“Don’t bother. He was on a cruise ship in Alaska when it all went down. Left a few days before the murders happened and didn’t get back until after both bodies were found.”
“That’s awfully convenient.”
“I thought so, too—but the trip had been booked for months. If he orchestrated the killings, he must’ve cheaped out and hired some inexperienced nobody, because that was not a professional hit job. The girl was shot—what? Three or four times? Twice in the back, as she was presumably running away? And the guy, he just took the one bad hit, right in the gut. Bled out in the car, but it took some time.”
Grady leaned back in his own seat and exhaled heavily—which apparently sounded like an invitation to one of the remaining dogs. A small black-and-tan girl in a pink collar with a bow put her feet up on his shin and gave him the big-eyed dog stare of Please pick me up so I can sit on you.
He obliged, gently lifting her up to his lap.
“That’s Smidget,” Whiteside told him. “She’s a lover, but don’t pet her ass. She doesn’t like that, and she’ll nip your fingers.”
“Good to know,” Grady said, sticking to ear scratches until she turned three circles and settled down atop his knees.
“She’s a sweetheart, though.” When the dogs who occupied Whiteside’s own chair gave him concerned looks, he patted them all in turn. “They’re all sweethearts; that’s a fact. Daddy’s sweet little assholes.”
Grady murmured in polite agreement. Then he said, “Let me ask you something: What do you think happened? Nothing you can prove, nothing you even have any good evidence for… I’m asking for any hunch that you never did shake, or any theory that you wanted to stick to but you couldn’t nail down enough proof.”
Whiteside pondered this while he rubbed the head of the nearest pointy-nosed dog. “Well, first of all—I think it was definitely Crombie on the gas station surveillance video. The resolution was garbage, and the IT guys would never confirm it one way or another, but she fit the bill and her clothes matched up about right. I think she was hanging around, looking for help—and I think Sandoval tried to give it to her. She might’ve approached him as he was about to drive away, or even hitchhiked from the edge of the road as he was leaving. He left the pump alone, but his car went out of frame as soon as he’d moved away from the fill-up island.”
“But it was probably her.”
“I’d swear it on a Bible. She was running from somebody, and she saw this nice young man—clean-cut, friendly face, and prone to offering assistance, according to his parents. I think she was running, and whoever was chasing her figured he had to kill them both. Maybe Sandoval got a good look at him or tried to fight him off.”
“A scuffle would make sense. He was shot at close range, maybe even point-blank. He’d been in the water too long to find any gunpowder residue, but the coroner said the gun hadn’t been more than a couple of feet away when it went off.”
“See, there you go. Knight in shining armor gets murdered for his efforts. Tale as old as time.”
“It works, but there are still a lot of holes to plug.”
“Yeah, and that’s the problem, ain’t it? If I could’ve plugged those holes, the case would be shut by now. The only other thing I can think of…” Whiteside said slowly, chewing on the words, considering every one. “Her purse turned up almost a month later. A couple of kids found it tangled up in some plastic roadwork netting and fished it out of the water.”
“Her purse? I don’t remember seeing anything about that.”
“Like I said, it turned up well after the fact, and there was nothing in it that pointed to anything. We sent a couple of beat cops down to dredge the area, and all they ever found was an empty glasses case. Her vision was bad, and she usually wore contacts, but I guess she carried a pair for backup.”
“I don’t remember seeing anything about contacts in the coroner’s report, but I might’ve just missed it.” Grady added the last bit to himself.
“Well, I don’t remember anymore. But even if the doc didn’t find any, they might’ve washed out of her eyes or something. She was lying downstream from the pond, in the water runoff trench—and she’d been there almost a week. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
“Again, you have a point. Still, good to know. Was there anything else in the purse?”
Whiteside shrugged. “Tampons and breath mints, stuff like that. She had a little key chain Mace thing, too. Pink, so you know it’s for girls.” He laughed to himself. “I don’t remember what all else; I just remember that none of it was helpful. See if you can’t get into the evidence locker and get a gander at it, though. It might tell you something it doesn’t tell me.”
On that note, Grady carefully put Smidget back down on the floor and offered his thanks, then said he’d take his leave.
Whiteside stayed put but shook his hand heartily, and cautiously—so as not to disturb the dog that was now snoring across his thighs. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t see you out. Good luck to you, though. I hate leaving a case open like that. If you can zip it up, more power to you.”
“Thanks again, Jim. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
* * *
Back at the precinct, Grady went to his desk and pushed a small stack of paperwork aside, then removed a couple of new folders that had been left in his seat and sat down. There was always something, wasn’t there? He was falling behind, but he was used to that. Before she’d retired, the previous police captain had told him that coming to peace with playing catch-up was one of the most important skills a career detective could learn.
“Every day,” she’d told him, “you have to decide how to fail, and make the best of it.” At the time, he’d found it cynical. Now he honestly found it helpful—if for no other reason than he knew it was normal and he knew he wasn’t alone.
Every day, something was going to fall through the cracks, run late, or be wrong. If he paid enough attention, he could come back and deal with most of it later. Collect the crumbs. Run a little faster. Correct the inaccuracies. Bat cleanup.
But some days, he only had the bandwidth to do so much and try so hard.
Grady looked up at the desk that faced his own. His partner, Sam Wilco, had been out for the last couple of days with the flu.
“When Sam gets back…” he said under his breath, “I’ll have some help again.”
“Getting a little snowed under?” asked Lieutenant Le from the next desk over.
“Par for the course, right?”
“Always.” Her phone rang, and she took the call before her vibrating cell could shuffle off and fall on the floor.
Grady glanced at his phone and saw a message from Molly. She was grabbing pizza with a friend after school, then heading to a short shift at Starbucks. Someone had called in, and she wanted the hours.
“Will wonders never cease?” he mumbled. If nothing else, it meant he didn’t need to make dinner that night. He could grab a sandwich on the way home.
For a guy who worked in a large building surrounded by people, Grady Merritt felt weirdly alone. His partner was out of the office, his daughter wouldn’t be back home until bedtime, and his conversation with Jim Whiteside had left him feeling oddly unsettled. It had unnerved him, seeing what living alone could do to a man. He could wind up in a split level, surrounded by tiny, yippy dogs who were constantly trying to tunnel out to freedom like fuzzy little prisoners of war. If it’d happened to Jim after his wife had died, it could happen to anybody.