing. They could hardly move through the streets covered in blood, even at that hour. They’d need a kit, an exit route. And they’d need to be very precise about where they stepped.
“His shoes?” Foster asked.
“Clean,” Grant said. “Your email said you wanted to know if there was mud on them? There wasn’t. They were also dry, so he didn’t take them off, rinse them off in the river, and put them back on.” She stared at Lonergan when she relayed the last part. “That’s all I’ve got preliminarily. You’ll get a more detailed report by end of day. Good luck.”
Foster said nothing to Lonergan as they walked back to the car. Ainsley wasn’t their killer. She was both relieved and anxious about next steps.
“You win, Foster,” Lonergan said. “Guess your kid’s off the hook.”
Her kid. It was an odd thing to say, even odder for Lonergan to boil it all down to a game of wins and losses. She walked heavily, as though her body were buried beneath a wall of bricks, her mind racing. Thai food consumed hours before Peggy’s death, no foreign prints, no DNA. Two blood types, lipstick. She turned to Lonergan.
“If it isn’t Peggy’s blood, whose is it?”
CHAPTER 22
She flew through the doors back at Area 1. Alone. Lonergan had dropped her at the lot and taken off. Downtime, he’d said. Back in an hour. They had a body attached to no physical evidence and physical evidence that didn’t match any victim they knew of. Downtime? Where was Lonergan going that was more important than getting to the bottom of any of this?
She threw her bag on the desk, eyed Griffin’s closed door. The boss had done this to her, but she wasn’t about to go running back to cry about it. She was stuck with Lonergan. The office was busy, cops doing what cops did; Peggy Birch wasn’t the only murder that needed solving. Next moves. What could they be? Did Lonergan expect her to wait here like a doll on a shelf until he got back and made the moves for them?
Shimmying out of her jacket, she sat at the grimy desk and pulled out her notebook. Timeline. Peggy’s. She’d track her back from Teddy’s, the last spot anyone could place her. Street-camera access was in the works. The Riverwalk was covered. That was where she’d start. And if she was being hopeful, the blood on Keith’s jacket didn’t have to mean anyone else was dead. There could be a thousand explanations for it, and the fact that no one had stumbled on another dead girl kind of proved it.
She needed to see the case spread out in front of her. If she saw it mapped, she might be able to figure out the why that would lead to the who. Looking around the office, she spotted a small whiteboard leaning against the wall. She commandeered it and propped it up at her desk, then went hunting for markers. When she had the board set up and had acquired the markers from the shelf of office supplies near the printer, she started to quietly transfer her notes from her book to the board: witness statements, times, a list of Peggy’s closest associates, lines drawn under their names—Rimmer, Dean, Stroman. She even added Giles Valentine, the bartender at Teddy’s. Next, she taped up photos of Birch and Ainsley along with a crudely drawn map she’d made of the crime scene, noting the position of the body in relation to the bridge, to the marina, to the stairs. Blood. It wasn’t Birch’s. God forbid someone stumbled on another pile of leaves. The blood wasn’t Keith Ainsley’s either. He hadn’t had a nick or cut on him when he’d been found, for one thing, and the blood was old, for another, but just to be sure, on her way back, she had checked with Dr. Santos by phone from the car. Keith was AB-positive. That revelation had done little to alter Lonergan’s spiteful mood.
Stepping back, Foster studied what she’d done, satisfied that it was a good start. She would add to it as she discovered more, but for now the order helped her breathe a little easier.
“Foster.” She turned to see Griffin standing at the door to her office, arms crossed, glancing at the board but making no comment. “Lonergan?”
All heads turned her way, everyone quieting. “Following a lead. Should be back any second.”
She could tell Griffin knew she was lying. The boss knew Lonergan better than Foster knew him, but she didn’t challenge the statement. And from the looks she got from the cops in the room, she’d passed a test. She’d covered for her partner, even if it was Lonergan, and their nods and winks of approval signaled to her that she had earned their respect and fraternity. She’d take it, but a little white lie was as far as she would ever bend. They didn’t know that about her yet.
The board set, Foster checked her watch, then switched to the security footage from the bar. Two sets of eyes would have been better, but it looked like Lonergan was going to leave it all to her.
She went through the main footage again, finding just a bar filled with happy, drinking people. Peggy Birch, the life of the party, as Giles Valentine had told them. Foster then moved to the other angles, the ones that covered the back end of the bar and along the wall. She checked her watch. It was just after eleven.
“What’s all this?”
Foster looked up to find Detective Vera Li holding a white grease-stained bag that smelled like Wrigley Field on a hot summer day. “Excuse me?”
Li flicked the bag toward the screen. “That a lead?”
“It’s footage from the bar Birch was in the night she was killed. We’re looking for . . . anything, I guess. So far nothing. I’m just about to look at the rest of it.”
Li scanned the room. “We? Where’s Lonergan?”
Foster gave Li a slight smile. “Somewhere readjusting.”
“Want another set of eyes?” She held the bag up. “And a hot dog?”
Foster’s stomach growled as if on cue, despite her reluctance to accept the assist on principle.
Li chuckled, then pulled over Lonergan’s empty chair and sat next to her. “Sure you do.” She drew the dogs out of the bag and set one in front of Foster, taking the other for herself.
“What about whatever you’re working on?” Foster asked.
“Kelley’s at a dentist appointment. I’m taking lunch while he’s at it. No sense wasting all this detectiveness. I figure we eat a little, cop a little.” She nodded toward the computer. “Cue it up. Let’s see what we got.”
