Page 44 of A Deeper Darkness
“I already did. He and his partner went out to fingerprint the house. That’s why we’re all here.”
Susan’s eyes were rimmed in red, and Sam could see she was faltering. The alcohol had caught up.
“Can I have that tea you offered earlier? Or better yet, a cup of coffee? Eleanor doesn’t have any decent black tea around. I looked earlier, before I found the scotch. Eleanor doesn’t usually drink this brand.” There was a note of accusation in her tone. Sam ignored it. Susan was just going to have to put aside this petty-jealousy nonsense. They had to work together.
“She bought it for me. It’s my favorite,” Sam said, rising automatically and going to the sink to get the water for the coffee. Her mind was spinning. The break-in was unexpected. What were they looking for? What was Fletcher thinking? She hated being on the outside of the investigation like this. At home, she was always welcome to offer her opinions and insights. Here, she just felt like she was getting in the way.
Perhaps Susan was the target, after all, and not Donovan?
No, that wasn’t right. What could a stay-at-home soccer mom do to draw down the ire of a murderer? It was much more likely that Donovan had come across something he wasn’t supposed to see, mentioned it to the wrong person and had been killed for his trouble.
The scent of roasted coffee filled the kitchen. From the corner of her eye Sam watched Susan try to regroup. She was brushing away tears, straightening her hair, pulling her shirt down in the back so it covered the top of her pants. Her movements were clumsy, and Sam turned without thinking and finished the job for her. As if Susan were a child who needed neatening.
But the attention didn’t rile her, as Sam thought it might. Instead, she leaned into Sam’s hand, and whispered, “Thank you.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
McLean, Virginia
Detective Darren Fletcher
Fletcher and Hart watched the crime scene techs print the doorknobs of the Donovan home.
“You think she’s just losing it?” Hart asked. “It’s not that hard to misplace a hat.”
“It’s possible,” Fletcher replied. “Then again, anything’s possible. She seemed pretty adamant that she threw the hat out. Trash comes on Tuesday in this neighborhood. According to her statement, she put the trash out Monday night, with the hat in it, so that leaves a good ten hours for someone to go sneaking around.”
Hart hid a yawn behind his palm. Fletcher pretended not to notice, but had to admit he shared the sentiment.
“Eh, there’s nothing we can do here. Let’s go talk to the neighbors, see if any of them saw something.”
Hart’s face lit up. The man was a ball of energy. Sitting and thinking wasn’t his style.
They split the street, Fletcher taking the north side, Hart taking the south. The Donovans’ house was the end house of a cul-de-sac, with eight houses on either side leading up to it. It was a pretty neighborhood. Safe. Sturdy. The houses were two-story, brick on four sides, fenced yards, with gaily-painted shutters and matching front doors.
Suburbia. The perfect place to raise a family, and feel safe doing so.
No wonder Donovan lived here. From what everyone talked about, the man was overly concerned with safety, and this was as safe as he could get without putting bars on the windows or digging a bunker.
Even though Fletcher recognized that Susan Donovan’s intruder story could easily be that of a grieving widow hoping for attention, something felt off about this whole case. He had put a uniform on the Croswell house, just in case, and was waiting for the Army to give him the list of everyone who’d served in Donovan and Croswell’s unit. The wives could only give them so much information—the Ranger battalion had nearly six hundred soldiers in it. It was probably a long shot at best, but Fletcher wasn’t about to take any chances. Two good men were dead already. He didn’t want to have a third killed on his watch.
He had a short list of men who were in the immediate group that Donovan and Croswell hung out with. There were two names both Betty Croswell and Susan Donovan had mentioned—Billy Shakes and Xander Whitfield. But he hadn’t been able to find addresses on either man yet.
Betty Croswell had given him the names of the men her husband was supposed to meet in Denver. Fletcher had talked to them all—and hit another dead end. Croswell had stood them up, and while they were his friends, they’d been furious about it. Fletcher got the sense that most everyone was exasperated with Hal Croswell. Of course, once they found out why he hadn’t shown, they’d grown quiet, teary and apologetic. Death was a pretty good excuse for missing a job interview.
Fletcher felt like he was overlooking something. As he made his way down the tree-lined street, knocking on doors and striking out, that lack of knowledge nagged at him.
It took an hour for him to meet back up with Hart, who’d managed to get a rock in his shoe, and was looking rather pained over it. He leaned against the car and started to unlace.
“Did you have any luck?” Fletcher asked.
“I don’t know if you want to call it luck. Chick in the gray brick house remembers seeing a truck she didn’t recognize over the weekend. But all she could say was that the truck was blue. There’re teenagers on this street, it could be a friend of any of them. A bunch of people aren’t home from work yet. We’ll have to come back and recanvass later tonight.”
“Did you ask if the truck had four wheels?”
“And a bed in the back, too, dickwad.”
Fletcher grinned. “Fuck you. A blue truck. That’s all we got. Let’s go see what the print guys found.”
