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“Sometime during the six minutes he was inside, he stepped in blood from the younger kid, and tracked it into the kitchen. We can see some tread, and the forensics guys say it looks like size eleven shoes, which is one of the most common men’s sizes, I’m told. We should be able to identify the tread, but we’re not there yet.
“We don’t know where he went after he left, or if he walked orhad a car. We’re trying to figure that out now. We think he might have either been following the family or waiting for them from some spot outside the house, because they arrived so close together,” Russo said.
He turned to look at the scene, thinking, made a rapid clicking sound with his tongue, turned back to Lucas.
“At 8:17, thirty-four minutes after the killings, Margaret Cooper, Sand’s wife, drove past the front of the house and then past a security camera at the garage, around back. She parked inside the garage, walked into the house, saw the bodies, dropped a big bottle of olives on the kitchen floor, where it shattered.”
“I thought I smelled a martini,” Lucas said. “A jar of olives?”
“Yeah. Big one. She started screaming. She called 9-1-1 still screaming, and we got here, on the security cameras, at 8:22 and found her standing on the lawn, in the rain, holding her baby. The baby was not injured, although, by the time we got here, might have been hypothermic. She’s okay, though, the baby.”
Lucas frowned: “Any idea of what the guy was doing inside the house for six minutes after the shooting? Anything missing or...?”
“Let me ask you this—you’ve seen as many murders as anyone in the business. Does this look like a robbery to you?”
Lucas looked over at the bodies. “No.”
Russo nodded, turned to the bodies. “Doesn’t look like it to me, either. Too much well-planned violence for too little reward, as far as we know. The killer apparently took Sand’s watch and his wallet. He went up to their bedroom and tore a closet apart, and two chests of drawers. Also the kitchen, dumped out a bunch of canisters. Dumped the refrigerator. Like...” Russo shrugged. “Like he was looking for dope or a stash of cash. I don’t know—it’s weird. Thecloset has two lines of built-in drawers, and Ms. Cooper had left a diamond ring, in a platinum setting, in a silver tray on top of one set of drawers. He yanked the drawers out, the ring must have been right in front of his nose, but he left it.”
“Maybe too identifiable?”
“Pop the diamond out, sell it in LA. It’s a big one,” Russo said.
“Then why take the watch and wallet?” Lucas asked.
Russo spread his hands: “You tell me.... It’s like he was faking a robbery to cover the motive for the killing.”
“Okay. Now what?”
“After we get the bodies out of here, we’ll bring Ms. Cooper back inside to check things out. Ms. Cooper told us that the baby was crying when she walked into the house and she wondered why nobody had gone to pick her up. I’m thinking that the kid started to cry when she heard the gunshots and the killer went in and looked at her, decided to leave her, but maybe had to think about it, soaking up a little time there.”
Lucas: “What kind of shape is Cooper in? Can she talk?”
“She’sreallymessed up. We put her and the baby in Regions, had the docs and a shrink spend some time with them. She didn’t want a minister. She kept wanting to get back here, but we kept her away. She checked out of Regions about half an hour ago. I’m told a girlfriend picked her up and took her to the girlfriend’s home over in Edina. Katie McCarthy is over there with them, talking, but so far Cooper doesn’t seem to know anything. This came out of the blue. She says.”
Lucas: “Anything going on between her and her husband?”
“Not that we’ve been able to pick out,” Russo said. “Tell you the truth, I spoke to Cooper for a total of five minutes. You know what?I agree with Gary about that. She didn’t know anything about it. She has no idea who did this. Or why. I believe that.”
Gary Durey, the BCA agent, had been listening, and said, “She really doesn’t know what happened, Lucas. She just doesn’t.”
Lucas nodded at them: “Good. Thanks. Why do I smell popcorn? On top of the olives?”
“It looks like Sand and the kids made some microwave popcorn before they went outside to shoot baskets. There’s still some left, and there’s a microwave bag on the counter. They burned some of it.”
Lucas spent another five minutes looking at the scene. The crumbled bodies of the dead children were disturbing, but nothing he hadn’t seen before. Still, he felt anger rising, which was also typical.
Russo wasted a moment talking with the chief and Durey, then stepped out of the blue pathway, going back to the bodies; Lucas said to his back, as he went, “I’ll call you.”
“Give me a little time,” Russo said.
“Yeah.”
There was nothing more to do inside, so Lucas nodded at Durey, said, “Catch you later,” and headed for the door. He wasn’t quite there when the chief called, “Lucas,” and he turned and saw the chief coming after him, trailed by the FBI agent.
The chief nodded toward the porch and said, “Let’s step outside.”
On the covered porch, looking down at Steve, in the rain, the chief said, “There are going to be some complications with... all these people working the same case.”
