Close to the Bone (12 page)

So Wanda rapped on the loose, open screen door. It didn’t shut right, and unless one paid attention to the latch it would swing outward; yet another household repair that James never quite got around to fixing. She called Diana’s name and slipped inside.

It seemed immediately obvious that there had been a struggle in the cramped, eat-in kitchen. The table to her left had been shoved off-center, and a chair lay on its side. A mug had fallen from the short counter on her right, scattering brown liquid across the linoleum. Wanda called her neighbor’s name a second time as she moved forward, the last syllable dying off as she saw a bare foot just past the edge of the counter.

Wanda Simmons told the reporter how she’d told the police that she could never remember in exactly what order the next event occurred, but she had moved around the counter until she could see Diana’s body lying equidistant between the breakfast counter, the sink and window to the back yard, and the oven range and refrigerator. She lay on her left side, but Wanda, hoping her friend had simply passed out, pushed the upright shoulder until Diana fell open, on to her back, sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, tongue swollen and protruding. Wanda jumped back and stumbled away, too horrified by the sight to touch her friend again but equally horrified to think that she should be doing CPR or artificial respiration or something before Diana died completely and left this life for good, just in case that hadn’t happened yet, in case there was still some chance, but there wasn’t a chance because she couldn’t bring herself to go near that
being
on the floor, much less touch it …

Finally, her brain calmed enough to realize that Diana had, indeed, truly died and no amount of CPR would help, so she could stop beating herself up enough to find the phone – a cordless, scattered among the overdue bills and neighborhood flyers on the counter – and call 911. She gave the address and the situation easily enough, but it took another few minutes to convince the dispatcher that Diana was truly dead and Wanda had already worked through the CPR debate. They established that the victim had probably been strangled. Then the woman on the phone asked if there were anything still around Diana’s neck. Afraid she would be asked to touch the body to remove it, Wanda hesitated in answering. She also couldn’t make much sense of the incongruently bright object wound so tightly into the dead woman’s flesh that it had partially disappeared into a furrow of its own making. Aqua blue twined with a bright purple, assaulted by occasional patches of brilliant red. It wasn’t until she deciphered a tube of red plastic as a handle that Wanda recognized it for a jump rope. She reluctantly told the dispatcher and flat-out refused to touch it. Diana was dead, she insisted, and the dead had germs that she didn’t want anything to do with.

The patrol cars arrived so promptly that Wanda hadn’t even had time to wonder if the killer could still be in the house; when it did occur to her, the idea gave her nightmares for weeks. But the house had been easily cleared, and Wanda wasted no time in providing the police with their most likely suspect – the ne’er-do-well husband she had seen marching across the grass shortly after a screaming match with the dead woman. The same husband – the reporter added – who had a history of assault (narrowly avoided a conviction regarding a bar fight shortly after his high school graduation) and drug abuse (several small possession charges; James had a bad habit of hanging around his dealer instead of making his purchase and going). The same husband who callously pawned the sapphire ring he had taken from the hand of his beautiful wife after choking the life out of her. Conviction seemed assured, so James Allman listened to his lawyer and pled guilty. The prosecutor had started out at murder, aggravated by theft (of the sapphire ring), but perhaps concerned by the absence of any slam-dunk physical evidence he agreed to voluntary manslaughter. Extrapolating from her voluminous media interviews, Theresa wondered if the prosecutor had reservations regarding the testimony of the perhaps too-helpful Wanda. Diana had no family to enrage, and James did go to jail for ten–thirty years, so it seemed a satisfactory resolution.

The first officer on the scene was also named Allman – Casey Allman, he and James were first cousins. This was not a coincidence. He had heard the dispatch over the radio and recognized the address. He then responded without being assigned, beating the dispatched unit there.

Theresa slid the 5x7 crime scene photos out of their envelope. Probably because of the quick resolution of the case, not many had been printed and all were of the kitchen. Though she knew what to expect, Theresa still took a sharp breath in to see her friend, dead, the rope biting into her neck so deep that it seemed ready to separate the head from the body. Theresa made herself look, but to her relief saw nothing to linger on. Diana had been wearing a blue T-shirt and white shorts, a white scrunchy in her hair, and nothing on her feet. Scratches on her neck illustrated how she had clutched at the thing around her neck, trying to breathe, trying to live.

