Tim nodded. It made sense.
“Logan was barely sober in those days.” Logan had been the head of the fingerprint lab here whom Mo had displaced. He got hired in Greenwood County, but that was like going from the big leagues to A ball.
“Logan’s the one who died of exposure in his own cabin, right?” Tim asked.
“Right. He had some place up in Skageon with just an outhouse and he got drunk and went out to take a piss, and passed out in the snow and died there. Back in ’83, when he made Cass’s prints, he was already a shambles. Most of the time when he showed up for work, he didn’t know one end of a microscope from another. And damn me, when I start comparing his report and the lifts from the scene to the prints I got from Hillcrest—they don’t match. Close. Very very close. But in several cases, they display just the kind of minute differences you’d expect with a twin.”
“Which Logan missed?”
Mo hitched his shoulders. “Possibly.”
“So you’re telling me the wrong brother is in the can?”
“I’m telling you what I’m telling you.”
Tim considered this at some length, then shook his head.
“Paul Gianis is too smart to think he’d get away with that twice. He’s a former PA. The way he went strutting around that lobby—he knows his prints weren’t at the scene.”
“Or he thinks no examiner would bother to look again at the lifts identified as Cass’s in ’83,” said Mo. “Maybe Paul figures I’d confine my new examination to the unknowns. There’s plenty that would do it like that. But either way, I need Cass’s original prints. Maybe when I compare them with Paul’s, this will make more sense. Maybe I’ll see what Logan was talking about. But I’m buffaloed now.” He peered at Tim again.
“This stays right here,” Mo said. “I don’t want anybody hearing this, and then in two weeks thinking I’m a world-class bonehead.”
Tim agreed. He couldn’t make any more sense of this than Mo. They parted, joined in a weird compact, two old guys afraid they could be slipping.
15.
The Scene—February 9, 2008
Heather hadn’t moved out when Evon returned to the condo, last Sunday. She had opened a suitcase on their bed, but had gotten no further than that. In her nightgown, Heather was sitting on the covers in a butterfly pose, soles of her feet pressed together, her blonde hair flowing smoothly over her shoulders. She began weeping as soon as Evon appeared at the door to the room. Evon had no doubt that Heather had staged the whole thing, laid the case out and dressed herself in a casually revealing way.
‘You have to leave,’ Evon told her.
Heather begged, repeated her pledges of love, but ended up enraged. Evon couldn’t throw her out of her own home, she said. Heather was ignoring many facts—that Evon had paid every penny for the place, that the title was solely in Evon’s name and that Heather hadn’t contributed her share of the assessment for months. Evon had told her she had until next Saturday to go.
Now, on Saturday morning, Evon arrived at the condo, full of resolve. She knocked but of course Heather didn’t answer. When Evon tried her key, she found Heather had changed the locks. Evon hammered on the door for only a second, then called a locksmith and the head of the condo association. In the meantime, she went to her safe-deposit box to retrieve the deed to the place to establish ownership. Evon had the smith drill out the cylinder while Rhona, the association president, and her husband, Harry, both of whom lived next door, came into the hallway for a second to watch. She could hear Heather on the other side, threatening to call the police. When the drilling didn’t cease, Heather opened the door, just as the tradesman had bored through. Heather was in a negligee again and offered Evon both keys.
“I would have given them to you. All you had to do was ask.”
Evon didn’t bother responding. Heather would say anything at this point, no matter how obviously untrue. Evon left the locksmith at work on a new dead bolt, and drove to Morton’s and bought the biggest duffel bag they had in the store. Back at the condo, she started packing Heather’s stuff in front of her. Evon slammed Heather’s dresses, still on the hangers, into the bag, knowing that Heather, who treated every garment as if it were made of Venetian glass, could not bear the sight. When Evon was done, she took the duffel down to Heather’s car and hoisted it onto the hood. Heather followed her, weeping and screaming, which gave Evon the opportunity she needed. She flew up the stairs—she could still outrun most people she knew—and closed the new click-lock. Heather was now on the other side of the door. She phoned Evon inside more than forty times in a row. Evon answered once: “If you don’t go away, I will have no choice but to call the police.” Half an hour later, while Heather was still calling every five minutes, Evon opened the door to toss out Heather’s purse. Once the pounding and the texting and phone calls had ceased, once the woman was finally gone, Evon sat on the living room floor in the space that had been happily theirs and howled.
