The Messenger (2011 reformat) (10 page)

And her smile
glimmered like newly honed cutlery.

These were the
details Bobby noticed in those first few seconds. Then he fainted and collapsed
to the floor. What he hadn't noticed, though, was the bizarre design scrawled
on the floor at Marlene's feet: something that looked like a bell.

After Bobby
fainted, Marlene Troy's arms fell limp at her sides, then the cadaver collapsed
right on top of Bobby.

Jane imagined
what it must be like for some to, for instance, be standing on a street corner
in broad daylight and suddenly witness a fatal car crash just yards away in the
road. Instant death and calamity right before her eyes. That's how she felt at
that moment in her office.  The initial shock was gone now, leaving something
worse, something like a colossal mental hangover, her disbelief colliding with
the horror of what someone-someone in this same town-had done.

This...is...crazy,
she thought.

Steve Higgins,
the police chief, sat grimly opposite from her, a notepad on her desk, leaning
over, jotting things down.

"This is
absolutely disgusting. How could somebody do something like that? Digging up a
dead woman and propping her body up in the lobby? What kind of a sick prank is
that?"

"It could
be more than a sick prank, Ms. Ryan," Steve said. "And it's pretty
clear that Marlene Troy was into some stuff that no one knew about-some pretty
off-the-wall stuff."

"Stuff,"
Jane repeated. She still couldn't believe it. "You mean occult rituals,
satanism, demonology. Stuff like that."

"That's
what it's looking like, isn't it? This isn't like some punk egging a bunch of
cars or knocking over garbage cans. Somebody exhumed a corpse, brought it here,
and drew occult markings on the floor."

"And they
did it here, they brought the corpse here, to my post office," Jane said. First,
the tragedy at the main branch, and now this, here. It's crazy."

Steve nodded.
"Calm down. At least we'll be able to keep this one out of the papers. The
evidence team got the body out of here before any residents showed up. It's
possible for the body to have been seen through the front window, but that
early in the morning? If somebody had seen it-some guy walking his dog or out
for a jog-then he would've called the police immediately. That didn't happen,
so it's very important that all parties keep quiet about this."

"You
sound like the mayor," Jane said with some bitterness. "Worried about
the beautiful town of Danelleton getting a bad reputation."

"I
couldn't care less about that, Ms. Ryan. It's simply that the fewer people who
know about this, the better. We don't want to have to deal with the media; all
that'll do is reduce the effectiveness of our investigation."

When Bobby
Weaver had regained consciousness in the vending cove, half out of his mind,
he'd shoved Marlene's body off and called the police.  Steve and some
subordinate officer arrived at once. The body was removed before any other
postal employees had arrived. Steve had called Jane directly and now here she
was, at 5:30 in the morning, just when the carriers and processing staff were
coming in. When she'd arrived, Bobby was still being interviewed by a
lieutenant, and Jane couldn't help but overhear some of the conversation.

"What's
your explanation," she asked, "about what Bobby was saying before he
left? He said the corpse fell on him. He said that Marlene's eyes were open,
she was grinning at him. She was standing there holding her hands out, like she
was still alive."

"She was
in the ground for over twenty-four hours, Ms. Ryan. I guarantee you, she wasn't
alive. She was killed by multiple gunshots-one of the bullets destroyed the
left ventricle of her heart."

"But
Bobby said she was standing there," Jane countered. "On her own. Then
she collapsed on him."

"Let's
not go off the deep end here. The medical examiner will be getting back to me
later with a list of physiological prospects, but there are a lot of possible
explanations right off the bat."

"Like
what?"

"Postmortal
rigidity, rigor mortis, things like that. Things like temperature, humidity,
length of time that's passed since death, even ingredient concentrations of
embalming fluid can determine the extent and duration of rigor mortis."

"You're
saying that the body was still stiff and somebody propped it in the corner of
the cove and it just stood there like a storefront mannequin on its own? Eyes
open? Arms out? Grinning?"

"It's
possible. Then the rigor wore off and the body collapsed."

"It
collapsed on top of Bobby?"

"Why not?
He'd already passed out from the trauma, he was already on the floor."

Jane frowned.

"Then we
have to consider the reliability of the witness in the first place. That's
quite a scare, isn't it? Wouldn't you be scared, wouldn't you be terrified, if
you walked in here by yourself one day, turned the corner, and saw a dead body
propped up in the corner? Wouldn't you be terrified?"

"Of
course, but..."

"Traumas
like that can do strange things to the human mind. Bobby was terrified. Bobby
thought she was standing there with her arms out. Bobby thought her eyes were
open and she was grinning. Some kind of trauma-based hallucination. Maybe the
body had simply been left on the floor."

"Bobby
said it was on top of him when he came to!"

Steve pitched
a brow. "Bobby probably just thought it was. He was stressed out to the
max, he was close to a clinical state of shock. The mind plays tricks on people
in situations like that."

Jane eased
back in her office seat. "I don't know. Maybe you're right. I guess I'm
still not over the shock myself. Marlene killing her family then going on a
shooting spree? Now this."

"I
know." Steve seemed to be uncomfortable in his seat. "But let's talk about
something else right now, okay?"

His tone and
poised bothered her. "All right."

"For one
thing, Marlene's body was exhumed. And the county forensics people knew right
away that it was done with a shovel. That's hard work. That's a lot of effort
for someone to go through, so that's how we know this isn't just a prank. And
look what happened after that: The body was then transported from Winter Damon Cemetery
to your post office. That's a lot of risk."

"What are
you getting at?"

