12th of Never

Chapter 27

THE DAPPER CHARLIE Clapper was a homicide cop before he became director of forensics, and we were lucky to have him. He was thorough, insightful, and after he pointed out the evidence, he got out of the way.

Now he led us to the frozen-foods section, and Conklin and I got our first look at the primary scene.

Blood spatter, mostly of the arterial kind, had sprayed the contents of the freezer and the doors on both sides of the shattered glass. There was a long smear of blood on the unbroken bottom half of one door, showing where Harriet Adams had slid down after taking those shots.

An open handbag lay at the edge of a puddle made up of water, blood, and ice cream. The pool had been entirely corrupted by the EMTs’ attempt to save Harriet Adams’s life.

Conklin and I gaped at the number and assortment of footprints, drag marks, handprints, and gurney-wheel tracks running in and out of the pool.

“Textbook example of EMTs—evidence-mangling technicians—at work,” Clapper said. “Unless there’s a signed death threat in the victim’s handbag, we’ll never solve the case out of this.”

Conklin said to Clapper, “You have a picture of the victim?”

“The hospital just sent it,” he said. He pulled up a photo on his mobile phone. I took a look.

Harriet Adams was on a metal table with a sheet pulled up to her chin.

Conklin asked Clapper, “Can you make a call? Find out what she was wearing? Find out if she wore toenail polish?”

“I’ll be back,” I said.

I called Joe from the soup-and-nuts aisle. He said Julie was sleeping. He didn’t want to wake her to take her temperature. I asked him a lot of questions: Was she hot? How did she look? Did he think maybe a run to the hospital was in order? Joe talked me down, and then I called Brady.

“You need a senior team on this,” I told him. “We’ll take over again after we interview our person of interest.”

Once again, Conklin and I bucked the crowd outside the food store on our way to the squad car.

“What are your thoughts?” I asked my partner as we pulled out and headed east toward Brannan Street.

“It’s crazy, Lindsay. The scene is exactly what the professor said he dreamed—except for one thing. He dreamed that the victim was shot dead in the store.

“He didn’t get that right, but he nailed everything else, down to the green glass beads and the blue paint on her toenails. What the hell are we dealing with? A guy reports that he’s going to kill someone—and then he does it?

“He’s crazy or he’s messing with us, one or the other,” Conklin said. “Right?”

He leaned on the horn, then switched on the siren. It was as if the traffic were welded into one piece.

“Right,” I said.