Devil's Night (8 page)

“The blow was on the right side of Constance’s head,” Wallace said. “From the location and the angle of the wound, I can tell she was hit by a right-handed male. A woman of average strength wouldn’t be able to strike that hard. No offense.”

Even though he was most likely right, Kat appreciated the coda. “None taken.”

“Has a potential weapon been found?” Wallace asked.

“Not yet. You said yourself it could have been any number of items in the museum.”

“Well, I can help you narrow it down. She was hit with the edge of something flat and heavy. It left a line of damage to the skull instead of a circle. So if you were thinking someone bashed her head in with a cannonball, you need to guess again.”

A cannonball was exactly what Kat had been thinking. There were several in the museum—small ones the size of a grapefruit that someone strong enough could easily lift with one hand.

“There was no trace evidence found in the wound,” Wallace continued. “No paint chips or fiber. Whatever she was hit with, it was undecorated metal. Judging from the impact, it was something heavier than your average stainless steel. I’m thinking lead. Or cast iron.”

“Can you pinpoint the time of death?” Kat asked.

“When did the fire start?”

“Neighbors across the street reported it at 12:52.”

“Then she died sometime between then and the time it was put out.”

Kat’s eyes widened. “Are you sure? The cause of death is blunt force trauma, right?”

“Actually, it isn’t,” Wallace said. “Turns out Constance died of smoke inhalation.”

The only way Kat could have been more surprised would have been if Wallace had said drowning. She had seen the wound on Constance’s head, complete with flecks of brain or bone or
something
that had come out of it. Constance Bishop must have been one tough woman to survive a blow like that. Adding to the shock was the fact that she might have still been alive as the firefighters were trying to put out the blaze.

“They could have saved her,” she murmured. “If her body hadn’t been dumped in that crawl space, then Dutch Jansen’s boys would have seen her when they entered the museum.”

“Technically, it wasn’t murder,” Wallace said.

“Close enough. Whoever set that fire killed her, so it’s murder in my book. Especially after she was tossed into that hole in the floor.”

“That’s another thing. It’s looking less likely that she was dumped there. I found fresh scrapes on both of her knees. There were similar ones on the inside of her forearms, not to mention a splinter near her elbow.”

Another shock that Kat didn’t see coming. “You’re saying she crawled there by herself?”

Wallace nodded gravely. “If she had been dragged, the scrapes would have been slightly above her knees. The ones I found were below the knees, suggesting that her legs had been bent.”

Kat processed the information, unsure what to make of it. If Constance had crawled across the floor at some point during the night, it could have been before the blow to the head—while trying to fight off her attacker, for instance. But the scrapes on her forearms made that seem less likely. A woman scurrying away from an attack would be on her hands and knees. The wounds on her arms suggested she pulled herself across the floor.

Kat tried to form a timeline of events, based on what little she knew. According to Emma Pulsifer, Constance was in the museum a little before eight. She might have left at some point during the night, but was back there after midnight. Maybe she had arranged to meet the person who struck her over the head. Or maybe the person’s presence came as a complete surprise. Either way, Constance was left for dead on the floor as her attacker started the fire on the other side of the gallery.

Once the fire was burning and the assailant was gone, Constance headed to the crawl space. When Kat had entered the museum, the trapdoor in the floor had been closed. If Constance did climb into the crawl space herself, then she also closed the door after her. A tough task for an elderly woman with a devastating head wound. But it was possible. Anything was possible when you were fighting for your life. Still, that theory created one big question.

“Why would she go down there?”

“Maybe she thought it could be a refuge from the fire,” Wallace said.

Again, it was possible but unlikely. “Why not just keep going down the hall? There’s a back door there. That would have taken just as long as entering a hole in the floor.”

“She probably wasn’t thinking straight,” Wallace said. “Remember, she was struck in the head very hard. It likely would have killed her if the smoke hadn’t gotten to her first.”

Kat thought back to the way she had found Constance slumped over the trunk with the bones in it. She had managed to get most of her body over it, almost as if she was trying to protect it.

