A Ticket to the Boneyard (Matthew Scudder #8)

"Then there would have to be foreign bloodstains on his person."

"Foreign meaning not his. Why? Oh, because we know he had blood on him to wash off, and you never get all of it. So if there's none of their blood on his hands or his clothing, and if we do find traces of their blood in the bathroom sink, then somebody else killed them." He frowned and thought about it. "If there had been a single false note at the crime scene," he said. "If we had had the slightest reason to suspect this was anything other than what it looked to be, why, we might have taken a longer look at the physical evidence. But for God's sake, man, he called us up and told us what he'd done. We sent a car out and found him dead. When you've got a confession and the killer dead by his own hand, it tends to put a damper on further inquiry."

"I understand that," I said.

"And I haven't seen anything here today to change my mind. You saw the padlock on the front door. We put that on after, on account of we had to force the door when we got here. He had it locked with the chain on, the way you'll do when you're settled in for the night."

"The killer could have gone out another door."

"The back door was locked the same way, bolted from inside."

"He could have used a window and closed it after him. It wouldn't have been that hard to do. Sturdevant would already have been dead when the killer made the phone call. Do you automatically record calls to headquarters?"

"No. We log 'em, but we don't tape 'em. Is that how they do it in New York?"

"There's a tape made of calls to 911."

"Then it's a shame he didn't do this in New York," he said, "so there'd be a record, same as your medical examiner could tell us what everybody had for breakfast. But I'm afraid we're a little backward here."

"I didn't say that."

He thought a moment. "No," he said. "I guess you didn't."

"They don't record calls into the individual precincts in New York, or at least they didn't when I was on the job. And they only started taping the 911 calls when it turned out that the operators were incompetent and kept screwing up. I'm not trying to play City Mouse, Country Mouse with you, Lieutenant. I don't think we'd have looked any harder at this case than you people did. As a matter of fact, the biggest difference between the way you've handled it and the way they'd have done it in New York is that you've been very decent and cooperative with me. If a cop or ex-cop from out of town came to New York with the same story, he'd get a lot of doors shut in his face."

He didn't say anything just then. Back in the living room he said, "I can see where it might not be a bad idea to tape incoming calls. Shouldn't be all that costly to set up, either. What would it do for us in this instance? You're thinking voiceprint, but for that you'd need a recording of Sturdevant's voice for comparison purposes."

"Did he have an answering machine? He might have taped a message."

"I don't think so. Those machines aren't all that popular around here. Of course there might be some record of his voice somewhere. Home video, that sort of thing. I don't know if something like that would work for voiceprint comparison, though I don't see why not."

"If you had the call taped," I said, "you could find out one thing easily enough. You could find out if it was Motley."

"Well, you could at that," he said. "I never even thought of that, but when you've got an actual suspect it makes a difference, doesn't it? If you had a call taped and the voiceprint matched your Mr. Motley, you'd pretty much have him hanged, wouldn't you?"

"Not until we get a new governor."

"Oh, that's right. Your man keeps vetoing the death-penalty bills, doesn't he? But in a manner of speaking, you'd have your killer cold." He shook his head. "Speaking of voiceprints, you can probably guess we didn't do any dusting for fingerprints."

"Why should you? It looked open-and-shut."

"We do a lot of things routinely when there's not much point to them. Shame we didn't do that."

"I've a feeling Motley didn't leave any fingerprints."

"Still, it would be nice to know. I could get a crew in here now, but there've been so many people through here by this time I don't think we'd have much luck. Besides, it'd mean reopening the case, and I have to say you haven't given me cause to do that." He hooked his thumbs in his belt and looked at me. "You honestly think he did it?"

"Yes."

"Can you point to any kind of corroborating evidence? A clipping in the mail and a New York postmark, that may be enough to get you thinking, but it doesn't do a lot to change how the case looks from here."

I thought about that one while we left the house. Havlicek drew the door shut and snapped the padlock. It was cooler now, and the birch trees cast long shadows across the lawn. I asked when the killings had taken place. Wednesday night, he said.

"So it's been a week."

"Will be in a matter of hours. The call came in around midnight. I could give you the time to the minute, if it matters, because as I said we keep a log."

"I just wondered about the date," I said. "There was no indication on the clipping. I suppose the story would have run in Thursday night's paper."

"That's right, and there were follow-up stories the next day or two, but they won't tell you anything. Nothing else came to light, so there wasn't much for them to write about. Just that people were surprised, no indication he was under that kind of stress. The usual things you get from friends and neighbors."

"What kind of a workup did your medical examiner do?"

"The chief of pathology over at the hospital does our medical exams. I don't think he did much beyond looking at the bodies and confirming that the wounds were consistent with the way we read the case. Why?"

