J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“That’s what you said. Thirteen years old.”

“And I can hold two prints next to each other and tell you if they look the same or not. That at least is not rocket science.” I ball the Chronicle up in my fist. “That’s basic. I mean, Sherlock Holmes could process fingerprints, right? And that was the eighteen hundreds. So why all the sudden can the Houston Police not do it?”

“Amen, man, but you’re complaining to the wrong person.”

Disgusted, I shoot the newspaper off the rim of Bascombe’s trash can.

“Don’t just leave that there,” he says.

I scoop it up and make the dunk.

“I’m gonna go watch the tapes of your interview yesterday.”

“You do that,” he says.

“And if I don’t hear back on those prints, heads are gonna roll.”

“Let ’em have it.”

Outside my cubicle, I run into Captain Drew Hedges, a file folder under one arm and an HPD mug in the opposite hand, his usual plain gabardine suit traded in for an expensive-looking pinstripe model. He still has the weather-beaten leathery appearance of an old-time Texas lawman, still the same piercing gaze, but the hair is different, too. The gunmetal salt-and-pepper is gone, replaced by an even patrician white.

“Morning, sir.”

“Oh, March,” he says, making it sound like we’ve just been talking and he’s remembered something he wanted to add before I left. “I just wanted to say. .” Then his voice trails off. He reaches with his free hand and pinches the lapel of my sport coat, rubbing the fabric back and forth. “Where did you get that?”

“What, this old thing?”

Aguilar’s head pops above a nearby cubicle wall and doesn’t retract when he sees I’ve spotted him. Clearly anticipating some kind of show.

Hedges drops my lapel thoughtfully, his eyes still lingering on the fabric. “I just wanted to say, good work this weekend. I knew you were fast, but that was something else.”

A fishhook of a smile digs into Aguilar’s poker face.

“I haven’t closed mine, sir. Not yet. In fact, I’m having a hard time getting all the forensics back from the scene.”

“Ah,” he says. “I must have heard wrong.” He gives my shoulder a pat. “Keep your nose to it, March, and get that thing cleared.”

The thing I’ve always liked about Hedges is that he stays on top of cases. The higher up you go in the food chain, the harder it is for a sworn officer to stay true to the calling. The pressure to manage, to be an armed administrator, comes at you from all sides. For as long as he’s run the Homicide Division, his sights have been set on what’s happening underneath him, not up on high. To see him with his head in the clouds all the sudden, confusing one case with another and not being bothered about it, really throws me.

Not Aguilar, though. He wanders over with a glint in his eye.

“Is he gonna help you with your fingerprint conundrum?”

“He didn’t even offer.”

“So what’s up with Hedges, anyway?”

“Maybe Bascombe knows.”

“Ask him if you want, but I wouldn’t. All you gotta do these days to get the lieutenant sideways with you is bring up the captain’s name. Used to not be that way.”

“Right, I know.”

A glance behind me confirms what the tingling along my neck already suggested, that Bascombe is staring at me right now through his open door. I raise my eyebrows in his direction, then retreat into my cubicle to make another futile round of phone calls in search of reports that haven’t arrived. Once I’m done, I lay everything out before me-the photos, the paperwork, the notes-doing my best to work out what happened.

What I know so far is that on the afternoon or early evening of Saturday, December 5, Simone Walker went outside to have a smoke. She brought her laptop and phone outside with her, and I have a request in for phone records. Either she was sitting facing the house or the pool-I don’t know which, but if I did, it would help figure out which direction the killer came from. He might have entered through the house, but he might also have come through the garage or over the fence, even though there are no signs of forced entry or the inevitable broken foliage if he’d landed in the bushes.

Simone was wearing white shorts and some kind of top. The fiber recovered from the wound appears to be a light blue cotton. According to Dr. Hill, Simone often wore a baby blue Lacoste pullover that now is missing from her room. She might also have been wearing sweats on top of the shorts because of the cold.

The killer entered somehow, came up behind Simone while she was seated, covering her mouth and plunging the knife in. He worked it around in the wound, holding her tight until she bled out. There would have been blood all over her and most likely all over him. He must have stripped her while she was seated, then tilted the chair back to the ground before getting on top of her. Then he did the mutilation game, first in front and then on her back, probably rolling her away from the chair.

I think Bascombe was wrong when he suggested she was dragged to the pool’s edge while seated. That would explain how the chair ended up at the bottom, but I can’t make sense of the action. He probably threw the chair in after her because it was filthy with blood. The crime scene techs did fish it out and check for prints, but there was nothing.

Once he’d finished his game and thrown her body and the chair into the lap pool, he used towels and possibly Simone’s clothing to wipe up the blood, rinsing everything in the water. When he left, he took all of it with him, along with her laptop and phone. He left the ashtray on the table with her cigarette inserted into a notch. All the butts in the ashtray were bagged for testing, but the results will no doubt be long in coming.

His second-to-last gesture, I think, was to pull her out of the water and pose the body. By the time he departed, he’d done a thorough job cleaning up after himself. Thanks to Luminol, recreating the spatter at the scene proved straightforward-the report, neatly wrapped in a binder by a tech named Edgar Castro, sits proudly on my desk, a reproach to the missing fingerprint results-so there’s not much doubt that the attack took place under the pergola.

According to Dr. Hill, the furniture had been rearranged slightly. That’s because of what his final move must have been. With everything he was taking packed away, probably in a bag brought to the scene for that purpose, he went to the far end of the pool and crouched down, just where Bascombe and I perched ourselves, and made sure that the image he was leaving behind matched the one in his mind.

Only one thing troubles me. With this much planning and this much method behind the killing, there’s no way it happened on impulse. The killer I’m looking for is organized, a details man, a mechanically inclined problem solver. There was a rage driving him, sure, a dark mania, but on top of it was a ruling and rational template.

Is that Jason Young? So many things point to him, but I just don’t know. Like Bascombe said yesterday, what I need is physical evidence. The blood from Young’s shirt. The results of the fingerprint analysis. None of which I’m likely to get fast.

Aguilar comes into my cubicle, nudging my chair. “The lieutenant said you were gonna look at the video from yesterday. Mind if I sit in?”

I shake my head. “I need some coffee first. Get it cued up and I’ll be there in a second. Want me to bring you anything?”

“I’m good.”

In the break room, as I’m searching the drawers for something other than nondairy creamer, afraid that the unadulterated brew might prove toxic, my phone starts buzzing. I dig it out of my pocket and see Templeton’s name on the screen. I’m tempted to let him go to voicemail, but it’s always possible he checked his correspondence and found a letter from Jason Young.