“Maybe she knew exactly what she was doing,” Kat said, thinking aloud. “She was hurt real bad. Probably in a lot of pain, not to mention surrounded by fire. Maybe she knew she was going to die and went into that crawl space for a reason.”

“Which would be?”

“Trying to save the trunk that was down there. Or if she died, then making sure whoever found her body knew it existed.”

“But why would she spend the final moments of her life doing that?” Wallace asked.

“Because Constance knew what was inside it,” Kat said. “Other than the scrapes and the splinter, did you find anything else on her hands or arms? Any residue or dirt?”

Wallace dipped his fingers into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a cigarette. “I think I’m going to need a smoke for this.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said, lighting up, “I found dirt under Constance’s fingernails. Not the everyday grime we all have, but actual dirt. I’m talking fresh soil. She had definitely been doing some digging recently.”

Kat turned to Wallace, stunned. “Constance is the one who dug up those bones?”

“It certainly seems like it.”

“But I don’t understand. This is getting weirder by the minute.”

“And I haven’t even gotten to the writing on her hand.”

“It was a message from her killer,” Kat said. “It has to be.”

Wallace exhaled a long stream of smoke. “I have a theory about that. Let’s say you were a right-handed killer and your victim was on the floor, lying on her back. Now, say you wrote a message on the victim’s left hand. If you were standing at the victim’s head—”

“The words would be upside-down,” Kat said.

“Exactly. And that wasn’t the case here. Which means that you, the killer, were standing in the other direction, by the victim’s legs. Depending on your position, the words would likely appear either horizontally across the palm, beneath the fingers, or perpendicular to that, running beneath the thumb.”

But that wasn’t where the words on Constance’s hand had been located. The message was written somewhere in between those two positions, appearing diagonally across her palm.

“What are you getting at?” Kat said.

“Here.” Wallace pulled a pen from the pocket of his lab coat. “Write something on your left hand.”

Grabbing the pen, Kat held up her left hand. She couldn’t bring herself to write the same words that were on Constance’s hand, so she simply scrawled a short and sweet
MY NAME IS KAT.

“Now, look at the position on your palm,” Wallace said.

Kat lifted her hand in front of her face. The words were in the exact same position they had been on Constance Bishop’s palm.

“Are you sure?” Kat asked, not quite believing what she was seeing or hearing.

“Positive,” Wallace replied. “The killer didn’t write on Constance’s hand. She—”

Kat broke in, finishing the sentence for him—“wrote that message herself.”

7
A
.
M
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Kat sat in her Crown Vic, listening to the idle of the engine while trying to make sense of the situation. It was so strange that it bordered on the surreal. Yet the proof was there, and it pointed to one thing: the ominous message on Constance’s hand hadn’t been from the killer.

While Kat was relieved not to be facing another Grim Reaper scenario, it still left too many questions for comfort. Why had Constance written on her hand? And what was she referring to? Was she predicting more murders? More fires? More bones? Running through all the possibilities gave Kat a headache.

When she called Lieutenant Tony Vasquez with the news, he seemed equally flummoxed but none too surprised.

“One of the CSI techs found a black Sharpie in the crawl space,” he explained. “It was on the floor, right next to the trunk.”

“Even more proof that the message was the work of Constance herself,” Kat said. “You guys find anything else?”

“Nope,” Tony replied, disappointment evident in his voice. “What about you?”

Kat briefed him on the state of the bones. Old. Female. Burned. Then she dropped the other bombshell that Wallace Noble had provided—not only had Constance known about the bones in the trunk, but she had been the one to dig them up.

“Why would she do something like that?” Tony asked.

“Beats me,” Kat said, “but I imagine it had something to do with the historical society meeting she had planned for tonight.”

And that was only a guess. Kat had no clue why the bones would be important; nor did she have an inkling about where the digging took place. The first location that sprang to mind was Oak Knoll Cemetery. She assumed someone would have reported a gaping hole in the ground, but just to be on the safe side, she radioed Carl Bauersox as soon as she was done talking to Tony.

