Night Shift

by Annelise Ryan

  “Sheesh, you were just a kid,” Brenda says. “Even if you’d known what was happening, you couldn’t have done anything to save her. If you’d tried, you’d likely be dead now, too.”

  “I know,” I say with a sigh. “But it doesn’t make it any easier. I couldn’t help her then, but maybe I can find the man who killed her and bring her some justice.”

  “Any ideas at all?”

  “I do have some leads, and I have a copy of the police file from the investigation, though it’s not much help. I gave a copy of it to Mattie Winston over at the ME’s office and Bob Richmond has one, too. He said he might try to look into it if he has some extra time.”

  “Where was she killed? I mean where were you living at the time?”

  “Milwaukee.”

  “Not exactly in our jurisdiction.”

  “I know, but I think the killer might have been from Sorenson.”

  “Really?” Brenda gives me an intrigued look. “Why do you think that?”

  “I saw bits of him though the keyhole that night. His right hand was missing the pinky finger and there was a ring on the next finger... a class ring, I believe. It had a large red stone in it. And the Sorenson High School rings have large red stones in them.”

  “Okay, but there must be plenty of other schools that have red stones in their class rings,” Brenda says. “High schools and colleges.”

  “I know. But I also overheard my mother on the phone making the arrangements for her visitor. She said the name Sorenson at one point, in a surprised tone, and then said that seemed like a long way to come. And it took the guy nearly two hours to get there after the call.”

  Brenda rakes her teeth over her lower lip and shoots me a look.

  “What?” I say.

  “Don’t get mad at me.”

  “Mad at you for what?”

  “Hear me out. You think your father is from Sorenson, and you also think the man who killed your mother is from Sorenson. This town isn’t that big, and you didn’t even live here at the time. You were two hours away. What are the odds?”

  “You’re suggesting that it might have been my father who killed my mother?”

  Brenda shrugs. “It seems plausible, don’t you think? And it might explain why the guy looked at you while you slept but didn’t kill you.”

  “No need to worry. I’d already come to that possible conclusion a long time ago. But I don’t think it was my father who killed her. According to the police file, a dark hair was collected at the scene and my father, or the man who I think might be my father, is fair-haired. Of course, that hair could have come from any number of men. My mother had several men in her bed on a busy day, and while I’d love to say she washed the sheets several times a day, if they were done once a week, she was doing good.”

  The very idea of those sheets makes me shudder, and I have a sudden urge to wash my hands.

  “Anyway,” I go on, shoving my hands beneath my thighs to keep from subconsciously rubbing them together, “I also heard the voice of the man who killed her as well as that of my father. When I heard my father’s voice it was distant and I couldn’t make out any words, but I heard it well enough to know it was different from the killer’s voice. The man who killed her had a Southern accent, and his voice was deep and gravelly. My father had more of a tenor voice.”

  “So, the fact that they were both from Sorenson—at least you think they were—is just a coincidence?” Brenda says.

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences,” Brenda says firmly.

  I sense her growing interest on the topic and realize I might have finally found an ally to help me investigate my mother’s murder. But even as I’m thinking this, a call comes in over the radio and we are forced to refocus. This time it’s a domestic situation, one of the cops’ most hated calls, and it’s at the home of someone the cops know well. As it turns out, so do I.

  Chapter 16

  I know that the scene at the house we’re headed for will turn the domestic violence stereotype on its head. The victim is most likely the husband, Stewart Riley, a kind, intelligent man who is hopelessly in love with his wife. Stewart is a small man, standing about five-five and weighing maybe one-thirty. His wife, Marla, is several inches taller, at least forty pounds heavier, and strong as an ox. Marla spent time in the military and saw some action in Iraq, where a vehicle she was riding in hit an IED. The resultant explosion killed everyone except Marla, though she was badly wounded.

  Marla recovered physically, but her mental wounds have proven more stubborn. She retired from the military with PTSD and developed a significant drinking problem. Unfortunately, Marla is not a very nice drunk; alcohol brings out the worst in her temperament. Also, unfortunately, her husband, Stewart, who has consistently stayed by her side, encouraging her to get help, is often the primary target of her rages. It started with verbal and emotional abuse, but it didn’t take long for things to escalate to the physical. I’ve seen and spoken with Stewart half a dozen times in my years at the hospital, and I knew of other visits he had when I wasn’t on duty.

  I was the one who finally got the truth out of Stewart. In the beginning, either out of embarrassment or a desire to protect Marla, he tried to explain away his injuries with lies. For the most part, his stories were plausible. I finally got him to admit to the abuse one night when he came to the ER with a broken arm. It was what the doctor called a spiral fracture, an indication that the arm was twisted violently, making the break literally spiral around the bone. It’s a type of fracture that cues medical professionals to suspect abuse in children when they see it—the same type of fracture that put Child Protective Services onto Al Whitman’s family. Such a break in the arm of a grown man is less suspect, and the explanation Stewart gave made some sense. But one savvy, alert nurse saw something in the way Stewart answered certain questions and refused to look at her, and she called me in for a referral.

