“But he wouldn’t leave blood here if he got on the other side,” Torrez said.
I turned to Bishop. “You were on and off this machine a number of times yourself,” I said.
He stepped up close and reached out a hand. “And my prints are right about here,” he said. “I kinda reach on over a ways.”
“Or it could be Jim’s blood,” Torrez said. “I asked Alan Perrone to double-check for minor injuries that would be consistent with this. But that’s going to be a tough call.”
“Impossible,” I said. “What about on the operating levers themselves?” I peered close at the black rubber handles. “Anything there?”
“No,” Bishop said. “We’d expect a pretty good collection there, too. We dusted before I touched them, so at the very least we should have Jim Sisson’s and maybe the killer’s. But they’re clean.”
“Wiped, then. Very clever. Just the sort of thing a person committing suicide would do.”
Bishop actually came close to laughing. “They always slip up somewheres, if you look close enough,” he observed. “Whoever bled on this thing didn’t take the time to wear gloves.”
“If the levers hadn’t been wiped clean, the most logical guess would be that the blood is Sisson’s himself,” I said. “Maybe. So look, we’ll get a blood type, and that’s a start. We’ve got some good prints off the bar, and that’s another plus. Maybe the blood’s enough for a DNA match, if it comes to that. What I want you to do now is go over these machines, this entire area, for the ten-dozenth time. Slow, careful, methodical…every square inch of the machines, the tire, the wheel, hell, even the shop itself. I want to make sure that we looked at everything, too many times.”
I turned to Bob Torrez. “And before we get busy, I need to ask you something.” I pointed at Tom Pasquale. “And you stay close. I need to talk to you in just a minute.”
Pasquale hadn’t said a word in the darkroom, and he’d been a shadow while we discussed the machine. When I spoke to him, he nodded as if he’d been waiting for the ax to fall.
Torrez accompanied me back to the front curb where 310 was parked. “I talked to Judge Hobart and Don Jaramillo at lunch today,” I said.
“Jaramillo’s not being much help with any of this,” Torrez said. “I’d expect him to be doggin’ every step of this investigation, but he’s been staying about as far away as he can get.”
“I can think of all sorts of reasons for that,” I said, “but that’s not what interests me just now. He’s just an assistant DA with politics on his mind, and nobody’s going to be very popular with this case, no matter what happens. We can cut around him if we have to, go straight to Schroeder. But what did surprise me is that he mentioned something about asking for a court order to run a DNA test on Jennifer Sisson’s unborn child.”
Torrez frowned and leaned toward me as if he hadn’t heard right. “On the kid? The fetus, you mean?”
“That’s what he said.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Torrez said. “I know I said that to Sam, back there in his office, but that was just to jerk his chain a little bit…make him nervous.”
“I understand that. And I knew that’s what you were doing,” I said. “But did you bring up the idea to him? To Jaramillo?” Torrez’s eyebrow cocked at me in surprise, but he didn’t reply. “Don Jaramillo told Judge Hobart and me that you had suggested to him a paternity test on Jennifer Sisson might not be such a bad idea.”
“Jaramillo’s a liar,” Torrez said matter-of-factly. “As simple as that. I never suggested that to him. Like I said, you were there and heard what I said to Sam Carter. That’s it. I haven’t mentioned the idea to anyone else.” He looked hard at me. “I don’t think we’re going to go around sticking needles in the bellies of teenage girls. If Jaramillo thinks Hobart’s going to go for that, he’s more of a jerk than I think he is. And unless he came up with the idea himself, there’s only one place he could have gotten it-and that’s from Carter himself.”
“That was the conclusion I’d reached,” I said. “If Carter thinks you’re actually going to do a test, he might well start to panic, afraid of what would happen if it ever leaked out…and all it takes is one blabby nurse or lab tech.”
Torrez hitched up his gun belt, his face twisted with annoyance. “Maybe I’m wrong, but knowing exactly who’s the father of Jennifer Sisson’s child doesn’t tell me who pushed the levers on that backhoe over there.”
“It might give a suggestion of who might want to,” I said.
“Not even that. If Kenny Carter is the father, why should he want to kill his future father-in-law?”
“Self-defense springs to mind, Roberto.”
“That murder wasn’t self-defense, sir,” he said. “You don’t drop a tire on someone in self-defense and then squash it flat with a backhoe in self-defense. It’s a murder carried out by someone who thought he was goddamn clever, is what it is.”
“What do you want to do, then?”
Torrez gazed off down the street. “I want a few answers from the lab first,” he said. “And then I think it’s time we haul Grace Sisson into custody and put her under the lights. The one thing I’m sure of is that she knows a hell of a lot more than she’s letting on. She’s good. She sits still and watches us watching her. That all by itself makes me nervous. If she wanted to find out who killed her husband, she’d be cooperating with us. Or at least going through the motions.”
He turned and nodded at the house. “I’d like to give her one more night to think about it. Tomorrow morning, we’ll pick her up.”
“And we have nothing to hold her on,” I reminded him. “One phone call, and at the most one quick preliminary hearing, and she walks. You’ll be lucky to hold her for an hour.”
“Sure. But she doesn’t have to know that. She doesn’t know what we’ve found in that backyard. Or not found.”
I shook my head in frustration. “I don’t know. Go with the prints off the bar first and the blood sample. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Deputy Pasquale appeared in the driveway, and I beckoned him over.
“Keep me posted,” I said to Torrez, and watched him amble off, head down, deep in thought. I leaned on the fender of the car and crossed my arms.
Tom Pasquale stopped two paces away. “Sir?”
“Thomas,” I said, “did Linda get a chance to talk with you?”
“Just a little. She said that Miss Champlin pulled a gun on you.”
“Well, strictly speaking, I suppose that’s true. It turned out to be an old unloaded shotgun, more of a stage prop than anything else. But for a few seconds there, it was a magic moment.” I grinned. “I need to ask you to do me a favor.”
“Sure.”
I held up a hand, interrupting myself. “And first, I know just as goddamn well as you do that none of this is any of my business. But chalk it up to me being a little worried about an old friend, OK? Here’s what I’d like. I’d like you and Linda to take the rest of the afternoon off, starting five minutes ago, and get yourselves moved out of that place on Third Street. Can you do that?”
He hesitated. “Well, sure, I guess, but-”
I shook my head. “At this point, it has nothing to do with right or wrong, or tenant rights, landlord rights, leases, ruts in the yard, motorcycle oil on the floor, or any other goddamn thing, Thomas. It has to do with you doing me a favor.”
“Well, I don’t see, then-”
I cut him off again. “I want you out of Carla Champlin’s way, Thomas. And not for your sake, either. For hers.”
“Is she nuts or what?”
“Well, some of both, probably. Or headed that way. I want to defuse this thing, today. And tomorrow, I’m going to ask that one of the home health workers from Social Services stop by and chat with her. In the meantime, let’s get you and Linda out of the line of fire, all right? I told her that you two can camp out in one of the guest rooms at my place, if you need to.”