“What can we help you with, ma’am?” Brenda asks as we approach.
“It’s not here. It’s those people,” she says, indicating a duplex across the street.
I look where she’s pointing and see someone on their hands and knees in the front yard. At first, I think it’s someone throwing up in the grass, but as I look closer, I realize that it’s a young man crawling around and eating the grass. I give my head a shake, not sure I can believe what my eyes are seeing, and then take another look. Yep, the guy is grazing on the lawn, lowering his head to the grass, ripping out a mouthful, and then chewing.
“They’re always throwing wild parties over there,” the robed woman says to Brenda. “Mary Jean Homburg owns that building and she has a history of renting out to questionable people. Those of us in the neighborhood who own have asked her to be more discretionary, but she doesn’t care who lives in the place because she lives across town and doesn’t have to deal with them. As long as they pay the rent....” The woman rolls her eyes. “I want you to arrest Mary Jean for this,” she continues, glaring at Brenda. “Maybe then she’ll see the light. I’ll file charges or whatever it is I need to do.”
“I can’t arrest the landlord because of what the tenants do,” Brenda tells the woman.
“Why not?” the woman asks, her voice rife with indignation. “What the hell do I pay taxes for? You’re a civil servant, aren’t you? Don’t you have to do what I tell you to do?”
“No ma’am, I don’t,” Brenda says with admirable patience.
“What a load of horse pucky!” the woman snaps. “You police are useless. I don’t know why you bother carrying those guns if you aren’t willing to use them.” She shakes her head in disgust. “Someone needs to grow a pair,” she mutters. She stares at Brenda and then looks at me. We both smile back at her with questioning looks.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she grumbles. “It’s a saying. You know what I mean.” With that, she turns and storms back toward her house.
Brenda gets on her radio and calls for backup. Then she says to me, “Keep an eye out, Hildy. Lord knows what we’re going to find over there, but I’m also worried about this one.” She gestures toward the robed woman, who is disappearing through her door. “I wouldn’t put it past her to come back out here with a gun to try to deliver a little justice of her own. In fact, maybe you should wait in the car.”
“I’ll be okay,” I tell her. “I’ll stay alert and if anything starts to look hinky, I’ll get out of the way.”
Brenda looks at me and smiles. “Hinky?”
“Yeah, you know, worrisome, weird, potentially dangerous.”
“Got it. Stay behind me, okay?”
She doesn’t have to tell me twice. For once I’m glad I’m a short person. Brenda isn’t tall; she’s around five six, but that’s tall enough to cover me, at least vertically. Horizontal is another matter, but at least if I get hit with some wild gunfire that makes it past Brenda, I figure my love handles will take the hit and there aren’t any vital organs there.
We cross the street, Brenda eyeing the surrounding houses warily. Just as we reach the lawn where the fellow is grazing, another cop car pulls up and Devo gets out. He hurries over to us on the lawn where the young man, who is wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a T-shirt, is still grazing away, seemingly oblivious to our presence.
“Sir?” Brenda says, touching him on his shoulder.
He looks up at her briefly, strands of grass hanging out of his mouth, his jaws grinding away. Inside the house we hear a loud crash and some raucous laughter, and Brenda looks at Devo. “You want to keep an eye on Elsie here while we check out the rest of this group?”
“I suppose,” Devo says. “Is that why you called for backup? For a babysitter?”
Brenda narrows her eyes at him, her lips pursed. I expect her to chastise him, but instead she says, “And watch out for the crazy bat lady over there.” Brenda nods toward the robed woman, who is back outside, standing on her porch glaring at us, toe-tapping with irritation, arms folded over her chest.
Brenda and I continue toward the house. The front door is wide open, and light spills out from a foyer onto the small porch. Inside to the left is a large open space, a combined living and dining area. It is occupied by several people who all look to be in their twenties or thirties and out of their minds. A girl is kneeling in front of a couch, repeatedly licking the cushions, slowly dragging her tongue over the nubby material. In the middle of the living room area is a guy on his knees on the floor trying to pick up a leaf that is woven into the pattern of the area rug. His fingers scrape along the surface as he tries to pry up edges that aren’t there, his focus on the leaf singular and laser-like. Seated in an armchair is a woman who is holding a table lamp, waving it around in front of her, oohing and aahing over the light patterns it’s making on the ceiling. Rounding out this circus is a guy standing in the far corner of the dining area with his face to the wall as if he’s being punished. Behind him, on her hands and knees, is a young woman barking like a dog.
Near the center of the room is a large, square table with a variety of Chinese takeout containers scattered over it. Paper plates covered with partially eaten helpings of lo mein, fried rice, steamed dumplings, a beef and broccoli dish, and spring rolls are interspersed in between the containers. Fortune cookies, still wrapped in cellophane, are strewn about the floor.
“Oh my,” I say. “These people must be on some heavy-duty stuff.”
“You think?” Brenda says with no small amount of sarcasm. “LSD is my guess.” She looks around the room and then points to a sheet of paper on the coffee table that looks like a page of old-fashioned green stamps. Several of the stamps are missing. “Whatever you do, don’t touch that.” She talks into her radio and tells Devo to come inside the house. A moment later he’s standing beside the two of us gaping at the craziness before him.
