Chain of Evidence

Nothing.

Besides, he thought for a second time, he would never make it that easy.

CHAPTER 37

With the surveillance of 11 Hamilton Court failing to produce any sign of Wallace Sparco, and with a Be On Lookout alert having failed to raise his vehicle, Dart felt his only chance of finding the man-of saving him, perhaps-lay within that building. But when during the Friday night shift he approached Haite to discuss the technical merits of the search-and-seizure warrant issued on the house, Haite forbade him to enter “or get anywhere near” 11 Hamilton Court. What began as a civilized discussion ended in a shouting match with all of CAPers staring at the two through the glass wall of Haite’s shared office. Dart stormed out and, feeling the brunt of everyone’s attention, continued into the hall looking for somewhere to calm down. He hurried down the hall and seeing Abby’s light on, knocked and entered. They hadn’t seen each other in nearly a week, a fact that had escaped Dart until he found himself standing there looking at her.

“What are you doing here?” he asked her.

“This is my office.”

“At night.”

“I make my own schedule. I’m a one-person division,” She hesitated and then explained, “I’m trying to get onto your schedule so we might see more of each other.” Another hesitation. “I’ve missed you.”

“The kids?”

“It’s actually better this way. They sleep at night. I’m with them in the mornings and afternoons. I should have tried this sooner.”

“When do you sleep?”

“I don’t,” she answered. “You look like you’re ready to break something. Not something I’ve done, I hope.”

“Haite. He’s bullheaded. I misjudged him. Brought him into my confidence when I probably shouldn’t have. Sent him off the deep end. He suddenly wants nothing to do with these suicides. He keeps assigning me domestics.”

“The night shift,” she reminded him. Domestic quarrels and assaults were almost entirely the domain of the night shift.

“Yeah, I know. But I’ve got bigger fish to fry and he knows it. It scares him, is the thing.”

“Which fish?”

“I told him-not directly, but I told him-about Zeller.”

“Oh, shit,” she gasped.

“Seems his loyalty outweighs his concern over-and these are his words-’a bunch of perverts’ getting killed.”

She nodded, as if she understood, or had encountered such resistance herself. She said, “I had a case involving a gym teacher. Junior high. Molesting his girl athletes, a peephole in the shower, stealing underwear from their lockers-the whole nine yards. He raped three of them. Got one pregnant, or maybe we’d have never known. The school board tried to pressure me not to press charges. Said it would hurt enrollment. Said that they’d fire him, and that that was enough. They got to someone upstairs-I don’t know how. And they fired him, and ran him out of town. And I pressed charges before he got out of town. But no press. No publicity.”

“I never heard about that.”

“No one did,” she said. “It damn near cost me my badge.” Looking at him coyly, she added, “But I kept my badge. In fact I got my own division.” She grinned. “I found out who they got to.”

Dart and others had wondered how she had managed to pull a Sex Crimes division out of CAPers, and now, years later, it was explained. He was struck with an idea.

“What is it?” she asked, seeing his change of expression.

“A thought,” he said, feeling more calm than when he’d entered. He placed a knee onto the room’s only other chair. “You are your own division,” he said, thinking aloud.

“True story.”

“You don’t go through Haite for warrants.”

“Thank God.”

“What?” he asked. “Directly to the PA?”

“Do not pass GO.”

“Do you operate under special probable cause requirements, or the same as the rest of us?” He clarified, “Does the prosecuting attorney hold you to a Sex Crimes-”

“Angle?” she filled in for him. “No,” she answered. She added sarcastically, “Surprisingly enough, they treat me like I’m a lieutenant.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“I know you didn’t, but it sounded a little that way.”

“I need to extend the search warrant for Hamilton Court,” he stated. “I need inside.”

“I can get inside,” she said. “You can accompany me.” Checking her watch, she said, “It’ll be a phoner this time of night. Who’s the on-call judge?”

“Cryst.”

“Cynthia Cryst?” she said. “A woman, Joe. Piece of cake. Trust me on this.” She pushed her paperwork out of the way and pulled a blank pad in front of her. “This is a grounder.”

They entered 11 Hamilton Court an hour later, Abby carrying the signed warrant in her pocket. The automatic timer had the sitting room light switched on-it was 9:55 P.M.

Abby, via Dart, had listed three items on the warrant that had been left off of earlier warrants: grocery store shopping bags, the framed photographs on the piano, and “articles of clothing.”

With both of them wearing latex gloves, he collected the framed photographs into a white paper sack.

“The photos I can understand,” she said. “Even though you assume it’s Zeller who put them there to create this Wallace Sparco identity, you think there may be some significance to them, something he might tell you without intending to. But the shopping bags?” she asked.

“He thought to put food here,” Dart explained, having led her into the kitchen. “Again, as you said, to build the perception that Sparco lived here. Sparco didn’t live here. Neither did Zeller. He used this as a staging area-at least up until we discovered it; he must have used someplace else after that … He knew it was virtually impossible not to carry something of yourself into every crime scene, and to take something of the crime scene back to your house with you-it’s the nature of hairs-and-fibers-it’s what he drummed into me all those years. I was the one with the degree, but he was the one who understood fiber evidence handshakes and piggybacking.”

“So he came here, changed clothes-changed identities,” she corrected, “did the crime, came back, changed back….” She understood it then. “The chain of evidence would always lead back to here.”

“If we ever found anything at a crime scene-and he took extra precautions to see that we wouldn’t, like vacuuming and laying false evidence-we would only find his safe house, not the man himself.”

“But grocery bags?” she inquired skeptically.

“Maybe he was too smart for his own good,” Dart said, searching drawers. “He buys groceries to convince us Sparco lived here. Even eats some of it, to give the place a lived-in effect. But if he saved the grocery bags-” Dart thought aloud, sorting through the contents of another drawer.

Abby yanked open the cabinet below the sink, pulled out the trash can, and hoisted the trash bag-a plastic grocery bag. She completed for him, “Then he would use them as trash bags.”

“You’re brilliant,” he crowed.

“I know. It’s true, isn’t it? But not brilliant enough to know why you care about this,” she added.

He took it from her and turned it around for her to see the green writing on the side. “Shopway,” he said, reading the name.