Look Closer

59 Jane

Jane Burke drives back to the Betancourt house at the end of the longest day of her career on the force, memories from high school occupying her thoughts.

“Rob,” she says into her cell phone, her AirPods tucked in her ear.

“Hey, Jane,” says Sergeant Robert Dalillo of their sister department, Grace Park Police. “I hear you guys actually had a real crime committed over there.”

“And guess who caught it?”

“Yeah? Good for you. What do you need?”

“You remember Simon Dobias from high school?”

“Um . . . no. Should I? Was he my grade or yours?”

“Mine,” says Jane. “Real smart kid. Valedictorian. Spoke at graduation.”

“Didn’t know that many kids younger than me.”

“Okay, well, anyway, your records people pulled a complaint filed by Simon Dobias back in ’04.”

“This is related to your homicide?”

“Well, who knows, but I was wondering if you could give me everything you guys have on him. Simon Dobias. D-O-B-I-A-S.”

“Okay, sure, Jane. First thing in the morning. You think a kid from your class did this woman?”

“Way too early to know,” says Jane as she curbs her car on Lathrow by the Betancourt house. “Talk to you tomorrow. Gotta run.”

“Tell me you haven’t been here all day,” Jane says to Ria Peraino from Major Crimes forensics, who greets Jane at the front door of the Betancourt home.

“No, I went home, put the kids to bed, and came back. I knew you’d be busy with other things awhile. Besides, this is easier to do at night. There’s so much sunlight streaming into this house during the day, with all these windows.”

Jane gloves up, slips rubbers over her shoes, and follows Ria’s careful route up the winding staircase to the second floor, to the landing where the action happened, where the offender struck Lauren, subdued her, and put the noose around her neck.

Ria douses the wood floor with luminol from a spray bottle, the whoosh-whoosh reminding Jane of how badly her own apartment needs cleaning. “Ready?”

“Ready,” says Jane.

Ria flicks off the hallway lights, plunging them in darkness. Glowing blue patterns emerge along the second-floor hallway, dots and small puddles and streaks, the chemiluminescence reaction caused by the luminol mixing with traces of iron from the blood.

As always, there is more blood than one would think. Spatter on the hallway floor, coming in a small inkblot pattern in an area roughly between the bannister and the antique table.

“The offender hit her on the right back side of the head, probably right here,” says Ria, her pointed finger visible only by contrast with the blue-glowing blood. “The thickest blood droplets are usually the closest, then the droplets get smaller as the distance from the wound increases.”

Jane follows the line with her eyes.

“Not a lot of blood, all in all, but the head wound wasn’t that grave.”

“Then there’s more blood over closer to the little hallway table,” says Jane. “Where we found the phone.”

“Yeah, that’s interesting, isn’t it?”

Ria resprays the luminol solution onto the blood over by the table, lighting it up in an even brighter blue glow.

“Blood smears,” Ria says. “The phone slid across the floor a few feet, short of the table. Then it slid a second time all the way under the table.”

Jane sees it. The first smear stops, then starts again in a slightly different direction, maybe a ten- or fifteen-degree difference in angle, before disappearing under the table.

“So here’s what’s weird for me,” says Ria. “The first smear of blood, okay. That’s the phone sliding across the floor from where the struggle happened. The phone has a bit of blood on it, and it takes the blood for a ride.”

“Right . . . ?”

“That could have happened a number of ways. Most likely, the offender subdues her, catches her up here in the hallway, hits her, causing a blood spray, then she falls to the floor and the phone goes sliding away.”

“Maybe the offender threw the phone away,” Jane says. “To keep it away from her.”

“Maybe. Or maybe she dropped it and reached for it and knocked it away by accident, while struggling. Who knows? That’s not the problem. The phone sliding across the floor the first time isn’t my problem.”

“What’s your problem?”

“The phone sliding the second time. It’s a slight difference in angle, right?”

“Yeah, no question.”

“It’s a second, independent movement of the phone.”

“Agreed,” Jane says. “The phone was moved a second time. It slid across the floor, probably during the struggle, then slid a second time at a slightly different angle. Maybe . . . maybe she dove for it again, desperately trying to call 911. Or maybe the offender kicked it away, to make sure it stayed away from her grasp.”

“Sure, all possible in theory, but here’s the thing,” says Ria. “If you swat or kick or push a phone to make it move across the floor, you’re probably going to come in contact with the floor itself, right?”

“I . . . I suppose it’s likely, yes.”

