Free The Breathtaker by Alice Blanchard Page B

single fiber slipping through our fingertips this time.”
    “Yeah, boss, he’s been riding Lester’s ass all morning.”
    Charlie headed for the stairs. Lester could be sloppy when it came to evidence collection, and Charlie could tell it pissed him off that he didn’t have his superior’s full and complete confidence, but that was just the way it was when you were a lazy-assed bastard with one foot in your glorious football-hero past. The tension between them had been escalating lately, ever since Lester’s promotion a year ago. Mike had been the top contender for the position of assistant chief, but then, wouldn’t you know it, politics had reared its ugly head. Turned out Lester was related by blood to the mayor. Charlie wanted Mike for the job; Mayor Whitmore wanted Lester. Guess who won? Charlie didn’t like having his arm twisted, and now resentment bloomed on both sides.
    Upstairs, the floorboards creaked with oldness. He found Lester in Danielle’s bedroom, with its hand-painted cornflower motif and eastern-facing windows. On sunny days, this was probably the cheeriest place in the house. Lester sat slouched on the bed with his back to the door.
    “Lester?”
    He stood up, minivac in hand. His eyes were bloodshot, as if he hadn’t been sleeping very well lately. “Hey,” he said.
    “Jesus, Lester… can I count on you?”
    He frowned. “Of course, Chief.”
    “Just do what Hunter tells you to, okay?”
    His face grew resentful. “Why wouldn’t I?”
    Stuffed animals decorated the unmade bed—the cheap kind, made in Taiwan. Charlie scrutinized the extensive porcelain doll collection, their solemn eyes assessing him in turn. There was a Plexiglas cube of photographs on the messy desktop, pictures of Danielle at Bible camp. She wore a “Jesus Luvs U” T-shirt and squinted into the bright sunshine with a worry-free smile. There was a stack of rock and roll tapes next to a boom box on the bedside table, and Charlie studied these items, his breathing growing shallow. Some presence had been inside this room recently, he was sure of it. A stranger had entered the room and straightened out that stack of tapes. A crazy thought, but one he couldn’t shake. The stack was too precise to be the handiwork of a teenage girl.
    “Did you touch those tapes, Lester?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Are you sure?”
    He greeted this thinly veiled admonition with a strained smile. “No, boss. Why?”
    “Vacuum the area very carefully for hairs and fibers. And don’t touch the tapes. Tell Mike to dust them for latents. Understood?”
    He frowned. “Why don’t you trust me, Chief?”
    In the silence that followed, you could hear the generator chugging out in the backyard.
    “Where’d the blood come from?” Charlie asked him in turn.
    “What blood?”
    “On your hands yesterday, when I got here. You had mud on your clothes and blood on your hands.”
    “I must’ve touched the body… the girl, Danielle.” He shrugged. “I know you’re not supposed to touch anything, but I had to make sure she was dead, Chief. I might’ve touched the mattress, too.”
    Charlie nodded slowly.
    “Okay, so I fucked up. I know you’re not supposed to touch anything, but I didn’t know they were all dead at the time.”
    “But you did by the time I arrived.”
    “Huh?”
    “When I walked into the bedroom, I saw Danielle’s body in the corner, but I didn’t see Rob. Rob came crashing through the ceiling while I was just standing there.”
    “I saw him, Chief. The ceiling was gone, and I was looking up at the roof with my flashlight, and I saw a body up there in the rafters. I also saw Jen—… Jenna in the tree.” His eyes grew hard, as if he’d never laughed a day in his life. “Jesus, it was horrible.”
    “What were you doing here yesterday, anyway?” Charlie asked. “Wasn’t it your day off?”
    “I was out chasing,” he said defensively. He looked tired. “I was heading north on the interstate, and there were