“What?”
“Lundquist is here.”
“Get anywhere with this Evan guy?” Jesse asked.
“Not yet.”
“Okay, send him in.”
Lundquist came in and sat across the desk from Jesse and waved the file at him as he had at Molly.
“Full array of photos and forensics. Your man Perkins is good. Our guys said he did a first-rate job with the scene. Our guys don’t drop compliments easily.”
“I’ll let Peter know. How about the index card?”
Lundquist pulled out several enlargements of areas of the index card, came around to Jesse’s side of the desk, and laid them out on the blotter.
“See here, Jesse, these dark brown patches? This is old cellophane tape residue. There were still some traces of the actual tape on the card. The lab says the tape is at least forty years old. And here, these indentations in the card that the lab highlighted, what’s that look like to you?”
“A key.”
“A safety-deposit box key, to be precise,” Lundquist said.
“These numbers are the number of the box.”
“That’s the presumption.”
“But what bank?”
Lundquist frowned. “Good question. See this.” He pointed to an enlargement of the top left corner of the index card found in King Curnutt’s rear pocket. “It’s been torn here. Our best guess is that’s where the name of the bank was probably written. In the meantime, we’ve sent all this to the FBI lab in the hope they’ll be able to match the shape of the key and the number to the bank.”
Now it was Jesse frowning. “Don’t hold your breath. It will take months before they get to this. And when they do, the best they’ll be able to do is to come up with the manufacturer of the key and a list of banks that might have used that type of key and lock. We’re talking forty years ago.”
“At least forty years. Maybe more.”
Jesse asked, “Can your guys create a key from this?”
“I don’t see why not. You mind me asking what for? We don’t even know that this has anything to do with the case.”
“I think we do. Look, Curnutt’s body didn’t have ID, money, a cell phone, or car or house keys on it. Only this old index card. So he either had it on him or the killer planted it on him.”
“You’re right, Jesse. But—”
Jesse stood out of his chair. “Let’s go.”
“What is it?”
Jesse didn’t answer directly. “C’mon” was all he said.
50
The yellow tape was the only thing that indicated this patch of woods had been the scene of a murder. The Subaru had been towed away and the body long since removed. The old toolshed door creaked in the wind like the surrounding trees.
“You guys have the car?” Jesse said.
Lundquist nodded. “Nothing in it that didn’t belong to the owner except Curnutt’s prints. Since the car was boosted from a supermarket parking lot near the New Hampshire border, we’re concentrating our search for Humphrey Bolton up there.”
“If he’s been watching TV or reading the papers, he’ll be gone.”
“Bolton’s not the swiftest guy in the world, Jesse.”
“He’s evaded capture so far.”
“Good point.”
Jesse looked at where the car had been yesterday. “I didn’t like it yesterday and I like it even less today.”
“What don’t you like, exactly? I know you don’t buy into the ring scenario,” Lundquist said. “You think Curnutt and Bolton were too thick for a jewel heist, but everything about this fits the scenario of them ripping the ring off from the Cain woman’s house and then one partner eliminating the other. The way I see it is that they knew about the ring or, if not specifically the ring, about the Cain jewelry they thought the old woman had in the house. All they find is the ring and that would have been okay. Would have been a nice payday, too, but then things go sideways. The woman dies and they have to rough up the MassEx guy.
“Now they’ve got a murder rap and assault with a deadly weapon hanging over their heads and the money for the ring won’t get them what they thought it would. Now it’s about survival and getting as far away as possible, maybe even getting out of the country. But the money they get from fencing the ring will get one of them a lot farther away than it will get both of them. I don’t care how dumb Bolton is supposed to be, he can do simple subtraction.”
Jesse shook his head. “I still don’t like it, Brian. Why come back here when they were in spitting distance of Canada? If Bolton wanted to kill Curnutt, why not do it up by where they were? There are plenty of isolated areas in that part of the state to leave a body, places where no one would find it for weeks or months. Why come back to Paradise? Why call it in? Why take everything off Curnutt’s body and leave or plant the index card? I’m telling you there’s something else going on here that we don’t see or can’t see.”
“You surprise me, Jesse. Healy always told me you were big on saying the police should follow the evidence, not their hunches.”
“Yesterday, it was a hunch, but it’s more than that today. I am looking at the evidence. I’m not cherry-picking the evidence that fits a particular scenario. I’m trying to look at the evidence that hangs together and the evidence that doesn’t.”
“Okay, say I buy that and I got it wrong, that this isn’t about the ring. I don’t know why Curnutt was killed here or who killed him, but killed here he was. Sawtooth Creek is, what, a hundred yards that way? Why not put a bullet or two into Curnutt’s lungs and submerge him in the creek?”
Jesse thought about it for a second. He rubbed his right cheek with the back of the folded fingers of his right hand.
“All the questions have one answer, the same answer.”
“I can’t wait to hear this. Don’t tell me we’re looking at some twisted serial-killer type or an impulse kill, because the evidence doesn’t support that.”
“Just the opposite, Brian. I think this was completely calculated. You said it yourself at Daisy’s: The homemade sound suppressor is evidence of premeditation.”
“But premeditation by who?”
“I don’t think Curnutt and Bolton picked Maude Cain’s house because they heard some story about jewelry when they were inside together. Someone pointed them at that house.”
“To steal the jewelry?”
Jesse said, “If Curnutt turned up dead anywhere else, if that index card wasn’t on the body, or if we didn’t get that anonymous tip, I might accept it.”
“But if it wasn’t about the jewelry, then what? The Cain woman was broke. She was trying to sell her house so she could live out her last few years. What else could she have had that had any value?”
“Good questions,” Jesse said. “I don’t know the answers. I know someone wants media attention and Curnutt’s murder here was supposed to help get it.”
“And if he doesn’t get the attention he wants, what then, Jesse, another body?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You better hope not or I’ll be working that case with the next Paradise chief of police.”
Jesse knew Lundquist was right and there was nothing more to say for now. It was time to go.
51
Hump remembered something one of the guys inside had told him way back when he was doing juvie time. That the bigger the sandbox, the easier it was to lose yourself. Of course that was before Nine-Eleven, before most city-center blocks had cameras everywhere. And if the city didn’t have a camera on every lamppost, then private businesses had them outside their buildings. Even damned taxis had dashboard cameras. Despite that, he knew he was safer far away from New Hampshire and Paradise, safer from the cops and from the guy who had killed King. He supposed he could have easily made it to New York City, the biggest sandbox of them all, but he didn’t know anybody there, didn’t have anybody he could trust or with the right kind of connections.