Shuffle: A Novel Part 2

"Sorry sis, these are crime scene photos. You don't want to see them."

"Come on, I can handle it." It's true, I definitely have a stomach for gore. I love watching crime procedurals and horror movies. Callie and I watch them together. We always know who the murderer is before the TV police do. It's a point of pride.

"Those are fake bodies," she said. "This is a real one. That murder from this summer."

"Oh, right." A transient had been strangled in the woods just outside city limits on the Fourth of July, while I'd been away. I heard about it from Callie. It was her first big case. Otherwise it had barely been a blip on my radar. No one at school was even talking about it anymore. The victim didn't have any family to raise a stink, and the killing seemed pretty unmotivated. At least, that's what I'd gathered from the little I did know.

Callie had been pulled off the case to attend to other duties, but she was still working on it in her free time. She said that something about it just didn't make sense. Something was missing.

"He didn't have a wallet. Fine, he was a homeless guy. He could have hitchhiked here from Denver or Colorado Springs. He didn't have any money." Callie took a sip of what smelled like jasmine tea. "Again, he was homeless. n.o.body bats an eye at that. Plus, the killer might have taken a couple seconds to rifle through his pockets, just in case." She put down her mug and bit her lip.

"Does this mean I get to be on the case?" I asked. "I promise I won't look at official reports or anything that needs to be kept secret."

Callie cleared her papers away, stuffing them in a large file folder. I guess looking at pictures of a dead body without permission isn't exactly the ethical way to go. I still wanted to help, though. Anything beat cracking the first books of the school year. Homework, blech.

"Here's the deal," she said. "I'll let you in on a few details, as long as you don't tell anybody." She fixed me with a serious police officer's glare. "I mean anybody. Not even Ellen."

I crossed my fingers and held them up to her. "Sister swear," I said. A sister swear is sacred. Callie and I have rules that neither of us ever break, and sister swear is one of them.

"Okay," she said. "You're officially secretly deputized."

"Can you do that?"

"Nope."

I laughed and dumped my backpack on the kitchen floor. Callie had left out a notepad that she was using to write down ideas and important facts about the case.

"So," she said, tapping her pen rapidly against the table. "He didn't have wallet, I.D. or money on him. His fingerprints were taken and he was eventually indentified as Ernest Tucker Smith, born in Memphis in 1969. A string of jobs, not much else on record about him. A couple citations for vagrancy in cities where they still have that type of law on the books. But here's the thing."

She turned the notepad around and indicated a handwritten list of items in the bottom right corner. "Here's what he did have in his possession at the time of the murder. Anything seem weird to you?"

I glanced over the list: i 1 pack Marlboro cigarettes a half empty i Flannel shirt a soiled i Denim jacket a soiled, ripped i Jeans - soiled i Boxer shorts a soiled i Disposable razor blade i Keys i Spool of thread i 3 scratch lottery tickets a no winners i Bic lighter i Cheap plastic reading gla.s.ses i Sports section of the Stevens Peak Journal from July 3, 2011 (day before murder) "Was that all he was wearing?" I asked. "I mean, it lists his outfit, right down to the boxer shorts."

"That's all," said Callie. "The whole kit and kaboodle, as Mom used to say."

I smiled fondly. She had liked that phrase. Even used it in her suicide note. I sucked in a breath and took another look at the list. "So where are his shoes?"

"Exactly." Callie pulled the list away. "He didn't have any. No shoes or socks. And his feet, well, they weren't exactly manicured and exfoliated, but there wasn't any sign of laceration or the type of calluses you'd develop if you were to regularly go barefoot."

"So why do they think that is?"

"The reigning theory is that the killer accidentally got some sort of incriminating evidence on the shoes and had to destroy them. If it was a s.e.xual asphyxiation thing..."

"s.e.m.e.n. Yuck."

"Right. Or fingerprints that the killer couldn't make completely sure were wiped off, or really anything else of that nature. Saliva. People these days are scared of leaving anything behind for the lab."

"But you don't think that's why he's missing his shoes."

Callie shook her head, squinting down at the list. "It just doesn't fit my picture of the killer. Why be that careful about just one item? Why both shoes? And the socks? No, there's some reason they were removed. Some message."

"What, you mean something was written on the feet?"

Callie cracked a wry smile. "No, silly, I think even the police would have figured that one out. I mean something symbolic."

"He's trying to communicate. Like the Zodiac killer. That's so exciting!"

"Something like that. Now, take another look at the list."

