Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [269]
Outside, Henry Lee lifted the grate that led to the broken basement window. He climbed down into the window well to see how hard it would be to enter the house from there.
“I could do it, but I don’t think Barry could,” Lee teased. Then Lee inspected the ventilation duct from the boiler room that led to the front of the house.
Once inside, everyone noticed how empty the house was. The only furniture was in the caretaker’s room. Some walls had been repainted, though, and the basement was clear of the clutter it had once held. Lee took out his Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass. He photographed everything against a scale card that indicated inches and centimeters. Soon he was totally absorbed in his work, measuring and asking questions.
At first several members of the team couldn’t find the basement door, though they had studied floor plans. The way the door opened at the top of the basement stairs was unusual. They noticed that even in daylight, it took some time to find the light switch to the basement stairs. Its location on the wall opposite the basement door was counterintuitive—the last place you’d think of looking.
Standing in the doorway to the wine cellar, Lee first looked in quickly, exactly as Fleet White said he had done. The room was dark. There was a foot-thick concrete wall immediately to the right as he stood in the doorway, and Lee had to turn his head to the left to see inside the room. Even though a bare lightbulb hung just outside the doorway, its angle was such that light did not shine directly into the room. If you weren’t looking down, you might not see the white blanket in the dark. However, when Tom Haney made the same test, he stepped a foot inside and quickly saw the blanket lying on the floor.
One observer, seeing what he called the maze of the house and the basement entrance, said that the intruder theory wasn’t worth even a footnote. “Who gives a fuck if every window and every door was open in the house?” said another visitor. A stranger entering the house for the first time would need a map and a guide, he claimed.
On the theory that JonBenét had eaten the pineapple in the kitchen area before she was hit on the head, the group walked every possible route from JonBenét’s room to the kitchen and then to the basement. But they didn’t stumble on any overlooked evidence that would solve the case.
From the house, the group went to the war room at the Justice Center, where DeMuth, Smit, Haney, and Hofstrom gave Lee and Scheck another briefing. Then Hunter invited everyone to his home for dinner. With the unobstructed view of the Flatirons in the background, it was a pleasant, relaxing evening, with very little talk about the Ramsey case.
5
On Sunday, May 31, Steve Thomas sat in his usual back pew at St. John’s, reflecting on the last eighteen months and what he had learned about some of the people sitting in the rows ahead of him. He looked at the Fernies and the other friends who had been left behind after the Ramseys moved back to Atlanta, all of them bewildered and damaged as they searched for some meaning in the events since December 1996. It was like watching a fire burn out of control and knowing you couldn’t do anything about it. Thomas found peace in taking communion. Rev. Hoverstock held the detective by the shoulders and prayed over him.
Later that afternoon, Thomas and Jane Harmer visited Fleet and Priscilla White. Here were two more people who, like it or not, had been pulled into a vortex from which there seemed no escape.
On Monday morning, June 1, seventy-five members of the media showed up outside the University of Colorado’s Coors Events Center to cover the first day of the Boulder Police Department