I feign surprise. The name suits me, but it’s not as original as I’d hoped. “Really? Why?”
“He sticks poems in their mouths after he kills them, a message that law enforcement has to decode. I was thinking, maybe you should offer to consult. You’re a poetry expert.”
“No,” I say shortly. “There are plenty of scholars available, and the last thing I want is to bring attention to my family.”
“Right,” she says. “Right. I should have thought of that.”
I catch her hand and kiss it. “Relax. I’ll take care of you and the kids. Always. You know that.”
She nods. “Yes. Yes, I know you will.”
Chapter 77
I wake from what is a surprisingly deep sleep to a call from Mrs. Crawford.
“Are you okay?” She doesn’t give me time to answer. She’s still talking. “What exactly happened? There are reporters everywhere and everyone is talking about what happened.”
I sit up to find Wade walking into the bedroom, already dressed in a gray suit and freshly shaved, with two cups of coffee in hand. I mouth a thank you and accept the cup, wondering how I slept through him getting up.
“These reporters are crazy people, just crazy,” Mrs. Crawford says. “Surely you can do something.”
“The interest will fade in a few days. I promise.”
She isn’t so sure, because she launches into a story about a reporter who knocked on my door off and on for an hour and how she called the police. When she finally lets me off the phone, I sigh. “Good Lord. If this is how this day is going to start, I might need wine.”
“That’s not a bad idea. I talked to Martinez this morning. He wants me to tap our missing children’s records. In the meantime, they’re having a sketch artist do a sketch of the boy to put out in the press to try to identify him.”
I inhale against the hot spot in my chest. “Okay,” is all I manage and really, anything I might say would somehow be too much and not enough. “Are you headed to the office?”
“Not yet. Soon.”
“I should shower.” I stand up and take two steps before I turn back to him. “How can no one be missing a little boy?”
“We have jobs because it’s a brutal world.”
He’s given me a profound answer that I don’t expect and somehow, it’s exactly what I need. I give a nod of thank you and walk into the bathroom. Wade doesn’t follow. That’s the benefit of being with someone in law enforcement. Again, he just gets it. I need time alone, but I don’t shut the bathroom door. It’s not necessary.
Soon I’m under a hot stream of water and in my own head, and I think of my life choices and vow to protect others. I failed in that last night, but I find Wade’s words resonating, and beat back my self-doubt. I can wallow or I can fight. I’m going to fight. Focus. Work the case, I remind myself. And so I focus on what’s important: justice for the victims, including that little boy, whoever he might be. As for me, survival is doing my job, working. I need to get back to work. I exit the shower, with last night as compartmentalized as anything this fresh can be, determined to get this asshole.
Thankfully, I still have a few clothes and toiletries remaining here at Wade’s, and the truth is that I haven’t rushed to amend that fact. Shoving aside any self-analysis of my personal life, I apply makeup. I dry my hair. I dress in jeans and a pink lacy blouse that doesn’t scream “child killer.” Not long after, with my empty coffee cup in hand, I find Wade in the kitchen, sitting at his large granite island on his phone. I grab the coffee pot, refill his cup and mine, pour creamer from the fridge in both, and then claim a spot next to him. He’s still on the phone, talking about surveillance of some target when I unload my case file and computer to get to work.
He disconnects. “We’re going to start poking around the mayor’s business and see what we come up with. If I can get digital surveillance and he crosses any lines with Newman—”
“You could get surveillance approved on Newman as well.”
His cell phone rings and he holds up a finger, letting me know he has to take it. Mine then rings, as well, with Chuck’s number. I manage to finish half my coffee while he continues to talk about his yoga angle that isn’t going anywhere.
He’s nervously rambling, obviously afraid to stumble into the uncomfortable territory of last night when we’re both saved by another call beeping in from the crime lab. I hang up with Chuck and answer the call. “Detective Jazz.”
“Detective Jazz, it’s Antonio.”
I scoot to the edge of my seat. “What do you have for me?”
“I finished that urgent testing you requested. There’s no unknown DNA on the glasses. They matched up with the voluntary DNA samples you submitted. As reusable items, the books are tricky. We got some random DNA from them, but nothing that matches our database.”
“What about the gravel sample I submitted?”
“It didn’t match the samples taken at either crime scene.”
I sigh. “Damn.”
“I know. Sorry it’s not better news, but I do have the books being sent to the evidence room, clear for your review.”
“Thanks, Antonio.” We disconnect, and my phone buzzes with a call from Lang.
“Tell me something good,” I say, answering the line. “I really need something good.”
“You have me in your life. How is that?”
“That means you have nothing good to tell me.”
“I’ll pretend I’m not insulted,” he says, but moves on. “Nothing from Roberts here in Houston, and I’m with the detectives on the suffocation case here. We’re not getting anything from the physical evidence. We’re about to start working the poetry angle and look for a way these victims connect the dots.”
“I’m going to pick up the poetry books I got cleared from the lab a few minutes ago,” I say. “The DNA samples on the glasses matched the voluntary samples. The books had random DNA, as would be expected of a reusable item, but nothing that matched our database.”
“He’s smart,” he says. “He took anything he touched with him.”
“That’s what I think, too, but the bottom line here is that we have nothing which means I have to try something.”
“What about our warrant?” he asks. “We need to get to his creepy secret hiding place. You know he has one. These assholes always do.”
“Not going to happen. We need more, and I’m not exactly in a place to turn to his wife now.”