all, he had told Breen and his partner to let him die in peace.
If he hadn’t thought he was going to return, burning something self-incriminating wouldn’t make much sense. Unless the document—whatever it was—incriminated someone else.
After all, why live in a house for twenty years, eliminating everything that might reveal your past, and yet keep a self-incriminating document for posterity? Whatever it was he’d burned had to have pointed the finger at someone else, someone who posed a threat to him personally and yet whose secret he’d wanted to die with him if necessary.
Had that been the same person who had stolen the chart?
I began studying Tyler’s photographs one by one, focusing on every detail, hunting for anything odd. What burned in my mind now was the most banal of revelations: The person who had stolen the chart had to have known it was there to begin with. Did he, therefore, also know about the incriminating document? And if he did, then why wasn’t the place torn apart in a desperate search?
I pulled open the file containing my own photographs, the ones including both the chart and the unfocused shadow of someone lurking outside the window. I placed my shots of the building’s interior next to Tyler’s and compared them, looking for any discrepancies. The chart had vanished in the time between the taking of both sets of photographs; maybe something else had disappeared, too—something that had told the thief his secret was secure and that he had no need to conduct a frantic search.
Tyler had also taken a shot of the bookcase, straight-on, as I had. I laid them side by side and looked from one to the other, back and forth, my eyes aching with the concentration. What finally froze me wasn’t a single item but rather the absence of one; there was a small gap on the bottom shelf, near the stove, in Tyler’s picture. I squinted at my own picture, where the same gap was filled with the spine of a paperback book, the title of which had been circled with a broad band, like a felt-tip pen.
I sat back, curiously satisfied. The photos were in color, but the mark around the book’s title merely appeared brown. I was convinced, however, that had the picture been taken earlier, just after Fuller’s departure on the ambulance, the circle would have been as red as the blood from his pricked fingertip.
I stared at the now-missing book, smiling at its intended pun and admiring the mind of the man who had brought it to my attention, and to that of the chart thief. It was a copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter .
9
HARRIET POKED HER HEAD around the door to say that the second metal detector was waiting for us at the rental place and that everyone except Ron was either here or would meet us at Fuller’s place.
I neatened up my paperwork and crossed over to J.P.’s desk in the middle of the squad room. “I got something extra I’d like you to do when we get to Fuller’s.”
“Shoot.”
“I want you to go over the contents of that stove with a fine-tooth comb. If my hunch is right, you should find at least some trace of newly burned paper mixed in with the wood ash, near the front of the stove door. I think Fuller destroyed a document or a letter just before he was taken to the hospital.”
Tyler quietly nodded and crossed over to the closet where he kept his forensics bag of tricks.
The trip back up to Coyner’s remote property was made largely in silence. I had Dennis and Tyler with me; Sammie and Willy Kunkle were in separate cars.
At first, I wrote the quiet drive off to the contrasting personalities of my passengers. Dennis DeFlorio was as much a slob as Tyler was neat and precise, and they were not given to idle chats under the best of circumstances. But the farther we drove, the more I began to share their lack of enthusiasm for the search. Looking for the gun would be a long and tiresome procedure, and probably a fruitless one at that. Moreover, if by some miracle we did
If he hadn’t thought he was going to return, burning something self-incriminating wouldn’t make much sense. Unless the document—whatever it was—incriminated someone else.
After all, why live in a house for twenty years, eliminating everything that might reveal your past, and yet keep a self-incriminating document for posterity? Whatever it was he’d burned had to have pointed the finger at someone else, someone who posed a threat to him personally and yet whose secret he’d wanted to die with him if necessary.
Had that been the same person who had stolen the chart?
I began studying Tyler’s photographs one by one, focusing on every detail, hunting for anything odd. What burned in my mind now was the most banal of revelations: The person who had stolen the chart had to have known it was there to begin with. Did he, therefore, also know about the incriminating document? And if he did, then why wasn’t the place torn apart in a desperate search?
I pulled open the file containing my own photographs, the ones including both the chart and the unfocused shadow of someone lurking outside the window. I placed my shots of the building’s interior next to Tyler’s and compared them, looking for any discrepancies. The chart had vanished in the time between the taking of both sets of photographs; maybe something else had disappeared, too—something that had told the thief his secret was secure and that he had no need to conduct a frantic search.
Tyler had also taken a shot of the bookcase, straight-on, as I had. I laid them side by side and looked from one to the other, back and forth, my eyes aching with the concentration. What finally froze me wasn’t a single item but rather the absence of one; there was a small gap on the bottom shelf, near the stove, in Tyler’s picture. I squinted at my own picture, where the same gap was filled with the spine of a paperback book, the title of which had been circled with a broad band, like a felt-tip pen.
I sat back, curiously satisfied. The photos were in color, but the mark around the book’s title merely appeared brown. I was convinced, however, that had the picture been taken earlier, just after Fuller’s departure on the ambulance, the circle would have been as red as the blood from his pricked fingertip.
I stared at the now-missing book, smiling at its intended pun and admiring the mind of the man who had brought it to my attention, and to that of the chart thief. It was a copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter .
9
HARRIET POKED HER HEAD around the door to say that the second metal detector was waiting for us at the rental place and that everyone except Ron was either here or would meet us at Fuller’s place.
I neatened up my paperwork and crossed over to J.P.’s desk in the middle of the squad room. “I got something extra I’d like you to do when we get to Fuller’s.”
“Shoot.”
“I want you to go over the contents of that stove with a fine-tooth comb. If my hunch is right, you should find at least some trace of newly burned paper mixed in with the wood ash, near the front of the stove door. I think Fuller destroyed a document or a letter just before he was taken to the hospital.”
Tyler quietly nodded and crossed over to the closet where he kept his forensics bag of tricks.
The trip back up to Coyner’s remote property was made largely in silence. I had Dennis and Tyler with me; Sammie and Willy Kunkle were in separate cars.
At first, I wrote the quiet drive off to the contrasting personalities of my passengers. Dennis DeFlorio was as much a slob as Tyler was neat and precise, and they were not given to idle chats under the best of circumstances. But the farther we drove, the more I began to share their lack of enthusiasm for the search. Looking for the gun would be a long and tiresome procedure, and probably a fruitless one at that. Moreover, if by some miracle we did
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