Blood Will Tell (3 page)

Dan Martin took her in his arms, and Brandy discovered how comfortable it was to be held by someone only a few inches taller than she was. Their lips met without either getting a crick in the neck. It was as if they had kissed a thousand times before, knew each other's texture and rhythm.

She opened her mouth to his, found warmth and gentle teasing. He nibbled at her lips, then stroked his tongue under her chin and down her throat. It felt both weird and wonderful. She tilted her head, let him caress her neck.

Although they were standing, she practically lay in his arms. How strong he was, never a quiver of his muscles under her weight. She felt secure, protected, and eager. Finally, she knew what she had preserved her virginity for!

But even as Brandy sought to find Martin's mouth again with hers, he let her go. “I'm sorry!” he gasped, breaking the spell. “Please—forgive me."

“There's nothing to forgive,” Brandy said, caught between confusion at his sudden change and the lingering desire he had evoked in her. “Why don't you come in?"

“Not tonight,” he said, too hastily. “Please—go inside, Brandy. You're too intoxicating by half."

It was not until the next morning that she realized she could not remember telling him her nickname. She had introduced herself as “Officer Mather.” He would have seen “Brenda Mather” on the nameplate on her desk. But she hadn't misheard that remark about intoxication.

Brandy woke to her cat kneading her shoulder at 10:00am on Saturday morning. When she recalled last night's strange events, she knew she would have to find some pretext to look up Dan Martin again.

Unless he contacted her first.

But the weekend passed with no word from Martin. The phone did ring, twice. First it was her mother. Brandy insisted she was too tired to go out to dinner that evening. An hour later, once she got over her disappointment that it was not Dan Martin, the second call made her glad she had refused her mother's invitation.

“Hi, Kid!” It was her friend Carrie Wyman.

“Carrie! Hi. What's going on?"

“I have an empty Saturday night on my hands. I know it's short notice—"

“Come on over!” Brandy told her. “I've got movies and popcorn and nothing else to do!"

Sated on popcorn and the dramatic excesses of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, the two women turned off the TV to talk. “Why do we still believe in love that will last through time?” Carrie asked.

“I don't believe in it,” Brandy replied. “It's just nice to fantasize about. What I really want to believe possible is to have my work and still marry a nice man and have a family."

“Dream on!” Carrie said sarcastically. She was only Brandy's age, but last year her husband had walked out on her in favor of a nineteen-year-old. Once she knew that he had been unfaithful, Carrie let him have the divorce. It would be hard for Carrie to trust another man anytime soon.

Like Brandy, Carrie was a hard-working, underpaid career woman, the city's last remaining senior social worker. Budget cutbacks had downsized Murphy's social services just when they were most desperately needed, and most of the experienced staff had been replaced with low-paid assistants. Carrie believed in her work, and had added to it a weekly radio show in which she tried to encourage families to find solutions before abuse, drug use, or alcoholism sent them into her overcrowded programs. She was also setting up self-help groups through local churches.

Both Brandy and Carrie had such grueling schedules that it was rare for them to have an evening like this one. But they were old friends from college days. It didn't matter if they didn't see each other for a month; when they got together it was like being with the sister neither one had.

Brandy found herself telling Carrie about Dan Martin.

“You like him,” said Carrie with a knowing smile.

“I hardly know him,” Brandy protested.

“But you'd like to."

“Maybe. He hasn't called."

“Your phone's unlisted,” Carrie reminded her.

“Arrgh! You have no right to be so pretty and so smart!” Brandy growled, tossing a pillow at her friend.

Carrie looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor, or Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara: huge blue eyes, magnolia blossom skin, and the kind of slender figure designers loved to drape fashions on. Carrie even looked great in the outsized tee-shirt and bunny slippers she wore tonight. Furthermore, she had been endowed with thick, wavy brown hair and long black eyelashes. If she weren't so damn nice, it would be easy to hate her!

