Page 3 of The Accomplice
‘Check the cuff on this one,’ he said.
There was a stain on the cuff. It looked like a splash of dark liquid. Even though the shirt had been laundered, the rust-colored mark was still there. Delaney had seen enough bloodstained clothing in her time to know this looked suspicious.
‘Bag it,’ said Delaney.
Bill clicked his fingers at a tech behind him, who started opening an evidence bag.
‘That’s not all,’ said Bill, pointing at an open drawer with his flashlight.
Delaney took a look at the drawer and saw an array of jewelry resting on black cloth. Some of the items looked familiar. One in particular.
Stacy Nielsen’s black pearl necklace.
‘Jackpot,’ said Bill, with a smile.
‘Is this the right shirt ?’ said the tech.
Delaney turned. It was the right one. White with a stain on the …
For the first time, Delany realized it wasn’t a man’s shirt.
It was a woman’s blouse.
She turned back to the jewelry drawer. It was on the ‘hers’ side of the closet.
Clutching his radio, Bill spoke over the comms, ‘Any sign of the van on the property ?’
‘Not in the garage,’ came the answer.
‘Shit,’ said Bill.
‘We’ve got the jewelry and his DNA,’ said Delaney. ‘We don’t really need the van.’
‘I want it all,’ said Bill.
A few of the witnesses who had been in the vicinity of the crime scenes around the time of the murders had reported seeing a dark-colored panel truck nearby. The FBI had identified some eleven thousand registered owners of dark-colored panel trucks in New York. A good thing it wasn’t a white truck that had been spotted as there were fifty-five thousand of those in circulation. Along with local law enforcement, they had gone house to house with the dark-colored van owners, eliminating names from the database on a set criteria.
The truck wasn’t at Daniel Miller’s office. And it wasn’t at his home.
Bill’s phone rang. He saw the caller ID, handed the phone to Delaney who stepped out into the hall to answer.
‘Bill Seong’s phone,’ she said.
‘Where’s Bill ?’ said Drew White, the assistant district attorney in charge of the Sandman case.
‘He’s busy. We’re in the middle of a search here, Drew.’
‘Tell me you got the truck.’
‘We’ve got something better. We’ve got the jewelry,’ said Delaney.
‘Well, that’s good news. I’m afraid I have some bad news. Want to know why Daniel Miller wasn’t on our list of potentials for the truck search ?’
Delaney covered her other ear, focusing on White.
‘He bought it second hand and didn’t register it ?’ asked Delaney.
‘Nope. He was on our list, goddamn it. We could’ve got him two months ago.’
