a big guy. He wouldn’t be easy to overpower.”
“That’s the way it looks,” the tech said, and Stef nodded in agreement.
“Interesting theory,” I said. “But what if it was a woman, and she had a gun? Remember, the outside victims were shot and we found a gun in the woods.”
They looked at each other, and Stef shook her head. “Guess it could be?”
“Guns give folks a lot of power. She could have forced Jacob to get down on the floor,” I explained. “Your theory has potential. But a word of caution: don’t read too much into one piece of evidence. You have to look at the whole picture. But good job, you two. Those blood smears could have easily been missed.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Stef said, then she motioned toward the tech guy beside her. “We did it together.”
“You’re done in the nursery? I need to get a few things for the baby, diapers, clothes and such.”
“Yup, the room’s all clear,” the tech said. “We didn’t find anything to indicate it was part of the crime scene.”
As I turned to leave, Stef stopped me by asking, “Chief, why do you think he did that?”
“What?”
“The lipstick on the woman. Why would someone do that?”
“Stef, the woman on the bed upstairs has a name. Laurel Johansson. Let’s use it,” I suggested. “And whoever did it to her wanted to send some kind of message. I have a theory, but we won’t know until we get further into this if it holds up.”
“Laurel?” Stef asked. Her spine arched back in surprise. “That’s not Detective Mullins’ Laurel, is it? His daughter?”
In my insistence that we treat the victims as individuals, I hadn’t handled this well. I should have known that Mullins might have mentioned his daughter at the station, that Stef might be aware of her. “It’s—”
“It is her,” Stef said. The exhilaration she’d had since arriving on the scene drained from her eyes, and she appeared shaken. “I didn’t recognize her, but I met her once, not long after I first started in the department. I didn’t remember that she was married to Jacob Johansson. I just knew her as Mullins’ daughter. She stopped in while she was in town grocery shopping, to say hi to him. She was so nice. Just the sweetest…”
My budding CSI officer, our rookie who until that moment thought the crime scene was all textbooks and mystery novels, dropped her head and closed her eyes. I knew that she was experiencing something we all have to at some point if we’re going to be good at our jobs and also retain our humanity: from this moment on, Stef would understand that murder victims aren’t bodies or remains; they’re people. Real people. And that’s why all of it matters.
I considered consoling Stef, but I knew she wouldn’t want that. She needed to have room to process her feelings, so I turned to the crime scene tech, who stood back tongue-tied and watched his young charge learn a tough lesson. “You want to come with me upstairs, make sure I don’t disturb anything while I’m getting what I need?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said.
As we walked off, I noticed Stef rub her eyes, wiping away a tear.
Ten
In the nursery, the tech helped me shuffle through Jeremy’s tiny clothes, onesies with trains and trucks, soft blue blanket sleepers with teddy bears on the chest. I held a pair of pajamas in my hands, heartbreakingly small, decorated with miniature dinosaurs, and a wave of remorse flowed through me as I thought of the children I’d never had. I considered, not for the first time, that my marriage had no upside. I bore the scars of that unholy union. The man my parents forced me to marry was as desolate as the alfalfa fields around town in the dead of winter.
When I got to the Suburban, I threw the bag packed tight with diapers and clothes into the back. We should have had a car seat for Jeremy, but I hadn’t been able to find one. “Let’s go,” I said.
The baby cuddled to her chest, Naomi shot me a peeved look. “I can’t believe you’re making me do this. You’re going to have to call Ardeth as you said you would. I’m not going to do it.”
As promised, on the way to the station I had Naomi dial the house landline. “It’s Clara, Mother. Naomi is with me. I assume you’ve heard what’s happened at the Johanssons’ ranch?” In Alber, bad news spread faster than maple