Robert Crais - Suspect

“Scott, Joyce Cowly. I pulled the DVDs. No rush. You can come see them anytime, just call first to make sure one of us is here.”

Scott put down the phone.

“Thanks, Cowly.”

Scott grabbed a Corona from the fridge, drank some, then took off his uniform. He showered, and pulled on a T-shirt and shorts. He finished the first beer, grabbed a second, and brought it to the pictures on his wall.

He touched Stephanie.

“Still here.”

Scott took his beer to the couch. Maggie pushed herself up, gimped over as if she was a hundred years old, and lay on her side by his feet. Her body shuddered when she sighed.

Scott eased onto the floor beside her. He sat with his legs straight out because crossing them hurt. He rested his hand on her side. Maggie’s tail thumped the floor. Thump thump thump.

Scott said, “Man, we’re a pair, aren’t we?”

Thump thump.

“Maybe a doctor can help you. They shot me up with cortisone. It hurt, but it works.”

Thump thump thump.

File folders, diagrams, and the mass of newspaper clippings he compiled on the shootings spread from the couch to the wall in neat little stacks. Scott sipped more beer, and decided he looked like a nut case trying to prove aliens worked for the CIA, raving about lost memories, recovered memories, imagined memories, and memories that may not even exist—a flash of white hair, forchrissake—as if some miraculous miracle memory only HE could provide would solve the case and bring Stephanie Anders back to life. And now he even had the best detectives at Robbery-Homicide buying into it, as if he could provide the missing piece to their puzzle.

Scott ran his fingers through Maggie’s fur.

Thump thump.

“Maybe it’s time to move on. What do you think?”

Thump.

“That’s what I thought.”

He stared at the stacks with their corners all squared off and neat, and their neatness began to bother him. Scott wasn’t neat. His car, his apartment, and his life were a mess. If rats were in his apartment, they had made an effort to make his papers appear undisturbed, and overdid it. If someone had the tools in Marshall Ishi’s burglary kit, they wouldn’t need Mrs. Earle to get inside without breaking a window.

Scott got his Maglite from the bedroom, and went out. Maggie followed him, sniffing at the French doors as he shined his light on the lock.

“You’re in the way. Move.”

The lock was weathered and scratched, but Scott found no new scratches on the keyhole or faceplate to indicate the lock had been picked.

He checked the side door next. The French doors had a single lock, but the side door had a knob lock and a deadbolt. Scott knelt close with the light. No fresh cuts showed on either lock, but he noticed a black smudge on the deadbolt’s faceplate. It might have been dirt or grease, but it gave a metallic shimmer when he adjusted the light.

Scott touched it with his pinky, and it came away on his skin. The substance appeared to be a silvery powder, and Scott wondered if it was graphite—a dry lubricant used to make locks open more easily. A bottle of graphite had been in Marshall Ishi’s burglary kit. Squirt in some graphite, insert a lock pick gun, and the lock would open in seconds. No key was necessary.

Scott suddenly laughed and turned off the light. Nothing had been stolen, and his place hadn’t been vandalized. Sometimes a smudge was just a smudge.

“See a burglary kit, and now you’re imagining burglars.”

Scott went back inside, locked up, and pulled the curtains. He went to Stephanie’s picture.

“I’m not moving on, and I’m not going to quit. I did not leave you behind, and I’m not leaving now.”

He sat on the floor beneath her picture, and looked over the files and documents. Maggie lay down beside him.

Melon and Stengler had gotten nowhere, but it hadn’t been from lack of effort. He now understood their effort had been enormous, but they needed the ATF to bust Shin, and Shin wasn’t arrested until they were both off the case. Shin changed everything.

Scott fingered through the clutter, and found the evidence bag containing the cheap leather watchband. Rust, Chen had said. Scott wondered again if the rust on the band had come from the roof. Not that this would prove anything even if it had.

Scott unzipped the bag. Maggie lurched to her feet when he took out the leather strap.

Scott said, “You need to pee?”

She nosed so close she almost stood in his lap. She looked at Scott, wagged her tail, and sniffed the cheap leather. The first time he opened the bag to examine the band, she had been in his face, and now she was trying to reach the strap as if she wanted to play.

She was behaving like she had at Marshall Ishi’s house.

Scott moved the band to the right, and she followed the band. He hid it behind his back, and she danced happily from foot to foot as she tried to get behind him.

Play.

Dogs do what they do to please us or save us. They don’t have anything else.

Maggie was with him the first time he took the band from the bag. They had been playing a few minutes earlier, and she had nosed at the band when he examined it. She had come so close he pushed her away, so maybe she associated the band with play. He tried thinking about it the way he imagined Maggie would think.

Scott and Maggie play.

Scott picks up the band.

The band is a toy.

Maggie wants to play with Scott and his toy.

Find the band when you smell the band, Scott and Maggie will play.

Welcome to Dogland.

Scott dropped the band back into the evidence bag. He originally thought Maggie alerted to the chemicals fumed off the crystal because she confused them with explosives. Budress had convinced him this wasn’t the case, which meant there must be another scent on the band she recognized.

Marshall and Daryl would both carry the chemical crystal scent, but Maggie had not alerted to Marshall. She had alerted inside the house, she alerted on Daryl, and now she had alerted on the watchband. Scott stared at Maggie, and slowly smiled.

“Really? I mean, REALLY?”

Thump thump thump.

The thin leather strap had been in the bag for almost nine months. Scott knew scent particles degraded over time, but it seemed logical a person’s sweat and skin oils would soak deep into a leather band.

He reached for his phone, and called Budress.

“Hey, man, it’s Scott. Hope this isn’t too late.”

“No, I’m good. What’s up?”

Scott heard TV voices in the background.

“How long can a scent last?”

“What kind of scent?”

“Human.”

“I need more than that, bro. A ground scent? An air scent? An air scent is gone with the wind. A ground scent, you get maybe twenty-four to forty-eight. Depends on the elements and environment.”

“A leather watchband in an evidence bag.”

“Shit, that’s different. One of those plastic bags?”

“Yeah.”

“Why you want to know something like this? You got a sample you want to hunt?”

“One of the detectives asked. It’s a piece of evidence from one of their cases.”

“Depends. A glass container is best because it’s nonporous and nonreactive, but those heavy-duty evidence bags are pretty good. Has the bag been sealed? If it wasn’t sealed, you get air migration and the oils break down.”

“No, it was sealed. It’s been in a box.”

“How long?”

Scott felt uneasy with all the questions, but he knew Budress was trying to help.

“They made it sound like a pretty long time. Six months? Call it six months. They were just asking in general.”

“Okay. In one of those sealed bags, airtight, no sunlight, I’m thinking they’d have good scent for three months easy, but I’ve seen dogs work off clothes sealed for more than a year.”