The Blue Hour Read Free Page B

were still in the ignitions.
    Then,
the women had gotten into other vehicles.
    Kemp
and Rayborn had realized this, too. Hess read Kemp's notes. Then he turned to
the CS1 checklist of Lael Jillson's
    Infiniti Q45 and ran his
finger down the page. The evidence techs had pulled up hair and fiber, of
course, a fair amount of it. Human hair probably belonging to four or perhaps
five different people. Based on specimens supplied by her husband, the lab had
made likely matches with Lael and two family members— her husband and son. The
fourth was Caucasian, dark brown, with some bend in it. The fifth was a red
pubic hair that didn't fit with any of the others. Interesting, he thought.
    But Hess knew the
uncertainties of hair identification. Alone among the forensic sciences it was
still practically unchanged in the latter half of the century. It was really
done by eye, and was often inconclusive. The fact of the matter was that you
could get a wide variety of colors and textures from one donor. And a hair
could blow in from almost anywhere. Sometimes you'd get lucky with hair
processing or pharmacological residue that would help narrow the players. Not
often.
    Hess read
in Merci Rayborn's handwriting that Robbie Jillson had "purposely not
washed the car" when his wife went
missing because he immediately "knew" there was foul play,
"whether you cops would take a missing person report or not." Good
man, thought Hess. So the lab had gotten it in reasonably good condition, the
inside at least.
    Fingerprints were
lifted from the interiors and exteriors of both cars. The lab had easily
eliminated the victim and family members but a thumbprint in the Jillson
Infiniti was still unidentified. The print had scored no hit from CAL-1D, the
FBI or the regional registry in Tucson. The print results on Janet Kane's BMW
were pending. Soil specimens were taken from the interiors, good. Not taken
from the exteriors, however. Bad. Hess had once caught a creep because of
decorative gravel caught in a tire tread. That was thirty years back. Since
then he checked tire treads assiduously, because Hess believed that when
something worked you did it again. And Lael and Janet had been somewhere between the time they left
the shops and the time they pulled—or someone else pulled—their cars over for
the last time. Sometimes tire treads had good memories.
    Hess
was disappointed to see that neither Kemp nor Rayborn had had the cars examined
for basic mechanical problems. It was a rapist's trick old as the tire itself
to let some of the air out, follow the driver and wait for her to pull over.
    And
no mention of the cars' alarm systems. Overridden, disabled or functional? It
was an obvious question, and Hess had seen it left unasked a thousand times.
    Always
check the alarm.
    Nowhere in the notes on
the cars was there any mention
    or indication of a
struggle.
    On the back of the
Kane Automobile Impound Order Hess wrote:
     
    See dump sites, check Mary's clerk who saw Janet, check cars for window
marks—alarms/problems, ASAP lab on Kane car and CS1 results, check ATMs for cash withdraw post abducts, Kane purchase/how
paid; where first contact made—in store, in lot, where vehicles found? Ways to get victim to
trust/comply: badge, force, weapon, threat reprisal, security guard,
impersonating PO, law enforce background or reject? Pure opportunity or victims
chosen for specific reasons? Blood checked for drugs or specimen ruined?—How much blood at each site? Saturation tests done with same soil or lab dirt? What
viscera exactly ? Creep/s organized, efficient . . . how finding, what doing
between abduct and I dump site, what doing at dump site, what doing after? Run
blood' I hounds in wider radius, drag or dive pond . . .
     
    That evening Hess
watched the sunset from his deck. He snoozed through some of it, listening to
the 13th Street surf rolling in and the voices of kids and tourists on the
sidewalk below. He remembered what it was like to be a child and