“It’s very likely, Jane. If I dive for a phone in a desperate attempt to reach it, that first trail of blood that we see? I’d be diving right into it. I’d mess it all up. It wouldn’t look like this pristine line.”

“So nobody dove across the floor for it. How about kicking it?”

“Well, nobody stepped into the pristine line of blood, either. No shoe prints.”

“Okay, then they could have stood to the side, away from the original blood line, and lightly kicked the phone under the table. That would work, wouldn’t it?”

Ria turns on the lights.

“Well, yeah,” Ria says. “But isn’t that weird?”

Jane takes a moment to adjust her eyes.

“I mean, who are we talking about? There are only two people in this hallway, Jane. The offender and the victim. The victim isn’t going to walk over and calmly stand to the side and gently kick that phone under the table like she would tap in a putt on the eighteenth hole.”

“Of course not,” Jane says. “The victim wouldn’t be doing anything calmly. She was struggling to survive an attack. It must have been the offender.”

“Agreed. But while Lauren is still alive, the offender isn’t doing anything calmly or carefully or gently or methodically, either. Not until the victim is dead. Until the struggle is over. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” Jane takes a breath and thinks about it. “The phone was moved by the offender, and it was moved after Lauren was dead.”

“So picture it.” Ria walks over to reconstruct the theory. “After she’s dead, the offender walks over and is careful to avoid stepping in the original blood, and . . .” She kicks with her left foot toward the table. “He kicks the phone under the table, careful not to make contact with the floor.”

Jane gives it some thought, nods her head. “I agree, that’s probably how it happened,” she says.

“But why kick it under the table?”

“To . . . to hide it. No?”

Ria doesn’t think much of that theory. “Jane, by that point, Lauren is hanging from the rafters. There’s blood. The offender has to know there’s going to be an investigation. Cops are going to scour this scene. He thinks the police won’t look under a coffee table that’s five feet from where the victim was subdued?”

“Okay, but look, Ria, criminals make mistakes all the time. Especially if they aren’t pros. Especially if this was heat of the moment. He’s just killed Lauren, he’s freaking out, he sees that phone, and he kicks it under the table. He won’t win any awards for intelligence, I grant you that, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen the way I’m saying.”

Ria shakes her head.

“What am I missing?” Jane asks.

Ria shrugs. “What you’re saying, that may be right. He sees the phone and panics and kicks it under the coffee table.”

“Right.”

“But why not take it with him?”

“Why not— Huh.” Jane starts to pace, as she usually does when working through something, but thinks better of it, considering the fragility of the crime scene. “Okay,” she says. “I’m the offender. I’m having an affair with Lauren. We have burner phones, and we’re using them for one reason and one reason only, to send each other little love notes.”

“Right.”

“I’ve just killed Lauren,” Jane goes on, “maybe premeditated, maybe more of a heat-of-passion thing, and there I see her pink burner phone on the floor. I know what that phone represents. I know if the cops get inside that phone, they’ll read all our text messages, they’ll know all about our affair. So I walk over to that phone . . .”

“And you kick it under the table?” Ria says. “Knowing we’ll find it?”

“No. I take it.” Jane looks at Ria. “I take it with me. I don’t leave the phone lying there for the cops to find. I take it with me, so the police have no idea it even exists. The police would never know it exists. That’s the point of a burner. You can’t trace it back to an owner.”

“So why kick it under the table, knowing we’ll find it?” Ria says.

Jane throws up her hands. “He wanted us to find it. He didn’t want to be too obvious about it—he didn’t want to put it in a gift box with a bow on it. He made it look like he was trying to conceal it by kicking it under the table. But like you said, he had to know we’d look under a damn table right next to the crime scene.”

Ria nods. “He wanted us to find it.”

“He wanted us to find it.” Jane chews on that. “He wanted us to focus on the person on the other end of those text messages, Lauren’s boyfriend.” She looks at Ria. “Holy shit.”

“So maybe it wasn’t the boyfriend who did this,” says Ria. “And maybe we should no longer be referring to the offender as a he.”

Jane runs her fingers through her hair. “You’re blowing my mind here at the end of a long day,” she says. “I need to think about this.”

“Didn’t mean to complicate your life,” says Ria.

Jane smiles at her. But the smile doesn’t last long.

“So maybe Lauren wasn’t the only one in this love affair who was married,” she says. “Maybe Lauren’s boyfriend was married, too. His wife finds out about the affair, kills Lauren, and puts the whole thing on her cheating husband.”

Ria’s turn to smile. “The fantasy of every woman who’s ever been cheated on,” she says. “Kill two birds with one stone.”