Sins and Needles (5 page)

“Well, I'm sure there must be some innocent explanation. I mean, didn't you say she died peacefully in her sleep?”

“Yes, I did.” But now Jan was remembering that staring look of amazement, and again that feeling that something wasn't quite right.

Her mother's voice interrupted her thoughts. “If someone came and tried to stick a needle into my brain, I'd struggle with all my might.”

“Well, of course, so would anyone.”

“So that can't be what happened, don't you see? Maybe she did fall, and there was a needle in the carpet, and she didn't realize what happened but just went to bed with a headache. That
must
be the explanation.”

Jan took a breath, then let it out. “Of course, I'm sure you're right.” Her head was starting to ache. Conversations with her mother often made her feel like that. “Will you call Pastor Garson about the delay in the funeral service?”

“Yes, as soon as I talk to Stewart and Jason.”

“Fine. I'll tell Hugs.” Jan hung up and closed her eyes. Aunt Edyth's death had been a surprise, though Jan also thought it a blessing, going like that, quickly, without a protracted illness. Now…this was really, really scary. She needed to talk to someone levelheaded about this, someone whose nickname described what she also needed from him. Her dear, patient, kind, strong husband.

S
ERGEANT
Mitchell Rice didn't like autopsies. Like many police detectives, he was tall and burly, with dark hair, very thin on top, and an unstylish tie worn so tight it looked as if it were strangling him.

An autopsy is sort of like an operation, only a little rougher, and without the anesthesiologist. And the surgeon takes photos of his progress, which Mitch was pretty sure didn't happen in an operating room. Normally there are no non-medical people in the operating room; but if an autopsy is for the purpose of collecting evidence for a criminal investigation, a representative from the police department must be present.

Finally, autopsies are a grim reminder of mortality, something Mitch didn't need; and while he tried to be professional and distance himself from the process, he couldn't get far enough away to remain undisturbed.

Maybe if he went to more of them…now there was an ugly thought. He was not one of those cops who liked action. In fact, while he enjoyed his work, he was also grateful to be a cop in a community where murder was a very rare thing.

He was startled back to the present by the sound of something metal falling into a little pan. The medical examiner gave a grunt of satisfaction, and Mitch said, “Got it?”

“Yes.” Using his tweezers, the ME poked at what he'd retrieved. “Looks like a piece of wire. Steel, maybe.” He picked it up, rinsed it in a jar of water, then held it out to Mitch, who reluctantly came closer. It was about two inches long, shiny and pointed at one end. The other end was snipped off, not smoothly.

“That's not a piece of wire,” Mitch said.

The ME lifted it up to his own eyes, squinting behind the clear plastic mask that covered his face. “You're right.” He held it closer, then touched the pointed end with a rubber-gloved hand. “Dull point, but doesn't seem from wear.”

“What do you think?”

“I couldn't say for sure. It looks machined, not ground or cut, except at the other end. Shiny, so stainless steel? Maybe it's a part off something.”

Mitch, intrigued now, held out his hand for the tweezers. The piece of metal didn't look cut or filed to its point, but polished or rolled. There were no scratches on its gleaming surface. It was very thin—thinner than most nails. He very gingerly felt the pointed end and agreed that it was not very sharp. The other end, when touched, felt rough on the tip of his finger.

“Which end was the end inside her head?” he asked.

“The pointed end, up to about the last eighth of an inch, barely visible to the naked eye. And something else,” the ME went on, “there are a couple of small puncture wounds very near where I found this. In my opinion, someone made several tries to insert this in order to cause the deceased's death.”

Mitch frowned. “That can't be true. I have a report that the decedent was found in her bed under undisturbed blankets, as if she'd died peacefully in her sleep. If someone came into my bedroom and started poking me in the back of the head with something pointed, I'd kick up a fuss. Maybe the other injuries are because she was out in her yard with the mosquitoes.”

“They don't look like mosquito bites to me,” said the ME, who had photographed them. “Unless it was a mosquito with one hell of a proboscis.”

Mitch handed the piece of metal back. “So it's your expert opinion that we're talking homicide here?”

