Trail of Blood (37 page)

“I don’t get it,” Angela Sanchez said to her partner as they climbed the steps at Riverview Towers once more. As if she had read his mind at some point during their earlier trip, she had made him go first so he could not observe the tilt of her hips as they ascended. It made the journey less interesting to Frank. On the other hand, the hope remained that she might be observing
his
rear in motion, and the thought buoyed him through the last two turns. He needed a boost after being up all night.

She went on. “You really think Kim Hammond had James Miller’s notebooks?”

“Yep.” Short sentences allowed him to hide the pants of breath. Theresa was right, he should stop smoking.

“How?”

He came to their destination and knocked. “That’s what we’re here to find out. Mrs. Hammond?”

He had called ahead to be sure she would be at home, and she answered the door promptly. Nothing had changed since their last visit, except the woman’s clothing. The dingy windows, the smell of yesterday’s coffee, all Kim’s worldly possessions kept in a few shoeboxes under the futon. Frank sighed in relief at the sight of them, having worried that Mrs. Hammond might throw them out. She didn’t seem too sentimental to him. Grieving, but not sentimental.

“We need to go through Kim’s things again,” he told her mother, and went to his knees on the floor, risking the fleas and who knew what else living in the carpet fibers.

“Do you know who killed her?”

“Not yet.”

Mrs. Hammond sat on the plaid sofa. “But you’re still working on it.”

“That’s why we’re here.”

“Good,” Kim’s mother said.

Frank found the notebook exactly as he’d left it, next to the eagle medal on the faded ribbon. A momentary curiosity won out and he held up the medal. “What is this?”

“That belonged to Kim’s father.”

“And he left when she was in junior high?”

“No, that was her stepfather.”

Aha,
Frank thought. That was why Dr. Christine had trouble finding the birth certificate—because Kim hadn’t been born with the name Hammond. “Mr. Hammond was her stepfather?”

The woman nodded without any great interest. “Eladio married me and adopted her when she was ten. I had high hopes. I think we both did, Kim and I. But he ran out on us a few years later, just like my first husband. I really know how to pick ’em.”

“And your first husband’s name?”

“John Miller.”

Even though he’d been expecting it, the news shot through Frank like an electrical charge. This, he knew, was where the case would all come together. “And John Miller’s father’s name?”

She rubbed her eyes. “Um—another
J
. Jake…no, James. Jim.”

“James Miller.”

“Yeah. I guess he’d be Kim’s grandfather. That medal belonged to him. He was in World War I.”

“In the Marines? It’s a Distinguished Service Cross.”

“I guess.” Now she peered at him. “Why?”

“Did this notebook come from James Miller, too?”

“Yeah. Lord knows why Johnny kept it. Or why I gave it to Kim, or why
she
kept it. Probably because when you’ve got nothing else…” She stood up and went to the kitchenette, pouring a cup of too-strong-smelling coffee into a cup without milk or sugar.

“Did you ever meet your father-in-law?” Sanchez asked.

The woman snorted. “Of course not. He ran out on Johnny and his mother before Johnny could even walk. He left that woman in the middle of the Depression. Men couldn’t even
buy
a job then, much less a woman. She—I don’t know how she survived. Johnny wouldn’t go into details.”

“What else did he tell you about his father?”

She leaned against the wall as she spoke, as if she no longer had the strength to remain upright. “Nothing, other than he hated the guy with a passion.”

“But he kept his notebooks?”

“Like I said, when you’ve got nothing else…Johnny figured he would have had an okay life if his father had stuck around, if he had had enough to eat and a decent place to live. He could have at least finished high school. Instead he had to scrape by, stealing what he couldn’t con people out of. I felt sorry for him, so, like an idiot, I married him.” She finished her cup with one desperate gulp. “Again, I had high hopes. He was a lot older than me. I thought that would make him more stable. Hah! All that happened was he ran out on me and Kim before
she
could walk. Don’t they say history repeats itself?”

History repeats itself
.

