Red Herring (12 page)

Joe had read about sweatprints and touch-DNA, where a person’s fingerprints might be too smeared to lift, but the skin cells and oils and residues within the print were still available for testing. “That’s looking good?” he asked.

Hawke gave him an equivocal, “It’s looking possible. The cord was new; its surface is smooth and nonabsorbent; the killer may not have been wearing gloves. Who knows? There, even without Brookhaven, I’d be willing to take a shot, budget be damned.”

“Don’t we also have the ink analysis route with the suicide note?” Joe asked.

“Sure,” David conceded. “But without a standard, it won’t do us much good. It’s like a fingerprint without an AFIS match or a blood drop with no hit in the data bank.”

Joe shook his head. “Hold it. Isn’t that precisely what we’re talking about? We already have blood with no hits. That’s not stopping us from trying to see what else we can get out of it.”

David held up both hands in surrender. “Granted. We’ll put the ink on the table, too.”

“What do you think you have with the third case?” Hillstrom asked Joe, hoping to be helpful in light of his frustrated expression.

“Well,” he said, “given what you discovered in the poor guy’s stomach, I have a bottle that might have somebody else’s fingerprints on it. I also have the truck.”

“It wasn’t Clarke’s?” David asked, surprised.

“No, no. It was Bobby’s, all right. But it occurred to me driving up here that if he didn’t go off the road himself—and that’s looking likely with the head injury Beverly found—then the truck had to have been pushed, possibly by another vehicle.”

“Leaving a mark on the bumper,” Beverly suggested.

“Could be.”

“Well,” David stated. “That, we could check out pretty easily.”

“What about clothing?” Joe asked him. “Does touch-DNA work there? We’re assuming the killer pulled down Doreen’s underwear and lifted Bob into his truck. He couldn’t have done either without touching them and leaving DNA—assuming he wasn’t wearing gloves.”

“Big assumption,” Beverly couldn’t resist saying. “This is clearly a careful man.”

Hawke was also looking skeptical, if for different reasons. “I don’t know. The underwear’s as big a reach as finding residue from the knife on the nightgown. And with Bob, even if the bad guy didn’t have latex gloves, he probably was wearing something. It was in the middle of the night in the late fall, for crying out loud—frigging freezing. Still, the underwear, the nightgown, the ink analysis, and even the bumper might all be good for Eric Marine’s curiosity. Actually, come to think of it, if we did gather enough evidence through cutting-edge science, maybe we could get it into court, after all, and establish
legal precedent. That is how it happens sometimes; DNA didn’t have an easy time at first.”

Joe reached out and patted his arm. “Slow down, Einstein. There could be a Nobel in this for you, too, but I doubt it. For all we know, Eric Marine’s never heard of you, had some student read your articles, and has a policy against helping outsiders.”

Hawke pulled a face. “Damn, Gunther, you sure can rain on a parade.”

“Just being cautious,” Joe said. “Right now, we have a whole lot of nothing, much less anything to bring to a jury. I’ll have the sheriff’s department transport the pickup truck to you in a closed carrier, so you can give it your full attention without putting a team out in the field. I’ll also interview Mary Fish’s partner for any relevant background information. How much longer will Eric Marine be in town?”

Hawke didn’t bother consulting the brochure. “Three days, assuming he doesn’t skip out early.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Beverly volunteered, making both men stare at her. She smiled in response. “I’ve heard about him, too, and read his papers. Plus, I don’t think it will hurt if a colleague of the opposite gender makes the appeal. Maybe I can meet him for lunch or something.”

Joe was laughing by now. “All for the cause, Beverly, all for the cause. You are too much.”

“And that little secret had better accompany you both to your graves,” she said severely.

David Hawke saluted her and stood up. “Aye, aye. Can I go now? I’ve played hooky long enough.”

“Go,” Joe told him, “and many thanks. This has been truly above and beyond.”

Hawke gathered his files and moved to the door. “Not really. As
Dr. Hillstrom said, if all three of these are connected, we’ve got something more than worthy of our collective attention.” He paused and added, “I’ll run using Brookhaven by the state’s attorney, just to make sure we’re on safe ground with all this.”