When Evon opened the door for the Sunday paper, Heather was asleep in the hall, still in her negligee, using her handbag as a pillow. Evon called mutual friends and watched from the window as the two guided Heather to their car across the street. One had her by the waist, one by the shoulders. Heather was hysterical and they were nodding at every word. Evon was able to do nothing all day but talk to Merrel and watch the Pro Bowl. She was right, she knew, had done what she had to. All she needed now was someone to explain all that to her heart.
She was not much better when she went to work Monday morning. The loss, the drama, the sleeplessness had hollowed her out, made her feel as if the only part of her left intact was her skin. The vast entry of ZP’s headquarters was five stories high, glass on three sides, with giant seamless sheets of taupe granite cladding the only wall, which contained the building’s central service corridor. There workers in gray jumpsuits were on a lift hanging a huge crimson heart of woven roses as a Valentine decoration. It was too much for Evon. She barely made it into her office before closing the door so she could cry privately at her desk. She was still blubbering when Mitra, her assistant, buzzed to say Tim Brodie was here. Evon had totally forgotten the appointment. Tooley had copied all the old police reports for Ray Horgan, then handed the file back to Tim, asking that Evon and he, the ones with law-enforcement training, review the materials to determine if there were other leads they should follow.
Now she blew her nose and went to her purse for makeup. She looked horrible in the mirror of her compact. Crying with her contacts in had left her red-eyed, and the inflamed ridges of her nose made her resemble Rudolph. Tim took one glance at her once he came through her door and asked, “What happened?”
She tried to stiffen herself, but it didn’t work. She dropped her face into her hands.
“I’ve got girlfriend problems,” Evon said.
“I kind of took that from what you said when you were at my house. Anything requiring an old man’s advice?” You couldn’t resist Tim. There was a calm understanding that seemed part of his expression. Her father was this kind of man. Not as brainy. But centered. And thoughtful. And loving at the core. She needed to talk to somebody. Most of her friends knew Heather, too, and were caught in the middle. She’d largely been keeping all of it to herself.
Evon told him the story in short strokes.
“The worst part,” she said, “is me. What was I thinking? What was I doing with somebody like Heather? A model. A former fashion model. I just wanted to believe that somebody that beautiful could care for me. It kind of made me beautiful by association, I guess.”
“There’s nothing wrong with beautiful,” Tim said. “Not in and of itself.” Maria had been one of the most beautiful girls he’d met, with wide-set features and a perfect mouth. He’d loved her almost at once, because she seemed to take no notice of how pretty she was. “It’s kind of like money. It’s what it does to the people who have it or want it that’s the bad part.”
“How stupid can I be? I’m fifty years old.”
“People see what they want to see. You care to skip psychology class, then just remember that. Every time somebody falls in love, they create their own mythology to go with it. Don’t they? About her. And you. It makes it all bigger than life. Has to be, doesn’t it? To be so special. So this gal, used to be she was a goddess and so were you, and now she’s mortal.”
“Mortal? She’s crazy. Seriously disturbed. People warned me, too. And I didn’t listen.”
“Think you’re the first?” Tim had been standing in front of her desk, still in his overcoat, with his stocking cap in his hand. Little tufts of hair stood straight up on his head from removing his hat. He pushed the outerwear aside and fished around in the pocket of the brown Harris tweed jacket he always had on and came out with a piece of paper. “Copied this down a few months ago from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He read it out.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
He handed over the torn scrap of paper, where he’d printed the quotation out in block letters. You had to love Tim. Eighty-one and studying Shakespeare and understanding it, too.
