Liar (32 page)

I nodded, and tried not to think about throwing up.

“There was some spatter on the floor, but according to the reports, this housekeeper had started cleaning up before the scene was secured. Mopped the floor and opened the windows to let some air in. Neither action helped out as far as preserving evidence goes, but the blood traces were found with chemicals used by the lab guys. There was a single bloody footprint impression found on the farther side of the sheets, probably made when he got up off the bed. And in the hallway going to the front door, they did find a series of very faint bloody footprints. So there were probably footprints in the room before she started mopping.”

“From a bare foot?” Travis asked.

“No, the sole of a man’s shoe.”

“So the killer was male?” I asked.

“Yes, probably,” she said.

“What size shoe?”

She looked through the file, then said, “Eleven.”

“A big man, then.”

“Possibly. Most men wear between an eight and a ten-and-a-half.”

“Do you know your father’s shoe size, Travis?”

He shook his head. “I could probably find out.”

I was trying to picture the killer’s actions from what she had told us. “He stood on the bed?”

“No. I think the killer straddled her, pinned her arms down with his knees-there was some bruising there-muffled her screams with the pillow-used his left hand to hold the pillow on her face. Her hands were beneath the covers, no chance to scrape or claw him-nothing found under her nails.

“Killer is probably right-handed-see how the left arm blocked some spray? So did his body, as he bent over her. Wounds are all in the victim’s upper body. The autopsy studies of the wounds also indicate a righty doing the work.”

“Attacker was above the bedding the whole time?” I asked. “No sign of rape or molestation by her attacker?”

“They did all the usual tests during the autopsy-no recent sexual activity.” She handed over the next one, which showed the body without the pillow or sheet.

“Excuse me,” I heard Travis say weakly, and he hurried out of the room. I was regretting the fact that the house had only one bathroom. I winced and pushed the photos back at her.

“Sorry,” she said, but there was an unrepentant gleam in her eye.

“So do you think Arthur told him the truth?”

She lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know. It’s certainly possible. I guess the old cop in me ain’t dead yet, because it pisses me off that these people never spoke up. I guess it never occurred to any of them that someone got away with murdering this woman.”

“I think you’re wrong about that, Rachel. It probably occurred to them every day, and they felt guilty. I think that’s what kept Briana and Arthur apart all those years: Gwendolyn’s ghost.”

“Maybe, but I still don’t like it. They gave false information to people who were only trying to find the murderer.”

“You’ve met Richmond. Do you really believe that? Can you blame them? Arthur would look perfect to any prosecutor. A fortune at stake; an older, reclusive wife; a secret family in another town-”

She sighed. “It’s one thing when an adult makes up his or her mind to impede an investigation. Another to force a kid to go along with the program. Who carried the biggest burden in all of this? Your cousin. You think it was right for them to involve him in this?”

“No, but I don’t doubt they loved him, and I think they would have avoided involving him if they had thought they could.”

“Hmph. Look what’s become of him! He’s a good-looking young man who hides out from the world by living in a purple camper. Spends his time dressing up and telling fairy tales to kiddies. That’s not right.”

“I’m not saying he wasn’t damaged by all of this-he was. But you shouldn’t assume that he’s unhappy doing what he does for a living or that there’s anything wrong with it. It’s important, and he knows that even if you don’t.” At her frown, I added, “You should have seen him today, whenever he had to take on a role or make up some story-he loved it, Rachel. Besides, if this isn’t what he’s supposed to do with the rest of his life, so what? He’s still young. Give him some time to find his way.”

“Find his way? He’s wandering all over the map. You gotta give him something to hold on to, Irene. Some roots. Some roots that won’t let loose of the earth the first time a little ill wind blows his way.”

“Why, Rachel Giocopazzi! You’ve got a soft spot for him.”

“Damned right I do. He’s a good kid.”

We heard the bathroom door open, and the good kid came back out.

“Whew,” he said. “Rachel? Maybe not
that
much of a distraction.”

