“You’d think a banker would have lived in something nicer.”
“He was a loan officer. They make squat, especially in a town like this. And this house is a lot bigger than mine, Decker, with a lot more land.”
They walked up to the front porch of the home. Decker tried the door.
“Locked.”
“Well, why don’t you unlock it?” said Lancaster.
“Are you giving me permission to break and enter?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time. And it’s not like we’re screwing up a crime scene.”
Decker broke the side glass, reached through, and unlocked the door. He switched on his Maglite and led her inside.
“Do you remember?” said Lancaster. “That’s a rhetorical question, of course.”
Decker didn’t appear to be listening. In his mind’s eye, he was a recently minted homicide investigator after riding a beat for ten years and then working robbery, burglary, and drugs for several years as a detective. He and Lancaster had been called to the Richardses’ house after the report of a disturbance and the discovery of bodies inside by the first responders. This being their maiden homicide investigation, neither wanted to screw it up.
As a rookie uniformed cop, Lancaster had worn no makeup, as though to make herself less conspicuously female. She was the only woman on the entire force who didn’t sit behind a desk and type or go make coffee for the guys. The only one authorized to carry a gun, arrest people, and read them their rights. And to take their lives if it was absolutely necessary.
She hadn’t taken up her smoking habit yet. That would come when she began working as a detective with Decker, and spent more and more of her time with dead bodies and trying to catch the killers who had violently snatched away those lives. She was also heavier back then. But it was a healthy weight. Lancaster had gained the rep of a calm, methodical cop who went into every situation with three or four different plans on how to manage it. Nothing rattled her. As a beat cop she’d earned numerous commendations for how she handled herself. And everyone had come out of those situations alive. She’d conducted herself the same way while working as a detective.
Decker, on the other hand, had a reputation as the quirkiest son of a bitch who’d ever worn the Burlington police uniform. Yet no one could deny his vast potential in law enforcement. And that potential had been fully realized when he became a detective and partnered with Mary Lancaster. They’d never failed to solve a case to which they’d been assigned. It was a record of which any other police department, large or small, would have been envious.
They had known each other previously, having come up in the same rookie class, but hadn’t had much interaction professionally until they exchanged their uniforms for the civilian clothes of a detective.
Now Decker went step by step in his memory from that night as Lancaster watched him from a corner of the living room.
“Cops were radioed in about a disturbance here. Call came in at nine-thirty-five. Two squad cars arrived in five minutes. They entered the house a minute later after checking the perimeter. The front door was unlocked.”
He moved over to another part of the room.
“Vic number one, David Katz, was found here,” he said, pointing to a spot at the doorway into the kitchen. “Age thirty-five. Two taps. First gunshot to the left temple. Second to the back of the head. Instant death with either shot.” He pointed to another spot right next to the door. “Beer bottle found here. His prints on it. Didn’t break, but the beer was all over the floor.”
“Katz owned a local restaurant, the American Grill,” added Lancaster. “He was over here visiting.”
“And no evidence that he could have been the target,” stated Decker.
“None,” confirmed Lancaster. “Wrong place, wrong time. Like Ron Goldman in the O. J. Simpson case. Really shitty luck on his part.”
They moved into the kitchen. It was all dirty linoleum, scarred cabinets, and a rust-stained sink.
“Victim number two, Donald Richards—everyone called him Don. Forty-four. Bank loan officer. Single GSW through the heart and fell here. Again, dead when he dropped.”
Lancaster nodded. “He knew Katz because the bank had previously approved a loan to Katz for the American Grill project.”
Decker walked back out into the living room and eyed the stairs leading up to the second floor.
“Now the last two vics.”
They climbed the stairs until they reached the second-floor landing.
“These two bedrooms.” He indicated two doors across from each other. He pushed open the door on the left side and went in. Lancaster followed.
“Victim number three,” said Decker. “Abigail ‘Abby’ Richards. Age twelve.”
“She was strangled. Found on the bed. Ligature marks showed that some sort of rope was used. Killer took it with him.”
“Her death wasn’t instantaneous,” Decker pointed out.
“No. But she fought hard.”
“And got Meryl Hawkins’s DNA under her fingernails,” Decker said pointedly. “So, in a way, she beat him.”
Decker moved past her out of the room, across the hall and into the bedroom there. Lancaster followed.
Decker paced over to a point against the wall and said, “Victim number four. Frankie Richards. Age fourteen. Just started at Burlington High School. Found on the floor right here. Single GSW to the heart.”
“We found some drug paraphernalia and enough cash hidden in his room to suggest that he wasn’t just a user but a dealer. But we could never tie any of that to the murders. We tracked down the man supplying him, it was Karl Stevens. He was a small fry. There was no way that was the motivation to kill four people. And Stevens had an ironclad alibi.”
Decker nodded. “Okay, we were called in at ten-twenty-one. We came by car and arrived here fourteen minutes later.”
He leaned against the wall and glanced out the window that overlooked the street. “Four neighboring homes. Two were occupied that night. No one in those houses saw or heard anything. Killer came and left unseen, unheard.”
“But then you found something when we went through the house that changed all that.”
Decker led her back down the stairs and into the living room. “A thumbprint on that wall switch plate along with a blood trace from Katz.”
“And the perp’s skin, blood, and resultant DNA under Abby’s fingernails. In the struggle with her attacker.”
“He’s strangling her with a ligature and she grips his arms to make him stop and the material gets transferred. Anybody who’s ever watched an episode of CSI knows that.”
Lancaster’s hand flicked to her pocket and she pulled out her pack of smokes.
Decker eyed this movement as she lit up. “You cashing in on tomorrow’s allotment?”
“It’s getting close enough to midnight. And I’m stressed. So excuse the hell out of me.” She flicked ash on the floor. “Hawkins’s prints were in the database because the company he had worked for previously did some defense contracting. They fingerprinted and ran a background check on everyone who worked there. When the print matched Hawkins in the database, we executed the search warrant on his house.”
Decker took up the story. “Based on the print, he was arrested and brought to the station, where a cheek swab was taken. The DNA on it matched the DNA found under Abby’s fingernails. And he had no alibi for that entire night. And during the search of his home they found a forty-five-caliber pistol hidden in a box behind a wall in his closet. The ballistics match was spot on, so it was without a doubt the murder weapon. He said it wasn’t his and he didn’t know how it got there. He said he didn’t even know about that secret space. We traced the pistol. It had been stolen from a gun shop about two years before. Serial numbers filed off. Probably used in a string of crimes since that time. And then it ended up in Hawkins’s closet.” He glanced at his old partner. “Which raises the question of why you think we might have gotten it wrong. Looks rock solid to me.”