Evidence of Murder

“Do you even have probable cause yet to show she was murdered?” he pressed.

“Okay, what about the outside of the car? If it’s parked in a public place, and I collect something off the tires, say…would that be admissible?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I don’t think so.” She let him mull it over for a moment. “Actually, I’m not one hundred percent positive about that, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be. What would you be looking for, anyway?”

“Diatoms. They’re microscopic algae found in-”

“I know what diatoms are. You think he might have picked them up at Edgewater Park? Okay, I’ll check, but unless you hear from me you stay away from him, his car, his factory, everything, got it?”

She approached the intersection of Madison and West 117th. Lights shone in the windows of the second-floor apartment. “Um, good idea. Thanks, Frank.”

Her nonchalant tone never had fooled him. “Tess-”

“Have to go.” She flipped the phone shut and pulled past the iron gates.

A lone car sat in the parking lot at the old carbon company, slowly collecting flakes of snow across its roof and windshield-a Dodge K car that she would have thought couldn’t travel another ten feet, and not the sort of thing two breaking-out young designers would drive.

The door to the lobby of the ornate office/apartment building opened easily. Evan either did not worry about crime or heating bills or found security too cumbersome. She headed for the stairs, feeling no enthusiasm for the shuddering elevator in a building this empty. The door to the lobby clanged shut behind her. The stairway, however, stretched upward, with only the dusky light from unclean windows and oppressive silence.

It did release her into the second-floor hallway, where someone had repaired the gouge in the plaster next to the door of apartment 212. She knocked. Still quiet, then a shuffling sound as if something large were approaching on the other side. The speck of light through the peephole darkened as the something checked her out.

The door swung open, and the woman inside, though portly, was not half as large as her tread made her sound. She had accumulated enough years to be considered middle-aged and, to judge from the perfection of each burnished curl, seemed to have spent half of them doing her hair. She held an oval of baby blanket in her arms, from which protruded two tiny fists. “Hello. Looking for Evan?”

“Jerry, actually.”

“Doesn’t matter, honey, they’re both out in the barns. Can you find them, or do you want me to call and have him come here?”

Over her shoulder, Theresa scanned the living room, now as tidy as the baby’s room had been. “I’ll find them. How is Cara doing?”

The woman smiled all the wider and turned her bundle outward so that Theresa could see the round face and impossibly huge blue eyes. “She’s great, poor little tyke. Eats like a linebacker.”

Theresa did not let the opportunity go by. “Did you work for the Kovacics’ before Jillian’s death?”

“No. I sat for them a couple of times, but that was it. I don’t think they had anyone on a regular basis.”

“How did Jillian seem to you, just before she died?”

The woman began to rock Cara with an agitated motion, yet her answer promptly tumbled out. “She seemed fine to me, but you can never tell, can you? Though I only knew her to say hello and good-bye to. It’s Evan I’ve known since he was a little boy. I lived next door and his mother and I would get to talking.”

“It’s kind of him to adopt Cara now, since he’s not her real father.” She had to make herself say it, accompanying her words with as close to a genuine smile as she could muster, aware that Evan’s friends and family might not be privy to that detail. But the nanny merely agreed, saying that Evan had always tried to help others, even as a child.

“Did he play video games back then?”

The rocking slowed to a smoother pace. “I don’t think they had too much in the way of games, but he had plenty of fun taking things apart-alarm clocks, the blender-I remember that. His mother couldn’t keep any mechanical device intact, so she’d give him jobs. A device to keep squirrels out of the bird feeder. He made me a little puller thing to help me start my push mower. When he was twelve years old he installed an electric eye to let his mother know when his baby sister got out of her crib. Then there was the gate closer.”

“Gate-?”

A low whine sounded from within the apartment. “That’s my tea. Could you hold her a second?”

Theresa found the baby thrust into her arms, the pink blanket swathing a tiny human in pink flannel pajamas, with miniature hands feeling the air. Cara did not protest at the change in her view, merely studied this new face with solemn detachment. Did she have any inkling at all of how much of her world had changed this week, and what it would mean for the rest of her life? Of course not, and yet…her eyes, so resigned…

The sitter fixed her cup while Theresa proffered a finger for Cara to grasp, feeling that inevitable melting sensation when the baby did. “He and his brother were always forgetting to latch the gate that led out of their backyard and their dachshund would get out, so, a typical male, instead of remembering to stop and latch the gate, he tried to invent a mechanism that would shut it automatically.”

She sipped tea and continued, “Problem was, it worked too well. It snapped shut with such force that it cut the poor dog in half.”

“What?” Theresa straightened so suddenly that she ripped her finger from the baby’s grip and Cara frowned.

“Well, crushed it anyway. Poor Evan. He must have felt awful. His brother started screaming, and I remember rushing outside to see what on earth was the matter. There was Evan, wiping the blood off the mechanism so he could adjust it. I made him bury the dog first. His brother finally calmed down some then.”

Cara let out a small cry as Theresa’s arms tightened around her.

“Oh, there she goes. Probably filled her diaper again.”

“Did they move after that?”

“Oh, heavens no. They lived there until the kids were long gone and then they retired to Florida. Never got another dog, though, even though he nagged his mother for one something awful. At first I thought he wanted to make his brother feel better-it was sort of the older boy’s dog, see-but he told me he wanted to make sure his machinery worked right. He couldn’t test it right without a dog, he said, and I told him that’s ridiculous, just push on the stupid thing, but you know boys, once they get something in their heads…here, I’ll take her back, she’s deciding to be fussy. There, there, baby. Nothing to cry about here. Would you like a cup, dear? It’s so cold out.”

“No, thank you, I’d better be going. I-I hope everything goes well with Cara.”

“Oh, sure. There’s nothing wrong with this little tyke.” She rocked the infant with a swooping motion as she closed the door behind Theresa with a quick good-bye.

The hallway had grown darker in the meantime, or perhaps it only seemed so, to keep pace with her thoughts.

Every child loses a pet more or less tragically. It didn’t mean anything.

But why did she say Evan must have felt terrible? She came upon the incident seconds after it had occurred. Wouldn’t you say “Evan felt terrible”?

Unless he clearly hadn’t, more focused on perfecting his invention than on the death of the dog. Just as now he was more focused on marketing his virtual-reality sphere than on the death of his young wife.

It didn’t mean anything.

She corrected herself. It didn’t prove anything.

She made her way down the staircase in the darkening hall and headed for the outbuildings. The sun, still on winter time, had half set already, so that now she could wander through very large and increasingly dark buildings alone, seeking a man she believed had murdered his wife. The man’s partner, actually, but according to the nanny, Evan would be there as well. She pulled out her cell phone and called Frank, just so he would know where to look for her body.

“You’re where?” he demanded, and then cautioned her not to collect any evidence unless Evan gave her permission to, otherwise it would not be admissible, and he had to go, he had three more houses to canvass for Sanchez’s Cultural Gardens murder, and that he hoped she-Theresa-knew what the hell she was doing.

That I can answer, she thought. And the answer is no.

Maybe I’m saving an innocent child from her impending murder.