Let Justice Descend. Lisa Black
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The mourning dove had soughed them a chorus as they left, either happy to have the yard to itself again or warning them of some clue they had missed. Maggie hoped it wasn’t the latter.
She had called her boss, Denny, to warn him, and Carol had agreed to come in and help for the overtime. The older woman had cleared and cleaned the large examination table in the center of the lab and now considered the large stacks covering the stainless steel surface.
Maggie glanced at her. “I swear this isn’t my fault.”
“You’ve been saying that a lot lately.”
“Doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
“She was really electrocuted?”
“Yep.”
“That’s a new one on me.”
“My reaction exactly.”
They gave each of the two patrol officers and the two detectives a piece of paper and a pen to tally the amounts. Maggie photographed each bag, each bag with the top opened, the contents of each bag after removal, close-ups of each stack, then each stack with a sticky note assigning it a unique number, then each stack next to the tally sheet showing its total. Some of the bundles had a piece of paper tucked under the rubber bands, which noted the amount of money in the stack—so far, those notes had proven scrupulously accurate. Some of the mesh bags had one or two plastic grocery bags inside them, separating the bills further, and these Maggie would label and move directly to the superglue tank, substituting fresh paper bags for the removed plastic ones—thus designing a system on the fly to be able to reconstruct which bills had been in which bags with which accoutrements like notes or trace evidence. And all on the off chance that it might help, in some way, discern who had executed Diane Cragin.
She did not let anyone remove the rubber bands, so they had to count the money while it was still wadded together. There might be trace evidence caught in the bundles, and besides, less handling meant less jostling and disturbing of any fingerprints she might need to process. Secretly she intended to put that idea off for as long as possible. Money, both paper and coin, remained one of the most difficult items to process for latent prints. Coins were small with a textured surface, and bills were porous with complicated and colored backgrounds. They passed through a lot of hands during their lifetime, giving a suspect the foundation to say that they’d handed that dollar bill to a cashier at the GetGo one time, not to the victim. Of course there could be something said for volume—explaining one’s prints on one bill would be easy. Explaining them found on 80 percent of the bills in Diane Cragin’s safe, much more difficult.
At any rate, not having to unbundle and rebundle the stacks of bills saved everyone time, so she heard no complaints. At least not about that. She did hear mild grumbling about the disposable lab coats, sleeve guards, and latex gloves she made everyone wear to protect any trace evidence that might be mixed in with the cash. This money had been, obviously, collected over a period of time and from more than one person—hence the different styles of sorting, sometimes mixing the denominations, sometimes noting the totals, sometimes binding with rubber bands. Perhaps all this money had a completely legitimate explanation, and even if it didn’t, it might not have a single thing to do with the murder. But Maggie wasn’t about to take that chance.
Jack and Riley chafed a bit, no doubt anxious to get out and retrace Diane Cragin’s last steps, interview all her known associates, and start writing a request for information to her cell service provider. But it made an interesting alternative to arresting drunk drivers and car-hopping kids for the two patrol officers, for they had a marvelous time discussing how finding a safe with this much money in it could outfit one heck of a man cave. One of them leaned toward a maximum amount of sports channels, the other toward an extremely well-stocked bar.
“One hundred ten inch,” one said. “4G.”
“Two blenders and a margarita machine,” said the other.
Riley said, “I want to know when this guy—person—set up his little electrocution machine. The assistant said Cragin went home before the fund-raiser and was on time for that. From her place to City Club, the very latest she could have left her place would be four forty-five. The Secret Service agent escorted her home around nine-thirty. That gives our guy close to five hours.”
Jack said, “The sun sets at seven-thirty, but he didn’t necessarily need the cover of darkness. No one can see into that yard unless they actually stop and look through the outer gate.”
Maggie asked if the outer gate would have been locked during the day.
“No,” Jack said. “Only at night, according to the Secret Service agent.”
Riley said, “Lots of trees and only one streetlight, at the corner, but I’ll bet it’s pretty dark at night. Much less risky than during the day.” He picked up another stack, latex-gloved fingers easily paging through the bills.
“It depends on the neighbors—if they’re professionals who are at work all day, then daytime would be better. If they’re nosey old-money types who spend all day peering through the blinds, then not so much. What about cameras? Somebody on that street—probably everybody on that street—must have home security.”
“Negative.” One of the patrolmen spoke up. “I helped with the canvas, and I didn’t see cameras unless they were really well hidden. One house did, but it’s at the very end of the street. Another one had a doorbell camera, but it also had a walled yard like the victim’s, so they’re not going to see anything beyond their front stoop.”
“We’ll have to send out another team when people start getting home from work,” Riley said.
“Every possible channel, too,” the patrolman said to his cohort, returning to their running conversation. “DirecTV.”
“No way. You can stream all the subscription ones, get anything you want that way.”
“Netflix and stuff? Every time I think, ‘That sounds good, I’ll have to see that,’ they never have it.”
“But there’s never anything on satellite, either. Why pay that big monthly bill? Much more economical to stream.”
The first patrolman nodded at the table. “I got all this money, what do I care about economical?”
“Just ’cause you got the cash, don’t mean you gotta waste it.”
Maggie bagged up his finished cash in fresh brown paper and removed the plastic bags from another set. The plastic went into the superglue chamber, and the kid began to count. Then he whistled.
“What?” she asked.
“This is all hundreds.”
“So’s this pile,” Jack said.
“I got twenties and tens,” the other patrolman grumbled.
“Mine have notes,” Riley said. “Scraps of paper. Think a handwriting expert could do anything with this? Might be very interesting if it isn’t the victim’s.” He held up a two-inch square of lavender-colored notepaper on which had been written 3325.
Maggie said, “I’m not sure what they can do with numbers, though that two looks pretty distinctive. That’s the amount?”
“Yep. Guess they didn’t bother with a dollar sign. Come to think of it, Miss Diane didn’t bother with a ledger or tally or little black book. This much money, you’d think she’d keep track of the running total.”
“Maybe it’s on her laptop,” Maggie said. “Our digital gal says it’s got a passcode, but she might be able to crack it.”
“Try her birthday,” one of the patrolmen suggested. “It’s always their birthday.”
“They’ve got equipment to download and copy the whole hard drive,” she said.
“A computer system to crack other computer systems,” he said. “Sounds disloyal.”