Beverly waited until the door had closed behind him before asking her old friend, “And what more can I do for you?”

“It’s going to sound a little weird,” he warned her.

“Go ahead.”

“I’d like to see Mary and Bob. I’m going to do my best to tell their stories and maybe let them rest in peace. I just wanted to meet them, if only this once.”

Beverly smiled and patted his hand, rising from the table. “I don’t think that’s the least bit weird, Joe.”

She led him back down the hallway and out into the lab, the last door of which opened onto the autopsy room, an arena he’d visited often over the years, usually with Hillstrom officiating.

She crossed over to the wall cooler and pulled open two of its drawers, revealing the pale, slightly yellow-tinged bodies of a young man and an elderly woman. The woman’s face was dark and discolored and her tongue protruded slightly from between her lips. Both bodies had the familiar Y-shaped cut decorating their torsos.

“Tell me what you know,” Beverly requested.

Joe studied the faces for a moment, barely registering the signs of death that would have derailed most observers. He had seen hundreds of corpses in his career, and before that in combat as a young man. He had learned to read life’s sign language in what was left behind.

“Mary I know the least,” he began. “Hardworking, dependable, devoted to the woman she lived with and the people she worked for, even though her boss is clearly an idiot. From what I could tell, she had a quiet, comfortable life, and filled her time away from the office
with classical music, show tunes, and a huge collection of DVDs of classic Hollywood movies. It looked like she and Elise, her other half, loved cooking, staying home, and each other. Of course, Elise and I have yet to meet, and you know what they say about first impressions.”

Beverly chuckled slightly. “That they’re usually correct?”

He conceded the point. “Not what I was thinking, but for Elise’s sake, I hope so. Maybe those memories will eventually overshadow the effects of that fake suicide note.”

He shifted over to the young man. “Bob Clarke’s grandmother, Candice, is best friends with my mom, so him I know more about. Terrible upbringing until his father was locked up as a habitual offender, then the proverbial gift from God. He reacted to Candice’s offer to take him in like a starving man hits a meal, and repaid the favor with respect and hard work and abstinence—at least as far as any of us knew. At the time of the transition, I know my mom was pretty nervous. Candice is no spring chicken, and not in the best of health; Mom thought the effort might do her in. But of course, it was just the opposite—both of them bloomed in the other’s presence.”

He stood there for a moment, looking down at both bodies, and then finally stepped back. “Thanks, Beverly. That helped add a little perspective.”

She placed her cool hand on the nape of his neck and smiled. “I know the feeling. Good luck finding who did this.”

Springfield’s hospital sat above the town, less overlooking it than standing slightly aloof, like a doting nanny standing off to one side, ready to care for her accident-prone charges. It was gray and damp when Joe pulled into the parking lot, and he paused a moment before entering the facility to appreciate a climate so many other Vermonters his age had come to thoroughly dislike.

He didn’t deny that the late fall/early winter cusp, especially, could be challenging, and that some years its unrelenting grayness could seem biblical in duration. But he was born of this part of the earth, and while he’d traveled far in his time, the nostalgia he’d felt when away was only reinforced when he was back in its embrace. Familiarity in his case led only to comfort and a sense of belonging. As with all love affairs of the type, the occasional crankiness was easily forgiven.

And so he walked slowly across the parking lot, feeling the mist against his face, very much aware of the two people he’d left in Hillstrom’s cooler, fellow New Englanders who’d been robbed of any more such experiences.

Elise Howard had been placed on the hospital’s top floor, in a quiet room facing a steep embankment covered with evergreens, across the feeder road to the upper parking lot.

Joe stood quietly in the open doorway, studying the thin, frail woman in bed as she gazed out the window, as unmoving as if she’d joined Mary Fish at the morgue.

He tapped softly on the wall beside him and watched her slowly turn her head away from the view, as if letting go of the one rope that was keeping her moored.

“Yes?” she said in a whisper.

He advanced into the room and took a seat between the window and the bed, so that she could look over his shoulder if she chose, instead of having to watch him.