Frank asked, “Where is Johnny now?”

“Dead. They found him in an alley off of East Seventy-first.”

“When was that?”

“Hell, I don’t remember. I think Kim had just turned five.”

Eighteen years before. Frank turned this fact over in his mind as he got off his creaking knees and pulled up a wooden chair. “What did he die of?”

“Natural causes. My guess is he had a heart attack banging some hooker, but I hate to think that because it would mean he died happy. I never told Kim…. I mean, I told her he died of a heart attack, but not the circumstances. She had already started to ask if he would ever come back for us, and I didn’t want her to spend her life waiting.”

History repeats itself.

“Why?” Mrs. Hammond demanded again, sinking into the plaid sofa once again. “What does her grandfather’s old things have to do with her getting killed?”

Frank and Angela Sanchez exchanged a glance, and she asked the question: “Did Kim mention a news story in which a body had been found in an old building off of Fifty-fifth, by any chance?”

The furrow between her eyes deepened with each question. “What?”

“The newspapers and TV news all reported—”

“Newspapers are one of those little luxuries I don’t have, and I never watch the news. Kim did, sometimes, but she never said nothing to me about some body.
Why?
”

“We found James Miller’s body in a building at 4950 Pullman.”

They let this sink in. It took some time. Frank had an image of her mind approaching the concept like a timid animal to a strange object, coming closer, then backing away to get another perspective, unsure whether this was something valuable, or dangerous, or simply irrelevant.

“Johnny’s father? Damn…but what does that have to do with Kim?”

Frank said, “That’s what we’re trying to find out. She never mentioned it? Had she brought up her father in the last few days? Ask questions about him or her grandfather?”

“No. I’d remember. I don’t think we’ve talked about Johnny in years. I tried not to bring him up. There were too many—what do you call it, parallels? All these things that seemed the same between their two lives, Kim and her father. I didn’t want her to end up like him. Kim thought the same way Johnny did—that life had not been fair to her, so she deserved a break. I think it’s the only thing she inherited, besides that medal and those notebooks.”

“Notebooks, plural? How many were there?”

“Two.”

“There’s only one here now.”

The crease between her eyes threatened to become permanent. “There were two.”

Frank thumbed through the pages. The first date noted read May 5, 1935, and the last August 8 of the same year. The one in Theresa’s lab began in April 1936. That left eight months. James Miller had made some notations during those eight months that made Kim Hammond think that she knew who killed him, and she had not shared this theory with her mother or her friend—meaning there was money involved, money that Kim didn’t want to share.

“The last few days before she died, who did she talk to, visit, go hang out with?” He had asked that question before, but perhaps a memory had come back in the meantime.

“I don’t know. I was at work.”

“She didn’t mention looking up any old friends—”

“I told her to stay away from her old friends. She was, too. Like I told you before, the only suggestion I have is that bastard down the hall.”

“Okay.” They would have to interview the drug dealer again for any hint of where Kim had been headed, what plans had revolved through her little mind. She had learned that her grandfather had died in the building at 4950 Pullman. She should have been happy that he had not run out on her father as all had supposed…but perhaps not. Perhaps that made the ruination of Johnny’s life all the more poignant.

But it had not depressed Kim. It energized her. Why?

The building—

“Mrs. Hammond.” His voice burst out so suddenly it startled him as well as the grieving woman. “You said Kim worked one summer at city hall?”

“Yes.”

“Doing what?”

“Clerk-type stuff, I guess, for the zoning and planning office. Filing plans, typing up allotment forms.”

“Did she stay in touch with any of her coworkers there?”

“Kim wasn’t the staying-in-touch type,” her mother said as if that were an endearing trait.

He tried to hone in by different means. “She was in high school then? Did she get along with everyone in that office?”

Her brow smoothed out as she remembered a more hopeful time. “She was only seventeen, and they made quite a pet of her at first. Then she said the older ladies got snooty, which probably meant she had gotten on their nerves. But there was one girl she liked—just out of college and young, so they had more in common. But I don’t know her name, if that’s going to be your next question.”

