Footprints to Murder Page 14

  I know. I checked.

  To avoid having to make small talk with the folks who were undoubtedly milling around the coffee urns in the hospitality suite, I found a quiet spot in the hotel’s coffee shop and ordered a small cappuccino. I tapped a bit of cinnamon on top of the foam, worrying that I’d allowed Jake’s easygoing charm to override my common sense. I had Paul Newman at home. Why would I need to go out for George Clooney?

  Jake had charmed my socks off, to be sure, but so had a lot of other guys and I’d never leaped into anything more than a friendly relationship with any of them. Not even that hottie at a library convention in Austin, Texas, who’d cornered me in the hotel sauna and explained how ‘understanding’ his wife was about his ménage a trois. Had I allowed Jake’s charm to blind me to his possible involvement in Martin Radcliffe’s murder?

  Motive, means and opportunity.

  Opportunity, for sure. Until Jake hooked up with me around eight-fifteen, only Harley knew where the man was.

  Means? Those biceps could rip a branch off a tree any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Effortlessly.

  But motive? I didn’t get it.

  Jake seemed very much the once-a-policeman-always-a-policeman type to me. A believer, sure, but open-minded about it.

  So what if he’d attended conferences with Martin Radcliffe before? Considering his interest in the subject and his involvement with BFRO, I’d be astonished if he hadn’t. Didn’t mean he knew the guy. I’d been to rallies for Barack Obama, and once shook his hand, but I didn’t know the president. I’ve never been invited to the White House for dinner.

  Jake thought we were a crime-solving team, did he? If so, he’d have to answer a few questions.

  Thinking I might corner Jake at the morning session, I slipped into the conference room just as the forensic artist, Robin Burcell, was wrapping up. Displayed on the overhead projector, her drawing in progress looked only vaguely like the creature I’d seen on Jim Davis’s video, although that’s what I gathered it was supposed to be.

  I leaned against the wall at the back of the room and listened as two witnesses argued about the size and shape of the creature’s nose. When consensus on the final drawing was reached by a show of hands, Burcell threw an enlargement of one of the stills from the Davis film up on the screen. She paused, letting the audience compare the film to the drawing now that they were displayed side by side.

  Two different critters.

  Burcell’s sketch, based on witness feedback, looked like a creature from Planet of the Apes. The photo, more like Homer Guthrie. ‘This illustrates how fallible eyewitness accounts can be,’ she said.

  I was surprised, frankly, by the fuzziness of the right-hand photo. Where were Randall Frazier’s high-end cameras when you needed them, the ones that could ‘freeze a cheetah running flat out?’ That’s what you get, I guess, when you buy your video equipment at WalMart.

  ‘The Innocence Project,’ the artist continued, ‘determined that more than seventy percent of the 337 DNA exoneration cases they’ve handled to date had occurred due to inaccurate witness testimony.’

  An astonished ooooh from the audience.

  ‘And they have three hundred cases currently on their docket. If that percentage holds, that means that two hundred and ten of those individuals have been unjustly imprisoned.’

  Burcell offered her drawings to the two audience members who had travelled the farthest to attend the conference – Key West and Mexico City won out. After the drawings had been collected by their new owners, she opened the session up for questions.

  Surprisingly, nobody seemed particularly interested in Bigfoot. They wanted career advice. Just like any professional, Burcell explained to an eager young woman who asked, you took courses, put together a portfolio. You had to prove proficiency in composite imaging, as she’d demonstrated today, as well as facial reconstruction and age progression. There would be tests, both written and practical.

  At the mention of tests, the young woman’s enthusiasm seemed to evaporate. ‘Oh,’ she said, slumping in her chair.

  The session wrapped up, the audience began to file out. I scanned the room, looking for Jake, but didn’t see him.

  Robin knew Jake – he’d worked with her before on a missing person’s case – so I waited until she finished packing up her materials. ‘Have you seen Jake Cummings this morning?’

  ‘Oh, hi, Hannah. Yeah. He was in the dealers’ room, showing off that footprint of his.’

  ‘Ah.’ I’d almost forgotten about the Bigfoot casts Jake had taken. ‘What did they look like to you – the footprints, I mean?’

