by Casey Dorman
Chapter 35
Susan Lin stood outside the door to the autopsy laboratory in the basement of the county hospital. Her partner, Abe Reynolds was inside, talking to the pathologist in charge of the lab. They couldn’t begin the autopsy of Regina Bonaventure, assuming it really was her who had been buried, naked, in the shallow grave at Banning Ranch, until Lucas Bonaventure arrived to provide positive identification. Susan had never been in the morgue before, but she wanted to be here today. She wanted to watch Bonaventure’s reaction to seeing his wife’s body.
Lucas Bonaventure had a strained expression on his face as he rounded the corner. He seemed relieved to see Doctor Lin. “This is where Regina is?” he asked her.
She nodded, noting the tremor in his voice. He seemed terrified. She had an impulse to reach out and take his hand, but she reminded herself that, in her mind, Lucas was his wife’s killer, and possibly Sherry Bennett’s also. He looked pathetic. His clothes were well-pressed and expensive-looking: a camel-hair sport coat over a light blue Oxford Cloth shirt, open at the collar, a pair of light khaki pants and boat shoes rounding out his typical Newport Beach casual look. But his dark hair was uncombed and he had not shaved, his eyes had dark circles under them. Even from a distance, she could smell the alcohol on his breath.
“Shall we go in? Are you ready for this?” she asked, unable to keep the concern from her voice.
He shook his head. “I’m not ready, but I guess I have to go in there.” He straightened himself and took a deep breath, then pushed through the swinging doors.
There were several long and narrow tables in the room, two of them occupied by bodies draped with white sheets. Along one wall were rows of steel doors, the repository for other bodies being kept in the morgue for identification or autopsy. Detective Reynolds and a doctor in blue surgical scrubs were standing next to one of the tables on which a clean white sheet revealed the outlines of a body beneath it. Behind them was a wheeled cart carrying an impressive array of surgical instruments.
Abe Reynolds came forward and held out his hand. “Thank you for coming this morning. I know this is difficult for you.” Although his words were meant to be comforting, there was a hard edge to his voice. Susan knew that Reynolds regarded Bonaventure as a prime suspect, along with Doctor Farquhar, in Regina Bonaventure’s murder.
“Is that her?” Lucas asked, ignoring the detective’s greeting. He stood stock still, staring at the table. He seemed unable to move.
“I’m going to remove the sheet just enough to show you her face,” the pathologist said, looking at Lucas. “I just want you to tell us if this is your wife.” His concern for Lucas’ condition showed on his face. “I know this is stressful, Mr. Bonaventure, but you’ll have to come closer to make the identification.”
Lucas moved woodenly toward the table. Abe Reynolds moved aside to let him stand next to the pathologist, whose hand was holding the edge of the sheet. Lucas was staring down at the form on the table. The pathologist pulled back the sheet. The woman’s face had traces of mud and her hair was filthy with remnants of the soil in which she’d been buried.
Lucas looked down at his wife’s face. He swallowed hard, as if he was trying not to retch. Then he turned toward the pathologist, his face livid. “How dare you show me her with mud on her face? Look at her hair, it’s filled with dirt!” His fists were balled, as if he were ready to attack the pathologist.
The pathologist lowered the sheet and backed away, a look of fear in his eyes. “We couldn’t clean her up until you made your identification. We have to examine all of the fragments of dirt on her face and in her hair. I’m sorry to show her to you this way, but it was necessary.”
“I don’t feel well,” Lucas said. His anger had disappeared. He looked as if he might pass out.
Abe Reynolds took him by the arm and led him to a chair at one side of the room. “Why don’t you sit down for a moment? You’re in shock.”
“Can I bring you anything? Water?” Susan asked.
Lucas’ face was ashen. “Give me a minute. I just wasn’t prepared to see my brother like this.”
“Your brother?” Susan said.
He looked up at her, as if he were confused by her question. Then he looked over at the table where his wife’s body lay. “I mean my wife, of course.”
“You seem a little disoriented,” Susan said. She looked over at Detective Reynolds, who was still next to the table but was staring at Lucas. His face showed his skepticism.
“I’ll be all right. It was just a shock, seeing her like that, especially so dirty. Why was she so dirty?” He still looked confused.
“She’d been buried. They can’t remove all the dirt right away. It needs to be analyzed. They were waiting for you to identify her before proceeding.”
“Analyzed? The dirt? I don’t understand. What does the dirt have to do with anything?”
“In case your wife’s body had been moved. They need to see if all the dirt came from the site where they found her or from somewhere else.”
“You mean someone could have moved her after she was dead?”
“They just have to rule that out. It’s routine.” She worried that she might have told him too much, but he seemed to need an explanation and she was worried about his mental health.
“Can I go?” he suddenly asked.
“Do you feel well enough to walk?”