Foster stared at Li for a moment, watching as she bit into her hot dog with great enthusiasm and speed. Cops learned early to eat fast and often. You never knew how long your break would be or how long a meal would have to last you before you had the chance to eat again.
“No chips?” Foster asked.
Li grinned and stuck a hand back in the bag, grabbing two small bags of Jays potato chips, original flavor. She tossed one to Foster. “What do you take me for?”
They ran through angle two for about forty minutes before Foster spotted him. He came in minutes after Birch entered and sat well away from the bar at a small table in the corner, his eyes never leaving Birch as she stood at the bar with Valentine and the others.
“He’s staring at her,” Foster said.
Li leaned closer to the screen. “And he looks pissed.”
They watched him glare at Birch from the table, then advanced the footage frame by frame until the blonde woman in the black dress who Valentine had paid close attention to approached him, talked him up, flipping her hair around, and then sat down with him. Twenty minutes later, the two left together. Foster rolled back to before the woman approached, zoomed in a little to get more of his face.
“That’s who you were looking for?” Li asked. Foster nodded. “Who is he?”
Foster froze the frame, leaned back in her chair to think. “Her ex. Joe Rimmer, who told us he hadn’t seen Birch in weeks.”
“What about the blonde?” Li asked.
“A pickup would be my guess.”
“She could also be his alibi,” Li said. “Depending on how long it all took.”
“Looks like we’ve got a new person of interest.” Foster ran it all again.
They stuck Rimmer in the smallest, smelliest interview room available and then let him sit there for a time, letting the funk sink in and the fear rise enough to rattle his bones. Foster watched him through the two-way mirror from the next room as Rimmer shook, his glassy eyes darting around the depressing space. He repeatedly checked his pockets as if trying to remind himself that he wasn’t holding anything they could ding him for.
Lonergan was back and took up the spot beside her. “Heard the boss was lookin’ for me. I was followin’ a lead . . . thought it’d be better if I took it solo.”
She didn’t bother turning to look at him. She’d seen enough, heard enough, endured enough. “What lead?”
“Doesn’t matter. Didn’t pan out.”
She knew there was no lead. She’d asked around the office when he hadn’t come back for almost two hours. It seemed Lonergan often disappeared when the going got tough. There were conflicting theories as to where he went, whether he cooled his heels in a bar or met a mistress in a hotel. It didn’t really matter to her which it was. Lonergan, she’d decided, was a goldbricker. Griffin had said as much, and she had no time for it. If she couldn’t work with him, she’d work around him.
“What’s he doing here?” Lonergan asked.
“We found him on the footage from Teddy’s.”
“That lyin’ piece of shit was followin’ her?”
“He was in the same bar she was in,” Foster corrected pointedly.
His eyes lasered in on Rimmer fidgeting in the other room. “On the very night she comes up dead.”
“I’ve asked Li to sit in,” she said.
He turned. “Li?”
“She helped get through the footage while you were . . . out. I needed another set of eyes. Yours weren’t here. She sits in.”
“Two days in and you’re already calling the shots?”
“Just working the case, Lonergan.”
“Which you’re supposed to be doin’ with me.”
“That’s right. But you flaked off and left the hard part to me. And I covered your ass with Griffin. So here we are.”
He studied her. “Look, if you’ve got beef—”
She brushed past him. Sniping with the man was a waste of time and energy, and she lacked both. The sooner they got something out of Rimmer, the sooner they could move on. “I don’t have beef. What I have is a dead girl. You coming or not?”
Three detectives, one liar. Lonergan, Foster, and Li stared down at Rimmer sitting at the table, sweating, smelling of weed. No one spoke for a good minute.
“What’s this about?” There was a tremor to his voice, his tone as thin as a reed. He looked from one to another. “Seriously?”
Foster laid a copy of the freeze-frame from the bar on the table and waited until Rimmer looked at it, registered what it was, and seemed to short-circuit. He started to stammer; his eyes danced around the room. Lonergan took a seat across from him. Foster too. Li leaned against the wall, her arms crossed in front of her, eyes on the trembling man-child with the heavy metal tats up and down his puny arms.
“Joseph Thomas Rimmer.” Lonergan leaned forward, smiling. “You’re a dirty rotten liar.”
Rimmer tried laughing off the formality. “You sound like my mother. When I was in trouble as a kid.” He eyed the cops, all three, who gave him nothing back. “So I was at a bar. That’s not a crime.”
Foster pointed to Birch. “You see what I see?”
“I didn’t know she was there. How could I?”
“A coincidence, then?” Foster said. “Chance.”
Rimmer jumped on it with both feet. “Sure. Yeah. That’s exactly what it was. I was there; she came in. What was I supposed to do, get up and leave? She doesn’t own the city. I have just as much right to—”
Foster consulted her notebook. “She came in first, actually. At five fifty-two p.m. Sunday. You came in at five fifty-five.”
“Start talking,” Lonergan said. “Do not, I repeat, do not waste my time.”
Rimmer swallowed hard, then swiped sweat from his brows with the back of a hand. “I don’t—”
Lonergan held up a hand. “Nope.”
He started again. “That’s not—”
Lonergan slammed his fist down on the table, rattling it, rattling Rimmer. “Try again.”
Foster said nothing and neither did Li, watchful against the wall. Rimmer wouldn’t be the first jilted boyfriend to take the news of his dumping hard and do something about it. As she watched him now, closely, she wondered if he possessed a switch she couldn’t see, a level of mania well hidden beneath a guise of a mellow music man who let things slide, who took things easy. All the while his wild, cornered eyes flitted around the cop room. He looked like he wanted to say something.