  It took me about thirty seconds to decide the nurse had been right to be concerned, but it took much longer to get the truth out of Stewart. I’d seen Marla in the ER a few times, too, on those rare occasions when she’d let Stewart bring her in for detox, and I knew what she was like when she drank. Looking back at the number of times Stewart had been in with injuries, I commented that he seemed to be awfully accident prone. A few more comments and some hems and haws from Stewart eventually led to his breakdown confession. His wife regularly beat up on him when she drank, and he, believing that women were the weaker sex and that physical violence isn’t the answer to anything, never retaliated or reported her. This, combined with the difference in their sizes and strengths, often made him a helpless victim.

  I spent some time with Marla after that, talking to her when she’d show up in the ER, occasionally letting Roscoe work his therapeutic magic on her if I happened to be rounding with him when Marla was in the hospital, and trying to help her find better ways to deal with her PTSD. She would improve for a while, but inevitably the lure of the bottle would call her back and, when she started drinking, the cycle would repeat itself.

  “Brenda, I know this couple well,” I say as she steers the car toward the Riley house.

  “As do we,” she says with a sigh of impatience. “That woman is a beast.”

  “She can’t always help herself,” I explain. “She has PTSD and when her bad spells come on, she gets so frantic and desperate that she drinks too much to try to dull the pain. If you get in her face when she’s like that, it only makes things escalate.”

  “Oh, I know,” Brenda says wryly. “I’ve tussled with her before.”

  “Let me approach her, with Roscoe. I’ve dealt with her before using Roscoe and he has a definite calming effect on her, even when she’s drunk. Her unit adopted a stray dog over in Iraq, and Marla spent more time with it than anyone else.”

  Brenda eyes me, thinking about my suggestion. “I don’t know, Hildy. She’ll take a punch at anybody, and if she has anything she can use as
a weapon, heaven help you. She came at me once with a toilet plunger and rang my bell something fierce.”

  I smile at the image of Brenda getting clocked with a plunger. “Tell you what,” I say. “Why don’t we approach her together? You be on the ready in case she goes bonkers, though I don’t think she will if I have Roscoe with me. She knows him and he always calms her down.”

  “Even when she’s half out of her mind with alcohol?”

  “Even then,” I say. “Dog love is universal and pervasive. Trust me.”

  “Famous last words,” Brenda says with a frown. “An old boyfriend told me to trust him right before he eloped with my best friend.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Yeah, but I got my payback. I confronted him and then I Tased him, right in his junk. Got canned from my last job because of it and that’s how I ended up here, but it was totally worth it.”

  “Too bad you didn’t get back at your supposed best friend.”

  “Oh, but I did,” she says with a wicked grin.

  “Do tell.”

  “Another time. Let’s deal with Marla first.”

  “Okay.” And then, with my own wicked grin, I add, “Let’s go flush her out.”

  Brenda doesn’t miss the innuendo. “You are evil, Hildy,” she says with a grin of her own. “I like that in a woman.”

  The front porch of the Riley house is dark, the light fixture lacking any bulb. There is a picture window off to the left and faint, filtered light sifts through it, eking its way through closed, vertical blinds. No sooner do we get out of the car than I hear Marla’s slurred but booming voice coming through the walls.

  “Ish not funny, Stewie,” she says in a sneering tone. “They’re gonna get me. I know it. They’re coming and you probly called ’em.”

  We hear Stewart’s voice, next, but his is calm and low and it’s impossible to make out what he’s saying. Brenda makes Roscoe and me stay behind her and she steps up onto the porch and bangs hard on the front door.

  “Sorenson Police,” she says loudly.

  Everything falls quiet. I look around at the nearby houses and see several curtains flick into place. The neighbors are watching.

  A few seconds later the front door opens, and we see Stewart standing there, looking relieved. There is a nasty gash on his forehead that is bleeding, though not heavily. Most of it has crusted over, but the dried blood on his shirt tells us that it bled profusely at some point.

  “Come in,” he says. “She’s in the kitchen. I’ve never seen her like this before, this bad. She’s super paranoid and it’s like she’s completely lost touch with reality. I’m starting to wonder if she’s on something more than just alcohol.”

  “Are you okay, Stewart?” I ask, nodding toward his head wound.

  “Oh, this,” he says after a moment of confusion, touching the spot with two fingers. “She threw a glass across the living room, not at me, at some imaginary person. It hit the fireplace surround and the glass broke and splintered in several directions. A piece of it nicked me. It’s not deep.”

