In the Belly of Jonah (25 page)

I was embarrassed that I hadn’t remembered that detail again until now. I must have thought it was more than a dream, because I had the inclination to mention it to Lisa before I headed off to work. And now she was dead. Murdered by someone who broke into the house.

“Maybe he was casing the house,” I said, sounding more and more ridiculous every time I spoke. Casing? I’m surprised I didn’t just jump off the deep end completely and tell Agent Kelleher that the perp was casing the joint.

Kelleher didn’t find it as ridiculous as I thought I sounded. He turned toward the stairs and said, “Show me where.”

I followed him down and showed him where I’d been sleeping the night before, pointing to the high window on the basement wall.

“Were there lights on outside?”

I shook my head. “No lights, but the moon was bright. Enough for me to make out two legs. And shoes.”

“What kind of shoes?”

“I don’t know exactly. I had rubbed my eyes to get a better look, and when I looked again, the man was gone. But I’m sure of what I saw. At least I must have been sure, because I had the sense to warn Lisa to be extra careful.” I was starting to doubt everything. Maybe I hadn’t seen anything at all. Maybe it was just an overactive imagination brought on by the situation and my houseguests. I couldn’t be sure.

Kelleher rubbed his chin again and stood on his tiptoes to see out the basement window.

“Dirt,” he said, walking up the stairs and out the front door.

I followed close behind him.

He rounded the house to the picket fence and gate, unable to work the latch.

“Here,” I said, stepping around him and lifting the metal latch on the inside of the fence to release the gate.

He scanned the grass in my backyard and walked toward the basement window. When he approached the window, he scanned the dirt closest to the house and noticed a partial boot print right where I had said I’d seen a pair of legs. His eyes searched the area, and he stepped within inches of the partial boot print without compromising it and lifted his gaze upward. The guest bedroom window sat directly above the basement window. Kelleher was looking directly into the room where Lisa had slept. He was unable to see the four feet or so beneath the window, but he was able to see the rest of the room by stepping on his tiptoes.

Agent Kelleher flipped open his cell phone. “Streeter, it’s Phil. We need to get the techs back and lift a boot print. Miss Bergen had warned Lisa yesterday morning about a prowler she’d seen earlier that morning around two o’clock.”

He listened for a minute and pulled the phone away from his mouth, looking at me when he asked, “How sure are you of the time?”

“Very sure,” I said. “I looked at the clock.”

Agent Kelleher finished the call and closed the phone. He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, something I would have never pictured this rigid man doing to anyone in his life.

He must have noticed my startled expression because he said, “Not me. It’s from Streeter. He told me to do that and to tell you you’re brilliant.”

SUNDAY MORNINGS WERE USUALLY
his favorite time of the week. Not today. After Lisa Henry’s murder the day before and the marathon of interviews he’d conducted since, Streeter felt like he’d been back amid the angry mob that flooded the streets of Mogadishu during Operation Gothic Serpent—expecting an ambush, edgy and hyped, amped to unhealthy heightened awareness. Both missions had left Streeter feeling a complete failure, with similar horrific endings: eighteen dead comrades in Somalia, one important friend dead in Colorado. Streeter was seething about de Milo’s freedom as much as he had about Mohamed Farrah Aidid on that fateful mission in October. Three years as a Marine on a select military team had been wasted back then, but he was not about to waste any time now.

Streeter wasn’t accustomed to interviewing so many people at once. Having to change his method wasn’t helping his mind wrap around what was being said any faster than if he had interviewed each person individually. He felt pressured, trapped by the urgency of de Milo’s murders. They were coming more quickly, more frequently than even Lisa had predicted. She had warned him of this, and now Lisa was dead. Lisa’s murder had occurred in broad daylight within three days of Jill’s murder and at the very home where the FBI had established temporary headquarters. Was de Milo mocking them, taunting them, he wondered? And when did he start thinking of Agent Henry as Lisa? He admonished himself for getting too close to her in death and wondered why he hadn’t had the courage to in life. Streeter needed a break, but what he needed more was to make every precious minute count, pressing on with interviewing and investigating, with the pursuit of every angle. Lisa deserved at least that.

Buzzed on adrenaline and secretly worried about time running far too short, Streeter had asked Detective Brandt to join him last night, only to learn from Brandt’s wife that Douglas had taken three sleeping pills earlier that evening and was knocked out cold in a deep sleep.
Warding off the nightmare
s, Streeter thought.
Good luck
.

So he had interviewed Jill’s circle of friends last night on his own. All nine of them. None of them ever having heard of a Jonah. And he had just finished interviewing Jill’s basketball teammates this morning, thanks to Coach Beck. All thirteen of them, along with the assistant coach and the team psychologist. None of them was named Jonah or had ever heard of Jonah. And no one’s expression changed much at the mention of the name.

Earlier that morning Streeter had also been able to reach two of the three professors he still needed to interview, including the infamous art professor, Dr. Jay, whose office he was on his way to now from the gym. Dr. Brian Miller, Jill’s computer science teacher, said he could meet with Streeter that afternoon. Dr. Helen Dixon, Jill’s journalism professor, hadn’t answered her phone. He would try later. And he definitely needed to conduct a one-on-one interview with Zack Rhodes to learn more about the wood carving, a direct connection to the crime scene.

As Streeter walked across the green, he dialed his cell phone. “Where are we on the print?”

“They only got a partial. Most of the toe from the left boot,” Kelleher answered.

