'Did you find anything?'
'Nothing that means anything yet. We took bank records, credit card
statements the usual stuff that sometimes means something down the
road. But we already knew from the walk through the other night that
we weren't going to find any obvious signs that she'd been done in the
house.
'Chuck and Mike came through on getting records for the recent credit
card charges and cell calls. We're still working on getting the toll
records for the home phone.
'We've got a charge at Nordstrom on Saturday. Adds up to the items we
found in the shopping bag, plus the pants and sweater she was wearing
on Sunday. The only charge after that was on Sunday, right after noon,
at the Pasta Company.'
I knew the place. Or places, I should say. The Pasta Company is a
popular local chain.
'Which one?' I asked, since I could think of six or seven locations
off the top of my head.
'Terwilliger and Barbur.' Made sense. Only a mile or so from the
Easterbrooks'.
'I sent a patrol officer over there with her picture. A couple of
employees said they recognized her because she's in there a lot, but no
one could place her there for sure on Sunday.'
'There's no way to know if she was alone?' I asked.
'No, but she probably was. One order of linguine in browned butter, no
tip. A carry-out order, it turns out. Walker drew short straw and got
trash duty. Duly noted beneath the sink: one empty Styrofoam container
from the Pasta Company.'
'So she picked up lunch on Sunday and ate at home by herself. Great.
All that work, and the credit card records don't get us any closer than
we were the other night.'
'Did I say I was finished, Kincaid? Damn, girl, anyone ever tell you
you're a glass-half-empty kind of woman? I haven't told you about the
autopsy yet.'
'The ME's done already?' It usually took a couple of days.
'It's been a light week so there's no backup. He made the cuts first
thing this morning. Report should be finished tomorrow, but I just got
off the phone with him a minute ago. You want to continue to interrupt
me, or do you want to get to the good stuff?'
'Consider me quiet.'
'Yeah, right. I'll get in what I can. Anyway, cause of death is what
we assumed: blunt force trauma to the right side of the head. He was
having some difficulties with time of death, though. He couldn't use
some of the factors that help when the body's fresh. It had clearly
been awhile, because she was cold.'
'How long does that take?' I asked.
'That puts us back to yesterday. But things get tricky past that
window. And they were even trickier in this case, because we were
right about her being moved. I'll spare you the details, but the ME's
got a problem interpreting things like bloating and bugs when he
doesn't know what kind of environment the body was in. We couldn't
tell him if she was inside, outside, wet, dry, in a heater,
whatever.'
So
'Patience, woman. See, you were about to say, 'So he can't tell us the
time of death,' right?'
'Maybe.' Definitely.
'See, now, that'd be an inaccurate statement. ME calls and tells me he
might have to give us a wide window for time of death unless I know
when she ate last. At the time he called me, I didn't, but, you see,
now I do. And the ME tells me she died within one to three hours of
eating noodles, which he found in the stomach contents. Assuming she
ate the food around twelve-thirty, she died between one-thirty and
three-thirty.'
'Broad daylight.'
'You got it. Makes an abduction off the street less likely but still
possible.'
My phone beeped, indicating that another call was coming through. The
name of the DA's secretary flashed on the caller ID screen. I let the
line go to voice mail.
'What else?' I asked Johnson. 'Was she raped?'
'Unclear. Looks like she was naked when she was hit. The ME says
there was no spatter on the clothes, either low or high velocity, which
he'd expect to find. But there was brain matter and blood transfer