She handed it back, and I pored over it again. A couple minutes ticked by, but Callie was patient. She wanted me to think hard, to check her logic. So I tried to put myself in Ernest Tucker Smith's shoes a er, you know what I mean a and pictured myself carrying all that stuff with me. Where would I keep my lighter? Scratch tickets? Hmm...

One question kept nagging me.

"Why would I carry keys?"

Callie clapped her hands, eyes lighting up. "Right! That's what I thought! The senior officers on the case didn't look twice at them, just thought, 'Well, transients tote around lots of random junk.'"

"I mean, I'm homeless, right? I don't have a car. I don't even have a wallet, why would I have keys?"

"Good." Callie snapped up her notebook. "You've been a big help. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going crazy."

"Wait, where are you going?" She was gathering up the file folder and clipping her utility belt back around her waist. "You aren't going back on duty, are you?"

"Nope. I'm going to go get those keys out of evidence. Do a little old-fashioned sleuthing."

"Sweet! Can I come?"

"Oh, so now you want to get back in the squad car?"

I stood up and grabbed my purse, pulling my Chucks back on. "The squad car is my favorite. I love the squad car. Whatever made you think otherwise?"

"Ha ha. Fine, but you get to sit and wait in it patiently while I'm in the station, and whatever else happens, I do all the talking. It's going to take a favor to even get those keys out of evidence."

Now my eyes lit up. "You already have people down at the station who owe you favors?"

Callie sighed deeply. "Nope."

I laughed at her and we swung out the door, even remembering to turn off all the lights. Mom would have been proud.

Half an hour later, the thrill of the chase was beginning to wear off. I was sitting in the squad car, fiddling with all the stuff I wasn't supposed to touch. Callie was in the police station. She'd been in there for a long and boring amount of time. I put my feet up on the dash, letting my hand trail back to graze the steel mesh cage that separates front from back. It was getting a little claustrophobic. I decided to get out, just for some air.

Sweet, sweet air.

Well, as long as I was outside anyway, why not go check on Callie? I was a little nervous walking into a police station, but I figured I was just visiting a family member in her place of business. Like take your sister to work day. With bullets.

Okay, I admit, seeing the guns strapped to everyone's waist is a tiny bit disquieting. I'd almost gotten used to Callie's. It helped when she told me that she'd named it "Buster," because then I could make fun of her. Don't tell anyone this, but when she's feeling especially amorous toward it, she shortens its name to "Bubbies." Almost as bad as Britta's dog, right? At least the dog is alive. And vaguely cuddly.

It was pretty quiet inside the station. There was one drunk guy in a row of plastic chairs, waiting to be processed or something. There were a lot of uniformed people in cubicles, typing away on outdated computers. I decided to feign confidence and went right up to the front desk.

"Can I help you?" asked a large, grizzled man. He looked up from his crossword, peering over his reading gla.s.ses at me.

"Yeah, I'm looking for Detective Calinda Wild. I'm her sister."

"Sit there. I'll page her." He pointed to the seat next to the drunk guy, who was now drooling on himself. No thank you.

"I think I'll just go find her myself," I said, voice rising as I talked quickly. "I think she's in Evidence, which..." I craned my neck around the desk sergeant and saw a hallway that ended in big industrial double doors. According to my TV knowledge, that was either the medical examiner's freezing room full of dead guys, the big room where they keep all the boxes of old evidence, or just a couple doors leading to the outside. I decided to gamble. "... which is right down that hallway. Thank you so much."

"Now hold your horses," is what I think the desk sergeant said, but I was past him in a flash and I didn't look back.

I did a little skip-hop down the hallway, awkwardly walking as fast as I possibly could. There were offices to either side of me with frosted gla.s.s windows, behind which were blurry shapes. I got to the double doors and pushed one of them open.

It was heavy. Geez. My sister must be packing more muscle than I thought.

Moment of truth. I stuck my head inside and...

There was Callie, arguing with some guy in a little cage, guarding rows and rows of boxes stacked neatly on shelves.

"Hi ho," I called.

She turned around, her face clouding over. "I told you to wait in the car, Evi. You aren't supposed to be in here."

I shrugged. "I got bored."

She indicated the man in the cage and said, "Toby, this is my sister. She's a junior in high school and she's the biggest troublemaker I've never had the pleasure of arresting. Evi, this is Lieutenant Tobias Collier."

"Hey," I waved. Lieutenant Collier was a surprisingly handsome older guy, with short brown hair and a kind smile that crinkled the edges of his eyes. He was shuffling and reshuffling a deck of worn cards.

