Dwayne Reed’s death hadn’t ended the investigation into either the Chapman or Henderson murder. Gloria Temple had been Rossi’s best lead since he found the aluminum bat in her bedroom closet in Virginia Sprague’s house. Forensics had confirmed that the bat had been used to shatter the skulls of the Henderson kids and rape Mary Henderson. There were multiple fingerprints on the bat, none clear enough for certain identification.
The bat was one of several tantalizing and frustrating pieces of evidence. The bullet extracted from Jameer Henderson’s head hadn’t matched the gun recovered from Dwayne Reed’s body. The fragment of burned fabric Lena Kirk had plucked from Odyessy Shelburne’s fireplace had contained Mary Henderson’s DNA but no one else’s. The fabric came from a sweatshirt of the same type worn by Dwayne Reed, but they hadn’t been able to prove that it came from one he owned.
None of that meant that Dwayne Reed hadn’t killed the Hendersons, but all of it couldn’t prove that he had. Finding the bat in Gloria Temple’s closet had to mean that there was a connection between her and the killer. Maybe he’d given the bat to Gloria after the murders. Maybe he’d stashed it in Gloria’s closet without her knowing about it.
Rossi, Gardiner Harris, and the gang squad had blanketed the east side, showing pictures of Dwayne and Gloria to anyone-kids hanging on street corners, gangbangers, and civilians. No one admitted seeing them together. And no one had seen Gloria since the weekend Kyrie Chapman and the Hendersons died, at least no one willing to talk to the police.
The most conclusive evidence they’d found was in the Kyrie Chapman case, not the Henderson case. Ballistic tests had confirmed that the gun Dwayne Reed was holding when Rossi burst into the living room was the same gun used to kill Chapman. Had Alex Stone not killed Dwayne, that would have been enough evidence for a conviction.
Rossi had made no further progress on either case in the months since the murders. Other crimes had been committed that would have pushed the Henderson murders deep into the stack of unsolved cases had it not been for Patrick Ortiz, who had been calling Rossi a couple of times a week for updates.
He’d worked with Ortiz on a lot of cases when Ortiz was the prosecutor, each of them doing their job, neither sending the other a Christmas card. Ortiz didn’t like Rossi’s freewheeling style and Rossi didn’t like that Ortiz had let him twist in the wind before clearing him on a couple of excessive force complaints. But the job was the job.
“What’s the Henderson case got to do with Alex Stone killing Dwayne Reed?” Rossi asked the first time Ortiz called him. “That’s pretty straight up. She shot him and you’ve got an eyewitness who makes it premeditated.”
“I’ve got an eyewitness who’s a crackhead and a prostitute who also happens to be the victim’s mother. I need more.”
“I get that,” Rossi said, “but how is closing out the Henderson case going to do that for you?”
“I don’t know-not yet anyway. Alex Stone defended Dwayne Reed and that got Reed killed. So I’m interested in anything having to do with the two of them, including everything that happened in the Donaire trial. Keep me posted if you find anything new. Day or night,” Ortiz said, giving Rossi his office, home, and cell numbers.
Rossi hadn’t needed Ortiz’s numbers until two weeks ago. He was lying in bed with Lena Kirk, who had finally accepted his offer to have dinner and the other offers it came with. They were talking about the Henderson case, and Rossi kept coming back to finding the aluminum bat in Gloria Temple’s closet.
“Did you search the rest of the house?” Lena asked him.
“You know we did. We gathered up every article of Gloria’s clothing and had them tested, but there was nothing to tie her to either the Chapman or Henderson murder scenes.”
“Hmmm.”
“Hmmm, what?”
Lena propped herself up on one elbow. “You remember that day Dwayne caught his leg on the fence and you had me pull those fabric fragments from the fireplace?”
“For all the good it did.”
“Well, maybe the day wasn’t a total bust.”
“Meaning what?”
“I went over the house, inside and out, in case there was anything else that might help with the murder investigations.”
“And found a whole lot of nothing,” Rossi said, sitting up.
“Only because we didn’t know what we were looking for.”
“A connection between Gloria and Dwayne.”
“Exactly. There were a bunch of footprints in the mud around the back door of the house. Some of them were clean enough for a molding. One of them was a woman’s shoe, but it didn’t match the shoes Odyessy was wearing. Did you find any of Gloria’s shoes when you searched Virginia’s house?”
“Yeah, three or four.”
They looked at each other, grinning, and jumped out of bed. An hour later they were in the lab. Lena compared the moldings to a pair of Gloria’s shoes.
“It’s a match,” she said, “right down to the dried mud on Gloria’s shoe.”
Rossi called Patrick Ortiz, waking him.
“It’s the middle of the night, Rossi,” Ortiz said. “This better be good.”
“We can place Gloria Temple at Odyessy Shelburne’s house,” Rossi said, explaining about the shoes and the molding. “The Hendersons were killed during the night. She had to have been at Odyessy’s house sometime between when they were murdered and when I went there to question Dwayne and he tried to run away.”
Ortiz thought for a moment. “Thank you, Detective. That’s a start. Call me back when you find Gloria Temple.”
Rossi had kept looking for Gloria Temple, but not because of Ortiz. She was the only one who could fill in the blanks on the Henderson case-if she was still alive. An entire family was in the ground way ahead of God’s schedule, and Rossi couldn’t leave that alone. He was convinced that Dwayne Reed had murdered them, but that wasn’t enough to close the case. He needed proof.
After Lena did her magic with Gloria’s shoe, he’d gone back over all the interviews, all the leads, and all the tips from CIs that hadn’t been worth the money the department had paid for them. He went back to the CIs, pushing for anything new. The effort had paid off Sunday night when one of the CIs said he’d seen Gloria the night before outside a crack house. He found Ortiz’s numbers.
“We’ve got a line on Gloria Temple,” he said, telling Ortiz the rest.
“How reliable is the CI?”
“What can I tell you? He’s a CI, but he peddles a lot less bullshit than most of them. And, he treats this shit like a business, not like a strung-out junkie looking to get high. He knows if he gives me bad information it’s bad for his business.”
“So what now?”
“This feels right. Gardiner Harris will watch the crack house and I’ll sit on Virginia Sprague’s apartment. Gloria shows up, we’ll bring her in.”
“Why not just knock on Sprague’s door?”
It was a lawyer’s question. A cop wouldn’t ask it. “Because if she’s not there, Virginia will tell her we’re looking for her and Gloria will vanish again. And if she is there, chances are Virginia will lie to us and we’ll end up in the same place. Better to watch and wait.”
Three days had passed and they had yet to catch up to Gloria. Rossi took another sip of his coffee when his phone rang.
“We just finished opening statements and the judge adjourned for the day,” Ortiz said. “Have you found her?”
“Nope.”
“That’s not very helpful.”
“Wasn’t meant to be.”
“What are you doing?”
“What I told you I was going to do. Watch the apartment at Choteau Courts.”
“That’s the best idea you’ve got?”
“When I get a better one, I’ll let you know.”
