The Maid's Diary(78)
“And what’s the status with Daisy Rittenberg?” Mal asks.
“West Van PD is en route to pick her up.”
The winch starts.
“Thanks, Lu. I’m on my way.”
She kills the call. In silence she and Benoit watch as the cables move. The yellow car breaks the surface. Seawater gushes out of an open window and pours out from beneath the doors as the Subaru is swung out over the waiting flatbed. Slowly, it’s lowered down. The Holly’s Help logo looks heartbreakingly innocent. The flatbed dips slightly under the weight of its new burden as the tires settle onto the bed.
Two crime scene techs in white boiler suits climb up onto the flatbed and begin photographing and checking the car before it’s prepped for transport to the lab.
“Sergeant, Corporal.” One of the techs on the flatbed calls Mal and Benoit over. With a gloved hand he holds up a ziplock bag. Water drips from the bag. Inside, awash in seawater, is a fuchsia-pink book with purple polka dots. “Found it in the glove compartment,” says the tech. “Glove compartment was open. Also got a women’s purse on the passenger seat. The contents have spilled out on the passenger side. So far we can see a Subaru key fob, wallet, mobile phone.”
Mal’s heart tightens.
“Her diary,” Benoit says softly. “We’ve got her diary.”
The tech says, “The ziplock is sealed, but the plastic has been punctured. We’ll need to separate the pages and dry them out carefully.”
The tech with the camera leans into the open Subaru window and shoots.
“It appears the gas pedal was wedged down with a block of wood,” he calls to Mal.
Mal’s phone rings again. She checks caller ID.
“It’s the lab,” she tells Benoit. Mal steps away from the noise to answer. “Van Alst.”
“Hi, Mal, this is Emma Chang, from the lab. We have some prelim results. DNA samples from Kit Darling’s hair and toothbrushes are a match to blood DNA from the crime scene.”
Mal sucks in a slow, deep breath. As thrilling as it is when the pieces start slotting together, it still guts her that a young woman’s body is likely to be the next thing the divers will pull out of that dark, cold inlet.
“Thanks, Emma.”
“There’s other DNA in the crime scene blood samples, though,” Emma says.
“Run it against the fresh DNA samples coming your way.”
Mal signs off and goes up to Benoit. “It’s Darling’s blood in the Glass House. But not hers alone. Someone else did some bleeding.”
“Rittenberg? His injuries?”
She nods slowly, biting her lip, thinking as they watch the techs in their boiler suits moving around the yellow vehicle on the big flatbed trailer. Fog has started to blow in. “Can you hold the fort here? I want to have a go at Rittenberg before his legal team gets up to speed.”
DAISY
November 2, 2019. Saturday.
Daisy sits in her parents’ living room, watching the television news with her feet propped on a pillow. Her legs are really swelling up. She’s retaining water in her face, too. She feels ill. Exhausted. Her hands rest on her belly, where she can feel her unborn son moving. Emotion fills her eyes. She’s waiting for her mom to get ready. Her mother will drive her to the doctor. Her parents fear for her health, given all the recent stress.
A breaking-news chyron flares across the TV screen.
Police divers find car of missing maid
Daisy sucks in a sharp breath. Her body goes still. She watches footage coming in from a construction site at the water in North Vancouver. Where the old silos stand—the place being developed for luxury condos. It’s all taped off with yellow police tape. Police cars with flashing lights and barricades block the streets to the site. Aerial footage from a helicopter shows people gathering along the bridge to watch. The chopper footage pans across police cars near the water. Vans. A truck with a crane. A flatbed truck with a yellow car on top. There are police boats in the water.
A reporter with a mike stands in front of one of the road barricades near the construction site. It’s raining. Someone holds an umbrella over his head.
“We have breaking news coming to you live from the ADMAC construction site in North Vancouver, where police divers have located the yellow Subaru Crosstrek owned by Kit Darling, a missing maid who works for Holly’s Help cleaning services. The vehicle has been brought to the surface and will be transported to a crime lab. Divers continue to search for more evidence underwater. This case is said to be linked to a crime scene at a luxury waterfront home in West Vancouver, where Kit Darling and her car were apparently last seen on Halloween night.”
A photo of Kit Darling appears on-screen.
The news feed then segues to a female reporter outside the Glass House. “The home behind me is where neighbors reported seeing the Holly’s Help Subaru along with a dark-gray Audi parked on Halloween night. It is now the scene of a violent crime. So far police are saying little.”
Daisy thinks she’s going to throw up. But she also can’t move. She’s riveted by the reporter’s words and the unfolding scene.
“Kit Darling has been cleaning this house—owned by a Vanessa and Haruto North—for the last six months or so, according to another cleaner from Holly’s Help. A neighbor reports seeing Darling herself at the house that night, as well as another mystery couple who arrived in the Audi. The as-yet-to-be-identified woman is described as a heavily pregnant brunette. The man is tall, well built, with sandy-brown hair. One witness claims to have seen upturned furniture and copious amounts of blood through the living room windows.”