I pull out a pillowcase and fill it with everything I need. The Grim Reaper costume makes it heavier and bulkier than I’d prefer. Nothing I can do about that.
I head out the back door, through the privacy of my backyard, into the alley.
I walk along Division, not wanting to arrive too soon. It’s cold and damp outside. I’m underdressed and I get a few comments in that regard from people I pass—“Love the costume! Aren’t you cold?”—but the cold is helping me now, not hindering.
Because now I’m doing it. The time for worrying, obsessing, debating, second-guessing, is over. It’s liberating, I must say, to be done with the conflict. Now I can focus.
By 6:45 p.m., I’m at Lathrow and Division in Grace Village. The number of trick-or-treaters has frittered down to just a handful, mostly older kids.
Lauren’s house is a block and a half to the south.
You shouldn’t have come back, Lauren.
73
Jane
Sergeants Jane Burke and Andy Tate get out of their car and head into the West Suburban Major Crimes Task Force center in Forest Park. Jane was in the station by six this morning—Day 2 of the investigation—Andy, by six-thirty.
“Harsh, yes,” says Jane.
“Doesn’t get any harsher,” says Andy. “‘I don’t love you’？ ‘I never did’？ ‘I needed someone different after a bad marriage’？ ‘You were my bridge, that’s all you were’？ I mean, cruel doesn’t get any crueler. Can you imagine someone saying that to you?”
She gives him a sidelong glance. “No,” she says. “That’s my point. It feels . . . I don’t know, staged.”
“Oh, c’mon, Janey. You really like a woman for this? You really think Lauren’s boyfriend had a wife, and the wife did this?”
Jane stops before entering the door for the task force. Their breath hangs in the cool air. “I know that that blood trail Ria showed me doesn’t lie, Andy. Somebody moved the pink phone after the murder. It had to be the offender. And if the offender was Lauren’s boyfriend, he would have to be the dumbest shit on the planet to not pick it up and take it with him.”
“And you’ve never met an offender who made a mistake.”
A couple of uniforms from Forest Park, one of whom Jane recognizes but can’t place the name, pass them on their way into the station. She steps back and nods to them.
“Yes, offenders make mistakes, but it’s not like the offender ignored it or was so freaked out that he missed it. That I could understand.” She steps forward, lowering her voice. “But he didn’t miss it. He focused on it. He paid careful attention to it. He gently, carefully nudged that phone under the table. It took deliberation, Andy. It took care. It took conscious thought. That whole time he—or she—is carefully pushing that phone under the table, it never occurred to him—or her—that hey, this phone is really incriminating, probably better I scoop it up and take it with me? Or smash it into thirty thousand pieces at least?”
“So it was a woman, the lover’s wife?” says Andy. “She kills two birds with one stone. She kills Lauren and frames her husband. All because a phone got moved not once, but twice?”
“Maybe it’s not a smoking gun, I grant you,” she says. “But something doesn’t fit.”
“A woman picked up Lauren and chucked her over the side, while she’s kicking and screaming.”
“Who said she was kicking and screaming? The blow to the head could have knocked her out. She’s unconscious, the offender gets the noose around Lauren’s neck and chucks her over the side. It might not be the easiest thing, but plenty of women could pull that off. Just—just do me a favor and keep an open mind.”
? ? ?
“Here you go, Jane.” Marta Glasgow, from Major Crimes forensics, pops up the image on her computer screen. “That’s it. That’s your boot.”
Jane leans over Marta’s shoulder, peering at the screen. “A . . . Peak Explorer.”
“Right. The brand is Paul Roy. They have a Peak collection, and this is the Explorer. See the treads?”
On the right side of the split screen is the bottom of the boot, a diagonal tread with a strip down the middle, a triangular shape of a mountain peak, filled by small treads of the same shape.
“A Paul Roy Peak Explorer.”
“Yup. Men’s size thirteen.”
“And you’re sure.”
“Yup. Matches the dental stone cast and the photographs from the impressions on the front door. Good thing for you it rained that afternoon. Just enough to moisten the mud behind the shrubs by the window.”