Lisa Black: Evidence of Murder

The print to the right of the tree, however, consisted of plain tread lines crossing the foot, almost like Keds or some other lightweight wear. It certainly didn’t belong to the victim or any of the large men surrounding her now. “What did the mother do when she found the body?”

Frank said, “Screamed, touched his face, and checked his neck for a pulse-as if his subzero temperature didn’t tip her off-and ran back to her house to call 911.”

“That’s all?”

“I asked her three times.”

The print looked too large for the mother, anyway. “We’re going to have to cast that.”

“In snow?” Don asked. “I thought that was, like, nearly impossible.”

“Just about. But after my last experience with shoe prints I didn’t lift, I’m not taking any chances.” Casting compound generated heat as it hardened, which, obviously, had a deleterious effect on prints in snow. Some precasting sprays provided limited help. But forensic scientists didn’t get to create their scenes; they could only work with what they were given. “I’ll get the tripod and the shutter remote for the camera.”

Theresa and Don examined Jacob’s bedroom with its worn orange carpeting but found only a few Ecstasy tablets and one well-smoked marijuana roach. A few violent drawings accompanied his sporadic note taking during classes, but no letters or journals turned up and only a few phone numbers, which Frank would run down. Jacob had apparently spent his days playing video games, reading comic books, and not listening to his mother.

“His father left for good two years ago, but he never had been around much,” his mother, Ellen, had wearily described from the doorway as she watched them work. A tough life had leached away muscles and fat and left a bit of padded skin over bones. Theresa had at least six inches and more pounds than she wanted to think about on the poor woman. “I just never got Jacob. I tried tough love, but as hard as I could be on him, he could say much harsher things to me. I tried talking about his feelings-he ignored me. When I tried restricting his video games, he broke into my room as soon as I went to work and got them back. I got tired of-when he did speak, which wasn’t often, he just wouldn’t give me a kind word. Ever.”

One of the advantages of cases involving teenagers had to be that Rachael suddenly became an angel by comparison. Theresa decided to tell her so that evening.

Her phone beeped. A text message, a form of communication she had not yet grown accustomed to-typing on a teeny number pad required too much patience and she couldn’t bring herself to use the shorthand devised by the young and hip. Chris Cavanaugh, the hostage negotiator who had handled the armed-robbery standoff that had killed Paul and nearly herself, had sent a message: Can you meet me for lunch?

As if on cue, her stomach grumbled. With one thumbnail, she punched out: No.

She tucked the phone neatly back into its clip on her belt. Then she picked up a baseball glove, nearly hidden under a pile of black T-shirts. “Did he play at the diamond there, the one the path led to?”

Ellen shook her head. “Not since he was little. His father liked baseball. Never played with him, of course, but liked it.”

Theresa looked around. “I don’t see a bat.”

“He lost that years ago.” The words caught in her throat and came out as a mangled sob. “He lost everything, years ago.”

FRIDAY, MARCH 5

Jillian Perry’s body was found at approximately 8:00 on Friday morning.

Don came down to the amphitheater to tell her, and also to help with Jacob Wheeler. The kid had now thawed out enough for her to remove the clothing and unclench his fists, one of which held a piece of colored paper. As with the dead woman from the Cultural Gardens, Theresa hung his clothes to dry thoroughly before taping. His wallet contained a credit card with his neighbor’s name on it, apparently stolen from his mail earlier that month. That, along with the iPod in his pocket, ruled out robbery. The scrap in his fist, about an inch square, had been ripped from the corner of a sheet of paper with colored graphics on both sides, but without any handy notations like a phone number. Jacob did not have a cell phone-couldn’t afford one, and neither could his mother, hence her return to the house to call 911.

It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Not every problem could be helped by instant communication.

Theresa took the county station wagon to Edgewater Park. This time Leo did not insist on sending Don as well, so Theresa arrived, alone, just before nine.

“I hate to say I told you so,” Frank began.

“Good.” She carried her camera bag and two heavy equipment cases, stepping carefully over the ice-slick walkway. “Don’t.”

“But I told you so.”

“No you didn’t.” A young patrolman took one of the cases from her and she smiled her surprised thanks. “You said if she was dead, then the pimp killed her.”

Frank waved one hand and led the way along the paved walkway, which continued up a steady incline. Trees lined one side, the white and frozen lake on the other. “Let’s not quibble in front of the help.”

“You can shoot him,” Theresa told the patrolman, “if you want to.”

They followed her cousin, a parka clutched over his suit coat, as the path wound past the Conrad Mizer memorial and along the cliffs leading down to the beach. The temperature had warmed to thirty over the past few days, so the lake breeze didn’t instantly numb exposed skin; it took its time about it. Even without the sun, the hazy gray light on the ice forced Theresa to squint. She didn’t know how far out the ice extended, but at a glance it seemed like forever.

Frank stopped at a curve in the walk, where the land jutted out slightly, and turned his back to the water. “There she is.”

Theresa saw the shirt first, a flash of brilliant aqua not found in the northeastern woods, just visible through a mesh of pine boughs and saplings. Only after staring a while could she distinguish the head, the face nearly as white as the snow, and the dark pants. “Who found her?”

“Jogger. Who else? Joggers and hikers find more bodies than anyone…it would put me right off that activity, if I were them. Lucky for me I never exercise. This trail had iced over, kept most people off it all week except for a few crazy people like you who run in subfreezing temps.”

“But they wouldn’t have their heads turned toward the woods. They’d be concentrating on the icy path, or looking at the lake.” Theresa turned again to the water; too bright or not, she had trouble keeping her eyes off it for any length of time. The brisk, slightly fishy air meant that her family was on vacation in the years before her father died, that they were up at Catawba Island for a whole week, and she and Frank and a passel of other cousins had nothing to do but swim, suntan, and roller-skate.

If summer ever came, perhaps she’d get out her scuba gear and dive on the wreck of the Dundee , sunk off the coast. Maybe. “Do we have a path we’re taking to the body?”

“I don’t know where the jogger stepped. Or the jogger’s jogging partner.”

Theresa breathed out, a pfff of irritation.

“Sparky here picked the right side of this growth to walk around, and I stuck with him. That’s all I can tell you.”

“I didn’t see any footprints,” the young CPD officer told her. The tip of his nose had turned red, catching up to the hue in his ears. Half of her wanted to tell him to wear a scarf, and the other half wondered, absently, if he was single. “I just went in, established death, checked for ID, came out, and called it in.”