He hands me two small, transparent plastic bags. I slip one over each eyebolt and carefully wrap tape around the top of the bag, careful not to touch any part of the bolt or the ceiling. I climb back down while Marino opens his tool box. “Hate to do this to you,” he says to Kiffin, who hovers outside the door, hands deep in her pockets, trying to keep warm. “But I’m gonna have to cut out part of the ceiling.”
“Like that’s gonna make much difference at this point,” she says in a voice of resignation, or is it indifference I detect? “May as well,” she adds.
I am still wondering why the fire only smoldered. This has really got me stuck. I ask Kiffin what type of linens and mattress cover were on the bed.
“Well, they were green,” she seems sure of herself on this point. “The bedspread was dark green, sort of like the color the doors are painted. Not that we know what happened to the linens. The sheets were white.”
“Do you have any idea what they were made of?” I ask.
“I’m pretty sure the bedspreads are polyester.”
Polyester is so combustible that I try to remember never to wear synthetic materials when I fly. If we have a crash landing and there is a fire, the last thing I want against my flesh is polyester. I may as well douse myself with gasoline. If a polyester bedspread had been on the bed when the fire was set, more than likely the entire room would have gone up in flames, and quickly. “Where did you get the mattresses?” I ask her.
She hesitates. She doesn’t want to tell me. “Well,” she finally gets around to what I believe is the truth, “new ones are awfully expensive. I get secondhand ones when I can.”
“From where?”
“Well, from that prison they closed down in Richmond a few years back,” she tells me.
“Spring Street?”
“That’s right. Now, I didn’t get anything that I wouldn’t sleep on myself.” She defends her choice in fine bedding. “Got the newest ones from them.”
This might explain why the mattress only smoldered and never really caught fire. In hospitals and prisons, mattresses are treated heavily with flame retardants. This also suggests that whoever set the fire wouldn’t have had any reason to know he was trying to burn a mattress specially treated with flame retardants. And of course, common sense would have it that this person also did not hang around long enough to know that the fire went out on its own. “Mrs. Kiffin,” I say, “is there a Bible in every room?”
“The one thing folks don’t steal.” She avoids my question, taking on a suspicious tone of voice again.
“Do you know why this one in here is open to Ecclesiastes?”
“Now I don’t go around opening them. I just leave them on the dresser. I didn’t open it.” She hesitates, then announces, “He must have been murdered or everybody wouldn’t be going to all this trouble.”
“We have to look into every possibility,” Marino remarks as he climbs back up the ladder, a small hacksaw in hand that is helpful at scenes like this because the teeth are hardened and aren’t angled. They can cut elements in situ, or in place, such as trim molding, baseboard, pipes or, in this instance, joists.
“Business has been hard,” Mrs. Kiffin says. “I’m on my own because my husband’s on the road all the time.”
“What does your husband do?” I inquire.
“A truck driver for Overland Transfer.”
Marino begins popping out drywall tiles from the ceiling around the ones the eyebolts are screwed through.
“I don’t imagine he’s home much,” I say.
Her lower lip trembles almost imperceptibly and her eyes brighten with pain. “I don’t need a murder. Oh Lord, it’s going to hurt me bad.”
“Doc, you mind holding the light for me?” Marino doesn’t respond to her sudden need for sympathy.
“Murder hurts many people.” I train the flashlight on the ceiling, my good arm steadying the ladder again. “That’s a sad, unfair fact, Mrs. Kiffin.”
Marino starts sawing, wood dust drifting down.
“I’ve never had anybody die here,” she whines some more. “Not much worse can happen to a place.”
“Hey,” Marino quips to her above the noise of sawing, “you’ll probably get business from the publicity.”
She gives him a black look. “Those types can just stay the hell away.”
FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHS Stanfield showed me, I recognize the area of wall where the body was propped up and I get the general idea where the clothing was found. I imagine the victim nude on the bed, his arms strung up by rope threaded through the eyebolts. He might be kneeling or even sitting—only partially hoisted up. But the crucifixion position and gag would impair his breathing. He is panting, fighting for breath, his heart palpitating furiously in panic and pain as he watches someone plug in the heat gun, as he hears air blow out when the trigger is pulled. I have never related to the human desire to torture. I know the dynamics, that it is all about control, the ultimate abuse of power. But I can’t comprehend deriving satisfaction, vindication and certainly not sexual pleasure out of causing any living creature pain.
My central nervous system spikes and surges, my pulse pounds. I am sweating beneath my coat even though it is cold enough inside the room to see our breath. “Mrs. Kiffin,” I say as Marino strokes the saw, “five days—a business special? This time of year?” I pause as confusion dances across her face. She is not inside my mind. She does not see what I see. She can’t begin to imagine the horror I am reconstructing as I stand inside this cheap motel with its secondhand prison mattresses. “Why would he check in for five days the week of Christmas?” I want to know. “Did he say anything at all that might have given you a hint as to why he was here, what he was doing, where he was from? Aside from your observation that he didn’t sound local?”
“I don’t ask.” She watches Marino work. “Maybe I should. Some people talk a lot and tell you more than you want to know. Some don’t want you in their business.”
“What feeling did you get from him?” I keep prodding her.
“Well, Mr. Peanut didn’t like him.”
“Who the hell is Mr. Peanut?” Marino reaches down with a ceiling tile that is attached by an eyebolt to a four-inch section of joist.
“Our dog. You probably noticed her when you came in. I know it’s kind of a funny name for a female that’s had as many puppies as that one, but Zack named her. Mr. Peanut just barked her head off right when that man showed up at the door. Wouldn’t come near him, the fur just standing up on her back.”
“Or maybe your dog was barking and upset because someone else was around? Someone you didn’t see?” I suggest.
“Could be.”
A second ceiling tile drops, and the ladder shakes as Marino descends. He goes back into his toolbox for a roll of freezer paper and evidence tape and begins wrapping the ceiling tiles in neat packages as I walk into the bathroom and shine the light around. Everything is institutional white, the top of the counter scarred with yellowish burns, probably from guests parking lit cigarettes while they shave or put on makeup or fix their hair. I see something else Stanfield missed. A single strand of dental floss dangles inside the toilet. It is draped over the edge of the bowl and trapped under the seat. With a gloved hand, I pick it up. It is about a foot long, several inches of it wet from toilet water, and the midsection of it pale red, as if someone flossed his teeth and his gums bled. Because this latest find isn’t perfectly dry, I don’t seal it in plastic. I place it in a square of freezer paper which I fold into a jeweler’s envelope. We probably have DNA. The question is, whose?
Marino and I return to his truck at one-thirty, and Mr. Peanut flies out of the house when Kiffin yanks open the front door to go back inside the house. The dog chases us as we pull out, barking. I watch in the side mirror as Kiffin yells at her dog. “You get here right now!” She angrily claps her hands. “Come here now!”
“Some asshole take time out from torture to floss his teeth?” Marino starts in. “Like what the h
ell is that about? Or more likely, it’s been hanging out in the toilet since last Christmas.”
Mr. Peanut is now right by my door, the truck bumping over the unpaved drive that leads through woods to Route 5.
“Come here now!” Kiffin bellows as she comes down the steps, hands smack-smack-smack.
“Goddamn dog,” Marino complains.
“Stop!” I am afraid we are going to run over the poor animal.
Marino stamps the brakes and the truck lurches to a halt. Mr. Peanut jumps up barking, her head bobbing in and out of my window. “What in the world?” I am baffled. The dog was scarcely interested in us when we first showed up a few hours ago.
“Get back here!” Kiffin is coming after her dog. Behind her, a child fills the doorway, not the little boy we saw earlier, but someone as tall as Kiffin.
