Part 33 (1/2)

”I don't know. I was at work.”

”She didn't mention looking up any old friends-”

”I told her to stay away from her old friends. She was, too. Like I told you before, the only suggestion I have is that b.a.s.t.a.r.d down the hall.”

”Okay.” They would have to interview the drug dealer again for any hint of where Kim had been headed, what plans had revolved through her little mind. She had learned that her grandfather had died in the building at 4950 Pullman. She should have been happy that he had not run out on her father as all had supposed...but perhaps not. Perhaps that made the ruination of Johnny's life all the more poignant.

But it had not depressed Kim. It energized her. Why?

The building- ”Mrs. Hammond.” His voice burst out so suddenly it startled him as well as the grieving woman. ”You said Kim worked one summer at city hall?”

”Yes.”

”Doing what?”

”Clerk-type stuff, I guess, for the zoning and planning office. Filing plans, typing up allotment forms.”

”Did she stay in touch with any of her coworkers there?”

”Kim wasn't the staying-in-touch type,” her mother said as if that were an endearing trait.

He tried to hone in by different means. ”She was in high school then? Did she get along with everyone in that office?”

Her brow smoothed out as she remembered a more hopeful time. ”She was only seventeen, and they made quite a pet of her at first. Then she said the older ladies got snooty, which probably meant she had gotten on their nerves. But there was one girl she liked-just out of college and young, so they had more in common. But I don't know her name, if that's going to be your next question.”

Frank smiled. ”It was, yes. Please try to remember.”

The woman tried, pressing her back into the sofa with her arms crossed. Sanchez raised an eyebrow at Frank but would wait until they left to ask why he asked.

”Sorry, I'm a total blank.”

”That's all right. It was just a hunch.”

”I remember she got pregnant just before the summer ended. I had hoped they might hire Kim to fill in during her maternity leave, but they didn't.”

”That's helpful. Thank you.” He stood up and gave her his card for the second time, asking her to call if she thought of anything else and telling her that they would be in the building for a while longer, reinterviewing her neighbors.

She pressed it into her palm and then crossed her arms again, balled fists underneath her armpits. ”You really think Johnny's father's body turning up is the reason Kim got killed?”

”Mrs. Hammond,” he confessed, ”I don't know what else to think.”

Theresa prodded a flattened McDonald's cup with her toe and decided it had been on the scene for years and was unlikely to have been on his body when it had been dumped. Besides, she couldn't see Van Horn eating in a McDonald's. John Q's, maybe.

Occasional bursts of sun made the buildings in the distance glitter as if studded by diamonds. The cries of birds and insects, one cla.s.s of animal thinking about migration and the other about death, filled the air. A perfect day for a stroll by the railroad tracks, except she wouldn't have considered strolling here without some sort of escort-in this case one of the patrol officers guarding the scene-and she'd rather have been strolling through her kitchen, deciding what to cook to entice her teenager out of bed. Eleven o'clock. Rachael would still be asleep, unless Harry decided to wake her.

The patrol officers had already walked a grid through the area, so she really didn't need to do this. Surely they would have found anything of significance. She knew she should just tell them to release the scene and go home. Frank would let her know if any significant facts developed from the interviews, and she could use the time to figure out a way to tell Leo about contaminating the victim's clothing with her pets' hairs.

Yet she continued to walk from the pool of dried blood to the train track and back, widening the swath with each step. Perhaps the killer had dropped something. How she would know that something when she saw it became the question, so any item that had not yet become encrusted by rain-soaked dirt bore closer scrutiny. So far she had not found an object to match that description.

The patrol officer watched her from the concrete platform, bored in his little cage of yellow tape. She'd have to release the scene after she finished-she couldn't justify tying up a road officer because she wanted to go home to her daughter. And the railroad wanted their train back.

A dirty matchbook, a bundle of filthy yarn. She walked on. The sun flowed through her hair to her scalp and she took off her sweater, tying it around her waist. The valley smelled of diesel fuel and dead leaves.

A broken plastic fork. A penny. A rumble sounded, and she looked up. The Red Line 11:08 chugged off to the west.

A used condom. A piece of surprisingly clean white paper.

She stepped carefully over a stand of dead goldenrod to pluck up a piece of torn paper. The piece had been torn from the upper left corner of an unlined spiral notebook but the black pencil used on the paper formed not words but a series of lines and dots, some very straight, some wavy, some forming another corner, the deep slashes against the white somehow reminiscent of- She turned her face up to the train in front of her. The rear edge of the boxcar, with its small rung at the bottom and the coupling sticking out, matched the piece of drawing. Someone had been sketching a train.

She couldn't prove it without finding his sketch pad but would bet that Van Horn had been drawing one of his favorite items-a train-at some time in the previous day. Standing near the tracks, where a train rattling by would deaden the sound of someone approaching from behind, ready to bludgeon, catch, bundle into a waiting car. Perhaps the victim's hand clenched on his drawing, ripping the paper. Perhaps the notebook had been left behind at the site...by a train track. There were too many miles for herself or the officers to scour. She should start with the preservation headquarters, the most logical place for Van Horn to do his sketching.

CHAPTER 41.

SAt.u.r.dAY, SEPTEMBER 11.

PRESENT DAY.

Frank knocked on the door. The Brookpark bungalow was neatly kept, with the gra.s.s trimmed and the leaves raked and only a few scattered toys to make it look homey. At least on the outside.

With Sanchez at his side, he knocked again, hoping the husband would not be at home. When he interviewed married women, in Frank's experience, husbands always took up too much time. They wanted to know everything. He would be the first to admit that men were, in general, paranoid. Maybe they'd learned to be while evading saber-toothed tigers or something.

The inner door swung inward, pulled by a short, slender woman with light brown hair and a chubby baby perched on one hip. She left the screen door in place. Behind her, a little boy as round with baby fat as his sibling peered at them with dark eyes, his hands reflexively clenching a Tonka truck. He must have been the pregnancy that engorged the woman while she worked with Kim Hammond at the zoning and planning office.

”Sonia Kettle?” Frank asked.

”Yes?”

They showed her their badges, told her their names, and said they were there to ask about Kim. That this did not seem to surprise her at all convinced Frank they were on the right track. She pushed the screen door open with her free hand and told them to come in.

There were more than a few scattered toys on the inside of the house. In fact, the living room seemed more like a well-scrubbed toy box than a place for adults. No husband emerged, though a motorcycle magazine and a pair of men's sungla.s.ses implied that he did exist. Good thing, Frank thought, since Sonia Kettle appeared to have her hands full. As soon as they sat at the kitchen table, the baby started to squirm and the little boy plunked the Tonka on Frank's knee.

”I have a truck,” he declared, as if daring Frank to deny it.

”That's great.” Now go away.

”I read about it in the paper,” Sonia said. ”First about the body in the lake, and then the next day I caught a little paragraph somewhere about it being Kim. I couldn't believe it.”

”You worked with her in the zoning and planning office?” Sanchez began.

”Yes. That was...geez, four, five years ago, I think, right before I had Brent. Kim was just a kid. So was I.”

”The back goes up,” Brent continued, demonstrating how the dumping part of his dump truck worked by unloading a Super Ball onto the oak table.