Theresa flicked through the Trace Evidence Department report Don had written up. No DNA under the fingernails, except the victim’s. Clutching one’s own throat was instinctual, but why hadn’t Diana tried to wound or scratch her assailant? Her fingernails were certainly long enough. They’d been the envy of the secretarial pool.

Close-ups of the hands showed the broken nails, the slight crimson edges where she had drawn her own blood. No jewelry except for her wedding ring, no bracelets, and one gold Hello Kitty watch.

Theresa glanced over Don’s shoulder as he flipped through the autopsy report, and sure enough, Dr Reese had noted how the jump rope had been knotted from behind. Diana hadn’t gouged her assailant because she couldn’t reach him. Theresa went back to the crime scene photos. Shephard continued to read through the newspaper articles.

Diana’s kitchen, fairly tidy except for a pile of junk mail, had only a few loose items on the counter and three more empty coffee mugs by the sink. Close-ups revealed dregs at the bottom, and the rims had been swabbed for DNA, according to the evidence inventory. The swabs had never been tested – no need, given the plea.

Behind the coffee cups sat the container of Dunkin Donuts decaf coffee, an unlabeled canister, a wicked-looking steak knife, a jar of vitamins (B complex) and a two-liter bottle of generic ginger ale (diet, of course). A box of Zesta saltines was next to a box of animal crackers, somewhat incongruous in the home of two adults, at least one of whom watched her carb intake religiously.

On the breakfast counter sat a
Cosmopolitan
magazine, a box of Pop-Tarts, a labeled prescription medicine bottle, and a pen, next to a blank white envelope. Another shot showed a close up of the bottle, a prescription made out to Diana Allman for metformin, which confused Theresa because Diana had not been diabetic. At least, not that she knew of … though of course Diana could have been and it simply never came up in conversation.

And these were the items surrounding Diana Allman at the end of her life.

Theresa found herself staring at the back cover of the Manila file.

‘Ten years is a long time,’ Shephard said. ‘Were you working here then?’

‘Yeah. Still married then, with a daughter in middle school. Don here had just started.’

‘I was still on the road,’ Shephard said, meaning he had been a patrol officer with an assigned area. ‘So what does this murdered secretary have to do with Reese and Johnson and the missing Justin Warner?’

Don held the autopsy report. ‘Reese did the autopsy. Just as they did today, they emptied the building—’

‘I remember that,’ Theresa said.

He patted her shoulder. ‘Leo told you to stay home – in one of his rare shows of compassion – knowing that you two used to hang together. I collected the fingernail scrapings, stored the ligature and taped the clothing.’

‘Ligature?’ Shephard asked.

‘The jump rope she’d been strangled with. Where’s the clothing list?’

Theresa pulled it out, the white copy of a three-part form. ‘Here.’

‘Who was the deskman?’

‘Darryl Johnson.’

Shephard inhaled sharply. ‘Let me see that.’

Don turned it around so the cop could read it, pointing to a set of initials in one of the last boxes. ‘The personal property – earrings, wedding band, watch – were dropped in the Property Department drop box.’

Theresa pointed to a set of initials in the corner of the form. ‘George Bain transported the body. Well, he and his partner, Cindy Messina.’

‘We should call Cindy,’ Don said.

‘She doesn’t even live here any more, remember? She went back to North Carolina and full-time ministering. She has a small church in Greensboro.’

‘That’s right. Still, might not hurt.’

Shephard exhaled. ‘So that’s all our victims. But no mention of Justin Warner, right? Did Warner know Diana?’

‘She died ten years before he started working here,’ Don pointed out.

‘They could have known each other outside of here. They were about the same age.’

‘But why would Justin suddenly get curious about Diana’s death? It had been solved. It’s not as if anyone here—’

He broke off as Theresa grasped his arm.

She thrust one of the newspaper articles announcing the plea deal at him, pointing to a picture of the defendant. It was an inch-square, grainy, badly lit black and white photo, but still—

‘No way,’ Don said.

