Leaving Time(86)

Abigail puts her hands on her hips. “You’ve already used that excuse.”

I blink at her. And then I remember—one time, when I’d been on a bender not long ago and had been wallowing in my own stink for a full week without leaving the office, Abigail had come to investigate. When she walked in, I was passed out cold on my desk, and the place looked like a bomb had gone off. I told her I’d been up working all night and must have dozed off. I told her that the litter on the floor was physical evidence collected by the major crimes unit.

Although, really, when was the last time you saw the MCU gather empty bags of microwave popcorn and old Playboys?

“Have you been drinking, Victor?”

“No,” I say, and with no small sense of wonder I realize that the thought has not even crossed my mind in the past two days. I don’t want a drink. I don’t need one. Jenna Metcalf hasn’t just ignited a spark of purpose in me. She’s managed to dry me out, cold turkey, the way three rehab centers couldn’t.

Abigail takes a step forward, until she is balanced between the bags of evidence and only inches away from me. She leans up on her toes as if she’s going in for a kiss, but she sniffs at my breath instead. “Well,” she says. “Will wonders never cease.” She retraces her careful steps until she is at the threshold again. “You’re incorrect, you know. Dead men can talk. My late husband and I have a code, like that escape artist, the Jewish one—”

“Houdini?”

“That’s right. He’s going to leave me a message, which only I can interpret, if he finds a way back from the beyond.”

“You believe in that crap, Abby? Never would have guessed.” I look up at her. “How long’s he been gone?”

“Twenty-two years.”

“Let me guess. You two have discussions all the time.”

She hesitates. “I would have evicted you years ago, if not for him.”

“He told you to cut me a break?”

“Well, not exactly,” Abigail replies. “But he was a Victor, too.” She pulls the door shut behind her.

“Good thing she doesn’t realize my name’s Virgil,” I mutter, and I crouch down beside one unopened paper bag.

Inside are the red polo shirt and cargo shorts that Nevvie Ruehl was wearing when she died. The same uniform that Gideon Cartwright had been wearing that night, and Thomas Metcalf.

Abby is right: Actually dead men—and women—can talk.

I pick up an old newspaper from a stack behind my desk and spread it out over the blotter. Then I carefully pull the red shirt and the shorts out of the bag and lay them down flat. There are stains on the fabric—blood and mud, I imagine. There are bits that are completely shredded, too, the result of the trampling. I take a magnifying glass from my desk drawer and start investigating each ragged rip. I look at the edges, trying to determine if there is any way to tell if the cut was made by a blade rather than by stretching and tearing. I do this for an hour, losing track of the holes that I have already examined.

It isn’t until my third pass on the shirt that I see a tear I have not noticed before. Namely because it isn’t the fabric that was rent in two. It is a gap along a seam, as if the stitching has just unraveled where the shoulder meets the left sleeve. It is only a few centimeters in diameter, the sort of rip made when something is caught, rather than torn.

Looped in the stitched hem is the crescent moon of a fingernail.

I flash through the image in my head: a struggle, someone grabbing on to the front of Nevvie’s shirt.

The lab can tell us if this fingernail matched the mtDNA of Alice. And if it doesn’t, we can get a sample from Thomas. And if it matches neither of them, maybe it belonged to Gideon Cartwright.

I place the fingernail in an envelope. Carefully I fold the clothing and put it back into the bag. It’s then that I notice another envelope, this one with a smaller paper packet inside, as well as photos of a preserved fingerprint. The small piece of paper had been soaked with ninhydrin, leaving behind those telltale purple fingerprint ridges. These had been matched to Nevvie Ruehl’s left thumbprint, as taken by the medical examiner in the morgue. No surprise there; a receipt found in her shorts pocket would likely have her fingerprints on it.

I take the small square paper out of the envelope. By now the chemical has faded, a light lavender. I can try to get the lab to process it again, to check for additional prints, but at this point they will probably be inconclusive.

It isn’t until I slip the paper back inside the envelope that I realize what it is. GORDON’S WHOLESALE, it reads. And the date and time, the morning before Nevvie Ruehl died. I didn’t know which caregiver had picked up the produce orders. But maybe the employees at the wholesale outfit would remember the employees from the sanctuary.