Twisted Reason (18 page)

They all went back outside to await the crime-scene truck. When it arrived, Lucinda posted one uniform on the front door, another on the back. She told the other two they could leave after they helped the techs maneuver a diesel generator up the steps and into the house. The lights were carried in next. A videographer and still photographer followed shooting every corner of each room.

Lucinda hadn’t needed to ask for that documentation, Marguerite just did it. She knew from experience that the lieutenant was demanding. Marguerite liked that in a detective; she hated the ones who tried to hurry her up or make her take short cuts. She and Lucinda both wanted a record of everything. Neither woman ever wanted sloppiness or negligence to set them up to be blindsided by a defense attorney in the courtroom.

When that task was completed, Marguerite and an assistant headed upstairs to look for any out-of-place fibers, gray hairs or locations where it might be useful to apply Luminal. Jumbo went with them to serve as an extra pair of eyes and to lend a hand where he could.

Another tech got busy dusting high probability fingerprint sites. Lucinda and the document specialist headed into the dining room where a large roll-top desk, bookcase and computer stand occupied one corner. It was disappointing that the computer was no longer there but when they lifted the lid on the desk, the amount of paper inside was staggering.

There was a high, sloppy stack of newspaper clippings, articles printed from the Internet, and small pamphlets all concerning an alleged connection between diet and Alzheimer’s disease. It included pieces on the importance of blueberries, Himalayan goji berry juice, Vitamin E, spinach, olive oil, Vitamin C, coenzyme Q10 and more in Alzheimer’s prevention. On the right, a shorter stack was an assortment of alarmist manifestos claiming a conspiracy by the military-industrial complex, the Russians, the pharmaceutical companies – all of the usual suspects – along with dire warnings that the drugs we give our loved ones to treat high blood pressure and cholesterol were causing dementia; and other papers insisting that the increased incidence of dementia was the direct result of Aricept, Razadyne, Exelon and Memantine, the very pharmaceuticals doctors prescribed to help patients with Alzheimer’s.

Lucinda moved to the bookcase while the document tech pulled open the file drawer. On the shelves, most of the space was occupied with older paperback science fiction by well-known authors like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Poul Anderson, as well as an assortment of books with cheesy covers depicting rocket ships or aliens or unknown planets. Some of them were “two-fer” books with double covers – read one story, flip it over and read the other. Interspersed irregularly were hard cover books with more relevance to the investigation:
The Anti-Alzheimer’s Prescription
;
Dr.ugs, Dementia and the National Institute for Health: A Conspiracy to Control Your Mind
;
The Chemical Warfare Experiment: The Military’s Link to Dementia
;
Nutrition and Alzheimer’s: You Are What You Eat
;
Exercise and Sleep: The Key to Staying Sharp into Your Eighties and Beyond
; and
Brain Food for Your Golden Years
.

Wouldn’t it be nice,
Lucinda thought, if dementia could be eliminated so easily? If eating right, exercising and getting enough sleep could protect you from all harm.

Jumbo hollered down the stairwell, interrupting her thoughts. “Lieutenant. Spellman wants to luminal and wants to know if you want to see it.”

“On my way,” she shouted back.

Marguerite met her at the top of the stairs. “Maybe I’m getting a bit carried away, Lieutenant, but I won’t feel right if I don’t check it out.”

“What’s got your radar blips sounding, Spellman?”

“Well, there are three bedrooms up here. Only one is carpeted. The other two have hardwood floors with throw rugs. It’s been a long time since any of these rooms have been painted but the room with the carpet looks as if it’s a little bit of a newer paint job. Now, I know that could be explained easily – it was the only room redecorated.”

“I’m not questioning your judgment, Spellman.”

“Still, I want to tell you the clincher. Come in here,” she said, nodding her head toward one of the smaller bedrooms. She pulled open a closet door and shined a flashlight inside of it. “Look.”

The silver bar had only a few hangars on it: one held a blouse, another had a dress, the rest were empty. On the floor, a small pile of two or three garments next to a beat-up pair of shoes.

“Abandoned stuff from the looks of it, right?”

“Sure – just things the owner didn’t want any longer,” Lucinda agreed.

“Right. It’s the same thing in the other small bedroom except it has a few articles of clothing which are male.”

“And you have something different in the larger bedroom?”

“You betcha. In that bedroom, there are two closets,” Marguerite said as she walked across the hall. “One of them contains a couple of pieces of men’s stuff. But the other . . .” She pulled open the door of a packed closet. Clothes rammed tight on the rod, shoes piled high on the floor.

Marguerite flipped through the garments with blue gloved hands. “Just look at this stuff: billowing maternity dresses, oversized shirts, stirrup pants, but these . . .” She bent down and picked up a pair of pink plastic shoes. “If these jellies don’t say Eighties, I don’t know what does.”

Lucinda whispered, “Sadie.”

Over her shoulder, Jumbo said, “That’s just what I thought, Lieutenant. And it looks like she didn’t pack a bag.”

“Where do you want to spray, Spellman?” Lucinda asked.

“I want to do the headboard of the bed and the wall around it.”

“Do it.”

“If I find anything, I’ll want to rip up the carpet and do the floor.”

“Fine.”

“I might even want to rip up the carpet if I don’t find anything.”

“Go for it, Spellman. If the answer to what happened to Sadie Blankenship is here, I want to find it.”

Jumbo helped Marguerite hang a blackout cloth over the sole window in the room to eliminate the light from a lamp post in the alley. With the door shut, the lights switched off, Lucinda and Jumbo stood close enough that they could hear the other person breathe but could not see each other at all.