Observing Carrie's marriage from the outside, Brandy had been able to see what Carrie couldn't: George Wyman had fallen in love with the cute, pretty, bubbly outside, and never seen the serious, dedicated woman within. As Carrie had taken on more responsibility in her work, he had become less supportive—and eventually had found himself another cute, pretty, bubbly girl. Brandy could only hope that this one was genuinely shallow; if so, she might be able to keep his interest.

Carrie had intended to stay the night, but at 11:38pm her beeper sounded. She phoned her service, then turned apologetically to Brandy. “It's an abuse case—I've been trying to get this woman to take her kids and run before someone got seriously hurt. Her husband got drunk and hit her three-year-old. Thank goodness it's only a broken wrist. But I've got to go to the hospital and keep her from going back to that louse, at least tonight."

“You need help?” Brandy asked.

“No. She's fragile, Brandy. She believes that beast is her only support and protection. Until she believes otherwise, police intervention will only scare her back to him.” Pulling on jeans and searching for her loafers, she added, “This is a breakthrough. Really. A strong woman like you can't believe how battered women think. She's finally asking for the help she needs."

“I understand,” said Brandy. “Too bad we couldn't talk all night the way we used to do in the dorm. But a night's sleep will probably do me good. Call me."

“You know I will,” said Carrie. “You're my lifeline, Brandy. Thanks for being there. And hey—good luck with the new man. Maybe he'll turn out to be the one in a million who's not intrinsically a bastard!"

On Sunday, Brandy went as promised to Church's house at noon. Churchill Jones and his wife Coreen had the kind of life Brandy had always thought of as normal—and not hers. Their house was comfortably cluttered. In the back they had built a deck that they planned to screen in. The gas grill was fired up, foil-wrapped potatoes baking, a plate of hot dogs and fish fillets waiting to be cooked. The family had been out to the lake yesterday, where they had caught the fish. The two children, Tiffany and Jeff, were playing with their dog, a golden retriever named Sandy.

If anything, the Jones family was too ideal. It occasionally crossed Brandy's mind that they played it so stereotypically middle class because they were black. She didn't know whether they were pursuing the American dream right down to the latest kitchen appliances, or whether they felt a need to show neighbors who even in the 1990's had resented an African-American family moving onto their street that they were an asset, not a liability.

Actually, race relations were usually calm in Murphy, with errors usually on the side of ignorant good intentions. For example, Brandy had known perfectly well when she was in high school that there would always be a black cheerleader. Although the cheerleaders were chosen by vote of the student body and there were nowhere near enough black students to elect one of their own, the teachers dropped the lowest winning white candidate in favor of the black student with the highest number of votes. Brandy had been in college when what “everyone knew” and believed to be “only fair” became a temporary scandal. Interestingly, the next year there was, as usual, one black cheerleader, no further comment, and so it had gone ever since.

The determined attempts of white Murphians not to offend, to be “fair,” might be clumsy, but Brandy found them preferable to the open hostility she had grown up with in Cleveland, the detente that had her going to school and her parents working side by side with ethnic minorities, but never making friends. Churchill Jones was the first close friend she had ever had who was black.

Church was enough older than Brandy for her to respect his experience, but young enough not to be a father figure. Her only problem was, he frequently read her better than she read herself.

Today Church was full of questions about the body in Callahan Hall. He quickly noticed that she had left something out. Unlike Carrie, who would wait encouragingly until someone was ready to talk, Church pounced and questioned. When he pressed, Brandy explained, “There was one more witness, who turned out not to be one. One of the professors had a theory about how the body got there. Everybody thinks they're a detective."

Church studied her. “So why did he impress you? Was he a nuisance?"

“Who said he impressed me?"

“Uh-huh,” her friend said wisely.

“Okay, he took me out for pizza,” she confessed. “Somebody saw us, right?"

“Not anyone who felt the need to tell me. So why are you paranoid?"

“You always say I'm paranoid when you're the one who's suspicious. Anyway, I'll probably never see him again."

