The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  Ross pulled the card closer, staring at the whirlpool of parallel lines. He was familiar with crime-scene linkage, which said that any person who came into contact with an object or another person left a piece of himself behind. Detectives, like Eli, would use this to document that a suspect was in a certain place at a certain time, to find the cause that led to this particular effect. But the same theory could be used to prove the existence of a ghost. Or to make a man rethink suicide. Or to explain why love felt like a phantom limb, long after it was over.

  Forensic detectives already knew what most people spent a lifetime learning: you couldn’t pass through this world without affecting someone else.

  Ross’s chest suddenly felt so tight he thought he might pass out. “You okay?” Eli asked, staring at him curiously. Even the dog cocked its head. Ross grabbed the first thing he could on the table—another set of prints that had been tucked underneath some crime-scene photos. He bent down, pretending to be absorbed by the lines and dips that made up the fingerprints.

  “This is what I’m thinking,” Eli mused. “Pike’s an influential guy. He told the investigating officers a story, and they believed it because it was far easier to blame an Indian than to stand up to a guy who was so well-respected in the town. The question, of course, is why Pike killed his wife, if that’s the way it went down.” He snapped on latex gloves and began to pack the glass for transport to his DNA scientist. “Money, maybe. He did inherit the land.”

  Frowning, Ross glanced from one of the index cards to the print that had come off the pipe. “Uh, I’m not sure about this . . . but don’t these two match?”

  Eli took the cards out of his hands and began to bob his head back and forth. “Hmmph.” Settling down on a stool, he picked up his magnifying glass and began to scrutinize them. After about five minutes, he rubbed his jaw. “I’ll be damned. I’m going to have to have the experts at the lab take a second glance, but yeah, I’d say this is a match.”

  “So whose prints are they?”

  Eli looked at him. “Cecelia Pike’s. They were rolled postmortem. Standard procedure.”

  “If Gray Wolf wasn’t even there, what was she doing with his pipe?”

  “Holding onto it, apparently,” Eli said. “Among other things.”

  “Like?”

  “Maybe Gray Wolf himself. Say the wife was having an affair . . . getting rid of her and framing her lover would kill two birds with one stone.”

  “Shut up,” Ross said, his voice rising. “Just shut up, all right? There was no lover. There was no one. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Easy . . .” Eli held up his palms, placating. “I’m not the bad guy here.”

  Ross forced himself to relax, realizing how crazy he must have sounded. “It’s just . . . she was not having an affair. You didn’t know her.”

  Eli stared at him. “Neither did you.”

  WITNESS STATEMENT

  Date: September 22, 1932

  Time: 8:15 AM

  INTERVIEW OF: Lemuel Tollande

  INTERVIEW BY: Officer Duley Wiggs and Detective F. Olivette of the Comtosook Police Department

  LOCATION: Comtosook PD

  SUBJECT:

  1. Q. State your name and address for the record, please.

  A. Lemuel Tollande, 45A Chestnut Street, Burlington.

  2. Q. Where do you work, Mr. Tollande?

  A. The Rat Hole in Winooski. I tend bar.

  3. Q. Do you know John Delacour, aka Gray Wolf?

  A. Sure. He’s a friend, a regular.

  4. Q. Did you see this man on the night of September 18th?

  A. Yeah. He came in about eight, eight-thirty, and left near one.

  5. Q. At any point did he leave the bar during that time?

  A. I think he went out to get some smokes . . .

  6. Q. How long was he gone?

  A. I can’t say. The bar was awful busy that night.

  7. Q. Well, are we talking five minutes? An hour?

  A. I . . . I really can’t tell you. All’s I know is he was gone and then he was back.

  8. Q. Did he tell you he’d been fired from his job?

  A. No . . . but Gray Wolf’s a pretty private fellA. He keeps his business to himself. [Pause] He ain’t no murderer, though. Wasn’t the first time around, and not this time neither.

  9. Q. Mr. Tollande, have you seen Gray Wolf lately?

  A. Not since that night in the bar.

  10. Q. Do you know where we might find him?

  A. He moves around a lot.

  11. Q. Your people always do. And you lie, too, don’t you?

  What Eli first thought, stepping into the musty, stuffed room that made up the Comtosook Public Library, was that someone with all the bright bloom of Shelby Wakeman didn’t belong in a such a closeted place. He imagined her sitting, instead, among a kaleidoscope of tulips in the Netherlands, or swimming with a rainbow of Caribbean fish, and then drew himself up short at being caught in such a flight of fancy.

  Watson, unused to being on a leash, yanked so hard all of a sudden that Eli went flying, nearly jackknifing himself on the front desk. The resulting noise caused Shelby to look up from the computer terminal where she sat. “Well, hello,” she said, getting up and coming around the counter. She looked at Watson, who was wagging his ridiculous tail so hard it made his face shake. “You aren’t allowed in here,” she scolded, but she was patting him all the same. “Then again, who am I to tell a cop what to do.”

  When she smiled at him, Eli’s heart raced like a Roman candle. “Hey,” he managed.

  Brilliant, Rochert. She works in a library, she knows the whole dictionary, and that’s the only word you can scrape out?

  “Were you looking for something in particular?” Shelby asked, and Eli opened his mouth only to realize that she was speaking to Watson. “Hound of the Baskervilles, maybe, with your namesake? Or Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers?”

  “Actually, he just came to keep me company,” Eli said. “I was looking for town records from the thirties.”

  He was not particularly looking for town records from the thirties. In fact, he’d come expressly to see if Shelby was working today. But the murder case was on his mind, and that excuse was the first to pop into his head. It occurred to Eli that, between his investigation of a seventy-year-old murder case and his itch to see this woman, he was clocking precious little time for police work.

  She was staring at him curiously, wondering, no doubt, why a policeman wouldn’t know that all municipal records were stored next door to the department in the town clerk’s office. “I know exactly where they are . . . but it’s not here.”

  “Any chance you can show me?”

  Before Shelby could even pose the question, the other librarian on duty—one who’d been so still and wrinkled Eli hadn’t realized she was animate—waved her along. They walked down the steps with Watson between them, Shelby squinting in the sun.

  “Beautiful out, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “I forget how bright it gets, sometimes.”

  “You mean working in the library all day?”

  “That, and staying up all night with Ethan. It’s the only time he can go out to play.” They began to walk down Main Street, Watson sniffing at cracks in the sidewalk and patches of gum stuck to the ground.

  “When do you sleep? You must be exhausted.”

  She smiled tightly. “You do what you have to do.”

  A kid on a scooter passed them on the left, pushing Shelby toward Eli. He felt the charge that came from being so close. He could trip, blame it on Watson, and brush up against her. He could even push Watson into her, and then catch her when she fell.

  What would she feel like in his arms?

  Then they were at the municipal offices, and Eli felt a slow roll of frustration. Had the buildings in this town always been so close together? He followed Shelby up the stone steps and into the first room on the right. “Lottie,” she said to the colossal town clerk, “h