"Toby's one of the best, but he's been on desk duty since a meth dealer shot out his knee a couple months ago up in Oldtown."

Oldtown is an ancient section of Stevens Peak that extends from the foothills up a narrow gap into the mountains. It's where the miners used to live and gamble their silver away. Now the place is filled with dingy bars, tenement housing and graffiti.

"Ouch. Sorry."

"Hey, I can still play poker. I'm a lucky man," he replied pleasantly. "Except when your sister comes bugging me about evidence I can't release."

"I was on the case." Callie jumped back into their argument enthusiastically. "I'm still actively investigating it, with approval from the Captain. I have the files at my desk; you're telling me you can't let me look over the evidence?"

"Look over, yes. Not take. It's protocol, kid."

Callie sighed and wrinkled her nose in disappointment. She looks disgustingly cute when she makes that face, like a little girl, but she caught herself and resumed a neutral expression. The expression of a calm, reasonable police detective.

"Fine," she said, sweeping her arm grandly as though she were the one extending the favor. "We will sit here and look over the evidence. You don't mind about my sister, do you? She's thinking of a career in law enforcement herself."

Not true. But apparently effective, as Lieutenant Collier brightened immediately. "Oh, wonderful! What branch are you interested in?"

Callie nodded at me to play along, so I said, "I want to investigate murders, like my sister." Technically not a lie, for the moment. He let himself out of his cage, behind the chain links that protected the boxes of evidence from ill-intentioned interlopers like the Wild sisters. I could see that he walked slowly, with the help of a cane. My sister followed him with her eyes, a pained expression on her face.

"I don't know," I whispered. "The cane's kind of hot, right?"

I can always, always tell when Callie has a crush on someone. And she did what she always does when I b.u.t.t in. She punched me in the arm.

"Hey, police brutality!"

A couple minutes later, we were standing over a plastic table with the contents of the evidence box spread out before us. There were the scratch tickets. They looked frayed at the edges, and the dates on them were old.

"That's a long time to be carrying around used scratch tickets," I said.

"Check out the other side," Lieutenant Collier suggested.

I turned one over, and on the back found a cartoon lady in a bikini spreadeagled across a muscle car. MEGABILLIONS.

"Ew." I dropped the card like a hot potato.

There was the Bic lighter, the packet of cigarettes, the newspaper. Everything. The boxer shorts hadn't even been laundered. I gave them a wide berth.

"These are what we a what I'm after," said Callie, catching herself. She picked them up and they jangled in her hand. "Let's take a look, Evi, and see what we can see. Toby, do you know if anyone closely inspected these keys when they were brought in?"

"Not as far as I know. Everyone was looking for the shoes and the garrotte. Nothing else seemed particularly consequential, especially since he didn't have I.D. When his fingerprints got a hit on the database and we learned who he was, and that he didn't have any property holdings or automobiles of any kind, we figured he just found someone else's keys and picked them up."

"That does seem probable," said Callie, thoughtfully. "But here's another thought a what if they were planted on him by the killer? Look..."

She splayed out the contents of the ring across her palm. There were three keys total, two bigger and one smaller. She pointed to the bigger ones. "These are clearly old and worn out; the grooves are barely there anymore. And there are no codes on them, no DO NOT DUPLICATES. These have got to be from, like, the seventies. But this one..."

Callie turned her attention to the smaller key on the ring. It was brighter, a little silver thing with a layer of blue rubber covering the bow. The rubber was stamped with a number: 112. "Evi, does this look familiar to you?"

"Yeah, actually. But I can't place it."

Lieutenant Collier piped up. "It looks like a key to a safe deposit box or... No, even those are bigger. Maybe a bike lock."

"112," muttered Callie. "Why would that be printed on a bike lock? It looks like a "

" a a locker number," I supplied. "Sometimes malls have lockers like that, for big bags so you can store them while you shop."

Callie snapped her fingers. "I know where I've seen a key like that before. Why didn't I notice it when I first processed the evidence? Ugh, I'm so stupid; I wasn't looking properly..."

Lieutenant Collier patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. "Hey kiddo, you're only human."

I popped my knuckles loudly. "Where?"

Callie dropped the keys back into the evidence box and flipped a notebook open from her waist. She wrote the number down. 112. Then she sighed grimly.

"The library."

Ten minutes later, we were staring at the bay of beat-up book lockers on the second floor of the public library. I don't think either of us had been in here since Mom died. I guess it's a good thing we were together.