“I need you to check out Oak Knoll Cemetery,” she told him.

“What am I looking for?” the deputy said.

“Disturbed graves. Signs of recent digging. Anything suspicious. I’ll meet you back at the station in twenty minutes.”

Once Carl signed off, Kat started the car and flicked on the stereo. The coffee from the diner had worn off, and a postcaffeine crash was coming on. She needed a great song to get her energy up. What she got was “Disco Inferno” by the Trammps. Not great, even for disco, but appropriate. So Kat cranked up the volume and sang along. By the time the song ended, she was in her driveway.

She checked her watch as she got out of the car and crossed the front yard. She couldn’t stay long. Fifteen minutes tops. She just wanted to check on James and arrange for a different babysitter, if necessary. Finding child care on short notice was one of the toughest aspects of being a single mom.

Inside, she found her son awake and sitting on the living room couch. Scooby, his beagle, was curled up next to him. The TV was on, broadcasting one of those obnoxiously bright cartoons that were a staple of Saturday mornings. The animated creatures arguing with each other were easier to take with eight hours of sleep under her belt. Without it, they just seemed shrill and spastic.

“Hey, Little Bear,” Kat said, tousling James’s hair. “You’re up early.”

“I couldn’t sleep.” He yawned for added emphasis. “Not without you in the house.”

Kat felt a familiar twinge of guilt in the pit of her stomach. It happened whenever she realized her job was affecting her son’s home life. Making it worse was James’s condition. Although he was more functional and self-reliant than many other children with Down syndrome, he still needed extra attention. When Kat couldn’t provide it, he often got sullen as a result.

During the Olmstead case, for instance, James’s behavior had reached new and frustrating levels. When he was born, a pediatrician who specialized in children with Down syndrome said they tended to wear their hearts on their sleeves. James had decided to wear his on his fists. The result was a suspension from school, a very long grounding, and a nagging worry that more behavioral problems waited just down the road.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I had to go to work. Something bad happened.”

She skipped over what exactly that bad thing was. She tried to shield James as best she could from the perils of her job. Still, she suspected he knew more than he let on. A mother could only have so many brushes with death before kids at school started to talk.

“I know,” James said. “Lou told me.”

Hearing her name, Louella van Sickle swept into the living room carrying breakfast on a tray. Professionally, she was the police station’s dispatcher. Personally, she was James’s surrogate grandmother, always willing to watch him when Kat was tied up with work. Lou was the person Kat had called at one in the morning when the museum fire broke out.

“Your couch is lumpy,” she announced. “I didn’t get a wink of sleep.”

“That’s funny,” Kat replied. “Neither did I.”

Lou set the tray on the coffee table. The meal she had prepared—scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast—gave Kat another guilt twinge. Most mornings, she just let James pour his own cold cereal.

“So how bad was the fire?”

Kat looked at James, who ate with his eyes glued to the TV, blindly guiding a forkful of eggs into his mouth. She gestured for Lou to join her in the kitchen.

“Listen,” she said once James was out of earshot. “It’s more than a fire. Constance Bishop was murdered in the museum last night.”

Lou excelled at three things—gossip, offering unwarranted advice about Kat’s personal life, and being totally unflappable. Yet the news of Constance’s death turned her face a chalky white.

“Jesus,” she said. “I thought this town was done with all that.”

“Me, too.”

“How are you holding up? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Kat said. “Just tired. And busy.”

She briefly told Lou about the rest of her night. Fire. Corpse. Skeleton. She left out the fact that Henry Goll was back in town. That was information too juicy for Lou not to share.

“I need to head back to the museum soon,” Kat finally said. “There’s still a lot of stuff to do there. So I was wondering—”

“If I could watch James the rest of the day?”

Kat nodded slowly. She had asked this favor of Lou on dozens of occasions. She knew that one of these days, Louella van Sickle was going to tell her no. She hoped today wasn’t that day.