Lethal Lineage (5 page)
Sam and Keith burst through the front door together. They shouted, raged. But Deal had passed the Rubicon. He could not turn us loose until the following morning even though by this time he’d undoubtedly figured out he’d made a serious mistake. Sheriffs can’t simply change their mind once a criminal has been booked.
I hoped Keith would shut up, but of course, he didn’t. When he started cussing Deal in earnest, Sam intervened. “Outside, Fiene.”
When they came back inside Keith was silent.
“You’ve made a bad mistake here, Deal,” Sam said. “And Keith’s going to be outside all night long. I guess I don’t have to tell you nothing had better happen to those two women.”
“You can’t talk to me like I’m some kind of a goddamn pervert, Abbott.”
“Just telling you. Keith is going to be sitting outside the door.”
“I can arrest him for loitering.”
“Why don’t you. That’s a great idea.”
“Oh go to hell. All of you. Wish I’d never heard of any of you. I have a notion to just turn those crazy women loose.”
We could hear every word. I turned to Josie. “He can’t. He’s gone too far. He has to follow due process.”
“Can’t leave them alone either,” Sam said. “What if they’re suicidal?”
“Don’t have no one else to call,” Deal mumbled. “What if something else comes up?”
“Little late to think about that.”
“Won’t get no sleep with a homicidal maniac outside my office with a shotgun.”
“Oh you’ll sleep all right,” Sam said. “That’s when I’d be worried if I were you. Keith is an excellent marksman. Not that you have to be with a shotgun.”
“He can’t do this. Can’t threaten an officer of the law.” Deal’s voice tightened.
“Course not,” Sam said. “And he didn’t. And won’t. And there’s no law that says a man can’t have a nice little rifle or shotgun in his own gun rack in his own pickup. As a matter of fact, I recall that’s one of the issues you ran on. The right to carry fire arms. Second amendment and all that.”
***
We took turns dozing and were fully awake when we heard the outside door open shortly after sunrise. We heard Keith, Sam, Harold Sider, and other voices I didn’t recognize. Deal came back to the cell, looking like he hadn’t slept a wink. “Your lawyer is here, then we’re all going over to the courthouse.” He stalked off.
“Harold can represent us both,” Josie said. “There’s no reason to split this case. Unless you plan to turn on me.” I was too tired to smile.
But when Harold Sider came back to our cell, he looked worried and even more rumpled than usual after an all-night drive from Manhattan. His soft brown eyes appraised us like we were a couple of teens who couldn’t assess consequences.
“Now will you ladies tell me what’s going on and how in the hell you managed to get yourselves into such a mess?”
We both started talking at once, and if it wasn’t for Mary’s death it might have been funny, but all of a sudden it wasn’t. The fact remained that Mary Farnsworth’s family had not been notified.
One look at Josie’s face told me that despite our previous night’s baiting of Sheriff Deal, she wasn’t taking any of this in stride. She is a clinical psychologist with a lucrative practice and a part-time professor at Kansas State University. Harold began teaching there, too, after he retired from the FBI, but he focuses on forensic anthropology.
Josie could not afford to just shake hands with Deal when this was over and say “no harm done.” And I knew it wasn’t in her from a personal psychological stand-point either.
Only fools crossed Josie.
Harold took notes, nodded, then said, “We are pleading not guilty to the charge of breaking and entering, of course. I’ll move to dismiss all charges and the only words I want to hear from you two are ‘not guilty.’ Got that? Nothing else.”
We nodded in unison.
***
Magistrate Judge Willard Clawson had already gotten wind of what would take place today. Instead of his usual striped polo shirt and jeans he wore a blue button-down oxford with a limp knit tie and khakis. Normally there was a stack of Farm Journals and weed control bulletins on his desk.
He was my friend. There aren’t many Democrats in Western Kansas and we tend to bond.
The Copeland County attorney, Fred Baker, stared at the floor, cleared his throat, and then announced the charges. But he couldn’t look the judge in the eye. There were a number of persons observing the proceedings, all strangers to me. Some had notebooks. Others merely watched.
Harold moved to drop the charges immediately, and explained the circumstances; that I was the undersheriff of Carlton County and that Josie was a consultant for the KBI as well as the Carlton County sheriff’s department. Judge Clawson knew all that, of course. Then he threw everything out and gave Deal the dressing down of his life.
Deal’s face grew redder with each passing word. But instead of the county attorney trying to interrupt the judge’s tirade, Fred just stood there and let Clawson go on and on.
When the judge finished, Harold walked over to Deal and slapped a paper into his hand.
“You’ve been served,” he said.