“What did Linwood say?”

“He said we have a match from the shoreline at Horsetooth.”

Streeter sighed. “Thank God.”

“Jack also said he ran the tread through the database and found it’s consistent with a hiking boot that only Cabela’s and Jax sells.”

“Nearest stores?”

Kelleher paused. “Cabela’s would be Sidney, Nebraska, I think. Maybe three hundred miles. But Jax is a local store.”

“To Denver?”

“No, to Fort Collins.”

“De Milo’s a local,” Streeter concluded, piecing together the retailer for the boot, the hand-carved crutch, and his incredible intuition.

“Looks that way,” Kelleher agreed. “Jack moved on to the items we pulled out of Lisa’s room. I told him that was priority.”

“Thanks. How’s Liv?”

“Pretty shook,” Kelleher said. “But she’s hanging in there. She’s running right now. Good kid.”

“Smart kid,” Streeter added. “Without her we wouldn’t have found the boot print, figured out the probable murder weapon, or had the book from Jill’s locker or the letter from the mysterious Jonah that no one seems to know anything about.”

“She isn’t through yet,” Kelleher said.

“What do you mean?”

“She said there was something bugging her about the pomegranate we found under Lisa Henry’s bed. Miss Bergen said she hadn’t bought a pomegranate since her sister, a woman she referred to as Elizabeth, stayed with her a year ago. Said the pomegranate reminded her of something and she was going to run to get her mind wrapped around whatever was eluding her.”

“You think de Milo was after Liv?”

“Don’t know. Let’s see what she comes up with.”

“Kelleher, you shouldn’t have let her go alone,” Streeter fussed.

“I know, but it’s not like Miss Bergen gave me a choice.”

From Kelleher’s tight tone, Streeter could tell Liv Bergen had become a handful for him. “Her name’s Liv. Why so interminably proper, Kelleher?”

“Why do you call Miss Bergen by her first name, Streeter?”

Impasse. He decided to change the subject and give Kelleher a break. “Have you canvassed the neighbors about Friday night?”

Kelleher said, “One neighbor agreed with you about seeing a truck with a topper parked along the street, not in the cul-de-sac, just like you said. Another neighbor claimed he saw it parked in Liv’s driveway yesterday around noon.”

“Bingo,” Streeter said.

“Tim Gregory is working on it with Jack.”

“No, I agree with you that Linwood needs to stay focused on the evidence pulled from Henry’s room. We’re running out of time before de Milo kills again.”

“And Tim’s saying he won’t have much luck on the truck without the plates, or even a partial number.”

“It was too dark. It was late. I assumed it was a neighbor’s truck,”Streeter argued.

“Streeter, I wasn’t blaming you. What I’m saying is that the neighbors didn’t remember any numbers either. But we have the make, the model, the color, and the approximate year.”

“And the tire tread, once we find the truck. If it’s de Milo’s.”

Streeter was approaching the stairs to the College of Arts building.

Kelleher continued, “Chandler pulled some strings for you and he’s got someone from DMV coming in today to access some information for us. At least we can narrow it down. We’re going to get this guy, Streeter.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Streeter closed the cell phone and slipped it into his pocket, bounding up the stairs two at a time. The front door on the far left was unlocked for him, just as Dr. Jay Bravo had promised, and the only light on in the building was Dr. Bravo’s office on the second floor. Streeter’s even steps echoed down the long marble halls. Just as he was approaching the office, out stepped a tall figure.

Streeter immediately likened Dr. Bravo to a cartoon character, so exaggerated were his features. His tall frame and delicately long fingers were what he expected of an artist, but his handshake was strong and his chest looked oddly larger than his frame would suggest as natural. But nothing about Dr. Jay Bravo seemed natural, starting with the weird, ponderous pose he had assumed just as Streeter neared. The professor held his left hand lightly to his cheek, his right arm crossing his body and the back of his right hand holding up the elbow of his left arm. Streeter half expected the man to call him Rochester in his best Jack Benny impersonation.

“Agent Pierce?” the man asked, extending the right hand, his left still resting against his cheek.

“Dr. Bravo?”

“They call me Dr. Jay,”he said, his smile wide and bright next to his tan skin. He had dark eyes and an athlete’s body. His jet-black hair was shoulder length, perfectly trimmed and tucked neatly behind his ears.
Must be an artist thing, particularly on this campus
, Streeter mused. The pencil-thin mustache was fifties vintage and oddly timeless on this thirty-something gentleman. Dr. Bravo’s presence was somewhat off-putting, the way you’d feel meeting a model for romance novel covers, yet magnetic, as if he were everyone’s long-lost friend. “Just like the basketball star of yore. Only I know nothing about the game. Just how to model clay.”

He was as demonstrative and confident as Streeter would expect an American college professor to be, yet the slightest accent suggested his parents were not American, and his facial features hinted at classic Mediterranean.

“Come in, please.” Dr. Bravo waved the FBI agent into his small office.

Streeter stepped past him and sat in the only chair available, directly in front of Dr. Bravo’s desk. The bookshelves were filled with art books, and oversized books were stacked on the floor behind the professor’s desk. Every book appeared to be well used rather than simply for appearance’s sake. Dr. Bravo slipped around the edge of his desk and seated himself across from Streeter, angling his chair sideways to gaze out the window while they talked.

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m here about Jill Brannigan, as I mentioned on the phone,” Streeter said, amazed by Dr. Bravo’s peculiar behavior.