“Her testimony would have cut zero ice with a jury,” Samuels said. “Hey, if your mom won’t lie for you, who will?”
“Other people in the neighborhood saw him during his vacation week,” Yune went on. “He cut his mother’s grass, he fixed her gutters, he painted the stoop, and he helped the lady across the street plant some flowers. This was on the same day the Howard girls were taken. Also, that tricked-out truck of his was kind of hard to miss when he was driving around and doing errands.”
Howie asked, “The lady across the street, could she place him with her anywhere near the time those two girls were killed?”
“She said around ten in the morning. Close to an alibi, but no cigar. Regis is a lot nearer to Trotwood than Flint is to Cap City. Cops theorized that as soon as he finished helping the neighbor with her petunias or whatever, he drove to the municipal lot, swapped his Tahoe for the panel truck, and went hunting.”
“Terry was luckier than Mr. Holmes,” Marcy said, looking first at Ralph and then at Bill Samuels. Ralph met her gaze; Samuels either could not or would not. “Just not lucky enough.”
Yune said, “I’ve got one more thing—another piece of the puzzle, Ms. Gibney would say—but I’m going to save it until Ralph recaps the Maitland investigation, both pro and con.”
Ralph made short work of this, speaking in concise sentences, as if testifying in court. He made a point of telling them what Claude Bolton had told him—that Terry had nicked him with a fingernail while shaking his hand. After telling them about the discovery of the clothes out in Canning Township—pants, underwear, socks, sneakers, but no shirt—he circled back to the man he’d seen on the courthouse steps. He said he wasn’t certain that the man had been using the shirt Terry had been wearing at the Dubrow train station to cover his presumably scarred and hairless head, but he believed that it could have been.
“There must have been TV coverage at the courthouse,” Holly said. “Have you checked it?”
Ralph and Lieutenant Sablo exchanged a look.
“We did,” Ralph said, “but that man’s not there. Not in any of the footage.”
There was a general stirring, and Jeannie was holding his arm again—clutching it, really. Ralph gave her hand a reassuring pat, but he was looking at the woman who had flown here from Dayton. Holly didn’t look puzzled. She looked satisfied.
6
“The man who killed the Howard girls used a panel truck,” Yune said, “and when he was done with it, he dumped it in an easily discoverable location. The man who killed Frank Peterson did the same with the van he used to abduct the boy; actually drew attention to it by leaving it behind Shorty’s Pub and speaking to a couple of witnesses—the way Holmes spoke to the cook and the waitress in the Waffle House. The Ohio cops found plenty of fingerprints in the panel truck, both the killer’s and his victims’; we found plenty in the van. But the van prints included at least one set that went unidentified. Until late today, that is.”
Ralph leaned forward, intent.
“Let me show you some stuff.” Yune fiddled with his laptop. Two fingerprints appeared on the screen. “These are from the kid who stole the van in upstate New York. One from the van, one from his intake when he was arrested in El Paso. Now check this out.”
He fiddled some more, and the two prints came together perfectly.
“That takes care of Merlin Cassidy. Now here’s Frank Peterson—one print from the ME, and one from the van.”
The overlay again showed a perfect match.
“Next, Maitland. One print from the van—one of many, I might add—and the other from his intake at the Flint City PD.”
He brought them together, and again the match was perfect. Marcy made a sighing sound.
“Okay, now prepare to have your mind boggled. On the left, an unsub print from the van; on the right, a Heath Holmes print from his intake in Montgomery County, Ohio.”
He brought them together. This time the fit was not perfect, but it was very close. Holly believed a jury would have accepted it as a match. She certainly did.
“You’ll notice a few minor differences,” Yune said. “That’s because the Holmes print from the van is a bit degraded, maybe from the passage of time. But there are enough points of identity to satisfy me. Heath Holmes was in that van at some point. This is new information.”
The room was silent.
Yune put up two more prints. The one on the left was sharp and clear. Holly realized they had already seen it. Ralph did, too. “Terry’s,” he said. “From the van.”
“Correct. And on the right, here’s one from the buckle left in the barn.”
The whorls were the same, but oddly faded in places. When Yune brought them together, the van print filled in the blanks on the buckle print.
“No doubt they’re the same,” Yune said. “Both Terry Maitland’s. Only the one on the buckle looks like it came from a much older finger.”
“How is that possible?” Jeannie asked.
“It’s not,” Samuels said. “I saw a set of Maitland’s prints on his intake card . . . which were made days after he last touched that buckle. They were firm and clear. Every line and whorl intact.”
“We also took an unsub print from that buckle,” Yune said. “Here it is.”
This one no jury would accept; there were a few lines and whorls, but they were faint, barely there at all. Most of the print was no more than a blur.
Yune said, “It’s impossible to be sure, given the poor quality, but I don’t believe that’s Mr. Maitland’s fingerprint, and it can’t be Holmes’s, because he was dead long before that buckle first showed up in the train station video. And yet . . . Heath Holmes was in the van that was used to abduct the Peterson boy. I’m at a loss to explain the when, the how, or the why, but I’m not exaggerating when I say I’d give a thousand dollars to know who left that blurry fingerprint on the belt buckle, and at least five hundred to know how come the Maitland fingerprint on it looks so old.”
He unplugged his laptop and sat down.
“Plenty of pieces on the table,” Howie said, “but I’ll be damned if they make a picture. Does anyone have any more?”
Ralph turned to his wife. “Tell them,” he said. “Tell them who you dreamed was in our house.”
“It was no dream,” she said. “Dreams fade. Reality doesn’t.”
Speaking slowly at first, but picking up speed, she told them about seeing the light on downstairs, and finding the man sitting beyond the archway, on one of the chairs from their kitchen table. She finished with the warning he had given her, emphasizing it with the fading blue letters inked on his fingers. You MUST tell him to stop. “I fainted. I’ve never done that before in my life.”
“She woke up in bed,” Ralph said. “No sign of entry. Burglar alarm was set.”
“A dream,” Samuels said flatly.
Jeannie shook her head hard enough to make her hair fly. “He was there.”
“Something happened,” Ralph said. “That much I’m sure of. The man with the burned face had tats on his fingers—”