Look Closer

“This all tracks with what we have and what we know,” says Jane.

“Jane!” Andy calls to her. “Jane, you gotta come see this.”

—

Andy is standing in the bathroom, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “See anything interesting?” he says.

“Oh, yeah, this guy,” says Cheronis. “Guy has a friggin’ titanium toothbrush and a matching set of other goodies. Know what this one is?”

Jane spots it on the sink’s countertop. Three pieces of the five-piece Bentley-Kravitz Elite Men’s Care Set, titanium and matte-black: toothbrush, nail clippers, and dental-floss holder.

“This thing is for holding friggin’ dental floss,” says Cheronis. “You imagine what something like that costs? How much spending money you gotta have—”

“Nearly nine thousand dollars,” says Andy, showing Cheronis his phone, the website pulled up. “All that’s missing is the electric razor and nose-hair trimmer. And guess where we found those?”

—

Andy lifts the robe with two gloved fingers, careful not to touch it or shake it. A long black robe with elongated hood. A Grim Reaper costume, resting on the bed in Christian Newsome’s bedroom, just like the one the neighbor kid saw on Halloween night.

Jane steps out of the room, pulls out her phone, and dials the number.

“Simon,” she says, “this is Jane Burke again. Listen, something’s come up, and I can’t make it back to Grace Park tonight. Can I meet with you tomorrow, November third?”

87 Jane

Chief Carlyle slams his hand down on his desk. “That’s beautiful. He has the burner phone. He’s got the damn Grim Reaper costume, the boots that match, and half his toiletry set is in Lauren Betancourt’s bathroom. He worked at the building where all the morning text messages probably came from, and he lived in an area consistent with the nighttime text messages. He’s ‘tall, dark, and handsome,’ like that text message described him. And ‘Christian,’ last I checked, sounds like a religious name to me.” The chief puts out his hands. “Jane, look happier.”

“I’m happy, Chief.”

“But not convinced. The evidence isn’t strong enough.”

“Oh, the evidence is strong. In fact,” she says, “about all that’s missing is a sworn affidavit from Christian Newsome that he and he alone, without any assistance from Simon Peter Dobias, murdered Lauren Betancourt. But I assume that’s arriving soon in the mail.”

The chief considers her, wetting his lips. “Remind me never to buy you a present, Janey. You’ll just tell me everything that’s wrong with it.” He flips his hand to Andy. “What about you, Sergeant Tate?”

Andy’s a loyal enough colleague not to show up Jane. But she knows he’s more convinced than she is. “It could be very solid, Chief, but I think Jane’s concerns are worth following up on.”

The chief takes a seat in his office, his fingers playing piano on his desk. “Okay, go through these concerns, Jane, start to finish, before I wish we had never heard the name Simon Dobias.”

Jane puts out her hand, ticks them off. “Number one, the pink phone. As you already know, after Lauren was dead, somebody moved that phone under the hallway table.”

“You think someone did.”

“The phone absolutely was moved a second time, and carefully so, not smudging the blood line at all. A level of care, sir, that all but rules out anything but an intentional act. And for the life of me, I can’t understand why the offender, coming upon Lauren’s burner phone that is absolutely, far and away, the most incriminating piece of evidence against him, would push it under the table, knowing that we’d find it.”

“So criminals never do dumb shit,” says the chief. “They never panic and make a mistake.”

“It was not a mistake, sir. If he didn’t see it, if he accidentally kicked it—something like that would be a mistake. Panicking and rushing, I get. This was not panic. This was careful and intentional.” Jane shakes her head. “He wanted us to find that phone. But he didn’t want to be too obvious about it.”

“He being Simon Dobias.”

“That’s the theory, yes.”

The chief crosses his arms. “Okay, agree to disagree. Go on.”

“Number two, the CSLI is so perfect, so on-the-nose, that it feels staged,” Jane says. “And Simon Dobias is a law professor who specializes in the Fourth Amendment. He has this blog we just found called Simon Says, ha-ha. He writes for lawyers and law students, plus a bunch of law review articles. He writes about how the government can track citizens and invade their privacy. He probably knows more than we do about how to track people with cell phone historical data.”

“Okay, so the CSLI is too convincing. Our evidence is too strong, basically,” the chief summarizes. “Go on.”

Jane takes a breath to control her frustration. She gets it—the idea of a quick solve, in a tidy package with a bow. The first murder in the history of Grace Village, and the police solve it within a week. The Village president slaps the chief on the back, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief, congratulating each other on a job well done.