Live to Tell - Lisa Gardner [94]
“You’re the expert; you tell me.”
“Lack of physical evidence,” he said.
“Yeah, I got that message. Crime scene has nothing, janitor saw nothing. Sucky all the way around.”
“No, I mean lack of physical evidence. As in no latent prints. As in door handle, office chair, light switch—none of them bore prints small enough to be a nine-year-old’s. Tricky, if you think about it—a girl opening a door, turning on the light, setting up a chair, yet never leaving behind a single fingerprint.”
“Fuck,” D.D. said, a world of exhaustion behind that one word.
Alex reached over, squeezed her shoulder. “Not what you were expecting this evening—from executing routine search warrants to processing a dead body.”
“Not what I was expecting,” D.D. agreed. Alex’s hand returned to the steering wheel; she felt its loss. “I don’t … I mean … Hell. One moment I’m on a date, next I’m at a house with five dead bodies. And that leads to another house with six dead, which leads us to a psych ward where a nine-year-old child escapes and hangs herself while we’re on the property. What are the odds of that?”
“A date?” Alex asked.
“Nothing serious. Never even made it through the entrée,” she assured him.
“You gonna try again?”
“Nah. Bachelor number one’s kind of faded by the wayside.”
“Good to know. Please continue.”
“So we got five dead, plus six dead, plus one hanged. They’re connected somehow. Gotta be connected. Only thing that makes sense, except, of course, none of it makes sense. How do you go from two family annihilations to one hanged child?”
Alex didn’t say anything, just touched her shoulder again.
“Fuck,” D.D. muttered, and turned to stare out the window, where the morning sun was staining the sky.
She’d have to start monitoring her squad for burnout, she thought. Especially Phil. She couldn’t imagine going from scenes like the ones they had to tucking your kids into bed. Phil would stop talking, the first sign he was starting to fail.
And her? She wasn’t sure of her signs. Seems like she never slept when she was working a hot case and she was cranky during the best of times. Maybe she’d secretly burned out years ago, and now it didn’t matter anymore. God knows she went long periods of time without ever connecting with another human being. No hugs, no morning cuddles, no kisses on the cheek. She didn’t own a dog to walk or have a cat to pet. She didn’t even have a plant to soothe her with its pretty green leaves.
Get in touch with your inner angel, Andrew Lightfoot had said.
Asshole wouldn’t last a day in homicide.
“I think Danielle Burton is the key,” D.D. murmured after a moment. “The nurse had a little episode when I was questioning her, then her boss Karen and her boyfriend, Gym Coach Greg, closed ranks. Karen let it drop that A Bad Thing had happened to Danielle’s family and out of sheer compassion we should play nice with her. Then Andrew Lightfoot essentially said the same.”
“Gym Coach is her boyfriend?” Alex asked with interest.
“Almost positive. Definitely something above and beyond the call of duty.”
Alex smiled at her. “I feel the exact same way about you.”
D.D. laughed, which finally made her feel a little lighter on the inside.
“I’m telling you, they’re an item, and she has a secret,” D.D. said.
“And I’m telling you … I know her secret.”
“Say what?”
“Way back when, Danielle’s father killed Danielle’s mother and siblings. Little bit of unemployment, lot of whiskey, and he shot the entire family, except her.”
“How’d you learn this?”
“A milieu counselor named Ed told me everything. How sad it was for Danielle to have to deal with Lucy’s tragedy, particularly so close to the anniversary of her family’s death, yada yada yada.”
“Sure it was only a gun?” D.D. asked. “What about a knife? Maybe her father also stabbed someone?”
“We’ll have to look it up.”
“Oh, we’ll definitely look it up.” D.D. leaned back in the passenger’s seat. “Interesting. Personal. Isn’t that what you said after the Laraquette scene? Whoever is doing this is following a script. The murder business is personal to him. Or