Frank smiled. “It was, yes. Please try to remember.”

The woman tried, pressing her back into the sofa with her arms crossed. Sanchez raised an eyebrow at Frank but would wait until they left to ask why he asked.

“Sorry, I’m a total blank.”

“That’s all right. It was just a hunch.”

“I remember she got pregnant just before the summer ended. I had hoped they might hire Kim to fill in during her maternity leave, but they didn’t.”

“That’s helpful. Thank you.” He stood up and gave her his card for the second time, asking her to call if she thought of anything else and telling her that they would be in the building for a while longer, reinterviewing her neighbors.

She pressed it into her palm and then crossed her arms again, balled fists underneath her armpits. “You really think Johnny’s father’s body turning up is the reason Kim got killed?”

“Mrs. Hammond,” he confessed, “I don’t know what else
to
think.”

Theresa prodded a flattened McDonald’s cup with her toe and decided it had been on the scene for years and was unlikely to have been on his body when it had been dumped. Besides, she couldn’t see Van Horn eating in a McDonald’s. John Q’s, maybe.

Occasional bursts of sun made the buildings in the distance glitter as if studded by diamonds. The cries of birds and insects, one class of animal thinking about migration and the other about death, filled the air. A perfect day for a stroll by the railroad tracks, except she wouldn’t have considered strolling here without some sort of escort—in this case one of the patrol officers guarding the scene—and she’d rather have been strolling through her kitchen, deciding what to cook to entice her teenager out of bed. Eleven o’clock. Rachael would still be asleep, unless Harry decided to wake her.

The patrol officers had already walked a grid through the area, so she really didn’t need to do this. Surely they would have found anything of significance. She knew she should just tell them to release the scene and go home. Frank would let her know if any significant facts developed from the interviews, and she could use the time to figure out a way to tell Leo about contaminating the victim’s clothing with her pets’ hairs.

Yet she continued to walk from the pool of dried blood to the train track and back, widening the swath with each step. Perhaps the killer had dropped something. How she would know that something when she saw it became the question, so any item that had not yet become encrusted by rain-soaked dirt bore closer scrutiny. So far she had not found an object to match that description.

The patrol officer watched her from the concrete platform, bored in his little cage of yellow tape. She’d have to release the scene after she finished—she couldn’t justify tying up a road officer because she wanted to go home to her daughter. And the railroad wanted their train back.

A dirty matchbook, a bundle of filthy yarn. She walked on. The sun flowed through her hair to her scalp and she took off her sweater, tying it around her waist. The valley smelled of diesel fuel and dead leaves.

A broken plastic fork. A penny. A rumble sounded, and she looked up. The Red Line 11:08 chugged off to the west.

A used condom. A piece of surprisingly clean white paper.

She stepped carefully over a stand of dead goldenrod to pluck up a piece of torn paper. The piece had been torn from the upper left corner of an unlined spiral notebook but the black pencil used on the paper formed not words but a series of lines and dots, some very straight, some wavy, some forming another corner, the deep slashes against the white somehow reminiscent of—

She turned her face up to the train in front of her. The rear edge of the boxcar, with its small rung at the bottom and the coupling sticking out, matched the piece of drawing. Someone had been sketching a train.

She couldn’t prove it without finding his sketch pad but would bet that Van Horn had been drawing one of his favorite items—a train—at some time in the previous day. Standing near the tracks, where a train rattling by would deaden the sound of someone approaching from behind, ready to bludgeon, catch, bundle into a waiting car. Perhaps the victim’s hand clenched on his drawing, ripping the paper. Perhaps the notebook had been left behind at the site…by a train track. There were too many miles for herself or the officers to scour. She should start with the preservation headquarters, the most logical place for Van Horn to do his sketching.

Frank knocked on the door. The Brookpark bungalow was neatly kept, with the grass trimmed and the leaves raked and only a few scattered toys to make it look homey. At least on the outside.