Alex Barclay - Time of Death

‘My guy was shot close range, back of the head with a.22,’ said Ren.

‘Nope,’ said Hooks. ‘Hopkins was a chest wound, 45 caliber.’

I could care less. ‘Ah. OK. Well, thank you for that.’ Ren stood up and said her goodbyes before Janine Hooks had the chance to ask her why the hell she didn’t just call.

Ren was drawn to cold cases, but to investigate them every day would have driven her crazy. Knowing that, before you even started investigating, many people — experts with the same information at their disposal — had tried and failed, had a certain predestination about it. The older the case, the more likely it was that the evidence had been compromised, the original investigators were retired or dead or the witnesses were dead. If anyone was still alive, their memories had most likely faded.

What lay in Trudie Hammond’s file could be something or nothing. What it could not be was ‘asked for’. If she’d walked into Janine Hooks’ office with a request for Trudie Hammond’s file right before the story broke that Judge Hammond had also been murdered, Ren might as well have walked into Denver PD and held out her hands for the cuffs to be slapped on. There was no official reason for her to be there.

Billy Waites got out of his car when he saw Ren pull up outside Annie’s. He jogged up to her.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Why the mystery?’

‘Not so much mystery,’ said Ren, ‘as…well, yes, mystery, I suppose. In many ways.’

‘How does Misty feel about it?’

Ren smiled. She put the key in the door and they went into the living room.

‘Take a seat.’ Ren sat beside him on the sofa. ‘OK…I wouldn’t ask this if I wasn’t — as the song goes — Desperado.’

‘In the land of Ren, desperado could mean so much,’ said Billy.

‘You know what?’ said Ren. ‘You are correct. But take it as a compliment. I am asking you because (a) I think you are up to it and (b) I will watch your back for the entire process.’

‘OK — what is it?’

‘It’s…well, it is a biggie. I need you to break in…somewhere.’

‘Whoa, I did not see that coming,’ said Billy. ‘Are you for real?’ He looked at her. ‘Oh. You are.’

‘I am,’ said Ren. ‘And obviously I’ll understand you saying no…actually, more than I understand you saying yes.’ But please say yes.

‘Hmm. There is steel in your eyes,’ said Billy. ‘Which I respond to better than that puppy-dog crap.’

‘Not quite steel,’ said Ren. ‘What you see in my eyes is a substance one hundred times stronger than steel, a material incapable of destruction.’

‘Right. Jesus, Ren, I’m not sure about this.’

‘I have a watertight plan-’

‘What, water with the power to tighten my ass muscles one hundred times more than regular plans?’

‘There’s a reason why I’ll be watching your…back.’

Billy shook his head. ‘Tell me your plan.’

‘I need you to break into the office of Detective-’

‘Oh no, no detectivey things, no law-enforcementy things.’

‘Hear me out,’ said Ren. ‘It’s a low-security office. It belongs to Detective Janine Hooks of the Jefferson County Cold Case Unit. I need a file from a cabinet that I will mark clearly on a room plan. It’s under H for Hammond. Trudie Hammond.’

‘As in Judge Hammond Hammond? Hey, why don’t you throw a few congressmen’s offices into the mix, maybe the DA?’

‘It’s the file of his wife’s homicide in 1983,’ said Ren.

‘And then what do I do?’

‘I’m trying to think of the best thing to do…’ Ren paused. ‘Use your digital camera.’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘Use mine, then.’

‘And how will you be watching my back while this is going on?’

‘I’ll be in my car in the complex. I’ve already been in Janine Hooks’ office, so it is not beyond the beyond the bounds of possibility that I could be there again. Anyway, the JeffCo pathologist is there too. I have a few options.’

‘And…?’

‘And I can make a big show of arresting you if anyone stumbles across you. Which they won’t, because you are so good.’

Billy rolled his eyes. ‘What about the security guard?’

‘There’s no one at the back door,’ said Ren. ‘It’s punch-code access. And I have the number.’

‘Cameras?’

‘May have been tampered with,’ said Ren. She handed Billy the map she had drawn.

‘What is it with you and Douglas Hammond?’ he said, studying the map. ‘Why does it matter?’

‘Because,’ said Ren.

‘You child,’ said Billy. ‘You will tell me at some stage.’

‘I will. I promise.’

Billy stood up. ‘OK, let’s do it,’ he said.

‘Now?’

Billy nodded. ‘Billy Waites: Photo-copying While-U-Wait.’

Ren sat alone at Annie’s kitchen table with print-outs of the photos Billy had taken of Trudie Hammond’s file. Having pushed away her guilt at lying to Janine Hooks and at roping Billy into her mess, she was struggling to bury the fear of getting caught. She needed a sharp mind to put together the pieces of something she was not even quite sure of. It was like the ingredients of a cake laid out on a table without the recipe — you had to start baking it, but you had no real idea what cake you were making. A lot of it came down to guesswork, and the end result could be a disaster. With a cold-case file, you were dealing with out-of-date technology and the inexperience and limited resources of an older police force. Re-investigating it could make you the person who turns up decades later at a forgotten mine and strikes gold. Or the person who shows up and confirms that there was nothing new to be uncovered.

In Trudie Hammond’s case, there was a twenty-seven-year gap and a file that was disappointingly slim. Ren ran through the details, starting with a series of shots of the blood-soaked crime scene.

Trudie Hammond, housewife and mother of one was found dead by her husband at 11 a.m. on August 16, 1983. He had left for work at 8 a.m., returned unexpectedly to pick up a work file and found his wife lying dead on the living-room floor. She had been struck several times on the head with a glass vase and had crashed through a glass coffee table.

The couple’s two-year-old daughter had been asleep in her crib and was awakened by a female police officer and brought to a family member’s home. There were no signs of sexual assault. Mrs Hammond had had sex that morning with her husband before he left for work.

In evidence: one nightgown, fragments of broken glass from the vase, one piece of carpet.

All twenty houses on the street had been canvassed. The only name Ren recognized was Lucinda Kerr, who had been home sick from work, but was sleeping and had not seen or heard a thing. Her husband, Peter Everett, had been out jogging and had also not seen or heard anything suspicious. He had returned to find police cars on the street. Most of the residents discovered the tragedy when they came home at the end of the working day.

Ren studied the photos. Trudie Hammond was dressed in a white nightgown with a halo of blonde hair spread out above her head. It was the same nightgown that she had been wearing when her husband had left her that morning. She was heavily made up, but tears had clearly washed her mascara down her cheeks. Her bright pink lipstick was gone, leaving behind a faint stain.

Why did she have full makeup on when she was killed if she had not showered since her husband left? Would a woman shower, apply makeup and put on the nightgown from the previous night? Little things, maybe, but odd.

And how had little Mia Hammond slept through all this? Anintruder entering the house. Shattering glass. Her mother’s crying and probable screaming. Her father’s car pulling up. His arrival into the house.