  Robin tightened the strap on her oversized briefcase. ‘Big.’

  I laughed. ‘Thanks for your professional opinion.’

  She grinned back. ‘Seriously, they’re humongous. So either they were made by a basketball player on steroids or someone wearing funny clown shoes.’

  ‘Sounds like you don’t take this Sasquatch business very seriously.’

  ‘I take my job seriously, Hannah. You describe it. I draw it. Doesn’t matter if it’s Ted Bundy or a figment of your imagination.’

  ‘What’s next for you, Robin?’

  ‘Home, thank goodness. Leaving after lunch today, in fact. No gigs until August when I’m off to Cincinnati for the IAI conference. A while back I sketched a baby Bigfoot for the production company that produced a show for the BBC and NatGeo called Bigfoot: The New Evidence. I’ll be talking about that.’

  ‘A Bigfoot baby?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. The witness allegedly shot the baby’s mama up near Tahoe.’ She leaned closer and lowered her voice. ‘The guy was nuts, by the way. Probably drunk off his ass, shooting at bears or something.’

  I had to laugh.

  ‘The kid was in his twenties,’ she continued as we walked down the aisle side by side. ‘Had a cell phone in his pocket. Even the producers thought it was odd he didn’t pull it out and snap a photo.’

  ‘Why use a camera when you’ve got a gun?’

  Robin laughed. ‘Cynic.’

  I held the door open for her. ‘This job will do it to you.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Long Island, New York, November 12, 1886. ‘An escaped gorilla from the dime museum is making life miserable for Long Island farmers whose flocks of sheep have been killed by the animal.’

  The Semi-Weekly Age (Coshocton, OH), November 12, 1886

  I found Jake where Robin said he would be, in the dealers’ room, capturing the undivided attention of Prairie Flower who had, apparently, agreed to display the cast of his Bigfoot footprint alongside several others in a glass case on one of her tables. After making a show of my admiration for the amazing artifact, I dragged Jake over to the only corner of the room that wasn’t occupied by dealers, shoppers or gawkers – next to the recycling bins.

  I got straight to the point. ‘I need to know. Can I trust you?’

  ‘What’s brought this on?’

  ‘Have you talked to Detective Cook yet?’

  ‘Of course. We’ve had several conversations since yesterday morning.’ Jake smiled disarmingly. ‘She seemed interested in Harley, too. Wanted to know his specialty.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? Harley’s a multipurpose dog, so to speak. He’s trained to detect drugs and explosives but his most recent experience before retirement was in ground-based tracking. A lot of what we did was wildlife detection, out in the field looking for game violators. Harley can sniff out venison, bear, turkey, trout, bass, perch … and wildlife parts, if it comes to that. Gut piles and residual blood.’

  Picturing the gut piles, I was sorry I asked.

  ‘But you didn’t track me down in order to talk to me about wildlife parts, did you? What’s bothering you, Hannah?’

  The way Jake said ‘Hannah’ – gently, almost tenderly – set off alarm bells deep within my danger zone. I took a step back. ‘Cook implied that either you, or I, or both of us together had something to do
with Martin Radcliffe’s murder. She has us on the security tape, walking with Harley to the lookout.’

  As I spoke, Jake’s eyes never left my face. ‘She’s pulling your chain, Hannah. Wants to get you talking, hoping something useful comes out of it.’ For a moment, I thought he was going to touch my arm, but he drew back, dropping both arms to his sides, taking me seriously. ‘I’m a cop. I know the drill.’

  ‘OK, I get it, but why did you ask me to walk with you yesterday morning? Was it because you needed an alibi?’

  The laugh rumbled out of him. Clearly, that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

  I felt like punching the man, knocking him cold. ‘I’m serious!’

  Jake wiped his eyes, still grinning. ‘I don’t need an alibi, Hannah. I just wanted your company.’

  Uh-oh, I thought. I took a deep breath and plunged. ‘I’m married, Jake.’

  ‘And I have a partner.’

  ‘Partner? You mean …?’

  He smiled, nodded. ‘Thad and I were married in August of 2013 shortly after same-sex marriage was made legal in Minnesota.’

