how to navigate the legal system. Meaning they needed to get their ducks in a row, quickly, if they were going to proceed with any kind of meaningful questioning of the husband or the four-year-old potential witness.
So, she focused on the kitchen.
The kitchen, like the rest of the house, retained a semblance of period charm, while definitely showing its age. Peeling black-and-white checked linoleum. Appliances that some would call retro, but D.D. considered ancient. The room was very tiny. A curved counter-top bar offered enough space for two to perch on a pair of red vinyl bar stools. A small parlor table sat in front of the windows, but held a computer versus providing any additional seating.
That struck D.D. as interesting. A family of three that only had seating for two. Did that say something about the family dynamics right there?
The kitchen was neat, countertops wiped down, clutter confined to appliances lined up in a row against the checkered tile backsplash, but not too neat-dirty dishes were stacked in the sink, while the drying rack held clean dishes still waiting to be returned to appropriate cupboards. An old diner’s clock with a fork and spoon serving as the hands was mounted cheerfully above the stove, while pale yellow curtains patterned with brighter yellow sunny-side up eggs adorned the tops of the windows. Old, but homey. Clearly, someone had made an effort.
D.D. spotted a red checkered dish towel hanging up on a hook and leaned forward to give it an experimental sniff. Miller looked at her funny, but she just shrugged.
Early in her career, she’d worked a domestic abuse case-the Daleys, that was their name-where the domineering husband, Pat, had forced his wife, Joyce, to scrub the house with military precision every single day. D.D. still remembered the overwhelming scent of ammonia that had made her eyes water as she went from room to room, until, of course, she came to the back room and the scent of ammonia was replaced with the cloying scent of drying blood. Apparently, good old Joyce hadn’t made the bed properly that morning. So Pat had punched her in the kidneys. Joyce had started peeing blood and, deciding that she was dying, she’d retrieved the shotgun from the back of her husband’s truck, and ensured that he joined her in the hereafter.
Joyce had survived the damage to her kidneys. The husband, Pat, who lost most of his face to the shotgun blast, hadn’t.
So far, the kitchen struck D.D. as an average kitchen. No manic compulsions-or orders-to clean and sterilize. Just a place where a mother had served dinner, with mac-n-cheese-encrusted dishes still awaiting attendance in the sink.
D.D. turned her attention to the black leather purse perched on the kitchen counter. Miller silently handed her a pair of latex gloves. She nodded her thanks, and started sifting through the purse’s contents.
She started with Sandra Jones’s cell phone. The husband had no expectation of privacy on his wife’s cell, so they were in the clear to study the phone to their heart’s content. She reviewed text messages and the phone log. Only one phone number jumped out at her, and that was labeled HOME. A mom calling in to check on her daughter, no doubt. Second most often called number was labeled JASON’S CELL, a wife calling in to check on her husband, D.D. would assume.
D.D. couldn’t listen to the voice messages without the password, but didn’t sweat it. Miller would follow up with the cell phone company and have them freeze the messages as well as pull their own log. A provider retained copies of even deleted messages in its own database, handy information for inquiring minds that wanted to know. Miller would also have the provider trace Sandra’s final few phone calls, tracking the cell towers the calls pinged off, to help establish her final movements.
The rest of the purse yielded three different tubes of lipstick-muted shades of pink-two pens, a nail file, a granola bar, a black hair-scrunchy, a pair of reading glasses, and a wallet with forty-two dollars cash, a valid MA driver’s license, two credit cards, and three grocery store and one bookstore member cards. Finally, D.D. pulled out a small spiral notebook filled with various lists: groceries to buy, errands to run, times for appointments. D.D. left the notebook out as a priority item, and Miller nodded.
Sitting next to the purse was a large set of car keys. D.D. held them up questioningly.
“Automatic starter belongs to gray Volvo station wagon parked in the driveway. Two keys are house keys. Four keys we don’t know, but we’re guessing at least one is her classroom. I’ll get an officer on it.”