I get out of the truck and Mr. Peanut starts wagging her tail. She nuzzles my hand. The poor, wretched creature is dirty and smells bad. I get her by the collar and tug her in the direction of her family, but she doesn’t want to leave the truck. “Come on,” I talk to her. “Let’s get you home before you get run over.”
Kiffin strides up, just livid. She pops the dog hard on top of the head. Mr. Peanut bleats like an injured lamb, tail tucked, cowering. “You learn to mind, you hear me?” Kiffin furiously wags her finger at her dog. “Get in the house!”
Mr. Peanut sneaks behind me.
“Get!”
The dog sits down in the dirt behind me, pressing its trembling body against my legs. The person I saw in the doorway has vanished, but Zack has emerged on the porch. He is dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt that are way too big. “Come ’ere, Peanut,” he sings out, snapping his fingers. He sounds as frightened as the dog.
“Zack! Don’t you make me tell you again to get your butt inside the house!” Zack’s mother shouts at him.
Cruelty. Leave, and the dog will be beaten. Maybe the child will. Bev Kiffin is an out-of-control, frustrated woman. Life has made her feel powerless, and beneath her skin she seethes with hurt and anger, the unfairness of it all. Or maybe she is just plain bad, and maybe poor Mr. Peanut is running after Marino’s truck because the dog wants us to take her with us, to save her. That fantasy enters my mind. “Mrs. Kiffin,” I say in the calm voice of authority—that cool, cool voice I reserve for times when I intend to threaten the living shit out of somebody. “Don’t you touch Mr. Peanut again unless you do it gently. I have this special thing about people who hurt animals.”
Her face darkens and anger glints. I fix my stare dead center on her pupils.
“There are laws against cruelty to animals, Mrs. Kiffin,” I say. “And beating Mr. Peanut is not a good example to set in front of your children.” I hint that I spotted a second child she has failed to mention to us thus far.
She steps back from me, turns and walks off toward the house. Mr. Peanut sits, looking up at me. “You go home,” I tell her as my heart breaks. “Go on, sweetie. You need to go home.”
Zack comes down the steps and runs up to us. He takes the dog by the collar, squats and scratches between her ears, talking to her. “Be good, don’t go making mama mad, Mr. Peanut. Please,” he says, looking up at me. “She just don’t like it ’cause you’re taking her baby buggy.”
This jolts me, but I don’t let it show. I get down to Zack’s level and pet Mr. Peanut, trying to block out that her musky stench triggers memories of Chandonne again. Nausea twists my stomach and makes my mouth water. “The baby buggy’s hers?” I ask Zack.
“When she has puppies, I take them on rides in it,” Zack tells me.
“Why was it over there by the picnic table, Zack?” I ask. “I thought maybe some campers might have left it there.”
He shakes his head, petting Mr. Peanut. “Uh uh. It’s Mr. Peanut’s buggy, isn’t it, Mr. Peanut? I gotta go in.” He gets up, glancing back furtively at the open front door.
“I tell you what.” I get up, too. “We just need to look at Mr. Peanut’s buggy, but when we’re done I promise to bring it back.”
“Okay.” He tugs the dog after him, half running, half yanking. I stare after them as they go inside the house and shut the door. I stand in the middle of the dirt drive in the shadow of scrub pines, hands in my pockets, watching, because I have no doubt Bev Kiffin is watching me. On the street it is called signifying, making your presence known. My business isn’t finished here. I’ll be back.
CHAPTER 23
WE HEAD EAST on Route 5 and I am mindful of the time. Even if I could conjure up Lucy’s helicopter, I would never make it back to Anna’s house by two. I pull out my wallet and find the card Berger wrote her phone numbers on. There is no answer at her hotel, and I leave a message for her to pick me up at six P.M. Marino is silent as I slip the cell phone back inside my satchel. He stares straight ahead, his truck rumbling loudly along the winding, narrow road. He is processing what I just told him about the baby carriage. Bev Kiffin, of course, lied to us.
