In the Belly of Jonah (29 page)

“Well, let’s put it this way,” Micah said. “One night, maybe a week or so ago, Dr. Jay and Zack and Jackson were all giving Jill a particularly hard time. Mostly about her being a prude.”

“Because she wouldn’t sleep with any of them,” Streeter concluded.

“Right,”Micah said. “Only, their egos would never allow them to admit that it was because she found them unattractive or didn’t see them in that way, so they started questioning which side of the plate she swung from.”

“Her sexual orientation?”

Micah covered a laugh with her fist. Mimicking his words, she said, “Yeah, her ‘sexual orientation.’ Dr. Jay went so far as to say Jill must be gay if she was willing to pass up a night swinging from his dance pole.”

Just thinking about how repulsed Jill must have been made the muscles in Streeter’s jaw work overtime.

“Well, that was the first time I ever heard Jill say anything remotely bad or swear in any way.”

“What did she say?”

Micah grinned, recollection filling her smoky eyes. “I’ll never forget it. She looked right at Dr. Jay and said, ‘Oh, Dr. Jay, you misunderstand. I’ve always said what a nice ass you have. It’s just too bad it’s on your shoulders.’” Micah doubled over with laughter, holding her gut as if Jill were right there saying it again and seeing the expression on all the men’s faces.

“That must have shut him up,” Streeter said.

“He was at a loss for words. First time for that too.” Micah chuckled still more. “Go, Jill, is what I said. That was such a good comeback.”

“And Zack Rhodes? How did he respond?”

Micah’s chuckle faded. “Dr. Jay stood there with his mouth open like a docked fish. Jackson roared right along with me. And Zack blushed. He was mad, but I got the impression he was mad at Dr. Jay, not Jill. At least that’s what I thought.”

“And Jackson Whaler laughed.”

“Yep. It was hilarious,” Micah added.

“When was this? When Jill made you and Jackson laugh so hard with her comment about Dr. Jay. Do you remember?” Streeter pressed.

Micah leaned back on the bench again, laying her head on the wooden slats and staring at the blue sky. She stretched her legs out and twirled both ankles, pink sandals sparkling in the sun. “Actually, I think it was last Friday night. We were at Nate’s around closing time. Everyone was kind of wasted.”

“Wasted? As in drugs?”

She shook her head. “Booze. Lots of booze.”

“Does the gang ever do drugs?”

Micah gathered herself. “What is this? I thought we were just talking?”

“We are,” Streeter said. “I’m not with narcotics. I’m investigating a murder. I’m just curious if maybe there was any connection to drugs.”

“Jill never did any of that shit. She really was a Girl Scout. Cool, but she never touched that shit or swore or had sex or nothing. She was a really good kid.”

“Not like the rest of you,” Streeter said, answering for her.

“Hey, I’m not ratting anyone out if that’s what you’re after.”

“Just tell me this. Which one of the gang provides the rest of you with drugs?”

Micah sat up straight, pulling her knees together and folding her hands neatly on her lap.

“Let me ask it a different way, Micah. I’m trying to find out who killed Jill. Maybe the drugs and Jill’s refusal to participate got her in trouble somehow. If you were me, and you were looking to find the answer to my problem, who would you focus on?”

Micah stared a long while at the couple lying on the grass, the girl playing with her cocker spaniel, and the geese flying overhead. The longer she stalled, the more convinced Streeter was that she’d eventually tell him.

“Who are you meeting with?” she asked in a small voice.

“When? What do you mean?”

“Today. After me,” she said.

“Zack Rhodes.”

Streeter could tell Micah was mulling this over, debating whether to tell him more or leave this discussion where it was. He was pleased with her decision.

“That’s what I would have guessed,” she said. “You already knew the answer to your own question, Agent Pierce. Your focus is right where it should be.”

Micah stood up and, without ever looking back, walked slowly down the street toward the dorms.

On the way to Zack Rhodes’s dormitory, Streeter’s cell phone chirped.

“Streeter, it’s Jack Linwood. Did I catch you at a good time?”

Streeter stared up at the clear blue sky. “Sure, Linwood. What do you have?”

“What color hair does the homeowner have?”

“What homeowner?”

“Where Lisa Henry was staying,” Linwood clarified. “What’s her name?”

“Liv Bergen,” Streeter answered. “And her hair is chestnut brown, her eyes, sea green.”The second the words left his lips, Streeter regretted saying them. Such descriptive words to describe a stranger he knew only from her photograph. Whatever possessed him, he wondered.

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure, although I’ve never met her.”

Linwood paused a long moment. Before he could ask, Streeter explained, “There were photographs in her house. Lisa pointed her out to me. Unless she’s recently dyed her hair some other color, her hair is brown.”

“Chestnut brown,” Linwood repeated. “Interesting.”

“Why?”

“Look, I need some direction. We’ve finished prepping everything. Dr. Johnson wants me to stop processing the evidence from Lisa’s room and start performing a PCR on the tissue and hair I recovered from the spread.”

“Hair?”

“Just one strand. With a root,” Linwood explained. “And I was able to recover some tissue. Dr. Johnson confirmed my theory that it might be the killer’s tissue.”

