Evidence of Murder

Rachael chimed in from the backseat. “No, they said that on the news too.”

The approached another red light. This time Theresa gave herself plenty of stopping distance. “The news media likes serial killers. They sell papers and increase ratings.”

“So it’s your testimony, Ms. MacLean, that we do not have a ravenous murderer on the loose in Cleveland, Ohio?” Rachael asked with the cadence she had picked up from one semester of Business Law.

“I deny it categorically.”

“He was near the zoo?” her mother asked. “I used to go swimming there when I was little.”

“They had a swimming pool at the zoo?” Rachael asked. Theresa merely nodded, having heard the tales of her mother’s childhood, tales from a time when children could roam the city without cell phones or worried parents.

“The only place to go swimming was Brookside Park. They had a round cement pool, and you had to pay a dime or something to get in. My brothers and sisters would take me along. We’d walk all the way from Natchez Avenue.”

“Even Aunt Claire?”

“Aunt Claire turned all the boys’ heads.”

Rachael was silent for a while, no doubt trying to picture a hot summer in 1935, and her grandmother as a little girl. “That was a fun party.”

Theresa agreed while becoming deeply suspicious. Whenever her teenager expressed such an old-fashioned sentiment, it meant she wanted either to borrow the car or go on a ski trip with her numerous first cousins once removed.

Rachael continued, “Dora’s going to come to the talent show next week, even. I need to hang with her more often. We haven’t been to her mom’s in, like, forever.”

“We stopped by at Thanksgiving.”

“Mom, that was four months ago.”

“Oh.” Had it really been that long?

“We need to get out more.”

How diplomatic. The we instead of you. “I know.”

Theresa’s mother, in the passenger seat, said absolutely nothing. Theresa, no doubt, had often been a topic of conversation between Rachael and her grandmother; this struck Theresa as both heart-warming and deeply humbling.

Into the silence, Theresa asked, “Are you still thinking about electrical engineering?”

“Huh? As a major?” Rachael caught up to the leap in topics. “Yeah. Those guys make bucks. Why, do you have another college to check out?”

Theresa explained about the high-tech career expo at Kovacic Industries. Rachael could not be defined as a video-game junkie, but she would be majoring in science, and any sort of career-development exposure could not hurt for a high school senior currently working on picking a college.

“Oh.” Rachael slumped a bit into the gloom of the backseat, only her eyes visible in the rearview mirror. “You want to use me as cover to investigate a guy in one of your cases.”

Was that what she was doing? If so, Frank would kill her…though attending a public career fair could hardly be considered either an official investigation or bad parenting…“I thought of it as killing two birds-more like multitasking. You’ve been debating about engineering instead of the natural sciences.”

“Yeah. It’s just that you haven’t voluntarily left the house, except for work, church, and the grocery store, for months. And now, all of a sudden-”

Nine months, to be exact. Theresa concentrated mightily on a red light, avoiding her daughter’s all-too-knowing and compassionate stare. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve been out of it…” Her tongue stumbled over the useless euphemism for grief, for the selfish desire to make the world go away by ignoring its occupants, including the one she had brought into it.

Agnes said, “That sounds like fun. I have the afternoon shift at the restaurant tomorrow anyway. You two could eat out.”

That decided Rachael, her eyes in the rearview mirror regarding her mother as carefully and without judgment as a doctor, a therapist-or a parent. As if she were the mother and Theresa the child, to be guarded and cared for until strong enough to take care of herself. “Sure. I think that’s a good idea.”

To help the case? Theresa thought. Or me?

CHAPTER 8

SATURDAY, MARCH 6

“Mrs. MacLean.”

Evan Kovacic didn’t seem overjoyed to see her, but then he didn’t seem dismayed, either. More like confused, and she could well understand that. She stood out in the crowd of people inside one of the cavernous National Carbon Company buildings. Almost all the other attendees were younger, had at least one body piercing in addition to earlobes, and had never in their lives tucked in a shirt.

“Your Web site said the event was open, and my daughter is considering an engineering degree. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, not at all. This is your daughter? Wow.” He shook Rachael’s hand, and the way he looked her up and down made it clear that his “wow” was not for the fact that Theresa had a daughter Rachael’s age. It seemed to be for Rachael’s bra size, all too apparent in the tight, strategically torn T-shirt Rachael had insisted on wearing under the pretense of “dressing the part.”

Rachael smiled, even blushed, and Theresa questioned her own game plan. Involving her daughter in an investigation might not be the smartest thing she’d ever done. In fact, it was a horrible idea, and what kind of mother-and he was still checking her out, the-do something! “I also never had a chance to express my condolences. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Did it take him a split second too long to tear himself from her daughter’s form and snap back to the reality of a dead wife? Or did it just seem that way to a protective mother?

“Yes, of course. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I’m glad you came.” He turned to Rachael again, but this time with a professional tone in his voice. “We have over twenty-five technology and digital-media firms represented here, with demonstrations every half hour on the main dais-over there, under the lights. It’s cool you’re here, we need more girls in the field. It’s still very male dominated.”

“Math doesn’t bother me,” Rachael boasted.

He raised his voice to be heard over the cacophony. “It’s not that so much, it’s that the technology has always lent itself, first and foremost, to shoot-’em-up scenarios. The very first video game was called Spacewar, and was something like Asteroids. The first one for home use was Pong. The industry’s goal became to do the same actions over and over, only faster, and girls get bored with that a whole lot more quickly than boys do. So most games are still designed by boys, for boys.”

“You need more complications,” Rachael surmised.

He smiled, looking cynical and amused and remarkably more attractive than he had yet so far. For the first time, Theresa had a glimpse of what his wife must have seen in him besides a steady income. He was not stupid, this Evan. “Exactly. Complications are what make life interesting.”

“Did Jillian help you with the design? Give you a female perspective?” Theresa asked.

This question seemed to confuse him as much as her presence. “Jillian?”

“Evan!” A slim black man held to the back of a display board for Beachwood IT Solutions, snaking multicolored cables over the front of it. He gestured for Evan’s assistance.

Evan excused himself and trotted over, darting between the milling young people.

“You think he killed his wife?” Rachael’s tone, and the way she followed the man’s large form, made it clear she thought her mother way off the mark on this one.

Theresa felt ready to agree. “I didn’t say that. She may not have been killed at all. But I have a lot of questions