Look Closer(11)

No, I can’t do this. I have to stop this before it starts.

I’ll tell you in person, Lauren, when you return. And that will be that.





10

Jane

“Mary, Mother of God,” Sergeant Jane Burke whispers to herself as she stares at the body of Lauren Betancourt, dangling from a rope attached to the second-floor bannister. Her first homicide. The first homicide, as far as she knows, in the history of Grace Village.

Her partner, Sergeant Andy Tate, comes down the stairs carefully, avoiding the railing and boot and scuff marks on the individual stairs. “Chief call yet?”

“Any second.”

She’s been on the phone with the chief three times already over the last hour, since the cleaning lady entered the Betancourt house the morning after Halloween and found Mrs. Betancourt dangling here. Jane was still at home, getting ready for work, when she got the call.

“Mr. Betancourt is on his way back now,” says Tate. “We’ll have an officer meet him at O’Hare.”

“Where was he again?” Jane asks.

“Naples. Golf trip with his sons.” Andy walks around the dead body like it’s a chandelier to avoid. “Not a bad alibi.”

Yeah, but if the husband’s involved, and if he has as much money as Jane is hearing he has, he wouldn’t do the dirty work himself.

“She was something,” Andy mumbles, looking her over. Even in death, Jane agrees, Lauren Betancourt was gorgeous, slim and shapely with a delicate, sculpted face and silky blond hair. Her outfit, however garish it seems now in death, left little to the imagination: a formfitting leopard-print bodysuit—a cat costume for Halloween. Her eyes, wide open, look down on Jane, lips parted as if in mid-thought. Her lips are painted black, matching the whiskers painted on her face. She has an expensive manicure, black polish.

From the back side, nothing obvious to see, other than a dark stain between her legs. The loss of sphincter control is one of the many ugly accoutrements of death.

Jane’s phone buzzes in her AirPods. She whacks Andy and nods her head.

“Chief.”

“Okay, Janey, I’m in the car. I should be there in about three hours. First, is there press yet?”

“Not that I know of.” She looks out a window. No reporters yet, but the neighbors are out in full force, spilled onto their lawns or the street, in housecoats and slippers, some dressed for work; children with their backpacks headed off to school on a Tuesday morning, the first bell in ten minutes. The half dozen police cruisers would be enough on their own, but Burke imagines that word has filtered back to the neighbors now.

“Christ,” says the chief. “The first damn homicide ever, and I’m at a seminar in Indiana.”

Jane walks to the south door of the house, the kitchen door, because from everything they can tell thus far, it was not the point of entry or the site of the struggle. She wants to keep the crime scene as pristine as possible until Major Crimes brings its forensics unit.

She removes her shoe covers and walks outside, appreciating the fresh air. Tate follows her around the side of the house to the front, where the action occurred.

Grace Village, the day after Halloween. Remnants of smashed pumpkins, candy wrappers scattered in yards or stuck in the curb drains, plastic bags blowing about or clinging to the branches of naked trees.

The Village does a mean Halloween business, a mecca for kids from the west side of Chicago, from the other side of the Des Plaines River, even from Grace Park. Sometimes they even take buses over here to the mansions, with the huge candy bars and elaborate decorations. The older teenagers come at the end of the four-hour window for trick-or-treating, hoping to clean up the remaining candy in the bowls, usually prompting calls from one of the more uptight residents.

Hundreds and hundreds of strangers roamed these streets last night, many in face paint or masks or disguises, on the one night of the year that it wouldn’t stand out. It’s going to make this investigation twice as hard.

You want to kill someone, Halloween’s not a bad night.

“I’ll walk you through what we know so far, Chief. It’s early.”

“I’m listening.”

“First, the window on the front of the house.”

Manicured shrubs along the fa?ade of the house. Two windows behind them. She walks along the grass and peeks over the shrubs.

Boot impressions in front of one of the windows. Good and deep, cemented in the dirt.

“We have deep boot impressions,” she says. “Looks like an adult boot. Our guess is adult size, maybe twelve, thirteen. We’ll have forensics do impressions and run ’em through the database.”

“Good.”

“It rained just a little yesterday afternoon, right before trick-or-treating started. That was a gift to us. The ground behind the shrubs was just soft enough to allow for impressions. Looks like he was standing there for a while.”

“Looking through her window?”

“Exactly. Nothing else he could do, standing in that direction, but look through this window.”

“We have a time frame?”

“Well, that’s the thing, boss. Last night was Halloween. So you know how that goes.”

“Three-to-seven, then lights out.”

Per tradition, the residents of Grace Village turn off their lights at seven o’clock, to tell everyone that trick-or-treating is over. At seven bells sharp, all the parents shout, “Happy Halloween!”—probably mumbling under their breath, Now get out of my neighborhood—then kill their outside lights.