She explained her activities of the previous evening. From the sounds Frank made into the phone, her activities had caused him to choke on his hot dog.
“You’re asking me for a search warrant, Theresa, so I assume that means you understand the concept of one.”
“Yeah.”
“You searched Evan’s car without a warrant.”
“I didn’t search it. I removed detritus.”
“So what? It’s still inadmissible evidence.”
“No. It’s abandoned property.”
A slight pause. “Come again?”
“The car wash attendant would have vacuumed and scrubbed away all the items I collected, and disposed of them. He had Evan’s permission to do so-in fact, his instructions to do so. It’s exactly the same as when you see the suspect drinking from a cup and toss it in the trash can, and then you pick it up and have us swab it for DNA. You can take abandoned property. The hairs and fibers from his upholstery and the dirt from his tire treads were abandoned property.”
“They hadn’t been abandoned yet,” he protested, but weakly.
“He had left them there for disposal. Therefore, abandoned.”
Her cousin remained silent long enough that she wondered if the Nextel connection, always tenuous, had been broken. “Interesting, cuz. I’m not sure it will work, but it’s interesting.”
“I’m also looking for narcotics or poisons or anything that would have made her unconscious or dead. We should probably grab the bank statements showing Cara’s account, as well. That’s his motive.”
“Question-what about Georgie? He’s also two-fifty if he’s an ounce, could carry a one-ten body without straining, and Jillian would have opened the door to him. She would have even hopped in his car and driven off to Edgewater Marina without a care.”
“And without her baby? Not likely. And does Georgie strike you as clever enough to murder someone without leaving a trace?”
“How did Evan kill her without leaving a trace? What did she die of? I thought she froze to death…I’m not hearing an answer. You still don’t know why she died?”
“No, and that’s just it. Do you know how difficult it is to kill someone without leaving any trace? It could only be done by a control freak who’s trained himself to plan every last detail. A former chemistry major who needs that million and a half for his new company.”
“Absence of proof is not proof of absence.”
“That’s cute.”
“It’s also true. Can you prove Jillian didn’t walk out into those woods and freeze to death? Yes or no, Tess.”
She could hear the
“No,” she said, hating the word.
“What you want to do is go fishing, and a judge isn’t going to let you. You have to have probable cause to show that A, a crime occurred; B, this person is likely to have committed that crime; and C, evidence is likely present on the property that would help you prove same. You don’t even have A, much less B or C.”
She sat at her desk with the phone pressed to her ear, her forehead held up by the palm of her hand. Frank was right, and she knew it. “So he’s going to get away with it.”
“A search warrant is definitely out unless you can get me some probable cause. Now consider an alternative theory for me, just for a minute. Have you found any trace in common between Jillian and Sarah Taylor?”
“None. Sarah favored jewel tones over Jillian’s pastels. Pieces of vegetation were consistent with the location of the body. No diatoms. Sarah smoked, and ash and tobacco particles were consistent with her own brand. No mysterious smears of phenol,” she added.
“What?”
“Long story. Did she own a dog? A good-size black thing, maybe a Doberman?”
“Honey, Sarah Taylor barely had a place to live. She flopped in a one-room no-tell motel off of East 117th without a toothbrush and about ten articles of clothing, all told. No pets allowed.”
“Then I’ll bet your killer does. The press is still connecting these murders, the two women and the boy.”
“I’m wondering myself. Word on the street is, Sarah Taylor used to work for Georgie. In his less reputable days.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Years. But now Sarah Taylor finds she’s down to her last dime. If she knew where a body or two were buried, she might have tried to shake down her former pimp. I know exactly how Georgie would react to that.”
“Possibly. But she was a hooker, Frank. Their daily work is to get in a car with some stranger and drive off without telling anyone where they’re going. They’re tailor-made for sick and violent men. And if Georgie killed her, then why did he kill Jillian? She certainly wasn’t down to her last dime.”
“Yeah. I know. But you’re getting yourself stuck on Evan, and you’re not usually so…inflexible. Do you have any results on Sarah Taylor?”
“The rape kit came up positive for semen. So say your prayers tonight for a CODIS hit. We should know in a few days. But it’s not a serial killer, Frank-the MOs are different, and then there’s the kid-the boy didn’t have any connection to the women, right?”
“Nope. He stuck to his own neighborhood, and if he could have afforded Georgie’s rates, then he could have afforded a damn cell phone. I’m getting into the elevator, in case we get cut off. Hang in there, Tess. It’s nice to see you-” The rest of his sentence disappeared into a cloud of static and broken syllables. Theresa hung up the phone.
She prodded her chin with the top of a retractable pen. She did not put it in her mouth. One learned very quickly at a medical examiner’s office never to put a writing implement in one’s mouth. You never knew where it had been.
The rules of Sarah Taylor’s life also applied to Jillian Perry. Her clients might have been more nicely dressed and had better table manners, but they were still a group of strangers often with less-than-laudable purposes. She could have met her killer through the same channels as Sarah Taylor, and Evan could be merely unlikable, but innocent.
But she didn’t believe it.
Don dropped himself into the chair at the opposite desk and eyed her over a short bookshelf littered with texts, family photos, her Beanie Babies, and a box of disposable pipettes. “What’s the matter, babe?”
“I got nothing.”
“I wouldn’t say that. You’re beautiful, intelligent, relatively young-”
“I’ll ‘relatively’ you, you supercilious-”
“Did I mention beautiful?”
“I need proof, and I don’t even know what it is I’m trying to prove.”
“Jillian Perry?”
“Yep.”
“So what’s your plan?”
She moved a bean-stuffed tiger to see him better. “What?”
“Don’t you have a plan?”
She stared at him for a few more moments before speaking. “I don’t. That’s been my whole problem.” She dug through a desk drawer and pulled out a legal pad. At the top she wrote, in block letters, MEANS, OPPORTUNITY, MOTIVE. Then she added a fourth column, PROOF.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to show Evan Kovacic that he’s not the only detail-oriented control freak in this city.”
“What do you want?” Oliver discouraged visitors to his corner of the toxicology lab. He kept all the spare gas tanks clustered in a fencelike barrier. He had removed all task chairs except his own, which he rarely left, his extra