“Oh, I'd say so. I don't see how she came by this injury any other way. This was done by an individual who knew where to insert this pin or whatever it is, but was inexperienced in doing it.” He looked across at Mitch's baffled face and clarified his remark. “The puncture wounds say the murderer poked around a bit. Not a brain surgeon, in other words.”

“Oh. Okay. But what do you mean, insert it? Is there a place, an opening in the skull?” The thought that the human brain pan was not a solid round of bone was startling to Mitch.

“Where the base of the skull meets the first vertebra of the spine is a layer of—well, call it gristle. Shaped sort of like a disk—you've heard of slipped disks? There are disks between the vertebrae, and one on top, where the spine meets the skull. This piece of metal wasn't driven through the bone—it was slipped through that tissue and up into the brain stem.”

Mitch, not big on clinical detail but swift at methodology, asked, “If it could be pushed in, why couldn't it be pulled out again?”

“Probably because the woman, in a dying spasm, threw her head back and pinched the space closed. This piece of metal was once longer than it is now, though how much longer is anyone's guess. The roughness of the cut would indicate it was done with a dull blade—that's why the mortician cut himself on it.”

Mitch nodded. “Good thing for us that criminals generally make mistakes. This one thought the old woman's hair would hide it. And it almost did,” he added, without sympathy for the ME's rookie representative who hadn't found it before sending the body to that mortician in Excelsior, and who would get soundly rapped on the knuckles for that error.

Mitch thought some more, reaching for his notebook. The murderer would very likely not have brought wire clippers along and would have had to go looking for them. And then, not wanting someone to notice them missing, he probably put them back. Mitch wrote that down. Maybe there were fingerprints on them.

He'd go search the house today.

 

S
USAN
was scrubbing down the kitchen cabinets when the doorbell rang. In good shape for a woman in her midsixties, she hopped nimbly off the little step ladder, wiped her hands on a dish towel, and hurried through the dining room to the front door. From habit, she looked around before opening the door. All was in order; she kept a very clean house.

She glanced through one of the leaded lights beside the door and saw a tall, heavyset man with dark hair. He wasn't carrying an attaché case, so he wasn't a salesman. And his suit was too ill-fitting to belong to an attorney. Not a mortician—that was all taken care of. That left one choice, and her heart sank. A police detective had called earlier to see if she would be home. This must be him.

She opened the door. “Yes?”

Sure enough, he reached into a side pocket and produced a photo ID and badge in a worn leather folder. “Mrs. McConnell?”

“Yes?”

“I'm Sergeant Mitchell Rice, Orono Police. I called you earlier. Is it all right if I come in?”

She hesitated, but it was too late to say no without a really good reason, and she didn't have one. “All right.”

She turned and led the way into her living room. It was a good-size room for such a small house, done in pastel shades of green and cream, with touches of pink. Not fluffy, but definitely feminine. He paused a moment, then chose the pale upholstered chair; in his dark suit he was like a june bug on a buttercream birthday cake. He offered her a business card printed with his name, phone number, fax number, even an e-mail address, plus the round Orono city seal.

She couldn't think what to do with it, so she held it in her hand as she went to sit on the couch. “I assume you're here about my aunt,” she said.

“I'm here about Edyth Hanraty. She was your aunt, right?”

“That's right—my mother's sister.”

“Huber's Funeral Home contacted the police when Mr. Huber found evidence that Ms. Hanraty's death occurred under unusual circumstances.”

Susan nodded. “Yes, I know.”

His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “How do you know that?”

“The medical examiner's office called me to say Mr. Huber found something little and sharp, like a needle, stuck in the back of her head. He said that the funeral should be put off because there was to be an—an autopsy. Has there—have they finished it already?”

“Yes, and we have the preliminary results. I'm very sorry, but it appears your aunt was murdered.”

Susan leaned back in the chair. “I was afraid you were going to tell me that. But are you absolutely sure? I was thinking that maybe she fell. You know, and a nail or a needle was in the carpet, and she fell on it, and—and she didn't know it was serious. And she went to bed with just a headache and died in her sleep.”

“No, ma'am. For one thing, it wasn't a nail, or a needle. For another, it went right into her brain, killing her instantly.”