‘What?’ Shephard demanded of them both.

‘Justin Warner,’ Theresa said, ‘might be James Allman. Diana’s husband. The one who went to jail for her murder.’

THIRTEEN

‘I
don’t know,’ Don said. ‘It doesn’t look exactly like him. Something about the mouth—’

‘I’m not positive either,’ Theresa admitted. ‘If it is him then he’s at least fifty pounds lighter.’

‘How can you not know what the woman’s husband looks like?’ Shephard demanded.

‘This is a morgue,’ Theresa said. ‘Family members don’t tend to visit or hang out here. And the case pled out – none of us ever had to testify, so no, we never met the man. I do remember seeing a grainy picture in the paper, but that was ten years ago. And I could still be completely
wrong.’

Don said, ‘But if you minus the beard—’

‘And shave the hair.’

‘And add a smile.’

Shephard ignored them, occupied with a phone call to the prison to find out just where James Allman now resided.

‘It’s possible.’

‘Just possible,’ Don said.

Shephard hung up, jabbing the buttons of his phone with agitation. ‘He’s out.’

‘What?’

‘
What
?’ Theresa said.

‘He got parole. His sentence had been ten to thirty and the judge gave him twenty-seven. But you only have to serve the minimum of your sentence to be eligible, not the two-thirds of the actual sentence like it used to be. Plus he got eight months off for good behavior. So he’s out. He’s been out for about five and a half months.’

‘Plenty enough time to be working here for three,’ Don said.

‘They’re going to call me back with his parole officer and current address. Do you two want to tell me how you can have a felon on parole, who happened to kill one of your employees, working for the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the county?’ His voice rose a decibel with each word.

‘I have no idea,’ Theresa said. Nor was it her fault, but this wasn’t the time to insist upon that.

‘We don’t know that he
is
James Allman.’ Don, as always, the voice of reason. ‘He may simply look like him. He may be a relative. James Allman might have sent him here. Seriously, it’s not our department, but the county
does
do background checks, fingerprints—’

‘Prints,’ Theresa said, thinking about the print on the gurney and how it did
not
match those in Justin Warner’s personnel record. Was that because Justin Warner was not their killer, or because the prints on Justin Warner’s fingerprint card had not come from the man she knew as Justin Warner? ‘If he could fake the prints, he could do it.’

‘How?’ Shephard demanded.

‘Our employees have to go get fingerprinted at the city, but then the card is given to them to add to their application packet. He could have himself printed, then roll someone else on a blank card and fill in all the proper stamps and ORI number, forge the tech’s signature—’

‘Where would he get a blank fingerprint card?’

‘Maybe he palmed one on the way out of jail, I don’t know. It’s not that hard – they’re just blank cards, not necessarily under lock and key. He could get some friends to pretend to be references, use their phone numbers and tell them what to say when the county calls. Then all he would need is a clean drug test, because those results are sent directly.’

‘Allman would have failed that,’ Shephard said. ‘He had a history of drug offenses.’

‘He had ten years to clean up. I never saw any signs of drug activity in Justin, and that’s something we keep a very close eye on here, naturally. He wouldn’t be able to use and fool everyone in this building at the same time. But either way, if Justin is James Allman or someone sent by Allman – why would he come here? Why would he kill the people involved in his wife’s case?’

‘Revenge,’ Shephard said. ‘For getting him sent to jail.’

‘He pled! There was never a trial, never any testimony. How would he even know who had performed his wife’s autopsy, and why would he care?’

‘His attorney would have had copies of all the forms,’ Don said. ‘He might have seen them through him.’

Theresa felt a chill. ‘Where’s his attorney? If he’s taking out people who helped him into a jail cell, he’s probably been telling himself that his attorney talked him into the plea.’

Shephard flicked open his cellphone again. Allman’s attorney had given several statements to the press, her name clearly printed. He only had to call the public defender’s office and hope she hadn’t moved on; most young lawyers at either the PD or the prosecutor’s office jumped ship for more prestigious and better paying positions once they had a few years of experience under their belt.