He nodded and began to stand up. His right leg seemed not to move and he teetered for a moment on one leg then crumpled to the floor. Detective Reynolds and the pathologist both rushed over and assisted Susan with picking him up and putting him back on the chair.
“Are you all right?” The pathologist asked.
Lucas appeared calm. He looked up at the three worried faces peering down at him. “I’m fine. It’s just that my right leg doesn’t seem to move.”
“Did you injure it when you fell?” the pathologist asked. He bent to examine Lucas’ leg.
“Never mind, it’s OK. Perhaps if you could get me a wheelchair or a cane or something?” There was no panic in Lucas’ voice. He spoke as if becoming paralyzed in one leg was a perfectly ordinary occurrence.
Susan remembered her conversation with Doctor Farquhar. Bonaventure had a history of hysterical paralysis. It had happened before when his brother died. “He’ll be OK,” she told the pathologist, who was feeling Lucas’ knee and calf for evidence of an injury. “I believe this has happened before, hasn’t it Mr. Bonaventure?”
Lucas’ head snapped up. He narrowed his eyes as he looked at her. “How did you know that?”
“Doctor Farquhar told me. Remember you signed a release for us to speak to him about you.”
“And he told you about that?”
“I’m a psychologist. I needed to know what his assessment of you was.”
“I don’t want you talking to him anymore. I had no idea that he’d tell you things like that.”
“It was important to know your history,” Susan answered, surprised by Lucas’ alarm.
“I’m rescinding your permission to talk to him. Is that understood?”
“The release you signed was with the Irvine Police Department, with regard to the Sherry Bennett case. You’ll need to contact them to rescind your release on paper, although, of course, I’ll honor it now that you’ve told me in person.”
“Why are you talking to Doctor Farquhar about Sherry Bennett anyway?” Bonaventure seemed both angry and confused. “You work for Newport Beach.”
“I’m working for Irvine, too. I’m involved in both your wife’s case and Sherry Bennett’s case.”
He looked up at her with fury in his eyes. “Well, no more access to my d
octor. Is that understood? Now bring me a cane or something so I can leave here.”
She looked over at Abe Reynolds, who nodded, then turned to the pathologist. “Have you got some crutches or a wheelchair we can loan Mr. Bonaventure so he can leave?”
Chapter 36
“Lucas Bonaventure has rescinded his permission for you to release information to us,” Susan Lin said. She and Abe Reynolds were sitting in the detective’s office, the detective behind his desk and she in a chair next to it. George Farquhar sat facing the two of them. He was neatly dressed in a Hunter Green sport coat and brown slacks with a light blue Oxford Cloth shirt and a green tie that matched the color of his jacket. His face looked tired, but his eyes moved back and forth between Abe and Susan, as if he were frightened of what they would ask him.
“You didn’t have to tell me that,” George said, looking back at her. “You might have gotten me to tell you something important before you told me that he had taken back his release.”
“It would have been disingenuous for me to not tell you,” Susan said, looking over at Detective Reynolds, who was scowling at her, as if he agreed with the doctor. “Anything you told us about what he said to you could not be used in court.”
“We’re not interested in Bonaventure right now,” Reynolds said. “We want to know what you were doing at Banning Ranch last night.”
George sighed. He felt an immense weight pressing down on his whole body. “My wife and I had a discussion about our new house site there. I wondered if they had started any of the improvements yet and she told me she no longer wanted to live there. We argued. I’d had a few drinks after dinner and I decided to drive over there and see if anything had been done, and, to tell you the truth, whether I still felt attached to the property.”
“So that was why you were there?” Susan Lin asked. Her voice was friendly and reassuring.
“Yes.”
“So why were you digging in a mound of soil? Were you wondering how attached you were to the dirt?” Reynolds asked, making no attempt to conceal the sarcasm in his voice.
George could feel his panic rising. The truth was, he didn’t know how he had come to dig up Regina Bonaventure’s burial place. The last thing he remembered was staring at the pile of dirt and then suddenly he’d found himself digging up her body. “I guess it looked odd, as if it didn’t belong there.” His gaze darted from Reynolds to Susan Lin. His panic was growing. “I really don’t know what made me start digging.”
“Maybe you knew that there was something buried under the dirt,” Reynolds said, as he bored into George with his gaze.
“How would I have known that?”
“You tell us. You were the one who was digging in the dirt,” Reynolds said, making no effort to hide his hostility.
“I told you, it just looked odd, that pile of dirt right there.” George was still feeling panicky. He wished that Susan hadn’t told him that Lucas had taken back his waiver of confidentiality. Without telling them about Lucas’ dream, there was no way to explain why he was there or what he was doing digging in the dirt. Even if he had been able to tell them, he wasn’t sure that the story would have made sense. Why did he go there? If he thought that Lucas’ dream had suggested that his wife might be buried there, why hadn’t he called the police?
