Halfway through the living room for the twentieth time, she stops, pivots, hands on her naked hips, nodding her head. “Let’s do it. Let’s make sure the cops’ eyes never wander past Simon to me. Let’s set that cheating fucker up.” She wags her finger. “And I know exactly how to do it.”
59
Jane
Jane Burke drives back to the Betancourt house at the end of the longest day of her career on the force, memories from high school occupying her thoughts.
“Rob,” she says into her cell phone, her AirPods tucked in her ear.
“Hey, Jane,” says Sergeant Robert Dalillo of their sister department, Grace Park Police. “I hear you guys actually had a real crime committed over there.”
“And guess who caught it?”
“Yeah? Good for you. What do you need?”
“You remember Simon Dobias from high school?”
“Um . . . no. Should I? Was he my grade or yours?”
“Mine,” says Jane. “Real smart kid. Valedictorian. Spoke at graduation.”
“Didn’t know that many kids younger than me.”
“Okay, well, anyway, your records people pulled a complaint filed by Simon Dobias back in ’04.”
“This is related to your homicide?”
“Well, who knows, but I was wondering if you could give me everything you guys have on him. Simon Dobias. D-O-B-I-A-S.”
“Okay, sure, Jane. First thing in the morning. You think a kid from your class did this woman?”
“Way too early to know,” says Jane, as she curbs her car on Lathrow by the Betancourt house. “Talk to you tomorrow. Gotta run.”
? ? ?
“Tell me you haven’t been here all day,” Jane says to Ria Peraino from Major Crimes forensics, who greets Jane at the front door of the Betancourt home.
“No, I went home, put the kids to bed, and came back. I knew you’d be busy with other things awhile. Besides, this is easier to do at night. There’s so much sunlight streaming into this house during the day, with all these windows.”
Jane gloves up, slips rubbers over her shoes, and follows Ria’s careful route up the winding staircase to the second floor, to the landing where the action happened, where the offender struck Lauren, subdued her, and put the noose around her neck.
Ria douses the wood floor with luminol from a spray bottle, the whoosh-whoosh reminding Jane of how badly her own apartment needs cleaning. “Ready?”
“Ready,” says Jane.
Ria flicks off the hallway lights, plunging them in darkness. Glowing blue patterns emerge along the second-floor hallway, dots and small puddles and streaks, the chemiluminescence reaction caused by the luminol mixing with traces of iron from the blood.
As always, there is more blood than one would think. Spatter on the hallway floor, coming in a small inkblot pattern in an area roughly between the bannister and the antique table.
“The offender hit her on the right back side of the head, probably right here,” says Ria, her pointed finger visible only by contrast with the blue-glowing blood. “The thickest blood droplets are usually the closest, then the droplets get smaller as the distance from the wound increases.”
Jane follows the line with her eyes.
“Not a lot of blood, all in all, but the head wound wasn’t that grave.”
“Then there’s more blood over closer to the little hallway table,” says Jane. “Where we found the phone.”
“Yeah, that’s interesting, isn’t it?”
Ria resprays the luminol solution onto the blood over by the table, lighting it up in an even brighter blue glow.
“Blood smears,” Ria says. “The phone slid across the floor a few feet, short of the table. Then it slid a second time all the way under the table.”
Jane sees it. The first smear stops, then starts again in a slightly different direction, maybe a ten-or fifteen-degree difference in angle, before disappearing under the table.
“So here’s what’s weird for me,” says Ria. “The first smear of blood, okay. That’s the phone sliding across the floor from where the struggle happened. The phone has a bit of blood on it, and it takes the blood for a ride.”
“Right . . . ?”
“That could have happened a number of ways. Most likely, the offender subdues her, catches her up here in the hallway, hits her, causing a blood spray, then she falls to the floor and the phone goes sliding away.”
“Maybe the offender threw the phone away,” Jane says. “To keep it away from her.”