retired. We’re in the crucial first hours of a murder investigation. Unless you can make your presence and purpose plain to me, you’re going to have to leave. I hope I’m being clear without being rude.”
“I understand.” He took a deep breath. “I was hired as a consultant to the woman who interviewed Ruth Blum, and I’ve been taking a close look at the Good Shepherd case. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a major flaw in the prevailing view. I’m hoping the investigation of this murder won’t get screwed up like the first six. But, unfortunately, there already seems to be a problem.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“He didn’t park in the driveway.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The man who killed Ruth Blum didn’t park in this driveway. If you believe he did, you’ll never understand what happened here.”
She shot a glance in Clegg’s direction, perhaps to see if he knew more about this unexpected challenge than she did, but his eyes showed only surprise and confusion. She looked back at Gurney, then at her watch. “Come inside. I’ll give you exactly five minutes to make some sense. Meanwhile, Andy, you stay here and keep an eye on the TV vultures. They are not to put one toe on our side of the tape.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She led Gurney down a sloping lawn by the side of the house and up the steps of the rear deck-which he recognized as the location of Kim’s outdoor interview with Ruth Blum. He followed her through a back door that connected the deck with a large eat-in kitchen. A photographer was sitting at a table in a breakfast nook, downloading pictures from a digital SLR onto a laptop.
She looked around the kitchen, but it didn’t offer much opportunity for privacy. “Excuse me, Chuck, can you give us a few minutes here?”
“No problem, Lieutenant. I can finish this in the van.” He picked up his equipment and a moment later was gone.
The lieutenant sat in one of the chairs at the vacated table and motioned Gurney to the one directly opposite. “Okay,” she said evenly. “I’ve had a long day so far, and it’s nowhere near over. I have no time to waste. I’d appreciate some clarity and brevity. Speak.”
“What makes you think he parked in the driveway?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What makes you think I do?”
“The way the three of you were standing carefully to the side of it when I arrived. The way everybody avoided walking on it, even though your tech crew must have already gone over it. So I figure it’s being saved for a more thorough microscopic analysis. How come you’re convinced he parked there?”
She studied him for a while before a cynical little smile appeared on her lips. “You already know something, don’t you? Where’s the leak?”
“No point in going down that path. That’s the FBI path. Confrontational waste of time.”
She continued to study him, not so long this time, then seemed to arrive at a decision. “The victim posted a message on her Facebook page late last night. After some comments about the RAM program, she described a car that was pulling into her driveway as she was sitting there at her computer. Why do I have a feeling that you already know all this?”
Gurney ignored her question. “What kind of car?”
“Big. Military-looking. No make or model mentioned.”
“Jeep? Land Rover? Hummer? Something like that?” She nodded.
“So the theory is that he parks out in the driveway, walks up to the front door, knocks… and then what? He kills her in the doorway? She lets him in? She knows him? She doesn’t know him?”
“Slow down. You asked me why we believe that the killer-or someone who coincidentally visited her at approximately the time she was killed-parked in the driveway. And I gave you the answer. We believe it because the victim herself told us that’s what happened. It’s the victim’s eyewitness account, posted on her Facebook page, before she was killed.” Lieutenant Bullard’s expression of triumph was diluted with a pinch of worry. “So now you owe me a brief, clear explanation of why you think Ruth Blum would say those things if they weren’t true.”
“She didn’t.”
“Beg pardon?”
“None of it happened that way. The scenario you’re presenting doesn’t make any sense. First of all, before we get into the logical problem, you’ve got a physical-evidence problem at the end of the driveway.”
“What physical-evidence problem?”
“The ground is fairly dry. How long has it been since the last rain?” He knew when it had rained in Walnut Crossing, but the weather system around the Finger Lakes was often quite different.
She thought for a moment. “It rained yesterday morning. It was over by noon. Why?”
“There’s a strip of dirt in a crevice out there at the edge of the road, maybe an inch wide. Anyone coming into the driveway would have to cross it, unless they drove through the woods and across the lawn. But that little strip of dirt doesn’t seem to have been disturbed, at least not since the last rain.”
“An inch is not necessarily enough to register-”
“Maybe not, but it’s suggestive. Plus, there’s the psychological factor. If the Good Shepherd is back, if this is his seventh victim, then what we already know about him has to figure into it.”
“Like what?”
“One thing we know is that he is extremely cautious, extremely risk-averse. And that short driveway is too exposed. Any vehicle sitting out there-especially anything the size of a Hummer-would have its rear bumper practically on the road. Way too eye-catching, way too identifiable. A local cop cruising by might zero in on a strange car like that, might stop to check it out, might run the plate number.”
Bullard frowned. “But the fact is, Ruth Blum was killed, and if the killer came in a vehicle, he had to park it somewhere. So what are you saying? Where did he park it? On the shoulder of the road? That would be even more exposed.”
“My guess would be at the body shop.”
“The what?”
“Half mile down the state route, back in the direction of Ithaca, there’s an auto-body shop. There are some cars and trucks in a scruffy little parking area beside it, either waiting to be worked on or waiting to be picked up. It’s the one place in the neighborhood where a strange vehicle wouldn’t raise a question-wouldn’t even be noticed. If I were going to kill someone in this house in the middle of the night, I’d park there, and then I’d walk the rest of the way here in that deep swale by the side of the road to avoid being seen by passing drivers.”
She stared down at the tabletop, as though trying to see the possibilities in an imaginary set of scrabble letters. She made a face. “
“You mean
“I don’t get what-”
“You’re assuming it was
“It was her account, her page, her computer, her password.”
“Couldn’t her murderer have extracted the password from her before he killed her, opened the page, and composed the message himself?”
Bullard redoubled her scrutiny of the tabletop. She shook her head uncertainly. “That’s
Gurney smiled at the opening. “After your boys in the white suits confirm that the dirt in the crack at the end of the driveway hasn’t been disturbed, ask them to pay a visit to the body shop. It would be interesting to see if they can find a relatively fresh set of tire tracks that don’t match up with any of the vehicles there.”
“But… why would the killer take the time and trouble to leave a message like that on Facebook?”
“Sand in our eyes. A twist in the maze. He’s very good at that.”
Something in her expression told him she was open to every speck of information she could lay her hands on.
“How much do you know about the original case?” he asked.
“Not as much as I need to,” she admitted. “Someone from the FBI field office is on his way here to give me a briefing. Speaking of which, I’ll need your address, e-mail, phone numbers where you can be reached twenty-four
