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Chapter10
“WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE,Decker?” asked Jamison. “You never said.” She added under her breath, “As usual.”
Decker didn’t appear to have heard her. He was staring at various spots in the living room of the Richardses’ old home, particularly the floor. In his mind he dialed back to that night and laid what was there on top of what he was seeing right now.
And they tallied pretty much exactly.
“Rain.”
“What?” said Jamison, looking confused.
“It rained the night of the murders at the Richardses’ home. Bucketed down. Started at around six-fifteen and continued until after Lancaster and I got there. It was a whopper of a storm. Lots of thunder and lightning.”
“Yeah, his lawyer mentioned that. So what?”
Decker pointed to the floor. “There were no wet footprints inside the house other than those of the first responders. No traces of mud or gravel. And Mary and I and the techs put on booties.”
“So how could the killer, who clearly came after the rain was pouring down, have not left any wet marks on the floor or carpet?” She paused. “Wait a minute, you didn’t think of this until now?”
Decker’s eyes kept roaming the room.
“Decker, I asked you…”
“Iknowwhat you asked, Alex,” he said heatedly.
She stiffened at his harsh words.
Not meeting her gaze, Decker said, “I found the print and the blood trace on the wall switch in the living room. It’s where someone would put their hand if they were going to hit the light. We had the tech lift it. We ran the print through the databases and Hawkins’s name got kicked out.”
“Why was he in the system? Finger’s files didn’t say. You said he’d never been in trouble with the law before.”
“His old job was with a company connected to a defense contractor. He’d had to pass a background check and have his prints on file because of his employment there.”
“So from that point on?”
“Hawkins was our prime—well, really only—suspect.”
“How long did all that take?”
“We got the ID on the print around one in the morning. We immediately went looking for Hawkins after getting his address. He wasn’t home when we got there. But his wife and daughter were. They had no idea where he was.”
“Where did you find him?”
“We put out a BOLO and a patrol car spotted him a couple hours later walking down a street over on the east side of town. They arrested him and brought him in to the station on suspicion of murder. Lancaster and I met him there.”
“Walking? Didn’t he have a car?”
“An old clunker. It was parked on the street in front of his house when we got there looking for him. We confirmed later it was the only car they owned. With the rain and cold temperatures, when we arrived, we couldn’t tell if it had been driven recently or not. Although by the time we got there, it would have been hours after the murders were committed. The engine wouldn’t have been warm anyway. But we later checked with neighbors and they told us the car had been there all day and night. Even so, we did check the car’s exterior and tires for any trace from the Richardses’ house, but if he had driven it back there after the murders the heavy rain would have washed anything like that away. We didn’t have a warrant, so the interior of their house was going to have to wait to be searched.”
“So what was Hawkins’s story?”
In Decker’s mind, he and Lancaster walked into the same interrogation room where they had interviewed Susan Richards. Same mustard yellow walls. Same sort of person sitting in that chair. The accused. A hunted animal looking for a way out.
“He knew his rights. He wanted a lawyer. We told him one was on the way, but that if he wanted to answer some questions, it would help us eliminate him as a suspect. But if he didn’t, that was okay too. We needed to legally cover our butts.”
“Did you tell him you had his print at the crime scene?”
“We were holding that back as a trap. We’d gotten search warrants by then, so another team was tearing his house and car apart looking for any trace, and the gun used in the murder. As you know, they later found it behind a wall in his closet.”