“You just happened to be carrying that around in your pocket?” Evon asked.
“Naw,” he answered, “I copied out a couple of passages from the plays I read that I’ve been looking at whenever I get to thinking a lot about Maria. Somewhere in fifty years, Cupid loses his blindfold. That’s the part I wonder about. I wonder how badly I disappointed her.”
“I can’t believe you weren’t good to her, Tim.”
“Tried to be. I just never was the kind to talk about my feelings. So she was never completely sure I had my whole heart in it. Looking back I think I did. But then again, you wonder if it’s just stuff you’re making up so you feel better.”
It was easier in some ways to cherish the dead. He knew, with more than a little remorse, that the Maria he mourned was not quite the woman he’d lived with for more than fifty years. He lacked her sharp tongue, for one thing, and thus he couldn’t really summon the angry words that escaped her every once in a great while, words that made his deflated hopeless heart flounder in his chest. But he remembered something that was not as clear in life—who she was to him, the casting that could be made by the needs she filled, the zones of need and pleasure. In memory, he did not deal with her full complexity. But he felt what their love meant to him.
“Still, it was worth every second,” he told Evon. “At least for me. I can only say what I used to tell my daughters when some boy would break their hearts. Can’t be that something makes you feel so good without it making you feel bad, too, now and then. It’s how life is.”
She took that in for a second and came around her desk. She thought she was going to pat his shoulder or touch his hand, but he opened his arms to her and held her against him. She realized she’d been desperate for that hug.
“I think we have work to do,” she finally said.
“More and more,” he said. He removed his coat, plopped himself down on her sofa, and handed over a thick file. It turned out there was a problem already. He explained why Dickerman was in a heat to get Cass Gianis’s fingerprints, but Greenwood County maintained they no longer had his ten-card. Like Cass’s blood specimen, the card had been obtained from the Kindle County Police Academy, to which Greenwood returned it after Cass’s guilty plea. Those prints in turn had been trashed when the county automated its fingerprint system a decade ago.
“Didn’t Greenwood print him again when he was arrested after the indictment?” Evon asked. She was back behind her desk, an inch of plate glass marked with a translucent green rim. Ramparts of paper rose there, with photos of Merrel’s kids in nice leather frames in a row on the far corner. Pictures of her other nieces and nephews occupied a shelf in her bookcase, and her awards from the Bureau and a color courtroom sketch of Evon on the stand during one of the Petros trials hung on the walls.
“You’d have thought,” Tim told her. “The best anybody can figure is they didn’t print him when he came in to surrender on the indictment, because they already had the other ten-card from Kindle County. They’d promised Cass’s lawyer, Sandy Stern, it would be a quickie deal, no more than an afternoon and Cass would be out on his own recognizance. They promised to keep looking, but I doubt anybody out there is gonna stay late to do it.
“Anyway,” he said, “I’ve been over by Tooley this morning. He gave me a subpoena for Cass to give fingerprints and whatnot. But I’m gonna have to chase around and find him. Ray Horgan already told Mel he won’t accept service on the subpoena. Said Paul just about busted a gut when he heard. Wants his brother left alone, after all Cass has been through. Sandy Stern won’t cooperate either. I get the point, but we gotta do what we gotta do.”
“Cass is living with Paul, right?”
“That’s what the newspapers said. Supposedly he wants to work on opening a charter school for ex-cons. But he’s kept a low profile. I talked to Stew Dubinsky and he says he hasn’t heard of any reporter seeing hide nor hair of Cass since he came home.”
“Maybe he went on vacation,” Evon said. “That’s what I’d do after twenty-five years inside.”
“I hope not. Dickerman’s ornery already.”
Greenwood County had also produced the color photographs the techs had taken in Dita’s bedroom the night of her death. Evon got up from her desk to examine them beside Tim. She had never really developed a taste for crime-scene photos. It wasn’t the blood and guts that bothered her. Playing field hockey at a world level, she’d seen more than her share of scalp wounds and teeth flying like popcorn kernels as the result of a misdirected stick. But the pictures always seemed undignified and voyeuristic. Here was someone, like Dita, who’d come to a tragic end, and you were looking at her as an exhibit, a collection of visible trauma, with no sense of the life that had animated her.
