Lisa Gardner: The Neighbor

D.D. didn’t linger in the bedroom, but continued down the hall, to the master bedroom.

Two evidence techs were in front of the windows. They’d just pulled the shades and were now shooting the room with blue light. D.D. and Miller stayed respectfully in the hallway, as the first white-garbed figure scanned the walls, ceiling, and floor for signs of bodily fluids. As spots emerged, the second figure marked them with a placard, for further analysis. The process took about ten minutes. They didn’t do the bed. No doubt the sheets and blankets had already been rolled up to be processed at the lab.

The first figure snapped up the blinds, turned on the surviving bedside lamp, then greeted D.D. with a cheery, “Hiya, Sergeant.”

“How goes the battle, Marge?”

“Winning as always.”

D.D. stepped forward to shake Marge’s hand, then the hand of the second evidence tech, Nick Crawford. They all went way back, spending too much time at these kinds of scenes.

“What do you think?” D.D. asked them.

Marge shrugged. “Some hits. We’ll test them, of course, but nothing glaring. I mean, every bedroom in the United States has bodily fluids somewhere.”

D.D. nodded. When processing a room for bodily fluids there were two red flags: one, an obvious display such as spatter lighting up across a wall or a giant puddle illuminating the floor; two, the total lack of bodily fluids, which indicated someone had used chemicals for one helluva cleanup job. Like Marge said, every bedroom had something.

“What about the broken lamp?” D.D. asked.

“We recovered it from the floor,” Nick spoke up, “with all the shards in the immediate vicinity. At first glance, the lamp toppled and shattered against the floor, versus being used as a weapon. Visual inspection, at least, didn’t reveal any sign of blood on the lamp’s base.”

D.D. nodded. “Bedding?”

“Blue-and-green top quilt is missing, but the rest of the bedding appears intact.”

“You process the bathroom?” D.D. asked.

“Yep.”

“Toothbrushes?”

“Two were still damp when we got here. One a pink Barbie electric toothbrush belonging to the child. The second a Braun Oral-B electric toothbrush, which according to the husband belonged to his wife.”

“Pajamas?”

“Per the husband, wife wore a long purple T-shirt, sporting the graphic of a crowned baby chick on the front. Currently unaccounted for.”

“Other clothing? Suitcase?”

“Husband’s initial inventory revealed nothing missing.”

“Jewelry?”

“Biggest items are her watch and wedding ring, both gone. Also her favorite pair of gold hoops, which according to the husband she wore habitually. All we found in the jewelry box were some necklaces, and a couple of homemade bracelets apparently gifted by the child. Husband thought that looked about right.”

D.D. turned to Miller. “No activity on her credit card, I assume?”

Miller went back to his I’m-not-an-idiot stare. She figured that was answer enough.

“So,” she mused out loud, “by all accounts, Sandra Jones came home from work yesterday afternoon, fixed dinner for her child, put her child to bed, then proceeded with her nightly chore of grading papers. At some point, she brushed her teeth, put on her nightshirt, and at least made it to the bedroom, where…”

“Some kind of struggle broke a lamp?” Marge offered up with a shrug. “Maybe someone was already here, ambushed her. That would explain the lack of blood spatter.”

“The subject manually subdued her,” Miller supplied. “Asphyxiation.”

“Test the pillow cases,” D.D. said. “Could have suffocated her in her sleep.”

“Suffocated, strangled. Something quiet and not too messy,” Nick agreed.

“Then wrapped the body in the comforter and dragged it out of the house,” Miller concluded.

D.D. shook her head. “No, no dragging. This is where things get complicated.”

“What do you mean, no dragging?” Miller asked in confusion.

“Look at the dusty hallway. I can see our footprints, which is a problem, because if someone dragged a corpse wrapped in a giant quilt, what I should be seeing is a long, clean smear from this bedroom to the top of the stairs. No clean streak. Meaning, the body wasn’t dragged.”

Miller frowned. “Okay, so the subject carried her out.”

“One man carried the burritoed body of an adult female through that narrow hallway?” D.D. arched a brow skeptically. “First off, that would have to be one strong man. Secondly, no way he could’ve made the corner of that staircase. We’d see evidence everywhere.”

“Two men?” Margie ventured.

“Twice as much noise, twice as much chance of being caught.”

“Then what the hell happened with the comforter?” Miller demanded.

“I don’t know,” D.D. said. “Unless… Unless she wasn’t killed in this room. Maybe she made it back downstairs. Maybe she was sitting on the sofa watching TV, then the doorbell rang. Or maybe the husband came home…” She thought about it, trying out various scenarios in her mind. “He killed her elsewhere, then came up here for the comforter, knocking over the lamp as he tugged it off the bed. Quieter that way. Less chance of waking the kid.”

“Meaning we still haven’t found the primary crime scene,” Miller muttered, but he was frowning as he said it. Because according to him, they’d done the basics, and the basics should’ve turned up signs of blood.

They all looked at one another.

“I vote for the basement,” D.D. said. “When bad things happen, it always seems to be in the basement. Shall we?”

The four of them traipsed downstairs, passing by the front room, where a uniformed officer stood in the doorway, still keeping tabs on Jason Jones and his sleeping child. Jones looked up as they crossed the foyer. D.D. had a brief glimpse of shuttered brown eyes, then Miller opened the door, revealing a flight of treacherous wooden stairs leading down to a musty cellar dimly lit by four bare bulbs. They took it slow and careful. Honest to God, officers fell down stairs and hurt their backs more often than the public ever knew. It was embarrassing for everyone concerned. You gonna get hurt on the job, you should at least have a good story to tell.

At the bottom, D.D. made out a basement that looked an awful lot like a basement. Stone foundation. Cracked cement floor. An ivory-colored washer and dryer sat in front of them, old coffee table stacked with a plastic laundry basket and laundry detergent in front of that. Then came the ubiquitous collection of damaged lawn chairs, old moving boxes, and outgrown baby furniture. Directly beside the stairs was a set of plastic shelves that appeared to hold the overflow from the kitchen pantry. D.D. noted boxes of cereal, macaroni and cheese, crackers, dry pasta, cans of soup, the usual kitchen detritus.

The cellar was dusty, but not messy. Items were neatly stacked against the wall, the center floor clear for laundry duties, perhaps some indoor bike riding, to judge by the purple tricycle parked next to the bulkhead stairs.

D.D. crossed to the bulkhead, investigating the collection of cobwebs in the right-hand corner, the thick coating of dust on the dark handle. Doors obviously hadn’t been opened for a bit, and now that she was down here, she was already changing her mind. If you killed someone in the basement, would you really traipse all the way back upstairs? Why not stick the body beneath the pile of boxes, or grab an old sheet to bundle it out of the bulkhead in the dead of night?

She poked through the collection of discarded crib parts, baby strollers, and bouncy seats. Moved on to the collection of boxes next to the wall, the decaying lawn furniture.