“Did you see anything that made you uneasy?” asked Diane.
“That was a month ago… ”
“Mrs. Pate,” said Harmon Dance, his voice raspy, “Stacy was good to you. She was good to everybody here in the neighborhood.”
“Yes, she was,” said Mrs. Pate. “You think somebody kilt her?”
“We’re looking into the possibility,” said Kingsley.
The woman was quiet for several moments. Diane thought she was trying to remember. Mrs. Pate scratched the back of her hand and put a palm on her cheek.
“Not that day, but one or two days before, there was a car, an SUV kind of car. I noticed it ’cause it circled the block a couple of times”-she gestured with her hand, moving it in a circle-“and slowed down here when it went by. It stopped for a time-maybe a few minutes-on the cross street there above your house,” she said, nodding to Dance. “The windows were dark and I couldn’t see inside. It was a black car. No good comes from a black car with dark windows like that.”
“Did you see a license plate or a window sticker?” asked Diane. “Anything that might help to track down the vehicle?”
“No. I tried to get a fix on the license, but couldn’t. You think it was them? Somebody in that car did something to poor Stacy?”
She looked alarmed. Diane guessed that the thought of perhaps having laid eyes on a murderer-or his vehicle-was frightening to her.
“Have you seen it since?” asked Diane.
She shook her head. “No, I haven’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?” said Dance.
“They never come talk to me, did they?” she said.
“Thank you, Mrs. Pate,” said Kingsley. He handed her a card. “Please call me if you remember anything more.”
She studied the card a moment and looked up at him. She put the card in the pocket of her dress and nodded her head sharply. “Glad you ain’t renting to that Chinese guy.”
They watched her cross the street and go back into her house.
Dance invited them inside. His home was sparse, neat, and smelled like vegetable soup. Diane sat down on a blue corduroy sofa. Kingsley sat beside her. Harmon Dance sat in a mission-style rocking chair with matching blue cushions opposite them. It creaked with his weight as he rocked.
“So you think my little girl was murdered by somebody?” he asked.
“We don’t know,” said Kingsley. “But Dr. Fallon has examined the photographs and thinks it may be a possibility.”
Dance nodded his head up and down and seemed to shiver. “I told the detective. He had this idiotic idea that because Stacy wasn’t a beauty queen, nobody would fool with killing her, or some such notion. I’m not sure what he thought; he kept changing his mind. He said she did this shameful thing to herself. Well, Stacy may not have been Miss Georgia, but she was a good girl and lots of people liked her. You could go up and down this street and find a lot of older folks who liked her. She was good to them. Took them shopping if they needed to go. Stacy was a decent girl, not what he tried to make her out to be.”
“Mr. Dance,” said Kingsley, “we would like your permission to have her exhumed. I know that’s painful to think about, but we need to have someone else look at her.”
Dance was nodding his head as Ross spoke. “You do that. I want everybody to know that Stacy was a good girl.”
“Mr. Dance,” said Diane, “I would like to take a look at her room. Dr. Kingsley here said you left it as it was?”
He nodded. “I haven’t touched it.”
“I need to take a look,” Diane said.
Harmon Dance nodded his head. “Do what you have to do.”
“Examining her room can be a little destructive,” said Diane. “I have fingerprint powders and-”
“Do whatever you have to do,” he said again. “Whatever it takes.” His chair creaked as he rocked in it.
Chapter 16
Diane opened the door to the garage apartment with the key Mr. Dance had given them. She reached around to the light switch on the inside wall and turned on the lights without stepping inside.
“Wow,” said Kingsley softly. “The crime scene photo doesn’t do this room justice.”
“No,” said Diane, “it doesn’t.”
Stacy’s apartment was charming. There was an efficiency kitchenette in one corner with a small round oak table and four chairs. The living room held a love seat sofa, two stuffed chairs, and a coffee table. Her bedroom area was half hidden by curtains. The small bathroom was across from the bed. The walls were painted a light dusty rose. One wall was covered in matching shades of striped wallpaper. The curtains were a complementary pink, as were the pillows on the cream-colored sofa and chairs. She had decoupaged her chest of drawers with prints from a book of rococo art. A vase of flowers in the middle of the dining table had dried out, the water evaporated.
Stacy had enj oyed her life. Diane saw it in the room. Everything was carefully chosen, pretty, much of it handmade.
Kingsley started to walk in, but Diane stopped him.
“Wait until I examine the floor,” she said. Diane slipped covers over her shoes. “I’m closing the door. I’m afraid you’ll have to stand out here until I clear you a place to stand. It’ll take a while.”
Kingsley nodded. “As Mr. Dance said, whatever it takes. I’ll make some phone calls.”
Diane left most of the crime scene kit outside and stepped in, closed the door, and turned off the light. The room smelled like death. She set her crime lamp on the floor, turned it on, and squatted so she could see what it illuminated. She began systematically looking for shoe prints the low-angle light would show up. There were many. She began the painstaking process of lifting the prints from the floor with electrostatic film. Most of the prints would be from the police and the coroner’s people who carried Stacy out, and most would be overlapping. But she might get lucky.
She cleared the floor around the door and let Kingsley come in out of the chilly air to stand inside in the dark.
“You’ll get used to the smell,” she said.
He made light conversation as she went from print to print, placing the Mylar-coated silver foil over each print, lifting it using static electricity, rolling up the film, and putting it in a tube.
Most of the shoe prints were on the hardwood floor around the bed where Stacy was found. But there were a few in other locations on the floor.
“I didn’t realize this is such time-consuming work,” said Kingsley.
“And we’re still on the floor,” said Diane. “We’ve got the furniture and ceiling to do.”
“Ceiling? You expect to find something on the ceiling?” asked Kingsley.
“Expect it? No, but it’s standard protocol to look. Could find some kind of spatter, for instance, that might give us critical information.”
When Diane finished, she took the tubes of rolled-up film and put them in a carrying case beside the door. There was a gentle knock from outside.
“It’s me, Boss. Can I come in?”
“Come on in, Jin,” said Diane. “Carefully.”
The door opened slowly and Jin stepped inside. He was holding his digital SLR camera, his newest toy.
“Hey, Boss, I finished outside. How’s it going here?” he said.
“I’m starting with the black light,” she told him.
“The ultraviolet light detects organic stains from body fluids such as blood, saliva, semen, and urine,” Jin said