“The whole thing out there, wow,” he finally says, shaking his head. “Talk about a creepy feeling. Like there were all these eyes watching everything we were doing. Like that place has a whole life of its own nobody knows nothing about.”
“She knows,” I reply. “She knows something. That much is obvious, Marino. She made a point of telling us the baby carriage was left by the people who abandoned the campsite. She volunteered that without pause. Wanted us to think it. Why?”
“Those people don’t exist, whoever was supposedly staying out in that tent. If the hairs turn out to be Chandonne’s, then I’m gonna have to entertain the idea she let him stay out there, and that’s why she got all hinky about it.”
The vision of Chandonne showing up at her motel office and asking for a place to stay for the night shorts out my imagination. I can’t picture it. Le Loup-Garou, as he calls himself, would not take such a chance. His modus operandi, as we know it, was not to show up at anyone’s door unless he intended to murder and maul that person. As we know it. As we know it, I keep thinking. The truth is, we know less than we did two weeks ago. “We have to start all over,” I tell Marino. “We’ve defined someone without information, and now what? We made the mistake of profiling him and then believing our projection. Well, there are dimensions to him we’ve completely missed, and even though he’s locked up, he isn’t.”
Marino gets out his cigarettes.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” I go on. “In our arrogance, we decided what he’s like. Based it on scientific evidence and came up with what, in truth, is an assumption. A caricature. He’s not a werewolf. He’s a human being, and no matter how evil he is, he has many facets, and now we’re finding them. Hell, it was obvious on the videotape. Why are we so damn slow on the uptake? I don’t want Vander going to that motel alone.”
“Good point.” Marino reaches for the phone. “I’ll go to the motel with him and you can take my truck back to Richmond.”
“There was someone in the doorway,” I say. “Did you see him? He was big.”
“Huh,” he says. “I didn’t see anyone. Just the little kid, what’s his name? Zack. And the dog.”
“I saw someone else,” I insist.
“I’ll check it out. You got Vander’s number?”
I give it to him and he calls. Vander is already on his way and his wife gives Marino a cell phone number. I stare out the window at wooded residential developments with large Colonial homes set back far from the streets. Elegant Christmas decorations shine through trees.
“Yeah, there’s some strange shit out there,” Marino is telling Vander by cell phone. “So yours truly here’s gonna be your bodyguard.” He ends the call and we are quiet for a moment. Last night seems to fill the rumbling space between us in the truck.
“How long have you known?” I finally ask Marino one more time, not at all satisfied with what he told me in Anna’s driveway when I walked him out to his truck after midnight. “When exactly did Righter tell you he was instigating a special g
rand jury investigation and what was his reason?”
“You hadn’t even finished her damn autopsy yet.” Marino lights a cigarette. “Bray was still on your table, to be exact. Righter gets me on the phone and says he don’t want you doing her post, and I tell him, ‘So what you want me to do? Walk in the morgue and order her to drop her scalpel and put her hands up in the air?’ The dumb shit.” Marino blows out smoke as my dismay folds into a scary shape inside my brain. “That’s why he didn’t ask your permission to come snoop around your house, either,” Marino adds.
The snooping part, at least, I had already figured out.
“He wanted to see if the cops came across anything.” He pauses to tap an ash. “Like a chipping hammer. Especially one with maybe Bray’s blood on it.”
“The one he tried to attack me with may very well have her blood on it,” I reply reasonably, calmly as anxiety inches through me.
“Problem is, the hammer with her blood on it was found in your house,” Marino reminds me of a fact.
“Of course it was. He brought it to my house so he could use it on me.”
“And yeah, it does have her blood on it,” Marino keeps talking. “They already did the DNA. Never seen the labs move so fast as they are these days, and you can guess why. The governor’s got his eye on everything going on—in case his chief medical examiner turns out to be some whacko murderer.” He sucks on the cigarette and glances over at me. “And another thing, Doc. Don’t know if Berger might have mentioned this to you. But the chipping hammer you say you bought at the hardware store? It ain’t been found.”
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