  ‘Thank God,’ I said.

  ‘Thank God for what?’ he asked, looking slightly puzzled. ‘That I’m gay, or that gay marriage is now the law of the land?’

  I chuckled. ‘Both, I think.’

  ‘So, are we good? You and me?’

  ‘Of course we’re good. Somewhere in the archives of the Baltimore Sun there’s a picture of me standing on the steps of the Maryland State House holding a picket sign that says “Vote Yes for 6.”’ I fixed him with a death ray. ‘Stop trying to change the subject. What do you mean, you don’t need an alibi?’

  ‘I have one,’ he said.

  ‘The way I see it, I alibi you and you alibi me. But when I met with Cook she didn’t seem to be buying it.’

  ‘Look, she’s not going to tell you this, but Cook knows exactly when Radcliffe was murdered. 8:23 yesterday morning.’

  I cast my mind back. Shortly after eight I’d been resisting the temptation to eat another donut courtesy of Debbie and her diabolical Donut Dugout. That’s where Jake had found me. ‘So Debbie can alibi for both of us,’ I said, feeling relieved.

  ‘You bet’cha. And has.’

  That got my attention. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Barbara Cook isn’t as hard-assed as she seems, Hannah. We had a little pow-wow this morning after she talked with you. I’m officially “assisting the police with their inquiries” now, but in a good way.’

  I felt limp with relief. ‘But, wait just a minute! How can the ME pinpoint the time of death so precisely?’

  ‘Did you see that watch Martin wore, the one with the bright orange band?’

  I nodded. ‘The Apple watch?’

  ‘No. It was a Fitbit Surge. One of the new ones that not only tracks your every move but monitors your heart rate. Continuously.’

  The significance of this suddenly dawned on me. ‘Jeesh.’

  ‘Exactly. It was all graphed out for them, Hannah. Radcliffe put his Fitbit on at 7:12 and was walking around pretty constantly from then until 7:43 when he stopped walking. Probably standing still. We know where. His pulse beat slow and steady until 8:22, then the rate spiked dramatically. At 8:24? Nothing.’

  I shivered. ‘You are creeping me out.’ After a moment, I asked, ‘Fitbits have GPS tracking, don’t they? Did it say where Martin went when he was walking around yesterday morning?’

  ‘It did. He stuck around the hotel, walked out to the meditation garden briefly then headed straight to the woods, roughly to the spot where we found him.’

  I took all that in and did the math. ‘7:43 to 8:22. Almost forty minutes. You were right, Jake. Martin was staking out Jim’s video setup.’

  ‘It would seem so.’

  ‘Brave new world,’ I muttered. ‘Pretty soon we’ll have microchips implanted at birth.’

  ‘Listen,’ Jake said, ‘the sheriff wants to keep the Fitbit business quiet. So you didn’t hear anything from me.’

  I grinned. ‘Hear what from you?’

  EIGHTEEN

  Jones County, Georgia, August 1889. ‘… The bear had stolen the planter’s fence rails, had built the pen upon the secluded hammock, had stolen his hogs, and then selecting his best shoats had penned them up and was fattening them up for winter use upon Mr Beal’s roasting ears. The hogs were recovered, taken to Albany and sold readily for from seven to eight dollars each to a local butcher … [T]he butcher’s customers were so delighted … that they clamored for more of the same kind, but hogs fattened by bears upon roasting ears were an uncommon commodity, and the meat could not be duplicated.’

  The Lafayette Advertiser (Lafayette, LA), August 21, 1889

  ‘Why is it never easy?’ my husband is fond of saying. Too true. I’d just helped a tearful woman find a local veterinarian for her listless, purse-sized Pomeranian – if Barkley turns up his nose at Blue Buffalo Chicken Delights I know there is something seriously wrong! – and was heading for a quiet spot to check my email, when Susan texted.

  Interview Rm. STAT.

  Coffee emergency? I texted back.

  Srsl.

  It was obvious from the minute I entered the room, however, that coffee had nothing to do with my summons. The urn was full, for one thing. Cook had already drawn a cup for herself and was tapping the contents of a pink paper packet into it.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ I asked.

