“She says not.”
“You don’t believe her?”
Something hardened in the older man. “No. A father can tell when something happens to their child. Their demeanor changes. They become someone you don’t recognize. My girls stopped sharing their personal lives with me during their adolescence. My wife assured me it was a normal transition. I could see that. They were still themselves but more private.”
He shook his head and stared into the middle distance. “Jenny lost her spark in that last year before she transferred. Abigail grew uncharacteristically defensive of her sister. Neither of them would admit to anything, but I knew…”
He stopped speaking. I let the silence settle around us, heavy with the assumptions of things left unsaid. St. Pierre vibrated with a father’s rage.
After a time, St. Pierre cracked his knuckles and sat straighter. His red-rimmed eyes seemed eternally exhausted. “I don’t mourn Jesse or his friends, but I didn’t kill them, Detective. May I go home? I’m not feeling well.”
The following few dayspassed in a blur of quiet tension. Malik’s death hit the media, and the phones rang off the hook. When Monday arrived, so too did an uproar of activity in the once peaceful bullpen.
Golding returned a hundred inquiring and prying phone calls, shouted orders, and made unreasonable demands. Rue stewed and cursed over the scant evidence we’d collected, and I ran around the city on a personal mission to be the first to uncover the killer, working hunches and theories I couldn’t back up.
My to-do list had grown and included visiting Dominique at work, hunting down the owner of Iron Pumphouse, and finding Constable Yates. No matter what anyone said, I couldn’t dismiss the teens who had approached him three years ago. It was the tie to Jesse and his friends that I needed. It fit.Theyfit.
Considering that two of our victims had left university a couple of years ago, these girls and their story were the piecethat matched my theory of revenge from a sexual assault. The problem was, I had no proof because Yates had let them walk away. I needed him to recall every detail of the conversation he’d had three years ago. I wanted the best physical descriptions he could give me of all three teens.
At a guess, the girls would be about seventeen. The boy nineteen-ish. How had this incident affected them? Were they on a quest for revenge? Had the past trauma finally caught up with them?
The conversation I’d had previously with Yates was cut short thanks to Golding, but I suspected he knew more than he’d shared.
The manager at the gym, Matt Menard, a steroid-jacked guy in his fifties with a tank top that looked painted on, refused to answer my questions or provide me with access to logs or videos until I provided a warrant.
“You know the rules.”
“I don’t have to see anything. Look at your list for Christmas morning and tell me if she’s on it. That’s all.”
“Not happening.”
With barely a handful of days before another holiday was upon us, the best I could do was leave the warrant with a secretary at the courthouse to be signed by the working judge. He was swamped and unavailable, she told me. I would get it when I would get it.
Eager for answers, I had delivered Fatemeh’s hair to Dominique on Sunday afternoon. He informed me he wasn’t going into the office until this morning. So even my boyfriend had put me off.
Leaving the courthouse, I placed a call to the forensic lab, hoping Dominique wasn’t busy. He answered right away.
“It’s me.”
“I’m working on your report right now.”
“Excellent. Have you had a chance to compare the hair?”
“No. We’re backed up and working half-staffed. I had an autopsy this morning and another later this afternoon. I’ll try to get to it in an hour or so. I have a meeting in ten minutes and a report to finish. You want this report, right?”
“Yes. Sorry. I don’t mean to be impatient.”
“Come by around one. I planned a lunch break at that time. We can slip down to the lab.”
“I’ll be there.”
Locating Yates took a song and dance. I called dispatch to find out if he was on the schedule and where I might find him. Carrie Lumley, a semi-retired veteran officer who had made the shift to switchboard a year ago, kindly gave me Yates’s number.
“Is he with a partner?” I asked, concerned I may have trouble getting him alone.
“Not today. Reduced staffing with the holiday. Too many people wanted a vacation.”
Yates might not be a rookie anymore, but he had far less seniority than most people in the department. His partner included.
