‘Are we certain these don’t belong to Benny?’ I asked.
‘He says they don’t,’ Maier replied. ‘The stuff he says belongs to him is in that bag.’ He pointed to a bulging bag on the floor.
When I slipped a gloved hand into a back pocket of the jeans, I found a red-and-white paper tag that was identical to the ones Marino and I had been given when we visited the American Museum of Natural History. It was round, the size of a silver dollar and attached to a loop of string. Printed on one side was Contributor, with the museum’s logo on the other.
‘This should be processed for prints,’ I said, placing the tag in an evidence bag. ‘She should have touched it. Or Gault may have touched it if he paid for admission into the exhibits.’
‘Why would she save something like that?’ Marino said. ‘Usually you take it off your shirt button and drop it in the trash on your way out.’
‘Perhaps she put it in her pocket and forgot,’ Commander Penn said.
‘It could be a souvenir,’ suggested Maier.
‘It doesn’t look like she collects souvenirs,’ I said. ‘In fact, she seems very deliberate about what she kept and what she didn’t.’
‘Are you suggesting she might have kept the tag so someone would eventually find it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
Marino lit a cigarette.
‘That makes me wonder if she knew Gault,’ Maier said.
I replied, ‘If she did, and if she knew she was in danger, then why did she go with him into the park at night?’
‘See, that’s what don’t add up.’ Marino exhaled a large cloud of smoke, his mask pulled down.
‘It doesn’t if she was a complete stranger to him,’ I said.
‘So maybe she knew him,’ Maier said.
‘Maybe she did,’ I agreed.
I slid my hand into other pockets of the same black pants and found eighty-two cents, a saxophone reed that had been chewed and several neatly folded Kleenex tissues. An inside-out blue sweatshirt was size medium, and whatever had been written on the front of it was too faded to read.
She also had owned two pairs of gray sweatpants and three pairs of athletic socks with different-colored stripes. In a compartment of the knapsack was a framed photograph of a spotted hound sitting in the dappled shadows of trees. The dog seemed to be grinning at whoever was taking the picture while a figure in the far background looked on.
‘This needs to be processed for prints,’ I said. ‘In fact, if you hold it obliquely you can see latents on the glass.’
‘I bet that’s her dog,’ Maier said.
Commander Penn said, ‘Can we tell what part of the world it was taken in?’
I studied the photograph more closely. ‘It looks flat. It’s sunny. I don’t see any tropical foliage. It doesn’t look like a desert.’
‘In other words, it could be almost anywhere,’ Marino said.
‘Almost,’ I said. ‘I can’t tell anything about the figure in the background.’
Commander Penn examined the photograph. ‘A man, maybe?’
‘It could be a woman,’ I said.
‘Yeah, I think it is,’ said Maier. ‘A real thin one.’
‘So maybe it’s Jane,’ Marino said. ‘She liked baseball caps, and this person has on some kind of cap.’
I looked at Commander Penn. ‘I’d appreciate copies of any photographs, including this one.’
‘I’ll get them to you ASAP.’
We continued our excavation of this woman who seemed to be in the room with us. I felt her personality in her paltry possessions and believed she had left us clues. Apparently, she had worn men’s undershirts instead of bras, and we found three pairs of ladies’ panties and several bandannas.
All of her belongings were worn and dirty, but there was a suggestion of order and care in neatly mended tears, and the needles, thread and extra buttons she had kept in a plastic box. Only the black jeans and faded sweatshirt had been rudely wadded or were inside out, and we suspected this was because she had been wearing them when Gault forced her to disrobe in the dark.
By late morning, we had gone through every item with no success in getting closer to identifying the victim we had begun to call Jane. We could only assume that Gault got rid of any identification she might have carried, or else Benny had taken what little money she might have owned and disposed of what she had kept it in. I didn’t understand the chronology of when Gault might have left the knapsack on Benny’s blanket, if that was, in fact, what Gault had done.