“I’ll rephrase the question: You know anyone normal who doesn’t see a doctor? Especially in lockup, where it gets you out of stuff? Let’s get the medical records for both of them, see what we find. At the very least we could get a blood type.”
“Blood type’s only good for eliminating, not verifying,” Nancy said.
“I’d be happy to eliminate someone at this point,” Lenhardt said. “I’ve still got Bates from Family Crimes looking into the boyfriend’s priors, shaking his tree. The sooner we figure out which road we need to travel, the better off we’ll be.”
“Will Juvenile Services give us the records just by asking?”
“Maybe. But let’s get a subpoena, just to be on the safe side.” Lenhardt checked his watch. “It’s almost nine. Get the paperwork done, and try to catch Judge Prosser about eleven-thirty. He’ll sign anything that’s standing between him and lunch.”
Mira Jenkins had to stifle a whoop of triumph when she read the e-mail from the library staff: The SUV she had seen outside Maveen Little’s apartment was registered to Warren Barnes of Hillside Drive. She knew from reading the clips that Barnes was the name of the girl who had died, that Warren was the father and Cynthia the mother. And although the electronic database didn’t provide photographs, how could the woman she saw outside Maveen Little’s apartment be anyone but Cynthia Barnes? The two crimes must be connected, just as her caller had promised.
So how to proceed? If she asked the county cop reporter for help, he’d want in on the story, might even steal it from her, only to have downtown take it away from both of them. If she didn’t ask him and tried to work the cops herself, the information might circle back to the beat reporter, and then she’d be guilty of breaching protocol.
She studied her e-mail again. The librarian on duty had provided not only the registration, but also a thorough AutoTrack of the car’s registered owner. People would be shocked if they knew what computers kicked out about their lives. Here was Warren Barnes’s address, his driving record, and even information on his mortgage. The AutoTrack could also find boat ownership, pilot licenses, and years of old addresses and phone numbers. But the Barnes home phone was unlisted, and unlisted numbers were stubbornly elusive. To talk to Cynthia Barnes, Mira would have to drive to her home, an out-of-the-way errand that would be difficult to conceal within the framework of her day. Maybe she could find a feature down there, claim she was going to Woodlawn or Catonsville to chat up neighborhood sources, see what stories she could develop.
Her editor, a short, rotund man who moved too stealthily for Mira’s taste, suddenly loomed over her shoulder, thrusting a press release in her face. Reflexively she closed her e-mail, not wanting him to see what was on her screen. Not that it would mean anything to him. Her editor had worked at the paper only three years. The name Warren Barnes wouldn’t resonate as anything more than that of a well-known attorney.
“We need some dailies to get downtown off my ass,” he said. “See what you can do with this.”
This was a press release announcing that the library system had contracted for a special translation program that provided help for patrons in hundreds of languages, via a phone bank in California.
“It could be more than a daily,” Mira said, seeing an opportunity to get out of the office, slip the short leash on which he tried to keep her. “Instead of just doing a talking heads piece, why not make it a centerpiece feature? I could go to one of the libraries in northwest, where they have a lot of Russian immigrants, see the system at work. Talk to librarians, see if other library systems have used this program. Plus, we need census figures, don’t we? How many foreign-speaking library patrons does Baltimore County have? Or maybe I should try the Catonsville branch-”
“Do whatever you like,” the editor said. “Just make sure I have ten to twelve inches by four P.M. My kid has a T-ball game tonight and I need to get out of here by six.”
Mira glanced at the clock in the upper right-hand corner of her computer. It was almost eleven. Even if she reached the bare-minimum sources on the first try, she would probably be reporting the story until two, and she would need another two hours to write because she wasn’t very fast on bureaucratic stories. Give her a straight narrative line and she could pound it out. Her infamous story on the civil rights park may have been bogus, but no one ever said it wasn’t well written. Feature stories flowed out of her. So would the Barnes piece, once she nailed it. Now she would have to resign herself to eating lunch at her desk, knocking out ten to twelve inches by four, then spending another tedious hour answering whatever inane, trivial questions the editors raised. But if her boss really left at six, she could be out of here by six-thirty. A high-powered woman like Cynthia Barnes probably had some big job in the private sector now, and wouldn’t be home during the day anyway.
Mira dialed the number to the county library flack and got voice-mail. Sighing, she left a message, then flagged down a colleague and asked him to bring her a Greek salad and Diet Pepsi from the deli.
Nancy and Infante caught Judge Prosser before lunch, as Lenhardt had recommended, which made him impatient and grumpy. They could have done it with a state’s attorney, but the state’s attorney said he’d rather the judge sign off on it, given that another state agency was involved. Nancy wondered if the state’s attorney was setting them up. Prosser, a short, fat man with a left eye that wandered when he removed his thick glasses, was picking apart their request, stabbing at typos with the earpiece of his horn-rims.
“All their medical records? Why should you get access to all their medical records when all you want to know is their blood type?”
“If we specify blood type and it turns out they actually have DNA samples on file, for whatever reason, God forbid that a smart attorney says we overstepped,” Infante said, adding a beat late, “Judge.”
“Is that the real reason or a glib, cover-your-ass reason that you just made up on the spot?”
“Can it be both?” Infante asked.
Another judge might have smiled, but Prosser trained his right eye on the document in front of him while his wandering left rolled toward the window. Nancy, whose stomach growled when she was standing over a corpse, found herself mildly ill watching the judge’s eye.
“Seems thin,” he said. “Mighty thin. Girl disappears, there’s some blood on her jumper and a T-shirt, but it’s not hers and it’s not a relative’s. You want to see if you can match the type to these two girls who killed the Barnes child all these years ago because Cynthia Barnes called you and made some noise. I can understand why the city cops might jump when Cynthia Barnes called, but why do you care, Detective?” He directed his question to Nancy, then didn’t wait for an answer. “Isaac Poole is a city judge.”
“Eliminating the girls as suspects would be helpful, too,” Nancy said. “We’re going in a lot of different directions on this case, and we’d like to narrow it down, be more efficient.”