A Perfect Grave Part 15

Nothing.

Strange.

Was she so stressed that her mind was playing tricks on her? Maybe it was the echo of her own sob.

No. She definitely heard something.

It came from the garage. Maybe it was Brady and his friends? She glanced at the clock. It was a bit early for him to be home from school just yet. Besides, he didn't like going in the garage much.

Neither did she.

It was like a mausoleum. That's where Jack spent a lot of time. A lot of his stuff was still out there. Stuff she had trouble selling, or giving away. She'd better go check because, if she didn't, it would trouble her tonight.

She took the key from the peg.

It was a two-car garage connected to the house with a breezeway. Rhonda hardly used it. This is silly. She was probably hearing things, she told herself, sliding the key in the side door.

Dust motes swirled in the columns of late-afternoon sunlight shooting through the side window. Standing in the doorway, with her hand on the handle, Rhonda looked around.

Three broken lawn mowers that he used to cannibalize for parts lined one wall. Two ladders were suspended on hooks on the opposite wall. Extra sheets of drywall and sc.r.a.p pieces of plywood stood in one corner. The tall refrigerator was in another corner. Brady's wading pool, his old tricycle, and baby things cluttered one area. Old baby toys and broken lawn furniture. The barbeque.

Reminders of happier days.

It was odd.

She could feel a presence.

Jack's workbench was still cluttered with old tools. Junk, really. And such a mess. She should just toss everything. Next to the bench stood the row of his old mismatched file cabinets where he kept G.o.d knows what. Landscaper stuff. Not the important papers. Those all went to the accountant and lawyers.

Nothing seemed out of place.

Maybe the neighbor's cat got in through a vent? Or a squirrel? Hopefully not a mouse.

No. It was nothing.

Rhonda tightened her hold on the door handle and prepared to leave. As she took a last look around, something caught her eye. The way the light reflected on the file cabinet. The middle drawer of the second cabinet was open.

Now that's strange.

They're all supposed to be locked. There's nothing important in there but she distinctly remembered locking them all. She looked at the stuff in the drawer. Just useless files on lawns and maintenance. But how could that drawer be open?

How could that be?

Maybe she'd forgotten?

Maybe she'd been out here looking through Jack's papers and had forgotten? She stood there thinking until she heard Brady's voice, faint, from the house.

"Hi, Mom, I'm home."

"I'm coming!" she called back.

This was silly.

She snapped the file drawer closed, then left, pulling the garage door closed behind her without seeing the stranger standing in the darkened corner next to the refrigerator.

He was holding a large knife.

And he was skilled at using it.

Chapter Twenty-One.

It was relentless.

Something familiar gnawed at Chuck DePew, something he felt could break this case wide open.

But what was it?

At the Washington State Patrol's Crime Lab in Seattle, DePew studied an enlarged photograph on his oversized computer monitor. He'd seen this before. But when? He thrust his hands into the pockets of his lab coat and ground his teeth; a lifelong habit signaling his Zen-like style of problem solving.

The image looked like a TV weather map, a confusion of isobaric contours, troughs, and radiating temperature patterns.

DePew then typed several commands. As the new data loaded, he took stock of his worktable with the evidence collected in and around the scene where Sister Anne Braxton was murdered.

The key item was a cast of a partial shoe impression taken from the alley behind her apartment, near the blackberry bush where the killer had tossed the knife. The cast was collected by Kay Cataldo's crew with the Seattle Police CSI unit. They'd done a nice job, producing a little work of art in dental stone that offered a three-dimensional copy of the partial.

A right shoe impression was the first thing DePew thought when Kay first showed it to him earlier. "Any chance you could help us out here, Chuck?" Kay's SPD unit was smaller than the WSP team and constantly overwhelmed. But then again, so was DePew.

"There's not much to go on here," he said.

"I'll give you my Sonics tickets if you guys can do anything with this and the lift of the partials we took from her apartment."

"Are they good?"

"The impressions?"

"The tickets."

"Center court, fifteenth row."

"I'll see what I can do," DePew winked.

He was a senior forensic scientist and a certified court expert. After setting aside his own file, he set to work on Cataldo's case. The nun's murder had profile and everyone in the building knew the pressure that came with a high-profile case. DePew photographed the cast of the partial shoe impression, then he loaded clean, clear images into his computer.

Next, he a.n.a.lyzed the information from the alley, comparing it with the cast-the soil, the depth, weather condition, the pressure and stress points of the partial impression.

Now, where things got tricky was with the partial impressions Kay's people took from the hardwood floor of the apartment. They'd found impressions in the blood that had pooled around her, but they were smeared, the quality virtually unusable. The curious thing was they were not indicative of a set of exit tracks. The killer likely removed his shoes until he was out of the building.