"The body
wasn't just dropped off out front, it was brought inside the building,
supposedly before Bobby Weaver came on duty"

"Yes?"

"There
are no signs of a forced entry. We've checked top to bottom. So that can only
mean one thing. The person had access to the building's keys."

Something
snapped in her mind. "I didn't think of that..." Another snap, and
some alarm. "No, no way. You don't think it was Bobby Weaver? He's harmless.
He's a little flighty sometimes, but I just can't see him doing anything like
this."

Silence for a
moment, then: "Let me ask you something. Is it possible that Marlene may
have belonged to some sort of religious cult?"

The comment
pissed Jane off. "I told you the other day. No. The idea is totally
absurd. She was a mother, a resident in good standing, and a diligent,
hard-working employee. She was probably the most normal, level-headed person
I've ever worked with. A cult? What makes you ask that? The drawing of the bell
you found at her house? It sounds to me like, if anything, she was the victim
of some kind of cult. Maybe somebody abducted her, gave her some psychedelic
drug that made her do those things. And as far as that design goes, do you even
know that she was the one who drew it?"

"No, not
yet, but we're checking. The Danelleton police department is pretty small;
we're a municipal department, so we don't have our own crime-scene units and
evidence techs. We have to rely on county and state services for that, and it
takes a while. But the county graphologists are examining the first sketch
right now. And don't forget, the same bell-shaped design was found here, too,
this morning.

Drawn on the
floor in blood."

Jane couldn't
help a little sarcasm. "Well, I guess we know she didn't draw that one,
huh?"

Steve smiled
faintly but just for a moment. "Yes, we definitely know that. But there
are a lot of things we still don't know. For instance, who was the last person
to have sex with her."

More sarcasm.
"Well, I do know for fact that she was happily married, so-I don't
know-I'll gamble here and say that her husband was the last person to do
that."

"So it's
inconceivable to you that Marlene Troy was seeing other men?"

"Yes.
Very inconceivable."

"According
to the county medical examiner, there were abundant traces of seminal fluid in
her vaginal vault."

Jane pursed
her lips as if she'd just sucked a lemon. Seminal fluid. Vaginal vault.
"God, you really have a way with words, Chief Higgins."

"Sorry.
What do you want me to say? But we know she had sex on the morning she murdered
her family and killed everyone at the main branch. With two men."

Jane felt like
a door had just been slammed in her face. Two men? "Are you sure about
that?"

"The
evidence doesn't lie," Steve remarked. "There was semen in her, two different
secreter types. Two different men. The Medical Examiner says he's sure she'd
been with both men within hours of her death. Marlene's husband was in the
Naval Reserves; since 1990 all military personnel have DNA profiles put in
their medical records. One of the seminal types matched her husband. All we
know about the second semen traces is that they're from a person with
A-negative blood."

By now Jane
was feeling naive. Infidelity happened all the time, she knew, amongst the
people you'd least expect it from. "The post office does have medical
records of all employees, for their health plans. I guess you want to check and
see what Bobby Weaver's blood type is."

"We have
to get a court order for that, and we're in the process of doing that now,
Steve explained. "But it's not Bobby Weaver we're interested in
checking."

"Who,
then?"

"A man
named Carlton Spence."

Another door
in the face. A big door. "Now, that, Chief Higgins, is inconceivable. I've
known Carlton longer than I knew Marlene. He doesn't belong to any cult:

"But
didn't he go through a severe tragedy recently?"

"Not
recently. That was a long time ago. His wife and daughter were killed in a car
accident. He had an alcohol problem for a while but got over it."

Steve nodded
again, not looking at her. "The information I have is a little
different."

"What?"
Jane paused. "Well, yes-the daughter. She wasn't killed in the crash-"

"No, she
was abducted from the accident scene, according to the FBI and Maryland state
police. The potential there, especially in this day and age, is pretty
horrific: child pornography, child prostitution. Children are abducted for
those pursuits all the time; that must take a tremendous toll on a parent,
right? It would for me, I'm sure. And Carlton Spence was a devout Catholic. A
tragedy like that? It must really challenge a person's faith. If there was ever
a reason to turn your back on God, that's got to be it."

Jane reflected
on that. How could she not agree? He's right, but... "Not him, not
Carlton. He isn't capable of something like this. He just isn't. If you want my
opinion, you're wasting your time even considering it."

"Really?
Maybe. Tell me this, what exactly is his job here?"

Jane sat back.
This was going to be a long interview. "In the post office, we don't have
jobs, we call them crafts. Clerks, carriers, handlers, maintenance. Carlton
went through the ranks in all those crafts, and recently-when my west branch
opened-he was promoted to delivery supervisor. His pay grade is level fourteen.
You can think of him as part personnel manager and part operations manager. He
basically makes sure everyone else is on duty and getting their individual
tasks done. He maintains the route schedules, transfer deliveries, overtime
assignments, and a lot more. He's been a quality employee for as long as I've
known him."

"Is he on
duty right now?"

"Yes."

"How
about calling him in here."

Jane frowned.
She didn't have any worries that she might be wrong about this-she felt certain
that Carlton would never have anything to do with cults-but she supposed she
had no choice. After all, Steve was the chief of police. It's my civic duty to
cooperate-and prove him wrong. "One second." She picked up the phone,
hit Carlton's office extension, and waited. Then she hit another extension, and
waited. "Hmm. Can't find him," she muttered. "Let me try the
service area." One more extension. "Doreen, is Carlton up there? I
need to see him. ... Oh, okay"