“So, what do you do with them?” I ask.
Brenda sighs. “They aren’t breaking any laws, other than possession, and you can bet your booties that no one in this room will be able to provide a straight answer as to whose drugs those are. And they don’t appear to be engaged in any activities that put them or anyone else at risk.”
“Unless the front lawn has recently been sprayed with pesticide or some such,” Devo observes.
“Good point,” Brenda says. “Maybe we should take that guy to the ER to be checked out. But these others...” She shrugs. “Unless we get another call that says they’re doing something reckless or dangerous, I say we confiscate the drugs, shut the front door, and leave them be.”
Devo dons gloves and gets a plastic bag from his car that he then uses to snag and bag the sheet of presumed LSD stamps. I meander back outside and keep an eye on the grazing cow guy, who is now lying on his back in the grass, staring up at the night sky, his lower face stained green from the freshly mown lawn.
An ambulance arrives to escort Mr. Cow to the ER for observation and evaluation, but the others in the house all seem to be fine physically, albeit high as kites. I look for anything I can do within my job description, but there is nothing. I don’t want to let Roscoe out anywhere near these people for fear that there may be lingering bits of drug that he could lick or sniff. There is little I can do for these people in their current state. They are adults, the house is well kept and neat, and no one appears to be in any danger or in any state of emotional upset. In fact, they all look downright peaceful and happy.
Once the ambulance has gone and the front door to the house has been closed, Brenda says, “Come on, Hildy. We’ll roll back by here a few times to check on them and make sure they’re okay, but there’s no point in hanging out.”
Back in the car, I say, “I’ve never understood the urge to take mind-bending drugs like that.”
Brenda looks over at me. “You never tried any of them?”
“Nope.”
“Not even pot?”
“Nope, never did, though not from a lack of o
pportunity. I had plenty of chances. Some of the foster homes I spent time in had kids who kept stashes of the stuff, and most of the kids in the group home I lived in during my high school years did pot, cocaine, narcotics, even some meth. But I wasn’t tempted. Maybe it’s my OCD but I’ve never liked the idea of not being in full control of my body and my immediate surroundings. Heck, I don’t even drink all that much for the same reason.”
“I imagine the fact that your mother was murdered plays a role in that thinking,” Brenda says.
“You know about that?” I say. I knew Bob Richmond was aware of my history, but I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else at the station and didn’t think the others knew, particularly since it was such old news. My mother’s murder happened over twenty-five years ago.
“Chief Hanson filled us in,” Brenda explains. “He wanted us to know because he thought you might have some lingering emotional issues that could arise if you ended up at a murder scene. He wanted us to be aware, be on the lookout, so to speak.”
I think back to the night before and the scene at the farmer’s house. Had Devo been evaluating me and my reaction to the scene all that time? If so, he was quite subtle about it. Though I suspect the more probable answer is that he was so caught up in the situation and trying not to toss his cookies that he forgot about me and my history entirely.
“How did it go last night?” Brenda asks. “Out at the farm. Was that upsetting for you?”
“You’re not going to try to shrink me, are you?” I ask in a teasing tone. “Because I already have a shrink.”
Brenda smiles. “Nah, just curious. You seem to be impervious to a lot of this stuff, but I don’t want to make assumptions that might cause me to miss something critical happening with you.”
“I’m fine, I promise. But thanks for looking out for me.”
“Of course.” Brenda falls silent, but I sense there is something more coming. A moment later, she proves me right. “I’d like to hear about what happened to your mom. Is it something you feel comfortable talking about?”
“Depends,” I say, studying her face. “Why are you asking?”
She thinks about her answer for a moment, and I’m not sure what to make of that. “A couple of reasons,” she says finally. “General cop curiosity, to start with. Cold cases are a hobby of mine. I’m not a detective, but I’d like to be one eventually, so any cold cases I can help solve will look good on my resume. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to show the guys up from time to time,” she adds with a wink and a grin.
“And why else?” I ask, sensing that there is another, deeper cause that’s driving her.
“Empathy,” she says. “My brother was murdered when I was seven. He was two years older than me. Someone snatched him when he was out riding his bike and his body was found over a year later, dumped in some woods thirty miles from where we lived.”
“How awful,” I say, trying to imagine the emotional wreckage that had to have caused. “Did they ever catch who did it?”
Brenda shakes her head. “It’s a cold case, nearly as old as yours. I’ve looked into it, of course, but I’ve never been able to make much progress. The cops really bungled the investigation and some of the evidence has gone missing.” She pauses and sighs heavily. “I’m more or less resigned to the fact that Ben’s case will never be solved, but it helps me to work on other cold cases.”
“Fair enough,” I say. And since I’m eager to find someone, anyone who can help me investigate my mother’s murder, I fill her in on my story.
Chapter 15
“I was seven when my mother was killed,” I tell Brenda. “So, we have that in common.”
“It’s much too young to have to face something that awful,” Brenda says, and I see hints of the pain she’s been carrying all these years hidden in the lines of her face. It’s a pain I know well, and I nod my agreement.