“Sorry, Travis. You want to do something else for a while?”

He shook his head. “I’ll be all right-I didn’t get sick, I just felt like I might.”

She laughed. “Oh, is that all?”

He blushed.

“So, back to work,” I said. “Any way to estimate time of death? I think the newspaper said late Friday or early Saturday.”

“Right. Body was found on Monday at six in the morning by the housekeeper, Mrs. Coughlin. Rigor mortis had passed off, and there were other indicators that she’d probably died late Friday. More importantly-and here’s one of the instances in which Richmond really failed to pursue leads-she talked on the phone twice on Friday night. She was called by her cousin Robert, and she called her brother-in-law.”

“When?” I asked.

“Robert called at a little after eight; she called Gerald Spanning at nine-thirty.”

“Any idea what the calls were about?”

“According to Robert, he called to ask for a loan. He said she agreed to give him one, and he was going to come by on Monday morning to get a check from her.”

“Is that very likely?” I asked.

“Robert said she loaned him money all the time. Richmond didn’t check it out. Travis, I’d like to ask your dad’s attorney if we can get a look at his old accounts-he had a joint checking account with Gwendolyn, and I’d like to see if she really did write checks to Robert.”

“I’ll ask Mr. Brennan if he can help us out,” he said. “How soon do you need the information?”

“The sooner the better.”

He hesitated, then said, “I guess I should let him know what’s going on. May I use your phone?”

“Go ahead-use it any time you like while you’re here,” I said.

He came back in a few minutes and said, “I left a message with his service. They’re going to try to reach him and have him call me back here or on my cell phone.”

“You said Gwendolyn DeMont also called Gerald Spanning on the night she died?” I asked Rachel.

“He said she called to ask if he knew how to get in touch with Arthur. Gerald said he told her that he didn’t, but if Arthur called him, he would tell him to give her a call. She said not to bother, she was going to be turning in for the night. He asked her if she needed anything, or if he could help her, but she said no, she was fine, there was nothing urgent.”

“Any signs of forcible entry?” I asked.

“None.”

“Who else had keys to the house?”

“Good question. Arthur and the housekeeper, definitely. The housekeeper said the locks hadn’t been changed on the house in years. Who knows how many people had access. Richmond didn’t check that out, either.”

I was puzzled. “But I thought there were walls and security gates?”

Rachel nodded. “There were. But nothing a novice couldn’t get past. Fence wasn’t electrified or anything like that. It was just a big brick wall.”

“How high?”

She shuffled through the photos. “Maybe seven or eight feet.” She handed a photo to me. “You can see it here in this shot of the front drive. I’m not exactly sure why they took this photo. Richmond didn’t make any notes about it. Maybe just showing the security arrangements.”

I looked at it for a moment, then pointed at a marking on the gate-post and said, “What’s this, the symbol for the farm? A brand or something?”

She looked at it and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Travis took the photo from her, studied it and said, “Do you have a magnifying glass?”

“Yes, in the desk in your room.”

“My room?” he laughed.

I went into the guest room, which doubles as a study, and got the magnifying glass out of the desk. I brought it to him. After a brief look at the photograph, he said, “It’s a hobo sign.”

“Hobo sign?” I asked.

“You know, one of the signs hoboes leave for one another. Some people call them Gypsy signs, some people say they go back to old medieval ritual signs. Wherever they came from, drifters depended on them. They could tell a man where to catch a train or find a camp or a handout. If he knew where to look for them, the signs could tell him a lot about a house-to beware of a vicious dog, or that the owners will care for a man who’s sick, or that a man with a gun lives there. A drawing of a cat, for example, means ‘A kind woman lives here.” If there are three triangles by the cat, it means ’Tell her a sob story.“”

“What does this one mean?”

He looked up at me. “It means ‘Run like hell.”“

He handed the photo and the magnifier back to me. I could now see that the mark was drawn in pencil, and looked like an “h” that slanted to the right; it wasn’t hard to imagine a stylized runner.

