Redemption

Chapter 10

“What are we doing here, Decker?” asked Jamison. “You never said.” She added under her breath, “As usual.”

Decker didn’t appear to have heard her. He was staring at various spots in the living room of the Richardses’ old home, particularly the floor. In his mind he dialed back to that night and laid what was there on top of what he was seeing right now.

And they tallied pretty much exactly.

“Rain.”

“What?” said Jamison, looking confused.

“It rained the night of the murders at the Richardses’ home. Bucketed down. Started at around six-fifteen and continued until after Lancaster and I got there. It was a whopper of a storm. Lots of thunder and lightning.”

“Yeah, his lawyer mentioned that. So what?”

Decker pointed to the floor. “There were no wet footprints inside the house other than those of the first responders. No traces of mud or gravel. And Mary and I and the techs put on booties.”

“So how could the killer, who clearly came after the rain was pouring down, have not left any wet marks on the floor or carpet?” She paused. “Wait a minute, you didn’t think of this until now?”

Decker’s eyes kept roaming the room.

“Decker, I asked you...”

“I know what you asked, Alex,” he said heatedly.

She stiffened at his harsh words.

Not meeting her gaze, Decker said, “I found the print and the blood trace on the wall switch in the living room. It’s where someone would put their hand if they were going to hit the light. We had the tech lift it. We ran the print through the databases and Hawkins’s name got kicked out.”

“Why was he in the system? Finger’s files didn’t say. You said he’d never been in trouble with the law before.”

“His old job was with a company connected to a defense contractor. He’d had to pass a background check and have his prints on file because of his employment there.”

“So from that point on?”

“Hawkins was our prime — well, really only — suspect.”

“How long did all that take?”

“We got the ID on the print around one in the morning. We immediately went looking for Hawkins after getting his address. He wasn’t home when we got there. But his wife and daughter were. They had no idea where he was.”

“Where did you find him?”

“We put out a BOLO and a patrol car spotted him a couple hours later walking down a street over on the east side of town. They arrested him and brought him in to the station on suspicion of murder. Lancaster and I met him there.”

“Walking? Didn’t he have a car?”

“An old clunker. It was parked on the street in front of his house when we got there looking for him. We confirmed later it was the only car they owned. With the rain and cold temperatures, when we arrived, we couldn’t tell if it had been driven recently or not. Although by the time we got there, it would have been hours after the murders were committed. The engine wouldn’t have been warm anyway. But we later checked with neighbors and they told us the car had been there all day and night. Even so, we did check the car’s exterior and tires for any trace from the Richardses’ house, but if he had driven it back there after the murders the heavy rain would have washed anything like that away. We didn’t have a warrant, so the interior of their house was going to have to wait to be searched.”

“So what was Hawkins’s story?”

In Decker’s mind, he and Lancaster walked into the same interrogation room where they had interviewed Susan Richards. Same mustard yellow walls. Same sort of person sitting in that chair. The accused. A hunted animal looking for a way out.

“He knew his rights. He wanted a lawyer. We told him one was on the way, but that if he wanted to answer some questions, it would help us eliminate him as a suspect. But if he didn’t, that was okay too. We needed to legally cover our butts.”

“Did you tell him you had his print at the crime scene?”

“We were holding that back as a trap. We’d gotten search warrants by then, so another team was tearing his house and car apart looking for any trace, and the gun used in the murder. As you know, they later found it behind a wall in his closet.”

“Meaning he had to go back home and hide it. And his wife and daughter didn’t know about this how?”

“Lisa Hawkins was really sick, of course, and slept in another bedroom. The daughter, Mitzi, answered the door basically in her underwear. She looked like crap. High as a kite on something. She could tell us nothing. We had to go to Mrs. Hawkins’s bedroom to see her. She couldn’t even get out of bed. She was basically in in-home hospice.”

“Damn,” said Jamison. “Last thing she needed was for this to drop in her lap.”

