Authors: Diane Capri
“Which means what?” Kim asked.
“She filled in where we needed her. Dispatch, scheduling, reports and databases, payroll, supplies.” Roscoe stopped to think over Sylvia’s duty list. “No public safety work. But we only have a ten member team, including me and the Aide, so everybody pretty much does whatever needs doing.”
“Unfettered access to records?” Kim asked.
“Yes, she could access personnel files, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“So she could have taken the prints out of the file herself at some point after she was hired. She probably did.”
“Why would she?”
“I have no idea.” Kim brought the coffee cup to her lips with both hands and blew on the surface before she sipped. Really great coffee in this town. Was it something in the water? Maybe the brewing method? Steamed coffee was her favorite. A small stovetop Italian espresso maker. Freshly ground beans. Heaven.
Gaspar asked, “Was Sylvia issued a gun? Fingerprints would be required. The ATF would still have them.”
“No. Not armed on duty.”
“Allowed to carry?”
“She might have a concealed weapon permit. We can check. Hard to find a Margrave resident without one. Lotta snakes around here, both the two-legged and the four-legged kind.”
“OK,” Gaspar said. “That’s one possible source of old prints. Probably others. Is everything else that should be in the file actually here?”
“Seems to be.” Roscoe nodded, preoccupied with the papers in her hand. If she thumbed through them too many more times, she’d rub the ink off the pages.
The clock showed 10:57 a.m. Maybe GHP would never call. Maybe the boss was wrong. He’s not God, as Gaspar kept reminding her. But Kim’s gut, what she’d come to recognize as her second brain, disagreed.
“What’s involved in the background check?” Gaspar asked.
“Standard Homeland Security forms,” Roscoe replied.
Kim was thoroughly familiar with those forms and the procedures they required. Smart choice. Presented several possible fingerprint record opportunities. Roscoe was a small town top cop, but she was a good one. Kim would have enjoyed collaborating with a cooperative Roscoe under different circumstances. Maybe one day, they would actually be on the same team. Assuming Roscoe wasn’t the dirty cop Gaspar believed her to be.
To confirm, Kim said, “So pre-hire, you checked criminal records, gun licenses, credit report, education and employment, drug tests, lie detector, physical exam, right?”
“Absolutely.”
Gaspar said, “And all of that’s still here, for both Harry and Sylvia. Sylvia’s fingerprints and print report are the only things missing. No medical records?”
“Relevant medical records would be there if we had any,” Roscoe replied.
Gaspar said, “Maybe we can get those from the insurance company?”
“We’re self insured. She didn’t get any medical care through us. I’d have known about it. I file an annual report,” Roscoe said, inattentive.
Gaspar looked at Roscoe until she met his gaze. He raised one eyebrow; she grasped the point quickly. A woman Sylvia’s age should have had at least some medical care in the five year period. Sylvia herself looked well cared for and Gaspar lived in a house full of females, so he knew. Records existed. For sure.
The phone screamed silence. Twenty-six minutes. 11:01 a.m. What the hell were those guys doing out there, anyway? Kim’s stomach snake thrashed around, fully alert. She gulped coffee to calm and distract, but coffee wasn’t working any longer. She asked, “How about tax returns?”
She loved tax returns. She requested them on every case. Tax returns contained a gold mine of information if you knew how to read them. Predictable, comforting, recognizable digits securely held in proper boxes. Much better than dealing with people. Figures lie and liars figure, she knew. But Kim understood lies and liars; she liked numbers better.
Roscoe, it seemed, did not.
“No.” She dropped papers on the desk. A few fluttered to the carpet. “No tax returns. No DNA. No cavity searches. No video of her mother giving birth. No goddamned place to look besides those two folders. No old fingerprints. Got it?”
Kim held both hands palm out in mock surrender. Roscoe bent down to collect the documents she’d dropped on the floor.
Gaspar asked, “How about tax returns for Harry after they married? If they filed jointly, that would be a start.”
Roscoe straightened up. Without a glance, she stalked out and slammed the door behind her. But she didn’t do anything worse.
“That went well, don’t you think, Mrs. Lincoln?” he said lightly.
“Just great.”
Gaspar stood, stretched, walked around the room as if he was mulling things over. Might have fooled someone else, but Kim recognized his pain relief routine. He said, “Don’t worry, Sunshine. She’s got to come back eventually. It’s her office.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Roscoe came back five minutes later, looking unconcerned. Kim said, “Beverly, we can figure this out. You’re looking for fingerprints, but what you really want to find is Sylvia, right?”
“Duh,” Roscoe said.
“Sylvia seemed out of place here, don’t you think? You said she wasn’t a local. So why did she come here? With respect, Margrave isn’t exactly the town every sophisticated girl like Sylvia dreams about, is it? Surely she didn’t just get off a bus and walk into town looking for a job in the local police station?”
Kim saw the briefest glint of surprise.
“What?” she asked.
Then the surprise softened to puzzlement. Roscoe leafed through the papers in front of her.
