“Let me UP. I have to go to them!”
I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Marone, not right now.”
“What happened? Are they okay?” Marone choked out. “I just spoke to Elaine.” He sobbed. “I had to stop for cigarettes, but I told her I’d meet her at the car.”
“You were talking to her on the phone just now?”
“I heard her say to someone, ‘What do you want?’ And then I heard—oh God, tell me she’s okay.”
I said again that I was sorry as Marone cried, “NO, not my girls. Please, please, I have to go to them.”
Francis Marone was breaking my heart—and this was the savage part: if we ever expected to catch, let alone indict, the killer, we had to protect the crime scene from this man.
A forest of legs had grown up around me—Tracchio, Conklin, Chi, McNeil. I asked Mr. Marone if there was a friend or relative I could call for him, but he wasn’t listening. Still, I had to know: “Mr. Marone, can you think of anyone who may have wanted to harm your wife?”
Marone searched my face with his bloodshot eyes before shouting, “I operate a cement mixer! Elaine does PR for a toy store! We’re nobodies. Nobodies.”
Marone was bleeding from bad scrapes on his forearms. I put my hand on the poor guy’s shoulder and stood aside as Jacobi and Tracchio got him to his feet.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, man,” Jacobi said.
I signaled to officers Noonan and Mackey, asking them to drive Marone to the hospital. I promised Marone I’d meet him there as soon as I could. Then I got out of the way as Claire’s van tore up the ramp.
Chapter 41
CLAIRE WAS STOWING her camera by the time I made it back up to the fourth tier. She looked into my face, and I saw my own horror reflected in hers. We opened our arms and held on to each other, and this time I didn’t care who thought I was weak.
“These babies. I can’t take the babies,” I said.
“It’s not going to be all right,” Claire said into my shoulder. “Even when you catch the bastard, it’s not going to be all right. Not ever again. You know that, right?”
We broke apart as one of Claire’s assistants asked her if it was okay to start bagging the victims’ hands. The grim work of deconstructing the crime had begun. I said to Claire, “Did you see the letters on the windshield?”
“Uh-huh. CWF. That’s another kink in the pattern. The ‘C’ and the ‘W’ are still next to each other, so the ‘F’ is moving around. And that’s all I’ve got except for two more DBs to work up who shouldn’t be dead.”
Claire pulled at my arm, and I stepped out of the way as Clapper’s crime scene–mobile steamed up the rise and stopped beside the ME’s van. CSIs poured out of the back, and Clapper stood over the sickening tableau and said to no one in particular, “Makes you wonder if the Good Lord has just given up on humanity.”
Cameras flashed and video was shot of the bodies and of the bullet dings in the car both inside and out. Slugs were collected for evidence. Markers were set out, sketches were drawn, and notes were taken.
I stood aside and wa
tched the CSIs work, thinking about how an hour before, Elaine Marone had been shopping with her husband and her toddler, and now Claire’s team was wrapping their bodies in clean white sheets, zipping up the body bags. I was glad the cold finality of those zippers closing was something Francis Marone would never hear.
I was wishing again, hoping that the spent slugs would compute, that there would be some useful physical evidence in this bloodbath, when Conklin called out, “Linds. Check this out.”
I walked over to the Marones’ minivan and saw that my partner was pointing to the three-letter signature on the windshield. He turned his brown eyes on me and said, “That’s not lipstick.”
I shined my light on the letters and felt my stomach drop.
“That’s blood,” Conklin said. “He wrote the letters in their blood with his finger.”
One of Clapper’s techs took close-ups. Another swabbed the letters on the windshield. My flicker of hope burned bright.
Could it be?
Had the Lipstick Killer gotten so lost in his madness, he’d left a bloody print behind for the good guys?
Chapter 42