“The filing system? It’s really nothing more or less than a shelf list, like the shelf lists kept by libraries everywhere. It’s an inventory system-a way to tell what’s missing and what isn’t.”
“Except this one isn’t about books,” I suggested.
“I added a few bells and whistles,” Analise said modestly.
“What kinds of bells and whistles?”
“The kits are filed by year and date,” she said. “A year or so ago, once I got wise to what Yolanda was doing, I started keeping track. I assigned each kit its own separate number-a sort of Dewey decimal number of rape kits. And that’s one of the things I did every single day-checked the shelves to see if any of my control numbers were missing.”
“And if they were?” Mel asked.
“I wrote down the kit number, noted when it left the shelf, when it came back on its own, or when I found it somewhere it didn’t belong.”
“You don’t still happen to have that list, do you?” Mel asked.
“Of course I do,” Analise returned. “Not here, not with me. But at home. Would you like to have a copy?”
“Yes,” Mel said. “It would be really helpful.”
“Fine, then,” Analise told us. “Once I finish here we can stop by the house. But I have to finish shelving the rest of the books.”
I had just that moment fallen in love with Analise Kim and her insatiable love of order. In fact, I had to resist the temptation to reach out and smother that incredibly wonderful record-keeping woman in an old-fashioned bear hug, but that might have been as unwelcome as an improperly aligned book spine. “We wouldn’t even consider taking you away from that,” I said.
At which point my phone rang. The withering look Analise sent in my direction made it clear cell phones were an unwelcome intrusion in
“It’s me,” Todd Hatcher said. “I was hoping to talk to you. I’ve turned up some pretty interesting stuff today, but it’s getting late. I’m about to head home.”
“You’re still at Belltown Terrace?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I ordered a pizza for dinner. Hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all,” I said. “Hope it was good. Now, did Ross Connors happen to give you access to the SHIT squad’s LexisNexis program?”
“No,” Todd said. “He didn’t need to. I have my own. Why?”
“Because neither Mel nor I have our computers with us at the moment, and we need a whole batch of research done in a hell of a hurry.”
“When it comes to research, I’m your guy,” Todd said. Coming from someone else it might have sounded conceited. Coming from him I suspected it was absolutely true. “What do you need?” he asked.
“Every single thing you can find on both Destry Hennessey and Anita Bowdin. Two esses on Hennessey, and Bowdin is B-O-W-D-I-N. Find whatever you can and print it.”
“No problem,” Todd said. “I’ll get right on it. When do you think you’ll be here?”
“That remains to be seen,” I said. “We’ve got a few things to handle on the way.”
CHAPTER 23
I was fine while we hung around the library waiting for Analise Kim to finish her volunteer shift of shelving books. I was fine while we drove to her house to pick up a copy of her “shelf list.” But after that, on the way back to Belltown Terrace in downtown Seattle, I fell off the cliff.
Once upon a time I could do all-nighters. I used to be able to go without sleep for seemingly days on end without it bothering me, but time has a way of catching up with a guy. On the drive north from Burien, as I fought to stay awake, I was forced to con-front the fact that J. P. Beaumont is no Jack Bauer from 24. It helped my ego that, despite Mel’s relative “youth” and the nap she had grabbed earlier in the day, Mel was struggling to stay awake, too.
The only thing that helped was talking. “So what do we do?” Mel asked. She was clutching the papers Analise had given us.
What they contained was more a series of diagrams than an actual list. Each sheet represented one year and was covered with consecutively numbered boxes. I could see how numbering each of the rape kits in that fashion would have made it easy for Analise Kim to scan her shelves each day to see what, if anything, was missing. Annotations in some of the boxes, “out” or “in,” followed by dates, showed when the kit had disappeared and returned.
“As in?”
“Do we call Ross, have him send someone in to isolate all the kits that have been tampered with so they can be analyzed, or, more likely, reanalyzed?” she asked.
“Bad idea,” I said. “As soon as we do that, we tip our hand. Once Yolanda Andrade knows we’re looking into this, you can bet everyone else involved will know, too. I’m sure that’s why Ross didn’t want us talking to Destry, either.”
“It hurts me to think that Destry’s crooked,” Mel said.
“Me too,” I said. The very idea left me feeling half sick.
“And if there have been evidence-handling irregularities in the crime lab…”
She didn’t finish the sentence and she didn’t need to. I knew exactly what she meant. That kind of scandal could jeopardize convictions that were years in the past.
“Todd’s on it,” I said.
“On what?”
“He called while we were at the library. Since he was still at the house, I put him to work tracking down information on Destry Hennessey.” I paused, worried that I was venturing onto thin ice. “I also asked him to track down whatever he could on Anita Bowdin.”
“Good idea,” Mel said, and that’s all she said.
When we got to the condo Todd greeted us like an eager puppy that’s been left on its own all day long. He had a fistful of papers to show us. He had stuff he wanted to talk about, and he was disappointed when I waved him off.
“Sorry, Todd,” I told him. “Mel and I are both working on two hours’ worth of sleep. Talking to us now would be a waste of breath and effort. You’re more than welcome to stay over. The guest room’s made up and available. Help yourself.”
And off to bed we went.
Women perform these mysterious but invisible rituals that men mostly miss. For instance, I never really understood that when Mel goes down the hall every night before we go to bed, she uses some potion or other to remove her makeup. That night, tired as she was, she went to bed without performing that little chore. And since she’s usually up before I am and down the hall in her bathroom, it’s usually a nonissue.
The next morning, though, I happened to wake up first, and I was shocked. Mel looked like a raccoon.
“Are you all right?” I asked when she finally blinked awake.
“Sleepy,” she said. “Why?”
“You look like someone blacked both your eyes.”
She uttered a strangled little sound that was halfway between a whimper and a legitimate
“Why didn’t you
“You were right there when I told him he was welcome to stay,” I countered.
“Yes,” she hissed back. “But you never told me he’d
In other words, the Ides of March didn’t get off to the most auspicious of starts around our place. While Mel