They heard the spray and smelled the salty tang of the chemical that always reminded Lucinda of the beach. The glow began. First, tiny specks twinkled on the headboard. Then the brightness spread on the wall, more evidence of high-speed splatter, then a huge, splotchy smear as if someone bleeding hit the wall and slid down to the floor.

Marguerite kept spraying, up to the ceiling where the splatter grew finer and finer and then stopped. While they watched, they heard the slow whirr-click of the camera on the tripod taking long exposure shots.

“Need help ripping up that carpet, Spellman?” Lucinda asked.

“The more the merrier,” Marguerite said. “You both have gloves on, right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lucinda and Jumbo said in unison.

Marguerite flipped on the portable lights. With one person on each corner, the two forensic techs and the two detectives scooted the double bed to one side of the room. Marguerite pulled out a utility knife and made a two inch cut into the edge of the carpet. Jumbo grabbed that and pulled. When he loosened a big enough chunk, Lucinda latched on to it and tugged, too.

Marguerite and her assistant duplicated the effort on the other side of the room. Soon, they had a large rectangle of bare wood floor. Marguerite got down on her hands and knees and peered at the floor. “Holy crap! I can still see the blood in the cracks of the boards. No need for Luminal here. All I need are some swabs.”

Lucinda joined her on the floor. “And there’s even some staining on the top of the flooring.”

“There’s no way to date these bloodstains but they are nowhere near recent. Too much wear on the carpet, and there’s even some rust on the carpet tacks,” Marguerite said.

“Maybe we can date the carpet. Jumbo, there’s a tech going through the papers in the desk. Would you ask her to keep her eye out for a receipt?”

Jumbo nodded and left the room.

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Marguerite said.

“Sorry? Sorry? You may have just solved a twenty-year-old homicide that no one even knew about.”

“But that’s not why we’re here. We haven’t found anything to connect to your missing and dead old folks. We’ve found lots of hairs – but not one gray or white one in the bunch.”

“My disappointment in that is more than compensated by what we’ve found. And the clothing – if it’s been worn since its last washing, you can pull DNA and knock out profiles of the whole family. If that’s Sadie’s blood and those are Sadie’s clothes, samples from her children and her husband will pull it all together.”

“You want me to prioritize those profiles?”

“Definitely. Can you get Beth Ann Coynes to run them?”

“It will require sidestepping Doctor Ringo but that’s nothing new for me,” Marguerite grinned.

“How’s Audrey doing?”

Marguerite shrugged. “She’s a little mellower since her double mastectomy – talks about realizing the value of living one day at a time quite a bit – but for the most part, she’s still the dragon lady she’s always been.”

“Has she had a recent follow-up?”

“Yep. No sign of cancer.”

“Good. Dragon lady or not, I hope her survival is complete and permanent. We’ve lost too many women already. Domestic homicide is a horrible thing but breast cancer is sneakier and it scares me even more.”

Lucinda went downstairs and returned to the dining room. “Found a carpet receipt?”

“Not yet, Lieutenant,” the tech answered.

Jumbo looked up from an open file folder. “Lieutenant, you’ve got to read these letters. There’s a connection to River’s Edge.”

“You’re kidding?” she said reaching for the folder. She sat down at the dining-room table.

“They seem to be in chronological order. Copies of letters Gary Blankenship mailed and the original responses he received. A lot of his letters are nearly identical, just addressed to different people. If you read the first one all the way through, you can skim through bunches that follow. Do you think they could use me upstairs while you read?”

“If you don’t mind bagging evidence, I’m sure they could.”

“No problem. Have fun.”

It was a well-worn manila folder with ragged edges with a tag labeled “Mom”. The first letter, dated April 10, 2002, was addressed to: Administrator, River’s Edge.

My mother is Mary Agnes Franklin Blankenship Hodges. She is being held in your lockdown Alzheimer’s unit under false pretenses. She does not have Alzheimer’s or any form of dementia. I realize she displays the symptoms of one of these brain maladies but it is artificially inflicted. My stepfather, Alvin Harold Hodges, has poisoned her with pharmaceuticals.

Before she came to stay with you, I argued with him on many occasions about the medication she was receiving and about her diet. He ignored all the information I provided him both orally and in written form. When he tricked you into taking my mother into your facility, he left all the articles and books I had given him on my front porch. I don’t think he’d read any of it.

The reason he did not care is because he was trying to get rid of her. He wanted power of attorney over her assets and he wanted to date other women. Alvin Harold Hodges is an evil man. I warned my mother before she married him but she just thought I was jealous. He had fooled her and manipulated her so badly that she just thought I was jealous of sharing my mom with that man. I tried to object during the matrimonial ceremony but the pastor ignored me.

I did try to rescue my mother from her captivity last month but one of your misguided staff members would not listen to reason and had me evicted from the premises. I have not been allowed to visit her since.

Alvin Harold Hodges has put you in a position where you will be liable to face criminal charges. When he is arrested for attempted murder, you will also be charged for aiding and abetting him in his criminal activity and for holding my mother against her will. I do not want this to happen to you. That is why I am writing you now. I want to give you the opportunity to do the right thing before I contact law enforcement. Then, it will be too late. You will end up in jail along with many of your staff members. River’s Edge will be forced out of business. You will probably face civil action from your stockholders. Please do not wait a minute longer.

Do the right thing. Let my mother out of your prison. I am more than willing to care for her and I am confident that I can nurse her back to health. My children, her grandchildren, are looking forward to seeing her again and are eager to help me with her.

Lucinda knew the response Blankenship received to this letter could not have pleased him. It was an invitation to a conference with a physician and other health care providers to discuss his mother’s physical and mental condition. It ended: “Once you understand and accept that your mother does need to be here, we will gladly reconsider the restriction on visitation.”