Gaspar said, “What?”
No answer. Kim waited to explain how to find Sylvia.
Tax returns.
Unlike fingerprints, tax returns weren’t kept forever. The IRS normally held them for three years. Prior returns had to be somewhere, and Kim knew where they hid.
And tax returns knew where Sylvia hid.
The clock on the wall showed 11:06 a.m. What could the GHP possibly be doing with that Chevy for more than thirty minutes before notifying the correct homicide team? Sure, the first officer on the scene didn’t want to make a mistake and set the wrong jurisdiction in motion. But this was GHP’s beat. They had to know who to call. Even those two yokels from yesterday couldn’t be
that
dumb.
Then Roscoe sighed and said, “Sylvia Black applied for her job here because Finlay recommended us. Sylvia had been living in DC and wanted to relocate. He told her he’d come from Margrave. Made it sound idyllic, she claimed. Peaceful. Just what she wanted.”
And there it was. The connection. Under different circumstances, Kim might have cheered.
#
Finlay’s name roused Gaspar pretty fast. He handed the personnel folders back to Roscoe and asked, “Did Sylvia say why she wanted to relocate?”
Roscoe hesitated before answering.
“Jealous boyfriend,” she said.
“She give you a name?” Gaspar asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Not Finlay himself, right?”
“No.”
“How do you know, if she didn’t give you a name?”
Roscoe didn’t answer. Kim sipped her coffee, unsure. Even five years ago, Finlay was a long way up the food chain from an aspiring administrative aide. Unless he had some sort of personal relationship with her. But she couldn’t see Finlay risking everything for Sylvia Black. He seemed too, well,
smart
, at the very least.
She asked, “Did you ever ask Finlay about Sylvia? For a reference, maybe?”
Roscoe considered that one for a while, searching her memory. Her tone softer, sentences slower, she said, “I don’t think so. We had an opening. Sylvia applied. We liked her. Her background checked out. There didn’t seem to be any reason to go further, I guess.”
Gaspar asked, “How did Sylvia know you had a job opening?”
“I don’t know,” Roscoe said. “Five years is a long time to remember details like that.”
Gaspar asked, “How long have Sylvia’s fingerprints been missing?”
“No idea.”
“That’s a lot of screw ups on your watch, Chief. Your one and only prisoner escapes by walking out the door. With the full cooperation of your desk sergeant. Prints and print reports were removed from the accused’s confidential file. You don’t even know when that happened, let alone how. Awfully convenient, don’t you think? ”
“You think I pulled Sylvia’s personnel file out today just to screw with you?”
Kim asked, “Why did you? Retrieve the file today, I mean? You booked Sylvia, right? Took prints? Why pull the old file? Looking for confirmation? Discrepancies? Or what?”
Roscoe ran her fingers through both sides of her hair. “Or what, I guess.”
“Meaning?” Gaspar pressed.
Roscoe held up the papers she’d collected during her brief absence. “This is her booking file. We took new prints yesterday. Sent them in last night. Report from AFIS came back just before you arrived. They say no such person is on record.”
She tossed the folder across to Gaspar. It landed in his lap and slid to the floor. He bent to pick it up, and winced. Something wrong with his right side. Not just his leg.
“Walk me through it,” Kim said, and watched Roscoe’s body language. She figured Roscoe had sound instincts. And she’d been on the job a good long time. Pride and anger and duty and uncertainty all crossed her expressive face. She liked her independence. She hated that help was required. Kim understood.
Roscoe said, “I’ve always been careful about fingerprints. Even with DNA now, fingerprints still solve cases. Early in my career, it was my job to take prints, and handle the reports.”
“I hear a ‘but’ coming,” Gaspar said.
Roscoe smiled. The first genuine smile they’d seen from her today. She had a nice smile, Kim thought. Kind. Like a nurse in a dental office, maybe.
“But,” Roscoe said, drawing the word out and mocking Gaspar a little, as she stared directly at Kim, “I learned how important fingerprints really are when I met Jack Reacher.”
The statement startled. Not what they were expecting. Not at all. Roscoe smiled. She enjoyed the upper hand. Who didn’t?
“How so?” Kim asked.
“You know about Joe Reacher’s murder now, right?”
“We have some open questions,” Kim said. “But we know Jack was mistakenly accused and later released when his alibi was confirmed.”
“Yes,” Roscoe said. “Jack Reacher was innocent.”
Kim said nothing. She doubted Jack Reacher was innocent, whether he had an alibi or not. Jack Reacher hadn’t been innocent since Moses was a boy. But Kim need to kill time until the call came. Reacher was a better topic than the Chevy.
Roscoe took another breath, and held it, and let it go. She said, “Joe Reacher’s fingerprints weren’t processed correctly. We got a false negative. And we didn’t know that until after Jack’s alibi had been confirmed. So we lost a lot of valuable time.” Her voice trailed off into memories. Whether good or bad, Kim couldn’t say.