Page 128 of Witness 8

‘We can’t always get what we want, young lady. What will you do now?’

‘I have to see this through. I have to go to court tomorrow. There’s a chance I can get into the house again. I have to believe that.’

They drove in relative silence for a time, and Mr. Christmas took them back into the towering streets of the city. They drove down West 74thStreet, and Ruby checked the cars parked along the curb. None of them were from Flynn’s team. She could get back into the house tonight.

‘Why have you been so kind to me?’ she asked as Mr. Christmas pulled in.

‘Us grandmasters have to look out for one another from time to time,’ he said, and then pulled a card from his jacket and gave it to her.

‘If you ever need me, call this number. My long-suffering colleague will ask for the nature of your enquiry. Tell him you’re a movie fan and you’d like to speak to someone about Marlon Brando. He’ll do the rest. Farewell, Ms. Johnson.’

60

Eddie

The sound I’d heard was not from inside the Jacksons’ home.

The sound of a mechanism moving came from another lock. The next-door neighbor opened her front door, a woman in her sixties perhaps, wearing an expensive-looking dressing gown.

‘What the hell is going on? I thought when the Jacksons left, this place would quieten down. You’re the second person banging on that door tonight. Can you keep the noise down?’ she said.

‘Someone else was here?’ I asked.

‘Sure, couldn’t really see who it was. He looked familiar. Saw him parked outside on the street the other night in a Range Rover.’

Bale.

‘What happened? Is he inside?’ I asked.

‘No, he left with the nanny. She got into his car and they drove off not five minutes ago, down the street there,’ she said, and pointed.

‘Lake, can you open this door?’ I asked, but he was already working the lock with something small and black that looked like a key fob. It whirred and clicked and then the door opened. He pocketed the device and said, ‘I’m going after them,’ and then ran for his car.

The neighbor looked at us suspiciously, then said, ‘You’re the lawyer.’

‘Yes, thank you, ma’am. Sorry for the disturbance.’

She went back inside, slamming her door shut, and I followed Bloch into the Jacksons’ hallway.

Everything in the living room looked normal. The hallway and the kitchen didn’t. In the kitchen, I saw a bag of tools.

‘Don’t touch anything without these,’ said Bloch, handing me a pair of latex gloves. We both put them on. I closed the front door and Bloch said she was going to check upstairs, make sure there was no one else in the house. We had both seen the sheeting on the hallway floor and Bloch stepped over it to get upstairs.

I examined the tool bag first. It looked new, along with the tools inside it. A flathead screwdriver with a long neck; a trowel; a claw hammer; a crowbar and a hammer with a heavy flat-faced double head – a crack hammer. I took a moment to examine this closely. It still had a store sticker on the rubber covering the shaft. It looked new. No dents or scrapes around the steel head, but there was some staining. Dark spots. Could be blood. Could be Esther Hanson’s blood.

Bloch came downstairs, holding an empty glass.

I pointed to the hammer, and the spots on it.

‘Could be the murder weapon used to kill Alison’s mother,’ said Bloch. ‘Looks like the type.’

‘What’s with the glass?’ I asked.

‘It was in the boy’s bedroom, on the nightstand. There’s some residue inside. Looks and smells strange – almost medicinal.’

‘Alison mentioned Tomas had a fever and Ruby gave him some medicine. Maybe she put it in a glass of juice.’

A thick plastic sheet was spread out on the floor in front of the stairs. It was secured under furniture and a small, heavy hessian bag of what looked like sand, or plaster. There was no manufacturer’s label or store sticker on the bag. The other corners were taped to the tile.