“There’s another way to draw that one,” he said, as I handed the photo and glass to Rachel.

He borrowed Rachel’s pencil and awkwardly used his bandaged hand to draw a circle on one of the manila envelopes. Then, across the circle, he drew two parallel arrows. The arrows pointed right.

“If you saw that, you knew you should hit the road, and quick!” he said.

“How do you know about these signs?” Rachel asked.

“My dad could understand symbols and pictures, even numbers-he just had trouble with letters and words. His family taught him hobo signs from when he was very young; he taught them to me. If you weren’t on the road, of course, they were only good for so many situations. My dad and his brother had other little signs they used if they had to leave notes for one another. My mother and I used them with him, too. That was a big thrill, of course, when I was younger. We pretended to be spies, or to have our own secret language. Took me awhile to realize it wasn’t a game.”

“Wait!” Rachel said suddenly, and searched through her papers. She handed a photo over to Travis. “I took that at the back of your mother’s apartment. Someone tried to break into a window. This was drawn on the window frame, between the bars.”

His expression was grim as he said, “It means ‘This is the place.”“

Rachel went back to the murder file photos, looking through other shots, sorting out photos of the exterior of the house. “There aren’t any others,” she said.

“There probably are others,” Travis said, “but you have to know where to look for them. Maybe I should say, there probably
were
others-the whole area where the farm was is now an industrial park. My father had the place torn down years ago.”

“Getting rid of memories?” I asked.

“I guess,” he said, but I’m not sure he really heard the question. He had taken the stack of glossies from Rachel and was studying them intently, through the glass. He held one out to her, a photo of the front door. “There’s another hobo sign in this shot,” he said. “Look here-at the little pencil marks on the facing of the front door.”

“I still don’t see it. What are you looking at?” she said.

“Here,” he said, moving to look over her shoulder. “These three slanting lines. They mean ‘This is not a safe place.”“

Rachel handed it over to me, and Travis had to point out the lines to me as well. “What do you make of it?” Rachel asked.

“Assuming they were left on the night of the murder, and left by the murderer, then the killer was warning someone else,” I said. “Those two assumptions are big assumptions. But if the killer left them, then the question is, who was he warning?”

“The DeMonts may have known these symbols?” she asked.

“Yes,” Travis said. “If my uncle didn’t lie about Horace living on the road, then Horace would have certainly known them. And Robert. I don’t know if he taught them to his other kids or not. I don’t know if the others traveled with him.”

Rachel had another set of pictures. “These were taken of your dad’s apartment,” she said. “Do you know about these?”

He nodded, looking through the pictures. “My dad rented this apartment when he separated from my mom. He was going to buy another house, but he said he wanted a place where I could visit him in the meantime. At first, I had thought he would just go back to Gwendolyn, but he didn’t. I think he also wanted a place that was just his, a place to sort things out.

“When Richmond found out about the apartment, he got a search warrant. One for our house, too. He never found anything.”

I was looking over his shoulder at a shot of Arthur’s bedroom. Everything was neat and tidy-the bed made, the closet orderly. “Look,” I said. “Your mom had a night-light just like that one.”

“The Virgin Mary night-light?” he smiled. “No, it’s the same one. He gave her that one. She said he told her it might make her feel protected. My mother used to laugh and say she thought it was his way of saying he wanted her to be as pure as the Virgin Mary-that he didn’t want her to have any other men in her life.”

“Was she afraid of him?”

“No,” he said. “Not at all.”

“But she didn’t let him back into her life-I mean, not until recently.”

“No, like I said, she felt tremendous guilt over everything that had happened before the murder. She didn’t want to profit from Gwendolyn’s death. Once the crisis was over and she felt sure my father wouldn’t be charged with Gwendolyn’s murder, she felt guilty about lying on his behalf. She decided that no matter how much she loved him, he wasn’t good for her or for me. She couldn’t trust him again.”