“My mother was a single mom with no family support who struggled to make ends meet. I have grandparents, or at least I think I do—I’m not sure if they’re alive or dead—who live in Iowa and who belong to some type of strict religious sect. When they found out my mother was pregnant after a few rolls in the hay—literally—with a city boy, they ostracized her. Tossed her out of the family home and told her to never come back. They sent her on her way with no money, no car, not even a sack lunch. She barely had time to gather up a few changes of clothes, and then she had to leave under threat of a beating. She was sixteen.”
“Oh my God,” Brenda says, looking horrified. “How awful.”
“Yeah. So, you’ll understand why I’ve never tried to find or contact them.” Brenda nods. “Anyway, Mom told me she walked into town and went to a few of the fast food joints looking for work. Most of them turned her away; the managers and owners wouldn’t even talk to her. That’s because they belonged to the same religious group as my grandparents, and they knew why my mother had been ostracized. It meant she was no longer welcome at their places of business, either.”
“She went to the home of her boyfriend, thinking he might be able to put her up, but his parents had gotten wind of the situation and had sent him away to a military school. They refused to help my mom and she spent that first night sleeping on a park bench. The next day she went to a fast food place that was new in town and they offered her work. They also let her bunk in a room at the back of the store. But after a week of my mom working there, the owners realized that the rest of the town was blacklisting their establishment because they were helping her. Their business died away to nothing, so they had to let my mom go. They were kinder than the other town folk in that they gave her a bit of money on top of the wages she’d earned, along with some food and clothing, and then they bought her a bus ticket to Madison, Wisconsin.”
“Wow,” Brenda says. “Your mother must have been a brave woman.”
“Or desperate. What else could she have done? I don’t know what would have happened to her if not for the kindness of those people at the last.”
“So, your father was some kid in this Iowa town?” Brenda asks.
I shake my head. “No, my mother lost that baby. She didn’t get pregnant with me until a few years later. And by that time, she was earning most of her income from prostitution, so she didn’t know for sure who my father was. Or so she claimed.”
“You didn’t believe her?”
I shrug. “I suppose it might have been the truth,” I say doubtfully. “But there was one man in her life who came around more regularly than the others. I think he was paying the rent on the house where we lived, and there were other things I know he paid for. Mom still saw other men, but whenever this particular guy came around, she wouldn’t entertain anyone else.”
“And you think he might be your father?” Brenda asks.
“I think it’s possible, even likely. I found some letters among my mother’s things after she died that hinted at him being someone special. And even though Mom always made me stay with the neighbor lady whenever this guy came to town so the two of them could go off together—sometimes for days at a time—I overheard snippets of conversations. The place we lived in had once been a carriage house and whoever owned the main house put up some walls and turned it into an apartment. The main house was converted into a two-flat, and it was one of the renters in the main house who took care of me when my mother needed her private time.
“I think that lady—her name was Martha—was the closest thing to a friend my mother had. Whenever Mom dropped me off, I’d be told to go into one of the bedrooms and shut the door. There was a TV in there I could watch. Then my mother and Martha would have a cup of coffee and talk. I know they thought I couldn’t hear them, but if I put my ear to the heat register in the floor, I could hear every word they said.
“I learned that my mother had a long-term relationship with this man going back years, and that at one time she considered her relationship with him to be an exclusive one. That was before I was born, around the time I would have been conceived, and at the time s
he was trying to make a living through waitressing and other legitimate jobs, though I think this man was supplementing her. My guess is that he was married, and he couldn’t have a regular relationship with my mother, so he set her up as his mistress.”
“What did he look like?”
I shrug. “I never saw him full face. My mother was always careful to make sure I wasn’t around when he came. I caught a glimpse of his profile once when I sneaked a peek out the neighbor lady’s window as he and my mom were leaving. But aside from knowing he had blond hair, was a few inches taller than my mother, and was a little on the chunky side, I have no clue.”
“And what about the man who killed her?” Brenda says. “Assuming it was a man. Any idea who he was?”
“Not really, though I was there when it happened.”
“You were there?” Brenda says with obvious horror, swerving the car slightly as she whips her head around to look at me. “Geez, Hildy, that’s awful!”
“I didn’t see anything, at least not anything related to her killing,” I tell her. “My mother used to shut me in my bedroom whenever she entertained men and I wasn’t allowed to come out until she opened my door, or the sun was up. I was in my room but awake when the man who killed her came over. I peeked through the keyhole and saw his legs and shoes, but nothing else. Based on the time of death, he was the one who killed her, but I didn’t hear or see anything. I went to bed and fell asleep shortly after he arrived.”
“Good heavens,” Brenda says. “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you, too.”
“I think he considered it,” I tell her. “When I woke the next morning, my bedroom door was open, and my mother wouldn’t have opened it unless the man had left and no one else was coming. She never got the chance. It had to have been him who opened it. The thought of him standing there watching me sleep, contemplating whether to kill me, after he’d just stabbed and strangled my mother to death, haunts me to this day. That, and the fact that I didn’t do anything to save her.”
Night Shift Page 14