The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [68]
Hawke looked at him and laughed. “Hi, Joe. Wow. Why didn’t I ever think of that? You have a devious mind.”
He carefully climbed back down the ladder, watching his awkwardly dressed feet on the steps.
“You find anything of interest?” Joe asked. The bed’s covers had been pulled back to reveal the bottom fitted sheet, which, to his eye at least, looked pristine, if a little wrinkled.
Hawke shrugged. “Nothing at odds with a single woman living alone, and nothing to challenge the findings I read in your report.”
He packed his camera into a black plastic suitcase and snapped it shut, resuming: “I always hate it when we get called in so long after discovery.”
“We didn’t know it wasn’t a natural.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “I wasn’t complaining. I also read how this all played out—plus,” he added with a smile, “a few little birds are already adding some interesting political tidbits. I wonder who Hillstrom’s new boss is going to be? Rumors are, Freeman resigned so he wouldn’t have to fess up to some huge skeleton in his closet. Big mystery.”
Joe laughed. “Forget it. I’m not touching that. Was the stove the source of the propane?”
Hawke shook his head, still amused. “Very good. Nice, elegant change of subject. Okay, yes, the stove fits as a possible source. How’s that?”
“There’s another one?”
Hawke led the way into the big room and over to the linear kitchen, speaking as he went. “Not that we’ve found, but that doesn’t mean a portable one couldn’t have been removed. You have to start thinking like a scientist, Joe.”
He stopped before the stove and pointed at its row of control valves. “These are all off, the gas tank out back is three-quarters full, consistent with the delivery schedule, and the pilot lights are on and burning.”
“Meaning that if the stove was used to kill her,” Joe interpreted, “not only did the killer turn the controls back off, but he relit the pilots, too.”
“And opened the windows,” Hawke added. “Probably ran the ceiling fans, too, to speed things up.”
Joe turned to look at the long bank of windows across the room. “That does make you wonder, doesn’t it? Why bother? Why not just blow out the pilots, turn on the gas, and walk away?”
“So the house doesn’t explode,” Hawke said simply.
“Right,” Joe agreed. “Which would make sense if you had a vested interest in it.”
“Or were just a neat and careful person, which this one was.”
Joe looked at him inquiringly.
Hawke smiled. “I think we figured out how it was done,” he explained. “Follow me.”
They went out the back door at the end of the kitchen, stepped off the small, cluttered porch there, and circled back along the outside wall, eventually reaching two small, curtained windows located near where the stove was situated inside.
There Hawke stopped, pointing at a large cylinder of propane gas, whose feeder line vanished through the building’s wall. “Our theory right now is that the killer cut the gas here initially, which knocked out all the pilot lights. He used a wrench or some mechanical device to turn the valve. We found the tool marks. He probably did this while the victim was in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, which—what with the noise of running water and all—would have isolated her acoustically from any sounds he was making, or from any sounds the cat might have made in reaction.”
“But just turning the gas back on and letting it seep in through the pilots wouldn’t have been enough, would it?”
“True,” Hawke agreed. He crouched down and pointed out four small, deep impressions in the dirt. “A stepladder,” he explained. “We matched these holes to the ladder we found on the back porch.” He glanced up at the window beside the tank. “The gas gets turned off, the pilots go out, the gas gets turned back on, the killer climbs the borrowed ladder, leans in through the window, which is unlocked, reaches across the top of the stove, turns on all the