“But there’s no way to say the phenobarbital killed her?”
Tyler shook his head.
“You said earlier the hair had been dyed. You get anything back on that?”
He showed me another printout. “I gave the information to Sammie earlier. She’s checking on it now. The infrared analysis pegs the dye to only two manufacturers. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to eliminate the hairdressers that don’t use this color, and maybe a few others that don’t use these brands, and end up with somebody who remembers her.” He glanced hopefully at Shawna’s photograph I had taped to the wall before me. “One thing that might help is that the hair grew one and a half centimeters after the dye was applied, or about six weeks before she died.”
Through my open door, I saw Ron arrive at his desk. “Got the phone records,” he said when he saw me.
I beckoned to him, asking Tyler, “That it?”
Tyler nodded and rose. Ron noticed the printouts in his hand. “You get any DNA?”
Tyler looked at him curiously and then riffled through his collection. “Yeah-somewhere here.”
Ron explained his interest. “I was thinking that if we could get any DNA from the bones or teeth, we might be able to match it to Shawna’s PKU test on file in Massachusetts.”
I stared at him blankly.
But Tyler lit up. “Right. Every child born is supposed to have a PKU test. Stands for phenylketonuria-it’s done to check for mental retardation. And the blood sample is usually kept on record at the State Health Department. It’s just an identification card with a small dot on it, but it would be enough for us.” With rare exuberance, he patted Ron on the shoulder. “I’ll get right on it.”
Ron watched him leave, a small smile on his face.
“How’d you think of that?” I asked him.
The smile broadened. “I’m a new papa, remember? We just went through all that. Kind of stuck in my mind-all those vital records.”
Spoken like a true information nut, I thought gratefully, hopeful again that the identity issue could be settled. “You get a chance to look at those phone records?”
The smile slipped away. “Yeah-nothing to Brattleboro. For that matter, there weren’t many long-distance calls at all.”
“Okay. It was worth a shot. If you get any spare time, you might want to check the other numbers anyhow. Is Willy around?”
“I saw him talking to one of the patrol guys in the parking lot. Don’t know if he was coming or going.”
It turned out Willy was going, but I jogged outside and caught up with him just as he was starting his engine. He rolled down his window, scowling. “What?”
“You talk to any of your Satanist contacts?”
His look turned to disgust. “If I’d found anything, I would’ve said so. Besides, you only told me to think about it.”
“And then you went poking around.”
“Fuck you.” Willy didn’t like admitting defeat.
“What did you find out?”
“They’re all a bunch of thin-skinned assholes. What I got was a lot of holier-than-thou, alternate lifestyle bullshit. As far as I could tell, nobody’s contacted them to join up recently, and they haven’t been out recruiting. And it doesn’t look like they’ve been butchering virgins lately either. Can I go now?”
I stood back and let him slither out of the parking lot, his tires spinning on the hard-packed snow.
I didn’t share his obvious disappointment. Considering the little we had to work with, and the short time we’d been on the case, we were actually making pretty good headway. That satisfaction, however, was purely professional in nature. Emotionally, I was facing a darker picture. Tyler’s report, even with his scientific qualifiers, made it ever more likely that Shawna Davis’s death was a homicide.
6
Sammie Martens was waiting for me impatiently in the squad room when I returned from the parking lot. “I found the hairdresser who might’ve dyed Shawna’s hair,” she said.
“Okay. Let me get my coat.” I took a thick, quilted Navy pea jacket from its peg and slipped Shawna’s photograph into my pocket.
Sammie drove us to the south side of town, to Canal Street. An extension of Main, Canal began at one of the town’s most confusing intersections. Two parking lots and four roads emptied into this crossroads, which was further hemmed in by several large buildings and the bridge over the Whetstone Brook-the town’s most significant geographical division.
A hundred and fifty years ago, the Whetstone had been a major power source for a string of grist and saw mills stretching miles away to the west-one of the primary reasons West Brattleboro had started life as the dominant of the two towns. Now, the brook was a social boundary, separating Brattleboro’s patrician north side from its more lowbrow, commercialized southern half. Whenever we were called for domestic disturbances or alcoholically lubricated brawls, we most often headed south.
The irony was that much of Brattleboro’s vitality also resided on this side of the water. The high school, the park, and the old warehouses of the Estey Organ Works-once the world’s foremost provider of parlor organs-were all here, along with one of our largest grocery stores, most of the garages, the hospital, and half the town’s fast-food outlets. In fact, before the Putney Road was metamorphosed into a “miracle mile,” Canal Street, along with lower Main, had ruled the commercial roost.
But it had since acquired a tired, weather-beaten look, especially when compared to the Putney Road’s shiny glitz. The interspersing of decaying, multifamily residences, while giving Canal a more human feel, also injected an element of marginal despair. And because it was boxed in by the old wooden reminders of a past long gone, Canal had nowhere to go, while the Putney Road was former farmland and had acre upon acre left to heedlessly invade.
As a result, Canal was where a business went that either had spotty financing, or hoped to cater to a largely poor-to-working-class population. It was also the home of Clipper Academy-a launching pad for aspiring hairdressers and a place to go for a very cheap cut, assuming you had low expectations and a flair for spontaneity.
The manager, wearing a miniskirt and tottering on skyscraper spikes, greeted us at the door from under multihued eyebrows and a glistening, curly mass of black hair. She spoke loudly to be heard over the intermittent shrieking of air wrenches from the garage beyond a shared cinder block wall. “Good morning. May we help you?”
Sammie, whom I’d never seen in makeup, nor wearing anything besides pants, practical shoes, and a short haircut, appeared speechless. I gave our hostess a discreet look at my badge. “I hope so. We’re from the police department, and we’re trying to trace the whereabouts of a client of yours.” I showed her Shawna’s picture.
She looked at it carefully, holding it with stiffened fingers so her two-inch nails wouldn’t get in the way. “It’s a terrible cut.”
“Does she look familiar?” Sammie asked.
“No. When did she come here?”
“We’re not sure,” I answered. “It might’ve been a year ago-maybe six months.”
She shook her head, still looking at the picture. “We get so many people, and most of them for just one visit. You don’t have a name?”
“Maybe. Does Shawna Davis ring a bell?”
Her face lit up and she returned the photograph. “Well gosh, that makes it much easier. We keep a record of everyone who comes in, along with the student who did the work-it’s part of our teaching program.”
While she was talking, she circled around to the back of a curved counter and retrieved a fat book much like the dentist’s from the day before. “That’s last year’s.” She got out a second one and laid it on top of the first. “And that’s the year before.”
She opened the top one to a sample page. “They’re basically appointment books-day by day. You look under this column here, on each page, for the client names. Some of this other stuff is coded, so when you find who you’re after, I can translate for you.”