“So you see a mysterious pile of dirt and you decide to start digging underneath it, and voila, you dig up Regina Bonaventure, a woman who has been missing for over three weeks and was stabbed to death and buried on your property.” It was obvious to George that Reynolds wasn’t buying his story
“She was stabbed to death? What with?” George felt an acute sense of panic.
“A knife,” Reynolds said. “What else would she be stabbed with?”
“What kind of knife?”
“Why do you care what kind of knife she was killed with?” Reynolds looked at him suspiciously.
George shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “I don’t know. I don’t really. It just sounded shocking.”
“You must have felt shocked when you dug up her body,” Reynolds said.
“I didn’t dig up her body, the cops did. I just felt something under the dirt and I stopped digging.”
“Why did you stop digging?” Susan asked. Her voice was still supportive.
“I felt something and then I smelled something… a dead smell. I was frightened. Then the police drove up.”
“They caught you digging up her body,” Reynolds said.
“They didn’t ‘catch me,’ ” George answered. “I waved to the police, called them over to where I was. Anyway, would I have driven there at night to dig up a body and not brought anything to dig with but my own hands? No shovel, not even gloves?” He returned Detective Reynolds’s angry stare.
Reynolds heaved a sigh. What the doctor said was true. Digging in the ground with his bare hands was bizarre. “We’re gonna want to talk to you again about this. Don’t think I buy your story, doc. It just doesn’t hold water.”
“Not everything makes sense,” George said, looking over at Susan.
“Lucas Bonaventure identified his wife’s body,” Susan said, examining George’s face for a reaction. “Then he experienced a hysterical paralysis, just like the one you told me he’d experienced before.”
“My God,” George said. He’d almost forgotten that Lucas would need to view his wife’s body for identification.
“He also referred to his wife as his brother. Then his leg became paralyzed. Didn’t you tell me that a similar thing happened before when his brother died?”
“I can’t tell you anything, I’m afraid, now that he has taken back his permission for me to speak to you about him.” The news about Lucas astounded him. It made him almost forget about himself and that he seemed to be a suspect, at least in Detective Reynolds’s eyes.
“I’m just verifying what you already told me when you did have permission,” Susan said.
“It seems to me there’s something weird going on between you and your patient, doctor,” Abe Reynolds interjected. He was sitting forward in his chair, his eyes again narrowed as he looked at George. “This is two murders that both of you have something to do with. Don’t you find that strange?”
“I certainly find it strange that Bonaventure’s wife’s body was on my property. In fact, it makes absolutely no sense to me. But he was my connection to Sherry Bennett. I knew her because I had interviewed her at his request, which was something I already told Doctor Lin. That connection isn’t mysterious at all.”
“But the fact that you found both bodies is, don’t you think?” Reynolds answered.
George didn’t say anything. He had no idea what to say. “I think we’ve gone over that,” he finally answered. “Am I done here?”
“For now,” Reynolds answered. “We’re probably going to want to talk to you some more.”
“About what? I can’t tell you anything more about Lucas Bonaventure.”
“About you, doctor, about you.” Reynolds sat back and smiled, not warmly.
“Well, I’d like to talk to you more,” Susan said. Her smile was an inviting one.
George nodded. Despite his apprehension, he found himself buoyed by her friendliness.
“Let’s have that lunch we talked about,” he said, smiling back at her. She nodded.
As he left, George saw that Detective Reynolds was scowling at both the young psychologist and him.
— — —
“What was that all about?” Reynolds said to Susan after Doctor Farquhar had left the station.
“I still want to get information from him. I can’t have him hating me the way he hates you.
”
“He’s not telling us the truth,” Reynolds answered.
“I agree. But you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Besides, do you really think he murdered Regina Bonaventure?”
“He found her body, but he didn’t even know the woman. And he’s right, he wouldn’t have gone to dig up her body bare handed.”
“Right. So Doctor Farquhar is more important to us as a witness than as a suspect.”
“A witness to what?”
“To whatever Lucas Bonaventure told him that made him go to that site last evening.”
“You think that’s what happened?”
“Definitely. There’s no reason that the doctor would have gone to the site at night just to check on the property.”
“But Farquhar can’t tell us what Bonaventure is telling him. Bonaventure rescinded his release.”
“Farquhar couldn’t tell the Irvine police that Bonaventure had asked him to talk to Sherry Bennett or that Bonaventure was stalking her, but he managed to get around that by telling them what Miss Bennett was afraid of. He’ll find a way to tell us if we don’t frighten him too much.”
“So how do you plan to get that information from him?”
“Charm…” she smiled coyly at her partner. “Charm and a lunch invitation.”
“The psychological approach?” He grinned back at her.
“Something like that,” she laughed.
Chapter 37
George wasn’t surprised to see Lucas Bonaventure supporting himself with a cane and dragging his right leg, but he was shocked at the man’s frail appearance. Lucas sat down heavily on the edge of the couch. “I don’t understand how you were the one who found my wife.” It wasn’t clear if he was confused or angry.