“What kind of tissue?”

“Looks like skin, from underneath Lisa Henry’s fingernail,” Linwood explained. “Dr. Johnson confirmed that Lisa’s nails had been cleaned by someone other than herself. This might have been a chunk the killer missed after he scraped her nails.”

Streeter’s mind flashed to the angry scratch down Dr. Jay’s left cheek and neck. Alarm rang in the veteran FBI agent’s ears. “What color was the hair?”

“Not chestnut brown,” Linwood said. “It’s black.”

“Lisa’s hair is black, Linwood,” Streeter discounted.

“Yes, but this is definitely a different shade and texture from what I could see through the spectrograph and microscopically.”

“Different,” Streeter was starting to get that rush he often felt when the pieces were starting to fall into place. “Length?”

“About eight inches,” Linwood said.

Streeter’s mind went to both Dr. Jay and Zack Rhodes. Both had shoulder-length black hair. Artist’s hair, in his opinion.

“Run it. PCR on the hair is going to give us more than RFLP analysis anyway,” Streeter said.

“Means I’m going to fall behind on analyzing the rest of the evidence,”Linwood reminded Streeter. “I have the traps on all three pipes from the house. If he cleaned up, I might get some blood or tissue samples.”

“Save it for later, for court. For now, I need a name. Fast. He’s going to kill again—soon,” Streeter said. “It was only three days between Jill Brannigan and Lisa Henry.”

“It might not mean what you think,” Linwood said. “Dr. Johnson told me to tell you that she thought de Milo was rushed with Lisa Henry. He didn’t take the time to cut her with the high-powered water like the rest.”

“Well, he also killed Lisa in broad daylight, with me, Detective Brandt, and how many other law enforcement agents possibly dropping in at any moment. Of course de Milo was rushed.” Streeter was fuming. The madman had killed a brilliant woman and his friend. And he did it within striking distance of where Streeter had slept that very morning. “He’s getting bolder, taunting us, or Lisa Henry was on to something, closer than he wanted her to be. We need the computer forensic results.”

“Which means you might be a target, Streeter,” Linwood warned.

Streeter had thought of that. In fact, he hoped so. He would welcome the opportunity of de Milo taking him on. What worried him was that de Milo possibly had someone else in mind as his next target.

“Did Berta say anything about cause of death?”

“Dr. Johnson told me to tell you that it was the same as Jill’s and the two from Platteville.”

“Heroin,” Streeter growled.

“And apparently lots of it with Lisa Henry, according to Dr. Johnson,”Linwood reported. “Oh, and she got a print.”

“You mean the boot print or the tire tread?” Streeter asked, wondering what Berta would be doing with either of those since Kelleher was working those angles with Gregory and Brandt. Then he remembered that Tim Gregory had driven back to Denver the night before to help Linwood, so it must be the tire tread they were discussing.

“No, a fingerprint,” Linwood said.

“What?”

“I couldn’t believe it either,”Linwood explained. “But I guess Dr. Johnson was able to lift a print from Lisa’s arm.”

“Holy mackerel,” Streeter whistled.

“She’s something, isn’t she?”

“Berta’s something, all right.”

AS STREETER TRIED TO
wade through the sea of empty beer cans and pizza boxes, Zack scrambled to tidy up his dorm room. He kicked a few piles of soiled laundry under his bed and parted the rest with his toe to make a path for Streeter to the lone chair. Streeter had to take the stack of books off the plastic chair before sitting down; he opted to put the pile on the floor rather than to fight for space on the small desk.

Zack plopped onto the bed, unfazed by his catastrophic surroundings. Streeter marveled at how “put together” Zack appeared, considering his clothes selection each morning must have come from the rumpled piles on the floor. Streeter was careful not to knock over the bottles of pomade around his feet, clearly the secret to Zack’s slick look, the perfect ponytail.

“Shoot,” Zack said, tossing a baseball from hand to hand.

Streeter couldn’t help but notice how Zack eyed him sideways, never looking at him straight on, just as he had done the night before in the bar and out on the sidewalk. His demeanor would indicate Zack struggled with trusting people. Or he had something to hide.

“Zack, I need to ask you a few more questions about Jill, if you wouldn’t mind,” Streeter eased into it.

“Like what? We answered everything for you last night.” The ball thumped, thumped, thumped against the palm of each hand.

“And you got a little miffed at Shelby, almost started swinging at Sean. You want to tell me what that was all about?” Streeter asked.

Zack stared at the floor. “No biggy. Happens all the time with those two. They hooked up and Shelby’s not quite over me and Sean doesn’t get why she was ever under me,
capisce
?”

“I’m old, not stupid,” Streeter said.

Zack smiled. The first smile Streeter had ever seen on the man’s long face. Zack’s expression could only be described as forlorn or melancholy at best. A brooding artist. But when he smiled, Streeter could see the fire in his black eyes.

“Tell me about Jill,” Streeter asked.

“What about her?”

Streeter tried to think like an artist. “Describe her for someone like me who’d never met her before and wanted to understand who she was.”