To Catch a Killer(62)

The thought of adorable Miss P dating droopy Chief Culson is not a pretty one. “What if I can prove he was at her house the night she was killed?”

Victor looks skeptical.

I pause to wipe off the table. “Alright, I know it sounds crazy, and I’ll admit when I was gathering the clues they seemed more like accidents. But when you said that about a person in authority using their power the wrong way … it triggered something for me. Think about it. The chief is a person in a position of power.”

Victor sneers. “I wouldn’t exactly call Iron Rain a power center.”

“But did you know that Miss P was working to create a forensic lab here, in Iron Rain?”

Victor frowns. “Actually, that wasn’t mentioned in regard to her murder.”

“Well, she was. She wanted the school and the police department to share it. I assumed the chief was psyched about it—I mean, who wouldn’t be? But thinking back to what Sydney said, maybe he wasn’t. And, he is a person in power.”

Victor makes a calming gesture. “Don’t get hung up on the power thing. What I said was just something you say. I don’t see Chuck having any kind of motive—or the balls, for that matter—to murder anyone.”

“But in your books you always say ‘you’ve got to go…’”

“‘… where the evidence takes you.’” Victor slaps his hands on the table. “Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

I grab my mom’s evidence box. “What should I do with this?”

Victor thinks for a moment. “Put it back in the attic … but just for now. Okay?”

“Okay.” I dash up to my room and carefully return the file box to the attic. Now that Victor knows about it, I don’t know how long I will get to keep it. I haven’t told him about the matching shirt tie that Journey found in his van. I have a feeling that if he knew this was connected to my mother’s murder, he’d start acting like Rachel. He’d take it all away and I wouldn’t get to see any of it.

I return to the kitchen with my laptop and a smaller shoe box containing the evidence I’ve been collecting on Miss Peters’s murder. Victor has cleared the table, and propped his huge brown leather briefcase on a chair beside him. The top of the briefcase gapes open and Victor is flipping through a notebook. I pause to reflect on just what a perfect moment this is. In all of his books, Victor stresses the importance of keeping detailed notes. And here he is … in my house … at my table … waiting to see mine.

I set the shoe box on the table and hand over my notebook. It’s not leather-bound like his, but it’s what’s inside my cardboard cover that counts. “I kept a detailed journal on everything, just like you describe in your books.”

He gives me an appreciative smile as he flips through the pages, stopping to jot something here and there in his own notebook. When he’s done, he sets it aside. “Okay, hit me with it.”

I open the box and begin to spread things out on the table. “Remember those fingerprint cards you spotted the other night? Well, one of those sets of prints belong to Chief Culson.”

“How did you…?” Victor frowns.

I bring up my e-mail from the IAFIS search and swivel the laptop so he can see it.

“I’ll explain everything, but just listen first.” I rummage in the box and find the Ziploc bag containing the scrap of paper. I slide it across the table to Victor.

“I found this lodged in Journey’s seat belt. He says it’s not his handwriting and an ink test shows it matches the chief’s special pen.”

Victor snorts. “Chuck and his special pens. What else?”

I pull out the pages Spam gave me and put them on the table. “Phone records. Miss Peters received a buttload of calls from the chief’s private line in the days right before she was killed.”

“Wait. How did you get private phone records?”

“Um. I don’t want to reveal all my sources just yet. Just let me keep going.”

Victor rolls his hand in the air for me to continue.

I’m down to the last two pieces of paper in the box. “Last but not least, DNA results from Miss Peters’s lab computer.” I push the DNA printout to the middle of the table and slide the page with the footprint I found in my room off to the side.

Victor nods at the footprint. “What’s that?”

“It’s a footprint, it connects, I just don’t know exactly how.” Actually, I know how. I’m pretty sure the person who left this footprint was looking for the tie that matched my mother’s shirt. But since I don’t want to tell Victor about the tie just yet, I can’t really explain the shoe print either.

Victor frowns. “Where’d you find it?”

“In my bedroom.”

Victor uses the smooth end of his pen to slide the footprint back into the middle of the table. “For now, it stays in. Everything stays in until we eliminate it.”

I shrug okay and curl onto my chair. I watch him review one item after another on the table. His hand hovers over the group until he picks up the page Spam printed from Miss Peters’s computer files. Donning a pair of reading glasses, he gives me a pointed look over the rims.

“What makes you think these are DNA results, and why do they implicate Chuck Culson?” he asks.