I See You (Criminal Profiler #2)(88)

The call went to voicemail. “Mrs. Bradford, this is Detective Vaughan. I’ll be by later today. Remember, no media. And the girl does not see her father without a social worker or me present.”

He hung up and pulled into traffic. “I want to talk to the forensic department first. At this point, I need to have as many facts in hand as possible before I talk to Skylar or her father again.”

“Neither one of them has given us the full story. If he truly killed her mother, why is she protecting him?”

“He’s the only parent she has left.”

The two had time for a quick breakfast in a King Street bakery, and then they drove to the lab just as Bud was laying out two jackets on the light table. He recognized the clothes as belonging to the Foster family. Bud stood over the light table and clipped off a small piece of fabric from a blood-soaked exercise top.

The first set of clothes belonged to Hadley. They included jogging shorts, an exercise top, socks, and shoes. The second set were Skylar’s, and to his surprise, they were jeans, a black shirt, a dark hoodie, and running shoes. And then at the end were Mark Foster’s dress shirt, slacks, tie, socks, and shoes. Paramedic and emergency room personnel had cut Foster’s clothes off him.

All the clothes were doused in blood. Hadley’s were the worst by far, followed by Skylar’s and finally Foster’s. It would take weeks of testing to determine whose blood was on whom.

“All my testing is preliminary at this point,” Bud said. “We’re talking Quick-DNA, and I still have a mountain of evidence that’ll require more testing before I can finalize my reports.”

“The quick-and-dirty version will work for now,” Vaughan countered.

Bud adjusted the glasses perched on his nose. “The blood on Hadley Foster’s body so far belongs predominantly to Hadley Foster,” Bud said. “Considering the medical examiner estimated Hadley lost over fifty percent of her blood volume, this makes sense. Hadley’s injury was such that she would have drenched anyone or anything that came in close contact with her as she was dying.”

“Skylar had a cut on her hand,” Vaughan said.

“Like I said, it will take time to sort the blood on Hadley’s clothes. For now, I can’t differentiate between the two.”

“That conclusion also includes the back seat of the Lexus?” Spencer asked.

“It does. There is some blood that belongs to Skylar, but most of it was Hadley Foster’s.”

“Where did you find Skylar’s blood?” Vaughan asked.

“In the front seat, on the steering wheel,” Bud said.

“Fitting Foster’s first narrative that the girl drove her mother and the assailant away from the house,” Vaughan said.

“It could be interpreted that way,” Bud said.

“Did you get a chance to pull Jason’s DNA from his prison records and compare it to Skylar’s?” Spencer asked.

“It’s a match,” Bud said. “He’s her biological father.”

“The blue eyes and high cheekbones they share are not a fluke,” Spencer said.

“Appears so,” Bud said.

“Is there any of Mark Foster’s blood on Skylar’s or Hadley’s clothes?” Vaughan asked.

“No,” Bud said. “So far, his blood seems to be contained to his clothes, by the garage, and on the floor by the front entryway.”

“What about Skylar’s clothes?” Vaughan asked.

“She’s soaked in her mother’s blood,” Bud said. “And there are also traces of her own blood on her clothes.”

“All could fit the narrative of a masked intruder who forced the girl to leave with her mother,” Spencer said.

“Which leads me back to Mark Foster’s story,” Bud said, pointing to stains on Hadley’s outfit. “Hadley’s clothes were doused in her own sweat. These were the clothes she wore while she was running. She did not shower and change as her husband said.”

“She was killed shortly after her run,” Spencer said, more to herself.

“Why doesn’t it surprise me that Foster lied?” Vaughan asked.

“Foster’s clothes were also stained with sweat,” Bud said.

“That could have been the result of chasing after his family’s attacker or the trauma of a stabbing,” Vaughan said.

“Very true,” Bud said. “But there was a significant amount of perspiration, which is what caught my attention. Makes me think he did a good bit of running himself. Also, his shoes are badly scuffed on the bottoms.”

“They could be an old pair,” Vaughan challenged. Smoking guns rarely arrived fully formed but slowly in a collection of small facts that paired together to create a mosaic that told a narrative.

“The scuffs are well defined,” Bud said.

“There’s no record of him getting a ride from the car’s location to his home,” Vaughan said. “It’s a solid four miles between the car’s location and their house. He’d have to be one hell of a runner to get back home, especially in the summer heat and humidity.”

“He’s fit,” Spencer countered. “Plus, his body would have been surging with adrenaline. Maybe he could have covered that ground in a little over a half hour. It would explain the sweat and the scuffs.”