“You thought he might not want you looking around in there? Might resist, might offer to come to the station?”
“Yeah, but he didn’t. He said it was my call, whatever I wanted.”
“Like he doesn’t have a care in the world.” Andy wags a finger at her. “Just what hewantsus to think!”
“Now you’re mocking me.”
“I am, it’s true,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean I think you’re wrong. I just think it’s early. I want us to keep an open mind. I mean, we have a lot of reasons to believe that Lauren was having an affair that turned ugly—and we don’t think Lauren would be having an affair with Simon, do we? I mean, with their history? Lauren would be the last person on the face of the earth Simon would cozy up with. And vice versa, I’d suspect.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here, right?” Jane sweeps a hand. “Let’s look for evidence of another man being here. Someone other than Conrad. Assuming they’d come here for their liaisons.”
“It would make sense,” says Andy, heading into the walk-in closet. “If he’s married, like we think, they can’t go tohisplace. Conrad’s permanently living in the condo as of mid-September. Who wants a hotel with security cameras and doormen and credit-card receipts when you can just come here and get your rocks off?”
“I’ll check the bathroom,” she says. She drops her bag off her shoulder onto the bed and removes some paper evidence bags.
Andy comes out of the walk-in. “Nothing in there at first glance. Conrad definitely cleaned out his side in there. It’s totally empty.”
Jane walks into the master bathroom, full of marble, a claw-foot bathtub, enormous shower. A double vanity with medicine cabinets on each end made of ornate cabinetry, as if they were furniture pieces. She pictures her tiny little bathroom and makes a noise.
Andy joins her in the bathroom and takes the medicine cabinet on the left. “This one definitely looks like Lauren’s,” he says.
Jane opens the one on the right. Contact solution, lotion, ibuprofen, vitamins—
“Hey,” she says. “Look at these.”
Andy walks over. “A shiny black electric razor. Pretty fancy one. And what’s that—a matching trimmer?”
“Like a trimmer, yeah, for nose hair or hair in your ears. Pretty fancy one,” says Jane, peering at it, not wanting to touch it yet, even with gloves on. “The brand is ‘BK’ and this is... titanium, it says. Yeah, fancy.”
“Would a woman use a nose-hair trimmer?” Andy asks.
“I never have. I pluck. But the electric razor? This has to be a man’s.”
Andy pulls out his phone and types on it. “Here we go,” he says. “The Bentley-Kravitz Elite Men’s Care Set,” he says. “All titanium, and it comes in matte-black. Toothbrush, nail clippers, electric razor, nose-hair trimmer, and dental-floss holder. A five-piece set. This thing retails for nearly nine thousand dollars, for Christ’s sake.”
He shows her the photo. Yep, it’s a match.
She holds up an evidence bag and uses a pen to tip the nose-hair trimmer off the shelf and into the bag. She repeats the process with the electric razor, using a different bag.
“These could be good for prints,” she says. “It’s something you hold pretty firmly. If you can even get fingerprints off titanium.”
“Maybe DNA, too,” he says. “Long shot, but possible.”
Jane nods. “So these are two pieces of a five-piece set,” she says. “Let’s find out if these belong to Conrad.”
—
“The shaded area on the map is the cell-site coverage area,” says Andy into his phone as he and Jane return to the station. “It’s like a two-square-block area, including Damen. Check every commercial establishment and see if they’re even open at eight o’clock at night. If they are, then maybe our offender was going in there every night at eight p.m., at least Monday through Thursday, and sending text messages. Someone who’s that much of a regular inside a store or restaurant is gonna be known by the staff. Or—yeah, agreed,isa member of the staff himself. So get employee names. And security cam footage, too.
“More likely,” he goes on, “it was someone texting from their home, so get addresses of all the homes in that area, whether single-family or townhouses or condo buildings. Then run down property-tax records for ownership, and we’ll have to contact all the owners. Probably a lot of them in that area are renters.”
They walk through the station house to the war room. Jane walks in and looks around the room. At the garish photos of Lauren in death; at the pages of the text-message transcripts that provide the most information,blown up on boards and fastened to the corkboard; at the rope used to hang Lauren; at the pink telephone, back from fingerprinting and plugged into a charger on the wall.
She walks up to one of the text messages blown up on a poster, from the evening text exchanges for Wednesday, August 17:
Oh, my. For someone with such a religious name to have such a naughty side...
“Simon Peter Dobias,” she whispers to herself.