“Do you want to?"

“I don't know,” she equivocated. “He's a computer nerd, hardly my type. But not bad looking."

“Even with tape on his glasses and a pocket protector?” he teased.

“No glasses, and no pocket protector either. And he's a real old-fashioned gentleman. We'll see."

On Monday when Brandy got back from lunch, the coroner's report on the body in Professor Land's office was waiting on her desk.

No evidence of foul play. Lividity indicated that the body had remained where it died. Death was from multiple systemic failure due to extreme age. Doc Sanford had appended a note: “The mystery is not how the man died, but where he got the strength to walk into that office."

She added that to the fingerprint results: no prints on the wallet, except for some unknowns on the MasterCard. Why had someone done such a thorough job of wiping prints?

Furthermore, no one had yet located Professor Everett Land. Even if the man had gone out of town for the weekend, surely he would have missed his wallet! The very case that had had Brandy hoping for some real detective work was rapidly turning into another frustration.

Church came in while Brandy was studying the contradictory evidence, and picked up the top folder in his “In” basket. “Hell!” he exclaimed.

“What now?” asked Brandy.

“Judge Callahan ordered the Mortrees let go. All that work for nothing!"

Two weeks ago the Murphy police had participated in a raid on a local farm growing marijuana—probably Kentucky's largest cash crop, if it were possible to get accurate statistics.

State, county, and local law enforcement had cooperated in the confiscation of more than five hundred plants. They had arrested the owner of the property, one Jerrod Mortree, his two shiftless brothers, and an uncle. The police had hoped to bargain with the accused men for names of distributors—but all four men had now been released.

It was not the fault of the police who had raided the farm; everything had gone by the book. They had been certain that this time there would be no legal loophole.

“I knew it,” said Church. “Any time it's the Mortrees, there's no chance of an indictment. That family's been sharecroppers on Callahan land for generations, always handy to do the Callahan dirty jobs while ol’ Massa keeps ’em out of trouble with the law!"

Brandy knew Church suspected, but couldn't prove, that Judge L. J. Callahan was in on the local drug trade. Every case that came before him ended in a dismissal or an acquittal when the accused was one of the county's good ol’ boys. Only independent operators like Dr. McLaren, who traded in prescription medications, were ever convicted.

If only they could find out exactly where Judge Callahan fit in. A corrupt judge, both detectives agreed, but that didn't explain whom he was working for. It was no secret he planned to run for governor in the next election—if he were simply a pawn of some drug lord, he would be discouraged from leaving his very convenient current post.

No, there had to be more to L. J. Callahan. He was power-hungry—there were even rumors that the governorship would be the first step in a campaign for the Presidency. If so, he was gamemaster, not a piece on the board. But what was his game and who were the other players?

To Church's annoyance, there was no way of connecting what had gone wrong this time to Judge Callahan, although it was possible, of course, that he had paid someone to destroy the evidence. It was “an accident.” It “could have happened to anybody.” “Sure,” Church growled, “anybody who couldn't read evidence tags!"

The 500 plants confiscated from the Mortrees had been stored with evidence from other cases. When they burned the pot from the closed cases—somehow the 500 from the open case in Callahan County were destroyed along with the rest.

If this sort of thing happened only once, or once in a great while, it would be frustrating enough. But every time they arrested one of Judge Callahan's cronies they lost the case, in court or beforehand.

But the Callahan family was so old and powerful, the very county was named for them. Church never dared make his suspicions official. All he could do was stay vigilant until he found something that would stick.

Brandy understood her colleague's frustration as she took the thick folder out of his hands, and filed the latest Mortree case as closed.

The phone rang. “Detective Mather,” Brandy answered.

“Brandy, this is Dr. Sanford. About your John Doe at the college? You're not gonna believe this. I took dental x-rays, of course, but I didn't expect a quick answer because nobody seemed to know that old man. But I've got an answer already, from Dr. Mulcahey. It's one of his regular patients: Professor Everett Land."