Sam drove back to our farm in Keith’s pickup, and Keith, Harold, Josie, and I went in the Tahoe.
“So just what was in that paper?” Josie asked. “I thought Deal was going to have a stroke.”
“Charges I’m filing against him,” Harold said. They include false arrest, malicious prosecution, defamation of character, and obstructing a police officer.”
I was too tired to laugh. I noted my husband’s tense posture, his firm grip on the steering wheel like he was driving on ice.
“Who were those people in the courtroom?” I asked
“Concerned citizens,” Keith said. “Very concerned. They are organizing a recall election to kick Deal out of office. They don’t like what’s happened to you and your sister. It was the last straw.”
“But how would they know?” I was dumbfounded.
“Seems there was this video someone put up on YouTube. Put up there by someone not too terribly bright. Someone not exactly known for assessing long range consequences. Someone who has a gift for bear-baiting. Someone who doesn’t have the sense God gave a green goose.”
My face flamed. I said nothing.
***
Josie packed and I watched.
“I’m so sorry this happened,” I began. “I’m just glad you’ll be back home safe and sound.”
She zipped her carry-on, then looked at me hard. “I’ll be back during Spring Break,” she said. “Next week. I’m not letting this go. This man besmirched my reputation.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers against the bridge of my nose.
Besmirched.
Now that was a word. I wanted to put this behind us and focus on Mary Farnsworth.
But Josie was out for blood now.
“But why? What can you do?”
“I’m going to help with the recall election.”
We loaded her Mercedes and strapped Tosca into her cushioned elevated doggie safety seat which was designed to let her sleep or peer out. I leaned through the window and kissed them both goodbye while Keith watched, his hands shoved in his pockets.
“Sure you’re going to be OK to drive? You’ve had a hell of a night. And morning,” he added gloomily. “Might as well stay an extra day and get your bearings.”
“I’m fine. Harold is going to be right behind me.”
“I’d feel better if you would ride with him,” Keith persisted, “and leave your car here since you’re short on sleep. You’ll be back out in another week.”
She looked at me and winked. Harold had been up all night too, but then he was a man. She turned back to Keith. “I’m fine,” she said softly. “Really.”
***
Keith milled around the kitchen. I could feel his eyes on me, hear his unspoken thoughts. Knew he was biting his tongue to keep from reminding me that he made a wonderful living and even if every crop on our farm failed and all our cattle died, he could do right well as a full-time veterinarian.
So why in god’s name would a woman with a PhD want to tackle the work and humiliation that went with being a law enforcement officer in a poor county in Western Kansas? Yadda, yadda, yadda. I knew it all by heart. And I wished he would shut up, even though he hadn’t said anything.
Besides, I had work to do. I called Sam. “Still no information about Mary’s family?”
“No. The Bidwell County sheriff went over everything in her house with a fine-toothed comb. There’s nothing there.”
“Sam, that doesn’t sound right. Are you sure? There should be some old Christmas cards with return addresses. Something.
“Smith swears there wasn’t.”
“Did she own or rent?”
“Rented. It’s a little bungalow. Plenty nice enough. Neat as a pin. But nineteen years without buying? Just throwing money down the drain?”
“I don’t see how any woman could live in a house for nineteen years without having some evidence of family around. Are you sure this man did a thorough job? Would a woman know of more places to look? Should I volunteer to double check?”
“It wouldn’t hurt, but I’ve known Scott Smith for years and I don’t think he would overlook anything. He’s a good man. He says she didn’t even subscribe to magazines or buy books. Everything she read she checked out of the library.”
After we hung up, I headed for the stairs, then paused and listened to Keith’s guitar coming from the family room. He softened his powerful bass, but there was no mistaking his sorrowful mood as he strummed and softly sang “Knoxville Girl.” An ancient little ditty with at least a thousand verses about a man yearning to murder a woman.
When we were first married, I’d thought his selections were conscious, but I’d come to know he was innocent. Unaware of how clearly his choice of songs reflected his state of mind. That he didn’t know this about himself fascinated me because he was highly intelligent. But Josie had noticed it right away.
I wanted to break his guitar over his head. He was searching for the right words to take me on when he finished playing. To let me know he was worried.
Silently, I went to the doorway and watched. His hands are large and thick-fingered. I don’t understand how they can be capable of such dexterity. His jaw is square with a slight cleft. He’s the first man women notice when they step into a room.
The family was deeply damaged by Regina’s suicide. Keith most of all, though we never discuss it. He had thought it his duty to make that vain self-centered woman happy. Intellectually, he knows it doesn’t work that way. But when we were first married and I would come home from the historical society joyful over discovering an obscure historical document, there was a look in his eyes that can only be described as relief.
