Page 60 of The Last Close Call

“They were leaving anyway.”

He gave her a look that told her he knew that wasn’t true.

He rested his hand on her shoulder. “Thanks for hearing me out.”

Then his hand dropped away, and he walked out the door.

THIRTEEN

What are you doing down here?”

Jack glanced up from a file to see Bryan in the doorway.

“Looking for inspiration,” Jack said.

Bryan was dressed up today in a button-down shirt and tie, and Jack remembered he’d been scheduled to testify.

“How’d it go?” Jack asked, leaning back in his chair.

“Big waste of time. I waited around all morning, and they didn’t call me.”

Bryan stepped into the windowless space known as the “reading room,” which was really just a vacated storage closet where detectives sat at a table to review evidence. He eyed the carton at Jack’s feet, then stepped over to read the label on the box beside him.

“Shana Klein?”

“I’m impressed you know the case number,” Jack said. “That was before your time.”

Bryan tapped the lid. “Mind?”

“Sure.” Jack reached for the shelf behind him and handed over a box of latex gloves.

Bryan pulled on a pair and then removed the top of the banker’s box.

Jack had memorized the contents long ago and wasn’t surprised when the first item to catch Bryan’s attention was a ziplock bag containing a student ID card.

“She looks so young,” Bryan said, studying her photo through the plastic.

“Yeah.”

Shana had been nineteen years old when a masked intruder broke into her ground-level apartment in the middle of the night and raped her at knifepoint.

Now she was twenty-six.

Bryan replaced the bag in the carton. “You go through these a lot?” he asked.

Jack picked up on the curiosity in his voice. It was one of the reasons he liked working with the guy. He was open to learning from older detectives instead of being defensive.

“I like to look at the physical evidence from time to time, see if anything jumps out.” Jack paused, watching Bryan comb through the box. “Every now and then, you see something in a new light.”

“Why is her student ID in here?”

“We found it on the sidewalk just outside her place. At the time, we figured he took it with him as a souvenir and dropped it, so we ran it for fingerprints.”

“Gloves, though, right?”

“Yeah.”

Bryan replaced the lid and peered down at the box on the floor, tilting his head to read the case number.

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