Tim on the other hand seemed to confront the photos with sad determination. There was nothing about it he liked either, she suspected, except its importance to the job. As she watched him and the intensity that still gripped him, she recalled a story Collins Mullaney had told her.
‘Timmy taught me a lot,’ Collins had said. ‘I remember, we pulled some floater out of the river near Industrial Pier. Gang thing, and Jesus, what they’d done to this boy. It took a lot to make me sick, but this did. “What’re we doing here, Timmy?” I asked. He didn’t take one second to answer. “Helping the rest of them be good. Proving to them that this here won’t be tolerated. So they know there’s reason to mind their p’s and q’s, and do unto others. Because you and I are out here rounding up the ones who don’t. That’s what we’re doin.” That was quite a speech. It never left my mind,’ Mullaney had told her.
The shots of Dita’s face and neck were revealing. Blood had coagulated in a thick clump at her crown and rusted the mass of black hair for several inches below. The scalp wound at the back of her head, portrayed in a close-up, was a smile about an inch across, the laceration bloated by the walnut-size hematoma beneath it. It looked like Cass—or Paul—had had one hand over her mouth, gripping damn tight, as he rattled her head back and forth against the headboard. On the right side of her jaw, just at the point where it met her skull—“mandibular condyle” was the term, she believed—there was a faint oblong bruise. And Cass or Paul had given her a solid whack across the left side of her face. Rich with blood, Dita’s rosy cheeks had bruised easily and the strafing of an open hand was clear, with three streaks left by the fingers. The lowest of them disappeared into a whorl of color and in a close-up, you could see a tiny break in the skin from which a trickle of blood had browned.
“That’s how you knew about the ring, right?” said Evon, pointing at the bruise on Dita’s cheek.
“Those clowns out there in Greenwood, they looked at me like I was the Wizard of Oz when I told them that. They’d been figuring she’d been punched. Shouldn’t be so catty about it. They were smart guys and all, ju
st took a fat paycheck and a quiet life. But clueless totally.”
“Tooley and the other lawyers have been telling me we have to prove that Paul owned that ring, by the way. They’d rather not just go by Georgia, especially since we promised her we weren’t going to question her again.”
Tim nodded, but he was preoccupied by something else. He shuffled through the photos.
“You know,” he said, “seeing these, I recall I got into a little something with the police pathologist out there in Greenwood. She was the same as the county sheriff’s police, not accustomed to homicides, and a little prickly about it. Wasn’t real happy to be getting pointers from an investigator. Looking at all of this, I wanted to say that slap on Dita’s cheek came several minutes before she got the wounds on the back of her head. Look here. See the difference in the color of the bruises. Bruising doesn’t continue long after death.” He flipped between the mark along the jaw, contrasting it with the reddish-purple circle on her cheek. “Look at this, too.” He pointed to the photo taken of Dita’s left hand. She had long, elegant fingers, admirable even after the purplish pooling of blood at the sides, which occurred postmortem. But that wasn’t what had Tim’s attention. There was a rusty smear on the left knuckle.
“Tech put a hemastick on that. It was her blood. And there were traces on the left side of her face. So my thought was that Dita wiped off her cheek, when that little cut started in bleeding. But that’s the only blood on her hands. She never reached back to touch her scalp wound. Must have passed out before she knew she was bleeding.”
“So what was the issue with the pathologist?”
“Seemed to me like Dita was with Cass or whoever for a while. He smacked her on the cheek, they talked, she wipes that little faint trickle of blood from the cheek, and then he wallops her against the headboard, maybe ten minutes later. Dr. Goren, she agreed that the slap came first. But she wasn’t with me about the color of the bruises—said that could have been related to the closeness of the vessels to the skin. And that tiny little cut would have been stanched when the assailant grabbed her.”