Then seven years later, I introduced the mother of all double binds: he hated my foray into law enforcement, but feels duty bound to support me if it makes me happy. But when situations might lead to physical danger, it’s painful to watch Keith struggle.
Deep down, he would like me barefoot and pregnant. Metaphorically, that is, because I never have been either—pregnant, anyway. By choice.
Starting a family was a big decision when one’s husband is twenty years older and I have a stepdaughter older than I. And although we’ve been married seven years now, I’m still the wicked stepmother to Elizabeth.
For a brief period after I had responded courageously during last fall’s crisis dealing with an elusive criminal, I had hoped our truce, her admiration would last. But it was a shadow victory, fraught with problems.
I sighed. I wasn’t being fair to Keith. He was worried about the video riling people up, and his lovely old-fashioned protective instincts were the traits I loved the most. He wouldn’t be the same person without them.
When he reached the verse, “Oh, Willie dear, don’t kill me here, I’m unprepared to die,” I smiled and walked over and gave him a hug. “I’m going to catch up on my sleep. I’m done in.”
He said nothing. Just stood and wrapped his arms around me. I buried my face against his broad chest and he kissed the top of my head. I left and started up the stairs.
The phone rang. Keith answered, then called up to me. “It’s Sam.” He came up the stairs with the handset.
“Lottie we’ve got a serious problem,” Sam said. “Mary did not die of a heart attack.”
Time seemed suspended. “Well, what then?”
“The district coroner doesn’t know. They don’t have the resources to find out.”
“Please, please tell me they didn’t use embalming fluids before they discovered this.”
“They didn’t. The KBI is taking her to Topeka immediately. Her family couldn’t claim the body anyway now until the pathology department figures out the cause of death.”
“I looked through her purse again to see if we overlooked something the first time. There were no hidden pockets.”
“Did you wear gloves?”
“No. By now we have about a jillion fingerprints on everything anyway. I went through the checkbook again to see if there were slips of paper between the pages. The Wal-Mart receipts were for groceries. There was nothing unusual in the cosmetic bag and the mending kit came from a Super Eight.”
He sighed. “I feel like a fool.”
“I’ll call you right back. I want to take another look at that bag of supplies she was going to take to persons around here.” In fact, tired as I was, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I checked out an idea. Maybe she hadn’t planned to distribute everything. Perhaps some item was for her personal use.
But if so, why would the items be labeled with the names of persons living in this county?
I hung up and went to our home office and took the plastic sack out of the cupboard. Keith watched from the doorway. “I want to look at the diabetic kit.”
“Wait.” He went into the kitchen and came back with a pair of disposable latex gloves from the box he kept for professional use when clients brought small animals over to the house.
“Thanks. But, it’s a little late for that.” Yet Sam also had commented on fingerprint contamination, so I supposed it wouldn’t hurt. I slipped them on, then reached for the diabetic kit labeled Bertha Summers. I unzipped the little case holding testing strips, the lancing pen, and the monitor. I pushed the memory function.
Nothing. No thirty day history or fourteen day history. I checked the code on the testing strip vial. The monitor code had not been set yet. Everything looked brand new. Even so, we would check all of Mary’s medical records.
I sighed and zipped it back up. If she had been a diabetic, perhaps there had been an insulin screw-up. An overdose or underdose.
“Something?” Keith asked.
“Nothing. I thought maybe Mary was a diabetic and she was in some kind of a medical state because of that. It would have made it simpler.”
“That’s because you don’t want to consider murder,” he said flatly.
He was right. I wanted a simple solution. Most of all, I wanted one quickly.
I put the kit back in the bag, pulled off the gloves, and stood.
“Your instincts were sound,” he said. “Turn the bag over to the KBI. Might be something in that salve, or the aspirin, or hiding in that roll of bandages.”
I looked at him sharply. He was not kidding. “You’re right. I’ll call Sam back and tell him the KBI needs to look at these things too.”
Wearily, I dialed Sam and told him that Mary didn’t appear to be a diabetic, but of course we needed to check it out with her doctor.
Just in case.
***
I woke up six hours later and took a warm shower. Keith had coffee waiting and had rightly decided that a big breakfast made more sense than a lunch.
“Oh honey, you didn’t have to wait around for me to wake up.”
“I had office work to take care of. So say thank you and sit down.”
“Thank you,” I smiled. My stomach wasn’t up to bacon, eggs, and toast, but I faked it. And I expected to be grilled. For a take-charge person, my job had to be pure torture to him. But I kept my side of the bargain now by telling him everything.
As I ate, I went over everything I knew.
“There have to be employment records. Her W-4 should be on file along with everyone else’s.”
