style="font-size:15px;"> Jess grabbed Vernon’s hand. “There’s tar under your fingernails. You’re a roofer.”
“That’s not against the law.” Vernon tried to get up from his chair, but Alonso brought his hands to the man’s broad shoulders and kept him seated. “I didn’t kill her. If that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Okay.” Jess sat, reached in his shirt pocket, and pulled out a pad. “Tell us why your footprints were found near her body, Mr. Lanier.”
Vernon told them about sleeping in the abandoned lockkeeper’s house. “She must’ve screamed, but I didn’t hear her.” He was trembling. “I feel her eyes on me now. Could you take her photograph down?”
Jess raised an eyebrow at Alonso. Vernon was strange, but he was their first real lead. Five dead women, all kinds of crazy clues, but this man was the closest they had to a witness.
“Sure, Mr. Lanier.” Alonso sent Jess a look. “I’ll take it down.”
They would test Vernon. Jess would make sure Vernon didn’t look behind him.
Alonso had blown up photographs of the five girls’ faces, their eyes open, their faces startled in that last moment of life. Five death masks. The photographs were tacked to the back wall alongside a huge map of the Washington area marked with the murder locations, the Georgetown Reservoir, the Rock Creek Park, the C&O Canal, Roosevelt Island, and Arlington Cemetery. Clues printed on paper were attached to the various locations by colored string.
Alonso climbed the step ladder and covered the entire wall with a sheet. He got down and returned to the desk. “Is that better?” he asked Vernon.
“Now Doris is looking at me through a veil…” Vernon’s voice broke. “I feel her eyes...”
Alonso and Jess exchanged a startled glance. “How do you know her name?” Jess almost shouted.
Vernon could have read it in the newspaper. Thad Graham had done his research and dug up all the girls’ names. Ray K. says the reporter has a source within the MPD, but Jess suspected that source might be Ray himself.
“Her name was in her coat,” Vernon said.
“Did you cover her in her coat?”
“I did.” Vernon nodded.
Jess pounded the desk a moment in frustration, then wrote in his notebook.
A killer, who covered his victim, meant the killer felt regret, even shame for what he had done. Doris Reynolds was the only victim who had been covered. This killer had no regret or shame.
“By covering her, you disturbed a crime scene, Vernon. That’s illegal. Police need to see the body in situ.”
Vernon kept his head lowered. “I can hardly get my breath with her eyes on me.”
Alonso went to the case map, took all the girls’ photographs down, and stacked them between large pieces of cardboard for safekeeping. He left the sheet over the maps and clues and put the stack of photographs under the camp bed.
Jess watched Vernon to make sure he didn’t look around. Could Vernon tell her photograph was no longer on the wall?
Alonso returned and said, “How’s that, sir?”
Vernon lifted his head and inhaled. “Thank you, Alonso.”
Maybe Vernon had that sixth sense. What some called intuition, but was so much more.
Vernon rose partway from his chair. “This is for you.” From his pocket, he pulled out something small. “Found it on the path near her. I shouldn’t have taken it. That was wrong of me. Forgive me.” He gave it to Jess, sighed, and slumped in the chair.
Jess examined the twin silver bars. On the back were two prongs. “It attaches to the uniform’s collar with these.” Jess brought the bars to his own collar to show Alonso.
“Captain’s bars.” Alonso extended his hand. Jess gave him the insignia. “Brackets attach to the prongs and hold them in place.”
“If she ripped the bars off, the uniform would have a ragged collar, right?” Jess looked at Alonso, who said, “Couldn’t be worn again.”
Jess wrote in his notebook. The captain would have to be Army or Marines since a Navy captain was a high rank and would be older than their killer, or so they had decided. How many uniforms was a captain allotted? Did the officer have to account for the loss of a shirt? Was it easy to order another?
Alonso stood behind Vernon and took their father’s gold watch from his pocket, signaling what he wanted to try. Jess set his palm on the desk, his fingers spread wide, gesturing they needed to lower the tension first.
Alonso stepped over to the desk. “Would you gentlemen care for a cool drink?” he asked with a slight bow.
How easily Al switched into his manservant role.
“Sounds good to me,” Jess said. “How about you, Mr. Lanier?”
Suspicious, Vernon looked from Jess to Alonso and back again before he dropped his chin in a slow nod. “I would appreciate it.”
“May we call you Vernon?” Jess sat back. When Vernon said sure, Jess told him their first names. “Where you from Vernon?”
“I hale from a little place called Frog Hollow between Harpers Ferry and Shepherdstown.”
“I thought I recognized West Virginia in your voice.”
“Yep, I’m a mountain man. My pap worked the mines. Died in a cave-in. Myself, I like high airy places, mountains and rooftops.” He slumped in the chair. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Go ‘head.” A cigarette would relax him.
Vernon took out a pack of rolling papers and a grimy leather pouch. How steady his hand was as he filled the paper with golden brown tobacco from his pouch. He lit up and took a long drag, his eyes closing with pleasure. Jess set a saucer in front of him to be used as an ashtray.
The clink of bottles sounded. Alonso placed three soda pops on the table, grape, cherry, and orange. The bottles were dewy from the refrigerator they’d bought and hid from Mrs. Trundle, who complained about her electric bill.
With his pocket knife, Alonso popped their tops. “Choose your poison, Mr. Vernon.”
Vernon took the cherry, brought it to his lips, and almost guzzled the whole thing in one gulp. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You going to arrest me for taking the pin?”
“No.” Jess sipped his grape soda. “Tell us about that night and morning again.”
Vernon went back over everything.
Jess leaned across the table and looked into Vernon’s gray ghost eyes. “The mind can be like a crowded cupboard, Vernon. Sometimes things get stored in its darkest reaches, things we don’t even know are there.”
Alonso cut the lamp, while Jess studied the
