ground. That’s all I want to do.”
Wexler looked away from me and picked up the check the waitress had left. Then he downed the rest of his drink and slid out of the booth. Standing, he looked down at me and let out a heavy breath redolent of bourbon.
“Come back to the office,” he said. “I’ll give you one hour.”
He held his finger up and repeated himself in case I was confused.
“One hour.”
In the CAPs squad room I used the desk my brother had used. No one had taken it yet. Maybe it was a bad-luck desk now. Wexler was standing at a wall of file cabinets looking through an open drawer. St. Louis was nowhere to be seen, apparently choosing to have nothing to do with this. Wexler finally stepped away from the drawer with two thick files. He placed them in front of me.
“This everything?”
“Everything. You got an hour.”
“C’mon, there’s five inches of paper here,” I tried. “Let me take it home and I’ll bring it—”
“See, just like your brother. One hour, McEvoy. Set your watch, because those go back in the drawer in one hour. Make that fifty-nine minutes. You’re wasting time.”
I stopped belaboring the point and opened the top file.
Theresa Lofton had been a beautiful young woman who came to the university to study for an education degree. She wanted to be a first-grade teacher.
She was in her first year and lived in a campus dorm. She carried a full curriculum as well as working part-time in the day care center at the university’s married-housing dorm.
Lofton was believed to have been abducted on or near the campus on a Wednesday, the day after classes ended for the Christmas break. Most students had already left for the holiday. Theresa was still in Denver for two reasons. She had her job; the day care center didn’t close for the holidays until the end of the week. And there was also the problem of her car. She was waiting for a new clutch to be put into the old Beetle so she could make the drive home.
Her abduction was not reported because her roommate and all her friends had already gone home for the holidays. No one knew she was missing. When she didn’t show up for work at the day care center on Thursday morning, the manager thought she had simply gone home to Montana early, not completing the week because she wasn’t due to return to the job after the Christmas break. It would not be the first time a student pulled this kind of stunt, especially once finals were over and the holiday break beckoned. The manager made no inquiry or report to authorities.
Her body was found Friday morning in Washington Park. The investigators traced her last known movements back to noon on Wednesday when she called the mechanic from the day care center—he remembered children’s voices in the background—and he told her the car was ready. She said she would pick it up after work, first stopping at the bank. She did neither. She said good-bye to the day care center manager at noon and went out the door. She was not seen alive again. Except, of course, by her killer.
I only had to look at the photos in the file to realize how the case could have grabbed Sean and put a leash around his heart. They were before-and-after photos. A portrait shot of her, probably for the high school yearbook. A fresh-faced young girl with a whole life ahead of her. She had dark wavy hair and crystal-blue eyes. Each reflected a small star of light, the flash of the camera. There was also a candid of her, in shorts and a tank top. She was smiling, carrying a cardboard box away from a car. The muscles of her slender, tan arms were taut. It looked as though it was a slight strain for her to stand still with the heavy box for the photographer. I turned it over and read in what I guessed was a parent’s scrawl: “Terri’s first day on campus! Denver, Colo.”
The other pictures were taken after. There were more of these and I was struck by the number. Why did the cops need so many? Each one seemed like some kind of a terrible invasion, even though the girl was already dead. Theresa Lofton’s eyes had lost their brilliance in these photographs. They were open but dull, webbed in a milky caul.
The photos showed the victim lying in