“She was really upset. Wanted to know what was going on. But she was making no sense, and I’m not sure she could even process what we were telling her. And her stoned daughter couldn’t either. Between the two of them, Hawkins could have driven his car through the front of the house and I don’t think they’d have noticed.”

“Did Hawkins answer any questions?”

“The uniforms told him what he was charged with when they arrested him. But no other details. I told him basically what had gone down.”

“What was his reaction?”

Now Decker’s mind fully engaged with the memory. He was no longer in the Richardses’ old home. He was in the interrogation room with the younger Lancaster sitting next to him and the still living Hawkins across from him. The man was tall and lean, but strongly built, before the cancer came to tear him down. His face was ruggedly handsome, and Decker remembered his hands being strong-looking and heavily callused. They could have easily strangled the life out of a young girl.

“Mr. Hawkins, while we’re waiting for your PD to be assigned, can you clear up a few points for us?” said Decker. “It would be a big help, but you have the right to refuse to answer, just to be clear.”

Hawkins settled his arms over his chest and said, “Like what?”

“Like where were you tonight between seven and nine-thirty or so?”

Hawkins scratched his cheek. “Taking a walk. Been walking all night. Was doing that when your boys picked me up. No law against walking.”

“In the pouring rain?”

Hawkins touched his wet clothes. “And here’s the proof. When they picked me up, that’s what I was doing. Honest to God.”

“Where were you walking?”

“All over. Had to think.”

“What about?”

“None of your beeswax.” He paused. “And, hold on, they never told me who was killed.”

Lancaster told him who and where.

“Hell, I don’t know those people.”

Decker said casually, “So you’ve never been to that house?”

“Never. No reason to.”

“You see anybody on your walk who can corroborate your story?”

“Nope. It was raining. Nobody was dumb enough to be outside, except me.”

“You ever been to the American Grill on Franklin Street?” asked Lancaster.

“I don’t eat out much. Can’t afford it.”

“You ever run into the owner?”

“And who’s that?”

“David Katz.”

“Never hearda him.”

Lancaster described him.

“Nope, doesn’t ring a bell with me.”

A far slimmer Ken Finger, Hawkins’s court-appointed attorney, arrived just then, and Hawkins was compelled to open his mouth and provide a court-ordered cheek swab of his DNA.

Hawkins asked Decker what he was going to do with that sample.

“None of your beeswax,” Decker replied.

Decker looked at Jamison after describing this back-and-forth to her. “And later that morning, the search team found the gun hidden behind a loose section of wall in Hawkins’s closet. Ballistics matched the bullets taken out at the postmortem.”

“And the DNA from the cheek swab?”

“It took a while to get the results back, but they matched the trace under Abigail Richards’s fingernails.

“Case closed at that point.”

“Apparently.”

Decker looked at the floor again. “Except for no traces from the rain.”

“He could have had another pair of shoes and socks with him. He could have taken off his shoes and left them outside. And changed into the dry shoes.”

Decker shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Look at the porch.”

Jamison stepped to the window and looked at the small-roofed porch with open sides.

Decker said, “Mary and I got soaked going in, and that porch offered almost no protection. And I don’t see Hawkins having the foresight to bring an extra pair of shoes and socks. And how could he take the time to stop and change out of his shoes before breaking into a house with a bunch of people in it? Anybody could have looked out the front door or window and seen him. And hell, he’d have to have brought another set of clothes and a hair dryer before he set foot inside. Otherwise, there would have been traces.”

“Is there another way into the house that he could have used?”

“None that wouldn’t leave us with the same problem as now.”

“He could have cleaned up his wet traces on his way out.”

“After murdering four people he’s going to take the time to do that? And from all the different places he had to be in the house to kill them all? And there’s carpet too, so he’s going to what, get out a steam cleaner and fire it up and get rid of every single bit of mud, wet gravel, soaked blades of grass?”

“But, Decker, you know the alternative if that is the case.”

Decker glanced over at her. “Yeah, that Hawkins was right, and I was wrong. He was innocent. And I put him away in prison. And now he’s dead.”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“The hell it isn’t,” said Decker.