He squeezed her hand, less in a shake than in a simple touching of sorrowful humans, and uttered his all-too-practiced standard introduction.

“Hi, Ms. Howard. My name is Joe. I’m a police officer. I am so sorry to be meeting you under these circumstances.”

“So am I,” she said, which pleased him as a response. It implied that the numbness accompanying her misery hadn’t dulled her ability to react with precision and truthfulness.

“I hope my being here isn’t too much of an intrusion,” he continued.

“No,” she sighed. “I knew someone would come eventually. I imagined it would be a funeral director or someone like that.”

“That can be arranged,” he offered. “For the moment, we all just wanted to let you be, at least until the initial shock had passed.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

He assumed the need to pursue a funeral director had passed. “I
would like to chat with you a little about Mary, though. Would that be all right?”

“Yes.”

“And I know this sounds a little stupid, but I want to show my respect by asking how you’d prefer to be addressed. As Ms. Howard? Elise?”

She had returned to the window, but this brought her focus back squarely to his face. “How long have you been a police officer? I’m sorry . . . I forgot your name.”

“Joe. And a long time.”

She allowed for a thin smile. “It shows. You’re very good. Elise will be fine.”

“Thank you,” he said, and leaned forward to prop his elbows on his knees, placing his face near hers, but slightly below it, so she wouldn’t feel cornered.

“How long were you and Mary a couple?”

“Thirty-two years,” she answered without pause, the number no doubt having been floating in her head for several days. “And before you even ask it, they were the happiest years of my life.”

“What do you think of how Mary died?”

Her eyes narrowed. “What do I
think
of it? What an absurd question . . .”

He held up his hand to stop her. “Not how you
feel
about it, Elise. What do you literally think happened?”

She teared up and blinked several times, fighting to keep her composure. “We were doing fine,” she finally said, barely audible.

“No disagreements?”

She tilted her head slightly. “No. I’d been complaining about wanting some time just for us. At first, she’d been a little impatient—she
was the one who brought in the money, you see. But after a while, her enthusiasm grew, until she was talking about it more than I ever did. We laughed about that. It wasn’t a bone of contention.”

Gunther remained silent, letting her continue the conversation to his advantage.

She finally took a deep breath and asked him, “Could she have been murdered?”

“That’s what I’m trying to determine,” he admitted.

Her mouth fell open, her shoulders went slack, and she became so pale, Joe thought she might pass out.

What she said, however, surprised him. “I thought so.”

He watched her a few seconds, concerned, but she remained staring at him, alive and conscious.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

Her answer was disappointing. “I couldn’t think of any other explanation.”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully before proceeding. “Elise, I have to be honest with you. Most people are killed by someone they know and for reasons that make sense—or at least they’re explainable. Random stranger killings are very rare, especially around here.”

“All right,” she said, as if he were detailing a theorem.

“If everything was going well between you two, then what else might’ve gone sour for Mary?” he pressed her. “Schools can be hotbeds of jealousy and disappointment. Mary was in a powerful position, being Raddlecup’s number two. Did she ever discuss what happened at work with you?”

“All the time,” Elise said. “And it was Raddlecup that caused most of her problems. The rest of them usually went to her to avoid him, and she was wonderful with them.”

“How did that make the relationship between Raddlecup and Mary?”

“It was fine,” she told him. “He loved her; she saved his bacon every week and made it crystal clear that she never wanted to replace him.”

Joe paused a moment before asking, “The way she died was very personal. It wasn’t like someone fired a gun into the air and the bullet just happened to strike her. Does the staging of a fake suicide tell you anything?”

Again, she paled, and Joe feared he might have overestimated her reserves, but she took a deep breath and said quietly, “No.”

“There’s never been a death like that—a hanging—in either one of your families?”

“No.”

She was looking down by now, apparently focusing on the edge of the bed. Only by doing the same did Joe notice her tears silently dripping onto the sheet. He reached for her hand and squeezed it gently.

She looked up, her weathered cheeks glistening, and gave him a wan, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. She was the love of a lifetime.”