Very smart.

But he never thought about his entrance because beyond the blood, they got lucky. Invisible to the naked eye in the microscopic layer of dust on the hardwood floor, he left something. Something they could work with. Using an electrostatic lifter they got a couple of partials on the clear floor a few feet from Sister Anne's body.

A right shoe impression.

DePew a.n.a.lyzed the sharpest one, along with the field notes, photographed it, loaded it into his computer. And here we are: DePew's computer screen split and he set to work configuring the two photographs to the identical scale and att.i.tude.

Good, he thought.

Then he transposed one image over the other and began looking for points of comparison the same way he would examine fingerprints because DePew knew that shoe impressions can be as unique as fingerprints. The shape of the outsole, its size, its design, the material used to manufacture it, the wear patterns, the weight and gait of the wearer, all serve to create a unique impression.

And here, DePew thought as his computer beeped, we have a very consistent pattern of these right partials.

One taken from the murder scene. One taken from the alley where the murder weapon was found. He enlarged the transposed image dramatically, until it felt like the impressions had swallowed him.

The partials lacked any manufacturer's logo, lettering, or numbering, but that was no problem. DePew focused on the wear and cut characteristics. The edges had channeling, with an array of lugs and polygons; there was a waffle pattern, but here was the clincher: this mark on the fifth ridge, indicating a stone, or foreign object was wedged into it with this nice little "x" cut.

It is in both exhibits. DePew was getting ahead of himself but he would duly swear on the Holy Bible that this is the shoe of Sister Anne's killer.

Beautiful.

Now, why was that sense of familiarity gnawing at him even more?

By his calculations, DePew figured the shoe was a men's size 11, a North American sports shoe. DePew moved quickly to check the reference books of brands and manufacturers' designs and outsole producers, importers, and exporters who might know this impression.

But he stopped cold.

He had it.

DePew went to his file cabinet, flipped through case files until he found one in particular, pulled out a computer disk. Inserted it. He clicked through attachments and notes from the earlier case until he found images of shoe impressions.

He captured the outsole, configured it, then transposed it with the shoe impression from the nun's homicide. DePew a.s.sessed the characteristics. There was no way this was the same shoe. The earlier case was a male size 9, taken from a burglary at a gas station near Tacoma. They'd cleared that one and the offender was back in prison.

DePew was not concerned. In fact, he almost smiled.

The style and brand were definitely similar. In fact, DePew had a photograph of the type of shoe.

It was a sports shoe, a men's tennis shoe.

Standard state clothing that was issued only by the Washington Department of Corrections.

Whoever killed Sister Anne had done time.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Home from school, Brady came through the door the usual way.

A pack-drop to the hall floor and a beeline for the fridge.

"Hey, Mom."

"Have a good day?"

"Uhh-huh. No math homework. I thought we had chocolate milk."

"You finished it last night. How're you feeling?"

"Okay, I guess."

"Did you take your medicine at lunch?"

"Yup, did the doctor tell you what I got, or anything?"

Brady turned with the orange juice box he'd started at breakfast. "Today, I told Justin and Ryan about the MRI, how it was like going into a deep-sleep chamber in s.p.a.ce. They thought it was cool."

Rhonda watched his attention go to the papers, then to the booklet as he read the t.i.tle: Will I Go to Will I Go to Heaven? Heaven? She watched him blink a few times, open it, and begin reading. Awareness rolled over him and Rhonda felt the light in their lives darken. She watched him blink a few times, open it, and begin reading. Awareness rolled over him and Rhonda felt the light in their lives darken.

Brady didn't move.

She watched his chest rise and fall as he continued reading, understanding.

His eyes rose from the booklet to hers.

"Mom?"

"I know. We need to talk, sweetheart."

He set the booklet and the unfinished juice box on the counter.

"Let's go to your room."

Brady's room was all hard-core boy: walls papered with posters of Superman, King Kong, Spider-Man, and the Mariners; shelves lined with adventure books, model Blackhawk choppers and Humvees. In one corner, his skateboard rose like a rocket from his clothes heap. On his small desk, the secondhand computer Rhonda had picked up at a church donation sale. It was the best she could do. The N key stuck but Brady never complained.

Taking it all in, Rhonda succ.u.mbed to the reality that she might never see Brady's life go beyond his world right here and now. That she might never see him with his first girlfriend, his first car, never see him graduate from high school, go to college, start a career, get married, never hold her first grandchild.

"Don't cry, Mom."

Rhonda sat him on his bed next to her.