Jane opens the one on the right. Contact solution, lotion, ibuprofen, vitamins—
“Hey,” she says. “Look at these.”
Andy walks over. “A shiny black electric razor. Pretty fancy one. And what’s that—a matching trimmer?”
“Like a trimmer, yeah, for nose hair or hair in your ears. Pretty fancy one,” says Jane, peering at it, not wanting to touch it yet, even with gloves on. “The brand is ‘BK’ and this is . . . titanium, it says. Yeah, fancy.”
“Would a woman use a nose-hair trimmer?” Andy asks.
“I never have. I pluck. But the electric razor? This has to be a man’s.”
Andy pulls out his phone and types on it. “Here we go,” he says. “The Bentley-Kravitz Elite Men’s Care Set,” he says. “All titanium, and it comes in matte-black. Toothbrush, nail clippers, electric razor, nose-hair trimmer, and dental-floss holder. A five-piece set. This thing retails for over nine thousand dollars, for Christ’s sake.”
He shows her the photo. Yep, it’s a match.
She holds up an evidence bag and uses a pen to tip the nose-hair trimmer off the shelf and into the bag. She repeats the process with the electric razor, using a different bag.
“These could be good for prints,” she says. “It’s something you hold pretty firmly. If you can even get fingerprints off titanium.”
“Maybe DNA, too,” he says. “Long shot but possible.”
Jane nods. “So these are two pieces of a five-piece set,” she says. “Let’s find out if these belong to Conrad.”
? ? ?
“The shaded area on the map is the cell-site coverage area,” says Andy into his phone, as he and Jane return to the station. “It’s like a two-square-block area, including Damen. Check every commercial establishment and see if they’re even open at eight o’clock at night. If they are, then maybe our offender was going in there every night at eight p.m., at least Monday through Thursday, and sending text messages. Someone who’s that much of a regular inside a store or restaurant is gonna be known by the staff. Or—yeah, agreed, is a member of the staff himself. So get employee names. And security cam footage, too.
“More likely,” he goes on, “it was someone texting from their home, so get addresses of all the homes in that area, whether single-family or townhouses or condo buildings. Then run down property-tax records for ownership, and we’ll have to contact all the owners. Probably a lot of them in that area are renters.”
They walk through the station house to the war room. Jane walks in and looks around the room. At the garish photos of Lauren in death; at the pages of the text-message transcripts that provide the most information, blown up on boards and fastened to the corkboard; at the rope used to hang Lauren; at the pink telephone, back from fingerprinting and plugged into a charger on the wall.
She walks up to one of the text messages blown up on a poster, from the evening text exchanges for Wednesday, August 17:
Oh, my. For someone with such a religious name to have such a naughty side . . .
“Simon Peter Dobias,” she whispers to herself.
But Andy’s right. Why would Simon be texting these love notes with Lauren? Simon despised Lauren, blamed her for the death of his mother. He wouldn’t go near her. And even if he were diabolical—Andy’s word, always makes her think of an Agatha Christie novel—even if Simon were diabolical enough to pretend to have an interest in Lauren, to get close to her so he could hurt her, Lauren wouldn’t go along with that, would she? She knows what she did to the Dobias family. She would never, in a million years, believe that Simon wanted to start up a romance with her.
It doesn’t make sense. Something isn’t right.
“Okay, Timpone’s handling Wicker Park,” says Andy, putting down his phone. “Ah, the ‘religious name’ text message. Religious as in ‘Simon Peter,’ right?”
“But you’re right, Andy,” she says. “This doesn’t work. Simon might be behind this, but there is no way in hell this is Simon and Lauren texting each other.”
“So it’s Lauren texting someone else,” he says. “Maybe someone who has a titanium nose-hair trimmer.”
“And a religious name,” she adds.
A phone buzzes. Andy pats his pocket. Jane picks up her phone, which isn’t ringing.
“Holy shit,” Andy says.
Jane looks at Andy, who’s pointing at the table. Jane looks, too.