On the night Daniela Walker was killed, fifteen phone calls out of twenty were successfully made. These are the people who showed up. Fifteen people, plus however many officers showed up on the scene to report it.
The original phone call made from the victim’s husband to police dispatch is here too. I start reading, but find it has little interest.
Dispatch sent the nearest car to the scene to begin controlling things before the cavalry arrived. Two officers. Their names are on my list. I circle them. I also circle the fifteen called that night-including the pathologist, the photographer, and Detective Superintendent Stevens with the jet-black eyes.
This means I’ve just cut nearly eighty people off my suspect list. The fear I have of this being a waste of time creeps away. I’m down to seventeen people. I doubt the two officers who first responded to the husband’s call have anything to do with her death. First of all, they were together for the previous six hours on their shift, and the body was discovered only an hour after she was killed. Second, what are the chances that the person who killed her was the very officer called to the scene? Pretty low, that’s what. I cross their names off the list.
Fifteen people.
I think about the pathologist. He found several differences between this body and the others. Because he works alone, he could have easily manufactured evidence to make the residues and fibers on this victim identical to the others, but he didn’t. Who was going to check his work? Nobody. That’s who. If he had killed her, the results would be identical to the others. But they’re not.
So it isn’t him.
Fourteen people.
Could this be any easier?
I glance at my watch. It is nearly four o’clock. I have been in here all afternoon, cleaning the room for most of that. The smell of furniture polish is close to making me gag, and I’m getting concerned about how my lungs are looking after breathing in a couple of cans. I head back to my office, grabbing a coffee on the way and pausing in the conference room to switch audiotapes.
Back in my office the sun is no longer streaming in, instead one of the rain clouds is covering it, but the cloud is still holding onto its payload. I can’t remember the last time I saw rain. When I sit and look at the list again, I see something obvious I missed while in the records room. Of the fourteen left, four are women. I cross them off the list. I could have narrowed down the original ninety-four the same way, but it doesn’t matter now. Ten people. I write their names onto a fresh piece of paper, then sit there staring at them until four thirty comes along and says hello. I say good-bye to everybody who crosses my path on the way out of the building. Sally isn’t among them. On the way to the bus stop I remember the feeling I had this morning that something was wrong with my mother, and I chide myself for being foolish. If something had happened I would have got the bad news by now.
I catch the bus home. The trash outside my house has been collected. I lie down on my bed. Stare at the ceiling. I’ve narrowed down the suspects to ten people. The police have narrowed theirs down to about ten phone directories. I glance at my watch. I can’t lie down on the bed forever. Ceiling isn’t interesting enough for that. I get to my feet and grab my briefcase. There’s still plenty of work to do.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The smile has been with her all day. From the moment the elevator doors closed on Joe’s smile, she’s been able to think of little else. She’s always thought his big, expressionistic smiles were so natural, so pure, because they were the same as Martin’s. But this morning’s smile was something different. Pure? She thinks so. Joe has a pure soul, but there is something about it, something she is struggling to recognize. In those few seconds Joe was more of a man than a boy, more sophisticated than clumsy. There was a spark there that suggested Joe is more of everything else than she had thought.
But what, exactly?
She likes to think that it means Joe likes her, that their friendship is moving along the way she wants. Of course, it might have been a fluke. Joe might have been staring off into space as he is apt to do when she is around him.
Yet there is no denying that it didn’t only make him look grown-up, it made him more. . more. . attractive?
Sadly, the answer is yes. Joe is attractive, and she had never noticed it before. She doesn’t want to think about it now, either, because she finds it confusing.
She spends the day at work fixing a section of faulty air-conditioning. It’s a job that has taken the last few weeks of her time. It breaks down every year or two, and the government isn’t prepared to budget more money for police, let alone make their surroundings slightly more comfortable. So she does what she can-stopgap measures that will keep it working until the day those measures fall short.
Yet her mind keeps returning to Joe. She’s sure he doesn’t know that he’s not the only cleaner employed here. After six o’clock every night, well after Joe has gone home, a team of cleaners come through and do their thing. They vacuum, wipe, dust, sanitize the bathrooms, refill the paper towel dispensers, clean and put away the dishes in the coffee rooms, replace dirty towels with clean ones, and empty the trash cans. Some of these things Joe will do once a week, or once every few weeks, but he doesn’t know other people are taking care of them every single day. Joe is here during the day to keep things tidy and, she suspects, to keep people happy. Special people like Joe can struggle to find work, and in a world where they must contribute, where they must fend for themselves, sometimes the government must step in and create positions for them. She knows nobody has told Joe he’s not alone in his profession here because it might shatter the image he has of his importance. Sweet, sweet Joe.
She doesn’t see Joe when she leaves work. Only a few people finish at four thirty, and because of her father’s illness, she’s one of them. She heads down Cashel Mall, a shopping street that runs through the center of town that’s a few blocks from the Christchurch Cathedral, the city’s most iconic church that’s made of stone and was built well over a hundred years ago. She tried once to go inside and sit in the silence, only there wasn’t any-too many tourists for that. She doesn’t make it as far as the church today, instead she pauses outside shop windows and occasionally goes inside, searching, hunting, trying to find a gift for her dad that he will appreciate. She needs a card too. Something funny. Something that for the briefest of moments will take his mind off his failing body and her late brother. Just what do you buy for the parent who’s losing everything?
The answer is a DVD player. With the salesman’s advice, she finds the simplest-to-use player in her price range, and she chooses four classic westerns she’s confident her father will love. All have Clint Eastwood in them. Could there be anything better?
She carries her purchases back to her car, pausing only to give Henry another small bag of sandwiches. She wonders if a guy like Henry ever tries to save for anything. How hard it must be to have goals in life when you have nothing. It’s not like the poor guy can buy a suit and go to a job interview. It’s not like he can show up to one dressed the way he is. She thinks she ought to try and help him out there.
“Jesus loves you,” he reminds her, opening the bag. “Remember that, Sally, and everything will be okay.”
By the time she reaches her car, she feels like crying. Not even thinking about Joe’s smile can cheer her back up.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I pull out the latest cassette tape from the conference room and listen to the private words falling from the small speaker of my recorder as I pace back and forth. Not just hear, but really listen. I’ve heard all of the other tapes over the months, but I was only ever listening to see how the investigation was going. Now I have something new to listen for.