Page 52 of Dirty Looks

I thought I heard Derby mutter something about Margot being creepy under his breath, but I couldn’t be sure. Derby was a tall thin man with glasses and a pointed chin. He was towheaded and his hair had a mind of its own, no matter how ruthlessly he tried to comb it down. He was a smart cop anda whiz when it came to computers, and he led his crew well. But even he recognized there was something otherworldly about Doug’s abilities. Doug and his Uncle Ben both would have made Einstein look like a moron in certain circles.

While they were occupied getting the room set up, I noticed Oscar eyeing me warily. I held out the back of my hand and he came over and sniffed.

“You have excellent manners,” I told him, looking into black-button eyes and a face you couldn’t help but fall in love with. I let out a sigh and said, “Hell.”

Oscar took that as permission because he stuck his head under my hand and wouldn’t move until I scratched his ears.

“More of that later,” I promised him. “Conference rooms are meant for work. If you’re going to be a police dog you’ll have to learn that.”

He woofed softly and then trotted off to the sofa against the far wall, jumping up on it, turning around twice, and then making himself comfortable.

“Sorry I’m late,” Lieutenant Daniels said as she came in. “Was waiting on Cheney in the lab.”

Daniels was a stickler for the details—you had to be when you ran the crime-scene techs—but there was a kindness about her that made her relate well to victims. There’d been a time when she’d been my shoulder to cry on after a particularly violent case, and I’d never forget her compassion.

“We’re just getting set up,” Jack said. “Come on in. Pizza is on the way.”

“You read my mind,” Doug said. “It’s hard for my fingers to do the walking when my stomach is talking.”

I took a seat next to Jack at the conference table, and put my autopsy reports in front of me so they’d be readily available. The day had seemed like an eternity, and it felt like it had been aweek since I’d stood over Evie Lidle’s body instead of a little over twelve hours before.

Derby and Doug had their heads together, each of them sitting in front of their laptops, and one by one, items began to fill the digital screen along the wall. Daniels took a seat across from me and pulled a candy bar out of her pocket, and it reminded me of the Snickers I had yet to eat. I was trying to decide if it would ruin my dinner when Evie Lidle’s picture flashed on-screen.

It wasn’t the picture taken at the crime scene, but a school picture as she was dressed in her uniform with a white button-down shirt and a navy sweater with a logo over the pocket. Her smile was sweet and her eyes kind, and I hated that someone had decided she hadn’t deserved a chance to live the rest of her life.

Martinez’s suit was finally starting to show its wear. A five o’clock shadow hinted on his cheeks and he’d ditched the coat and tie. He’d rolled up his sleeves and unbuttoned his collar. This was his investigation, so we waited for him to start.

“Officers responded to a 911 call this morning at five thirty-eight from a passing jogger who discovered the body of Evie Lidle,” he said. Next to Evie’s school picture an image of her broken body appeared on-screen.

“Sweet Jesus,” Daniels said reverently.

I glanced at Doug to make sure he was okay, but his head was still buried in his laptop. He’d worked several cases with us before, and he was no stranger to death. But it wasn’t a career for everyone, and though his mind seemed decades older than his body Jack and I tried to keep an eye on how he handled things. Doug wanted to be a cop. He already had a bachelor’s degree and was working on his master’s. And he was valuable to the team. But Doug was still a kid in many ways.

Martinez continued. “An autopsy was conducted shortly after, determining cause of death as blunt force trauma tothe head. Forensics lab confirmed that the large rocks taken as evidence from the scene did have blood, tissue, and brain matter, indicating they were used as the murder weapon.

“The lab techs are still going through trash at the park and surrounding areas, but so far her clothes or the ligatures used to tie her hands and strangle her haven’t been recovered. Daniels and her team did recover a piece of chewing gum and a navy baseball cap from the scene. There’s a small embroidered logo in the corner in navy thread, but we’ve not found a match for it yet in the system. Not all logos are registered.”

There was a close-up shot of the logo. It looked like a Venn diagram made of a small, medium, and large triangle.

“Latent fingerprints from the murder weapon and taken from the victim haven’t turned up in the database either.”

Daniels hmmphed. “Not used to a life of crime. He left DNA all over that site.”

“Or maybe he’s never had one fight back before,” Martinez said. “We need to dig deeper into the Lidle family.”

Derby whistled. “Oh, that’s going to go over well.”

“I hope it does,” Martinez said. “Because we’ve been lied to more than once today. Put up our list of interviews from the day.”

Derby typed in commands, and driver’s license pictures of dozens of people appeared on the screen, including the elderly neighbors who had been camped out that morning, and several others I didn’t recognize. Plank had been busy canvassing the area.

“After interviewing the mother of the deceased, we determined that the victim had been staying at her grandparents’ home since Sunday morning because of a stomach virus. Another 911 call is placed just after noon from Robert and Kitty Lidle’s address. The call was made by the house manager, Astrid Nielsen. Kitty Lidle was found unresponsiveand taken to King George Memorial where she’s in the intensive care unit on a ventilator.”

Martinez shifted his attention to Daniels. “Daniels, your team collected items to have tested to see what Kitty had ingested to send her into respiratory failure.”

“That’s why I was hounding Cheney,” Daniels said. “We got negative results from the tea leaves, the chicken noodle soup, the bowls,andthe chamomile tea.”

I could see the frustration on Martinez’s face at the news.

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