“You checked the back of the station wagon?” she asked sharply.
Miller gave her a look, clearly wanting a little credit. “Yes, ma’am. No surprises there.”
D.D. didn’t bother with an apology. She just set down the keys and picked up a stack of school papers, marked neatly in red ink. Sandra Jones had given her class a one-paragraph writing assignment, each student needing to answer “If I were starting my own village, the first rule for all the colonists would be… and why.”
Some kids managed only a sentence or two. A couple nearly filled the page. Each paper had at least one or two comments, then a letter grade circled at the top. The writing was feminine, with some of the kids earning smiley faces. D.D. decided that was the kind of detail a forger wouldn’t think to include. So for now, she was satisfied that Sandra Jones had sat at this counter, grading these papers, an activity that according to her husband wouldn’t happen until little Ree was tucked into bed.
So at approximately nine o’clock at night, Sandra Jones had been alive and well in her own kitchen. And then…
D.D.’s gaze went to the computer, a relatively new-looking Dell desktop sitting on top of the little red parlor table. She sighed.
“Turned on?” she asked with barely disguised longing.
“Haven’t wanted to tempt myself,” Miller answered.
The computer was tricky. They definitely wanted it, but definitely needed the husband’s permission, as he had a right to privacy. Something to negotiate, assuming they found some ammunition to negotiate with.
D.D. turned to the tiny, narrow staircase ascending from the back side of the kitchen.
“Evidence techs already up there?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“Where’d they park the van?”
“Five blocks over, by a pub. I’m feeling coy.”
“I like it. Have they processed the stairs?”
“First thing I had them do,” Miller assured her. Then added: “Look, Sergeant, we’ve been here since six A.M. At one point, I had ten officers swarming the house, checking basements, bedrooms, closets, and shrubbery. Only thing we have to show for it is one broken lamp and one missing quilt in the master bedroom. So I sent the evidence techs upstairs to do what they gotta do, and the rest of the guys out into the broader universe to either bring me back Sandra Jones or some evidence of whatever the hell happened to her. We know the basics. They’re just not getting us anywhere.”
D.D. sighed again, grabbed the handrail, and headed up the chocolate-painted stairs.
Upstairs was as cozy as the downstairs. D.D. had to fight the urge to duck, as a pair of old light fixtures brushed the top of her hair. The hallway boasted hardwood floors, colored the same dark chocolate as the stairs. Over the years, dust had become trapped in the tight corners of the floorboards, with a couple tumbleweeds of fine hair and dander drifting across her footsteps. Pet, D.D. guessed, though no one had mentioned one yet.
She paused long enough to look back the way she came, a parade of footsteps mixing and mingling in an indistinct blur against the dusty floor. Good thing the floor had already been processed, she thought. Then frowned, as another thought struck her and made her immediately, acutely concerned.
She almost opened her mouth to say something, then at the last minute thought better of it. Better to wait. Get all the ducks in a row. Quickly.
They passed a cramped bathroom that had been decorated in the same fifties motif as the kitchen. Across from it was a modest bedroom with a single-sized bed covered in a pink comforter, tucked under the heavily slanted eaves of the room. The ceiling and eaves had been painted a bright blue, and dotted with various clouds, birds, and butterflies. Definitely a little girl’s room, and just cute enough that D.D. felt a pang for little Clarissa Jane Jones, who had gone to bed nestled inside such a pretty sanctuary, only to wake up to a nightmarish parade of dark-suited officials traipsing through her home.
D.D. didn’t linger in the bedroom, but continued down the hall, to the master bedroom.
Two evidence techs were in front of the windows. They’d just pulled the shades and were now shooting the room with blue light. D.D. and Miller stayed respectfully in the hallway, as the first white-garbed figure scanned the walls, ceiling, and floor for signs of bodily fluids. As spots emerged, the second figure marked them with a placard,