  ‘Sit down,’ Cook said as she tossed a wooden stirrer into the basket set out on the table for debris. ‘And close the door.’

  I closed the door. I sat.

  ‘Who is Ruth Hutchinson?’ she said without preamble.

  ‘If you’re asking me that question,’ I said, straight-faced, ‘you already know the answer. She’s my sister.’

  My older sister was a superannuated flower child who owned Mother Earth, a New-Age shop on Main Street in downtown Annapolis. I couldn’t imagine what had brought her name into the conversation, and I said so. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Do you know where she is right now?’

  ‘Ruth? Home, I imagine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Lieutenant, I can’t be one-hundred-percent certain, but I know she’s not here. If Ruth had taken it into her head to join me here in Oregon I think she would have let me know, don’t you?’

  As Barbara Cook kept me locked in a steely, unwavering gaze, saying nothing, I wracked my brain, trying to remember if I’d even told my sister where I was going. The last time we’d talked I was heading for my college reunion. The side trip to Oregon had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. For all Ruth knew, I was still in Ohio.

  ‘What possible connection can my sister have to this investigation?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you Tweet?’ she said.

  I shook my head. ‘I had a Twitter account once but I never got into it.’

  ‘So you don’t follow your sister?’

  ‘On Facebook, yes, but not Twitter.’ I paused. ‘I didn’t even know Ruth had a Twitter account.’

  As we talked, Cook had been idly fingering a stack of pages on the table in front of her. She picked up the top sheet and seemed to be consulting it. ‘Are you aware that your sister, Ruth, was engaged in a Twitter war with Martin Radcliffe?’

  Her question hit me like a blow to the solar plexus. I’d had plenty of caffeine already that morning but I needed time to organize my thoughts. ‘Do you mind if I get myself some coffee?’

  Cook waved her hand in a Lady Bountiful, be-my-guest sort of way.

  I stuck a coffee mug under the spigot and watched as the cup gradually filled, thinking furiously. What on earth would lead Ruth, a mild-mannered Maryland shopkeeper, into a war of words with Martin Radcliffe? Ruth was a child of the seventies, true, but the most radical thing she had ever done was protest against Richard Nixon and the war in Vietnam. She grew marijuana in a flowerpot on the fire escape of her student apartment building, too, but back then, who hadn’t?

/>   ‘A Twitter war?’ I said as I sat down again. ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  Cook’s grimace told me she wasn’t buying my ignorance for a minute, but she must have decided to humor me. ‘Hurling insults back and forth over the Internet.’

  ‘I see. No.’

  ‘That she threatened his life?’

  I took a deep breath then let it out slowly, trying to remain calm. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  Cook held the printout closer to her face and read, ‘“I don’t hate you, exactly, but if you were on fire, and I had water, I’d drink it.” What does that sound like to you, Mrs Ives?’

  It sounded exactly like Ruth, I thought, suppressing a smile with difficulty. ‘It sounds like a lame joke, not a serious threat.’

  ‘Or, “If we shot everyone who hates you, it wouldn’t be murder, it would be genocide.”’

  Oh, Ruth, Ruth, Ruth, I silently begged. When will you ever learn to keep your mouth shut?

  Keeping my voice steady, I said, ‘People get death threats over the Internet for everything from allowing transgender people in public restrooms to posing for photos with big guns and dead animals.’

  Cook nodded. ‘True, but since Radcliffe is dead, we would feel uncomfortable letting words like these go unchecked.’

  ‘My sister identified herself, right? She wasn’t using some kind of alias and sending her emails from a Starbucks around the corner?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘You mentioned a war. What did Martin Radcliffe say that started it?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask your sister.’

  ‘Trust me, I intend to. And in the meantime, I presume you’ve checked Ruth’s whereabouts, and whether she has an alibi.’

  Cook’s glance ping-ponged between me and Sergeant Edwards, her second in command, but she didn’t comment. Something was apparently on her mind, and after several moments of silence, I guessed what it might be. ‘Surely you don’t think that I bumped off Martin Radcliffe as a favor to my sister?’

  Cook’s laugh rang hollow. ‘It seems unlikely but stranger things have happened.’