Chapter Eight
Stephanie Parker opened the door on the first knock, her smiling face plump and pleasant. As Lamar introduced himself and his partner, her expression ran the gamut from polite to concerned and finally settled on confused.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly, fluffing her short dyed-blond hair nervously with her fingertips, “but you must have the wrong person. My Peter is not dead.”
Lamar exchanged a look with Genov. “Forgive me for asking, but how do you know, Ma’am?”
“Why, because he just left for work,” she said, shaking her head. “If he’d been attacked or what have you last weekend, he couldn’t very well be coming and going from home, now could he?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Lamar agreed.
“You’re sure?” Genov asked, confused. He pulled the victim’s morgue photo from the file he carried and held it out to her. “This isn’t your husband?”
Mrs. Parker studied it carefully and shook her head. “I can understand why you would think it was him,” she admitted, “There certainly is a strong resemblance, but I can give you his contact number at work? I promise you that he was home last night.” When Genov raised a brow, she sighed. “He’s been home every night.”
“Thank you,” Lamar interjected before Genov could get any further under the woman’s skin. “That information would be very helpful, thank you.”
“Cool it,” he hissed at Genov when she left them to go write the number down.
Genov shrugged and mimed zipping his lips, holding his tongue while Lamar accepted the number and expressed their appreciation for her cooperation.
“You think she’s telling the truth?”
“Well,” Lamar said with a shake of his head. “If not, she thinks she is. That machine shop is on the way back to the station. Let’s detour by and see if hubby made it to work today.”
A short drive later, Lamar was standing next to his partner in the lobby of the machine shop that Mrs. Parker had sent them to. When Genov showed the picture of the victim at the front desk, the receptionist just shrugged and waved down a passing employee to take them to the production floor.
“Parker?” the foreman barked over the noise of the equipment as they walked toward his office. “Well, yeah. He’s been here the last few days but hasn’t actually worked.”
Lamar and Genov exchanged a confused look. “I’m sorry?”
Motioning them ahead of him, he closed the door behind them but still had to speak loudly to be heard. “He’s met me in the parking lot every morning and told me that he won’t be in.” The foreman shrugged. “Doesn’t make any sense since he was laid off last Friday.”
“I see,” Lamar said slowly. “Thanks for your time.”
“This just keeps getting weirder,” Genov observed as they climbed back into the sedan.
“No shit,” Lamar snorted.
“What now?” Genov wanted to know.
“Now, you drop me off at the department and return to the Parker residence to see if you can sweet talk that nice lady out of her husband’s toothbrush. If we’re gonna get anywhere on this, I think we’re going to need a DNA match.”
“And if it’s really not him in the morgue?”
Lamar shrugged. “I’m going to search through the new missing person cases while you’re gone. Maybe this guy just happens to have a doppelganger.”
“That’d be a helluva coincidence.”
Talk about an understatement. “Yeah, it would, but it’s not impossible.”
Genov nodded and they made the rest of the drive in silence.
Lamar barely had time to grab a cup of stale coffee and log into the missing persons database before Genov was back, an evidence baggy holding a toothbrushwavingtriumphantly.
“That was fast.”
Genov nodded. “It turns out that after we left, Mrs. Parker had some time to think. She’s not as sure as she was that the person coming home to her at nightisher husband.”
“Come again?”
“I know, right?” Genov chuckled. “Get this. He’s been unusually attentive and affectionate.”
“And that’s a problem?” Lamar snickered.
Genov shrugged. “It seems that her initial assumption was that he’d been stepping out on her. Apparently, the body snatcher theory is preferable to being married to a cheater.”
“People.” Lamar turned back to the screen in front of him. “Go ahead and get that logged in for processing. It’s not gonna tell us anything until the results come back.”
