Wilde Lake(10)

Lu looks at the bedspread, a comforter of khaki and red squares. She can almost imagine the catalog copy, promising that it would bring a hint of Parisian flea markets into a room. It’s askew, with one corner flipped up at the foot.

“I think I’ve seen what I need to see. Call me if you get a hit on the print. And you know what? Grab the bedspread, have that tested.”

Mike is too professional to sigh, but she can tell he wants to. “Why, Lu? This shows no signs of being a sex crime. And if she were, um, an active lady, we might end up looking at a lot of DNA that doesn’t go anywhere.”

“The spread is mussed,” Lu says. “As if someone was lying on top of it. And that corner is flipped.”

“So?”

“Look at this place. She was a major neat freak. Either she was lying on the bed when the guy came in—or someone else was lying on the bed when she came in. Just do it, okay?” She’s testing him, making sure he knows who’s in charge. She softens her command with a joke. “Respect my authoritah.”

“Wouldn’t have pegged you as a South Park fan. I’ll walk you out.” That’s Mike Hunt, always with the little gentlemanly touches. That’s what women love about him. The ones who fall, they think it’s just for them, the courtly good manners, but Lu has observed that Mike’s gallantry is automatic. He is always, always, thinking about getting laid, and the good manners are an end to that. Sex—conquest—is like breathing for him.

Sure enough, a woman with a bag of groceries is walking up the fieldstone path to the complex and Mike lights up. “Can I get that for you?” The woman is a bit of a butterface, in Lu’s estimation, and probably older than Mike realizes because her figure is amazing, set off by a tightly cinched trench coat that’s short enough to showcase long legs in spike heels. Lu can’t help resenting women with long legs.

“No, I’m fine. I live across the hall from, um, Mary. They said it was okay. That I could leave and come back. It’s my day off, I got to do my errands.”

“I’ll be over to talk to you later,” Mike says. Most women would be beside themselves at the prospect, but this one seems leery.

“About what?”

“Anything you might have seen or heard this past week. Even if it didn’t seem important at the time.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” she says quickly. Lu knows the type. Just as there are people who never want to serve jury duty, there are citizens who dread being witnesses. “These apartments are well built; they’re pretty soundproof. And they’re set up so the shared walls are between the kitchen and the dining room. Not much to hear, you know?”

“Look, no right answers,” Mike assures her. “I’d still like to talk to you.”

“Should I—the people who live here—be nervous? I mean, was it random or a burglary or—what?”

“We’ll know more soon,” Lu says, hoping it’s true. The woman looks at her sharply, in what Lu interprets as a who-asked-you kind of way. Lu reminds herself that she’s a public official now, already running for her second term in a sense. She can’t afford to be caustic in the face of insults and slights. “I should have introduced myself. I’m Lu Brant, the state’s attorney.”

“Yeah, I know who you are,” the woman says.

“And you are—?”

“Jonnie Forke.” Lu, aware that her trouble with names and faces is a liability for a politician, plays her private game of trying to construct a mnemonic trick. Stick a fork in her, she’s Jonnie. Heeeeeeeeeeere’s Jonnie—with a Forke for her butterface. “I mean, no disrespect to Mary and I’m sorry it happened, but I’ve got to think about myself.”

Lu has a reluctant admiration for the woman’s bluntness. She’s saying what everyone thinks, in almost every situation. I’ve got to think about myself. Most jurors, even the ones who take the job very seriously, think about themselves first. If, when—and it will be when, it has to be when, all she needs is a fingerprint to come back, and this perp is no debutante, she’s sure of that, no one commits a crime like this his first time out—Lu comes to a jury with the story of how Mary McNally died, they will be judging the victim as much as the defendant. Did she know him? Did she grant him access to her home? Had they met online or in line, at that 10 P.M. showing of The Theory of Everything? A truly random case, one in which the victim appears to have been singled out for no reason, would be the best one to try in Lu’s experience. An intruder, surprised. He lashes out. The victim turns to run, he hits her from behind, strangles her, then keeps beating her after she’s dead, literally defacing her. Any juror can empathize in that case.

But if Mary invited the man into her home—that will complicate things. It will be better in some ways if the bedspread is pristine, as Mike’s preliminary scan indicated. With the break-in and presumed burglary, Lu already has a first-degree murder. Sex will just complicate everything. As sex does. Then again, if he didn’t break in, Lu might have the advantage of witnesses who saw them together somewhere. She catches herself: she, like Mike, is assuming it’s a man. The violence at the scene—not a lot of women have that in them. The anger, yes. Just not the strength to act on it. And there is something personal about it. The postmortem beating, the damage to the face. It doesn’t get more personal than that. Then again, men can be surprisingly swift when it comes to having expectations from women they barely know. Strange men tell women to smile, they interrupt conversations, they demand female attention in all sorts of ways.