"You still have the bodies on hand?"

"I don't believe they've been released yet. I don't know that we're clear on who we're supposed to release them to, far as that goes. You got something specific in mind?"

"I was wondering if he'd happened to check for semen."

"Jesus God. You think he raped her?"

"It's possible."

"No signs of a struggle."

"Well, he's very strong, and she might not have tried to fight him off. You were asking about corroborative evidence. If there were semen traces, and if the lab work established the semen didn't come from Sturdevant-"

"That'd be corroboration, wouldn't it? You might even wind up matching the semen to your suspect. I'll tell you, I'm not even going to apologize for not ordering a check for pecker tracks. That's about the last thing that would have occurred to me."

"If you've still got the bodies-"

"We can get him to run tests now. I was already thinking that. I don't guess she happened to douche in the past few days, do you?"

"I wouldn't think so."

"Well, let's find out," he said. "Let's see if we can catch the doc before he goes home for dinner. God, his line of work's got to be hell on a man's appetite. Police work's bad enough. Though I seem to manage, don't I?" He clapped a hand to his gut and flashed a rueful grin. "Let's go," he said. "Maybe we'll get lucky."

The pathologist had left for the day. "He'll be in eight o'clock tomorrow morning," Havlicek said. "You did say you were staying over, didn't you, Matt?"

We were Matt and Tom now. I said I was booked on a late-afternoon flight the following day.

"The Great Western's the best place to stay," he said. "It's east of town on Lincoln Way. If you like Italian food you can't go wrong at Padula's, that's right at First Street, or there's a restaurant at the motel that's not bad. Or here's a better idea, let me call my wife and see if she can't set an extra place at the table."

"That's decent of you," I said, "but I think I'm going to beg off. I had about two hours' sleep last night and I'm afraid I might fall asleep at the table. Suppose you let me take you to lunch tomorrow?"

"We'll have to argue about who takes who, but it's a date. You want to meet me first thing in the morning and we'll go see the doc? Is eight o'clock too early for you?"

"Eight o'clock is fine," I said.

I got my car from the lot where I'd left it and found my way to the motel he'd recommended. I got a room on the second floor and took a shower, then watched the news on CNN. They had cable reception and pulled in thirty channels. After the newscast I worked the dial and found a prizefight on some cable channel I'd never heard of. A pair of Hispanic welterweights were spending most of their time in clinches. I watched until I realized that I wasn't paying any attention to what I was seeing. I went to the restaurant and had a veal chop and a baked potato and coffee and went back to the room.

I called Elaine. Her machine answered, and when I identified myself she picked up and turned the machine off. She was doing fine, she said, sitting behind her barricades and waiting. So far there'd been no untoward phone calls and nothing unlikely in the day's mail. I told her what I'd done, and that I'd be seeing the pathologist in the morning, that I'd ask him to look for semen traces.

"Make sure he checks in back," she said.

We talked a little more. She sounded all right. I told her I'd call when I got back to the city, and then I rang off and worked my way around the TV dial without finding anything that grabbed me.

I got my book from my briefcase. It was The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Jim Faber, my AA sponsor, had recommended it to me, quoting a couple of lines that had sounded interesting, and one day I'd stopped at the Strand and picked up a used copy of the Modern Library edition for a couple of dollars. I'd been finding it slow going. I liked some of the things he said, but a lot of the time I would have trouble tracking his argument, and when I did hit a sentence that resonated for me I would have to put the book aside and think about it for a half hour or so.

This time I read a page or two, and then I hit this passage: Whatever happens at all happens as it should; thou wilt find this true, if thou shouldst watch narrowly.

I closed the book and put it on the table next to me. I tried to imagine the events at the Sturdevant home a week ago. I wasn't sure what order he did them in, but for the sake of argument I decided he'd taken Sturdevant out first because he'd have presented the greatest danger.

Still, the report of the shotgun would have awakened everybody else. So maybe he'd have gone to the kids' rooms first, working his way down the hallway, moving from one room to the next, stabbing the two boys and the girl in turn.

Then Connie? No, he'd have saved her for last. He'd wash up in the bathroom off the master bedroom. Let's say he immobilized her, got her husband into the living room at gun- or knife-point, killed him with the shotgun, then went back and did Connie. And raped her while he was at it? Well, I'd found out tomorrow, if you could still detect the presence of semen a week after the fact.

Then a phone call, and then a quick trip through the house to get rid of fingerprints. And, finally, a quick and silent exit through a window, and he was on his way. Five people dead, three of them small children. A whole family gone because twelve years ago a woman had sworn out a statement against a man who'd forced himself on her.