To Catch a Killer(77)

“It didn’t lead to anything, though.”

“That doesn’t mean it won’t at some point. You have to follow up on everything, and you did.”

“What do you do when you can’t figure out how something fits in?”

Victor shrugs. “Some things never drop into place, so at the end of the day you have to accept that they don’t count. That they were scene, not crime. You just hope that you get enough clues that do count.”

It’s been about forty-five minutes since we started running the gel. Victor turns to the page with Miss Peters’s DNA results in my notebook and arranges it next to the chamber. Then, it’s as if he sees something he hadn’t seen before. He places his hands on either side of the chamber and notebook and leans in, studying them both.

I sit up. “What is it?”

Victor’s reaction is small, but I pick up the signs anyway. He rolls his lips together and tightens his jaw. His coffee refill is forgotten. He stares at the process for a long time. After a while he lifts the notebook and studies it by itself.

I stare at the chamber from across the table, but of course it just looks like a big blob to me. I stay quiet for as long as I can. Finally, I’m about to burst. “Did we get a match?”

Victor is distracted. He disconnects the chamber from the batteries and slides the gel out onto a plate. He takes it to the sink and runs water over it.

“The swabs from you and Journey match,” he says. “So you were right about them. And it looks like we were right about Miss Peters, too.”

“What about Chief Culson?”

Victor brings the plate back to the table and retrieves a small, dark blue bottle from his briefcase. He squirts a few drops of that over the wet gel. “No match to Chuck.”

There’s something edgy in Victor’s manner. “You’re not lying to me, are you?”

He gives me a straight-on look but doesn’t deny anything.

I’m not sure he’s lying, but I’m 100 percent positive he’s not telling me the whole truth.

Victor pulls a small ultraviolet flashlight from his briefcase and shines it over the gel. Then he stuffs everything back into his briefcase and carries it to the closet. He grabs his jacket. “I’m going out for about an hour.”

I reach for my jacket, too. “I’ll go with you.”

“You should stay here.”

“Why?” My voice is high-pitched and worried.

Victor gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Erin. Trust me. Everything’s fine. I just want to run over to the station to check on a couple of things.”

“But … what about our tests and everything?”

Victor takes the entire floral foam holder with the samples and sticks it into the freezer. “Just leave everything on the table; it’ll be fine.”

“This stuff can’t be here when Rachel gets home. She’ll flip.”

“Don’t worry.” Victor pauses at the back door. “I’ll be back before Rachel gets home. They’re going to be late, remember?”

I’m boiling with emotion, but keep my face blank. “I’ll stay in the car.”

“I promise, one hour,” he says. My lips tighten, proof that I don’t believe him, so he repeats it. “One hour.”

And then he’s gone.

This sucks.

I’ve done my homework.

Eaten dinner and dessert.

Run DNA.

Now what?

I call Spam, but her phone goes straight to voice mail. This doesn’t surprise me. When she plays her online games at night, she turns off her phone. Lysa’s parents have huge issues with her cell phone. She’s not allowed to bring it to the table during meals, and no calls after eight o’clock on school nights. I can only reach her through e-mail.

I check my laptop again. Still no Journey online. Lysa’s not on, either.

I glance at the clock, hoping Victor will be back soon … only to realize he’s barely been gone fifteen minutes.

I don’t want to think he blew me off. We were getting along so well. Then, out of nowhere, he got that distant look in his eye. I know it very well. It’s the same expression I get from most of the adults who have known me since I was little. It says, I know something terrible happened to you but I’m afraid I won’t know what to say if we accidentally start talking about it … so I’m never going to ever look you straight in the eye again. Instead, we’ll just pretend everything is normal.

From the very first moment I met Victor, he never gave me that look … until tonight. Now I’m pacing the kitchen exactly like him.

He says it helps him think. I think it’s making me paranoid.

I have to do something to stay sane for the next forty-three minutes and twelve seconds. I sit down with my shoe box full of evidence and take everything out, one piece at a time.

First, the shoe print from my bedroom. I never focused on it before, but it is the right shoe. And even though the heel of the print isn’t as clear as the toe, it does kind of look like there’s a smooth spot on the lower right-hand side, near the heel.

There’s definitely not a smooth spot up by the toe. So for sure this print didn’t come from Journey’s shoe. Realization mingles with fear because there’s a good chance this print was left by the killer! That psycho was bold enough to come into my room late at night. Who would do that? Who could do that?