“Well it wasn’t. And none of this makes sense. A normal healthy human being doesn’t simply drop dead. And what do you think about Edna’s saying that a stranger gave Mary a heart attack?”
Keith didn’t like to stray over to a medical doctor’s territory. As a veterinarian he usually stuck to his area of expertise, but he read and studied a great deal. “I’ve read that a sudden shock can cause an episode, but you said there wasn’t any sign of a heart attack.”
I nibbled on a strip of bacon and thought about Mary dropping the chalice. “As to the stranger, everyone was a stranger to most of us. Then afterwards, we all just wanted to get the hell out of there.”
“So you have a body, no way to notify anybody, and no cause of death.”
“Right. That’s about it.”
“I’d start with the family issue first. There’s got to be something somewhere that will let us know who she is.”
I smiled at the “us.”
“Did you check her phone logs?”
“Yes. It was all business or local calls. Nothing there. Pizza Hut, dry cleaners, places like that.”
“You said absolutely no one got near the body?”
“That’s one of the few things I’m sure of. No one got in or out of that room. It was in full view of the entire congregation until the end of the service. There’s simply no way someone could have taken something out after she died either, because everyone left except me and Bishop Talesbury, and I’m the only one with a key to that room. It was unlocked during the service and after she ran there she locked it from the inside. She died without a soul going near her.”
“Then she had to die of a natural cause. They simply haven’t found it yet.”
“They’d better.”
“Face it, Lottie. There are really only two other possibilities. Suicide or homicide.”
“If it were suicide or a homicide, there had to be a method, a means. We’ve got nothing.”
“Don’t want to piss you off, sweetheart, but is there any chance at all that someone came in after you left?”
“Oh, don’t worry about upsetting me. The only thing that’s bothering me right now is figuring out how this woman died. Believe me, if you or anyone else has a bright idea, I want to hear about it.”
He rose and walked over and kissed my cheek and squeezed my shoulder before he picked up our coffee cups and carried them to the sink. “Well, one thing’s for damn sure, Mary Farnsworth didn’t just suddenly materialize out of thin air. There has to be some record of who hired her and when.”
***
Sam looked up from his desk when I came through the door.
“Anything?”
“No, I’m tracking down the state agency that would have hired someone—what? Nineteen years ago?”
I shrugged. “Don’t ask me. She’s been here ever since I moved to the county and you’ve been here forever.” Sam was one of those perpetual sheriffs that are simply reelected every four years in Kansas. Long hours and low pay doesn’t attract very many candidates.
“Can’t remember when she came,” Sam said. “I’ll tackle the government and why don’t you start on when and how she became an Episcopal priest.”
“OK. Couldn’t have been before the mid-eighties because there was a lot of division over the whole question of admitting women to the priesthood. It was a flaming mess. Worse by far than the knock down drag-out over gays right now.”
“And you were in diapers and remember all that?”
I smiled. “Not that young.” Josie and I will be thirty-nine this fall. “Research, Sam. Last winter I finished an article for
Kansas History
tracing the introduction of liturgical religions on the plains.”
He reached for his pipe, tamped it, added tobacco, and eventually coaxed it back to life. “Learn anything at all that might have some bearing on this case?”
“Not that I can see. But some things are really peculiar. Bishop Talesbury is a dead ringer for a Catholic bishop in the 1880s.”
“Who wouldn’t have had any off-spring.”
“Right. Theoretically. But the resemblance is creepy. Just plain eerie.”
“Can’t see where that would have any bearing on this investigation.”
“It doesn’t,” I said, slapping my knees. I rose and started toward my little cubicle of an office. “It should be possible to trace Mary through Diocesan records. The Episcopal Church in America has one of the most stringent vetting processes in the world for ordaining clergy. They look at everything from intention to psychological soundness. So there have to be detailed records at the Diocesan office, even if she was a Canon Nine priest.”
“Which is?” Sam drummed his fingers on his desk, as he thoughtfully pulled on his pipe.
“One who is not seminary trained and only administers the sacraments. That Canon was eliminated in 2003, but priests ordained before that time retained their status. They have to earn a living another way and are sometimes sent to places where congregations are struggling and only have enough money to keep the lights on.”
“A tentmaker priest then,” Sam said.
He surprised me sometimes. “Exactly.”
Sam had finally developed respect for my historical methods. I was tempted to launch into a spiel about Catholic monks forced to serve communicants on the frontier, but I didn’t dare get started on that subject when I need to spend every second on Mary’s death.
“What was the title of your article, Lottie?” he asked as he began dialing the phone.
“To Hell or to Kansas.”
He laughed.