She blinked at him, shocked.

He held up a hand to forestall a response. “I'm sorry. But what that also means is that she didn't suffer. There was no evidence of a struggle, and the medical examiner told me that it happened very quickly, between one breath and the next. A little poke, and she was gone.”

“Oh. I…I see.” Susan swallowed and clenched her hands shut, surprised to find one of them crumpling the card. She began to smooth it out with her fingers. “Still, it's so horrible. And you think it might be murder? I don't see how—I mean, who would have done such a thing? And why?”

“Well, that's where I come in. I'm going to see if I can figure it out. And I'm hoping you can help me.”

He seemed in earnest, so her response was sincere. “Of course, if I can.”

“First of all, I'm trying to understand the family. Who's who, and how they're related. May I ask you some questions about that?”

“All right, I'll tell you whatever I can.”

“Good, thank you.” He reached into an inside pocket and came up with an absurdly tiny notebook and a ballpoint pen. “Your aunt never married, is that correct?”

“Yes, that's right,” she said.

“So she left no children?”

“Of course not! I mean…I suppose in this day and age that's not an impertinent question, but it certainly was in hers. My goodness, to think of Aunt Edyth—” Susan had to pause a few moments, torn between indignation and laughter, before she could continue. “Her only immediate relative was a sister, Alice, who died nine years back. Alice was my mother.”

“And your father?”

“Was Dr. John O'Neil, also deceased. They had three children, a daughter named Margaret, who died very young, me, and a son, Stewart.” She spoke slowly, watching the detective write this down in his tiny notebook. “My husband was David McConnell, and we had three children: Jason, Julie, who died young, and Jan. My brother, Stewart, married Terri Pepperdyne, and they have four girls: Katie, Alexandra, Bernie—Bernadette, but no one calls her that—and CeeCee—Cecilia. My daughter, Jan, is married to Dr. Harvey Henderson. They have two boys, Reese and Ronnie. My son, Jason, is currently divorced and has no children. The oldest of Stewart and Terri's children is married to Perry Frazier; that's Katie, who just turned twenty-one.”

“And all these people except your parents are alive?” asked Sgt. Rice.

“No, my husband is also deceased.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you.” Susan gave a grave nod. Though it had been nearly ten years since Dave had collapsed at the office, she still sometimes felt the pain of loss.

Perhaps the detective caught the fleeting look of distress in her eyes, because he gave her a moment while he looked around the room. “I see you do counted cross-stitch,” he said, nodding toward a framed trio of Marc Saastad roses on the wall.

Susan, pleasurably surprised, said, “Yes—and how interesting that you know what it is. Most men just say sewing, or embroidery.”

“My wife does counted cross-stitch, too.”

A penny dropped. “Well, my goodness, is your wife Lizzy Rice?”

He nodded. “Yes. Do you know her?”

“Of course! She and I have taken I don't know how many classes together over at Crewel World in Excelsior!”

“She loves those classes. And they must do her good; she wins a lot of ribbons at the fair.”

“Yes, I know. Not that she brags. It's Betsy, the owner of Crewel World, who is always bragging about her. Well, isn't that interesting, you being Lizzy Rice's husband! She never told me she was married to a policeman!”

Sergeant Rice shrugged, his head cocked a little to one side, and gestured with his notebook. “A woman can't always help who she falls in love with,” he said, almost straight-faced.

Susan laughed, just a little, but felt more comfortable now that she could place this man within her own circle. Lizzy was a gentle-mannered, intelligent woman; no husband of hers could be a bad person. “What else do you want to know?” she asked.

Now Sergeant Rice looked a little uncomfortable. “Well, I've been out to Miss Hanraty's house, and this house you have here is very nice, but it's not exactly in the same category. I've done a little research, and it seems that your grandfather left his fortune to Edyth. Did your mother have some kind of quarrel with him?”

Susan bridled a bit. “
First
of all, it wasn't so great a fortune to begin with, though it
was
a lot of money in its time. Aunt Edyth was a clever investor. She ran her inheritance up all by herself.” She felt herself smiling; she couldn't help it. “Actually, it's an amusing family story.”