  “Why don’t you wait out here for a few minutes,” Brenda says to Stewart. “Let us approach Marla on our own and see what we can do to calm her down. Hildy says her dog, Roscoe, has a calming effect on her.”

  “That he does,” Stewart says with a meager smile. He walks over and sits on the steps, looking tired and defeated.

  Brenda nods to me, and then she starts down the hallway that leads from the front door to the back of the house, which is where the kitchen is located. We can see a small bit of the room from here: the sink with a window above it, faux-brick patterned linoleum, and some type of cloth lying on the floor, probably a towel.

  I lead Roscoe on his leash, sticking close behind Brenda. Roscoe’s steps are tentative; he senses the mood here is tense, and he’s wary.

  Brenda reaches the doorway to the kitchen and looks to the left and then to the right. It’s quiet, so I gather Marla isn’t in the throes of a major meltdown, and I risk coming up alongside Brenda.

  The kitchen is a mess, dishes piled up in the sink, a half-eaten sandwich on the table, spilt milk on the countertop, and an open package of Oreo cookies sits on the floor, several of the cookies strewn about. I see Roscoe’s nose twitching as he eyes the cookies and I tell him, “Leave it,” in a low but firm tone. He obediently disregards the cookies and focuses his attention on Marla Riley instead.

  Marla is standing in the doorway of a small bathroom—nothing more than a toilet and a sink like the one I saw at Bob Richmond’s house—that’s located off the kitchen. Her eyes are wide open and crazed, making her look both scared and a bit demonic. Her hair, which is long, dark, and curly, is a tangled, wild mess encircling her head. She’s wearing leggings and a threadbare blue robe that is open in front and nearly off her right shoulder, revealing a tank top underneath. Her hands are tightly clenched at her sides.

  When she sees us, her eyes widen even more. “We have to get them,” she says in a low, paranoiac voice. “We have to get them before they get us. Guns and bombs everywhere.” Her voice escalates in both volume and tenor.

  “Marla, you’re not in Iraq, you’re at your home here in Sorenson,” I say. “Look at your kitchen sink, and the table over there.” I point to a small wooden table and two chairs located on the other side of the room. “There are no weapons here, just your husband, and some friends. Do you remember me? Hildy Schneider? We met several times at the hospital here in town.”

  There is a slight relaxation in Marla’s taut shoulders as she looks around the room, though her eyes are still wide with fright.

  I tell Roscoe to sit and stay, and I unhook his leash. Then I slowly move out into the kitchen and start gathering up the cookies. “Look at these, Marla,” I say. “When did you ever see Oreo cookies in Iraq?” I shove the loose cookies back into the open package and set it on the table.

  “Do you remember Roscoe?” I continue, hoping to maintain my momentum. I walk over and pet Roscoe on the head, and he wags his tail tentatively, thumping it on the floor.

  Marla’s eyes shift to Roscoe and her expression softens. Tears well in her eyes. Then Marla’s hands come up from her sides and I see the glint of something in one of them.

  “Marla, what’s in your hand?” I ask.

  Marla shifts her gaze from Roscoe to me, looking mildly bemused. “My hand?” she echoes. She then looks at her left hand, which is empty, followed by her right hand, which is holding a knife.

  “Marla, put down the knife,” Brenda says. She removes her Taser from her belt as she speaks, moving slowly and with her body turned in such a way as to prevent Marla from seeing what she’s doing.

  Marla looks at the knife in bewilderment for a moment, as if unsure how she came to be holding it. Then she snaps her attention back to us. “I need my weapons,” she says hurriedly. “I need to defend myself.”

  “Roscoe will protect you,” I say in a calm voice. “But I can’t let him be with you if you’re holding the knife. He might get hurt. Sharp things scare him.”

  Roscoe, as if he understands what I’ve just said, whimpers. At the sound, Marla’s hand opens and the knife clatters to the floor. Brenda, still with her Taser at the ready but held close where Marla can’t see it, moves toward the knife and kicks it away. It scuttles across the floor and for a second Marla’s attention is distracted from me and Roscoe as she pins her stare on the knife. Just as I’m thinking things might turn very bad very fast, Marla looks back at Roscoe and squats on the floor, her arms extended.

  “I don’t see any other weapons on her,” Brenda informs me, and then I tell Roscoe to go to Marla. The dog dutifully walks up to the woman, slowing as he nears her, and gently rests his head on one of her knees, his big brown eyes looking up at her with the soul of unadulterated, unconditional doggie love.

  Marla lets her hand rest atop his head, and she strokes him once. Then she collapses the rest of the way to the floor, a heap of sobbing human. Roscoe nuzzles her hand with his
nose and lies down next to her.

  “Wow, he’s good,” Brenda says appreciatively. “Why can’t men be more like that?”

  I clear my throat, and she looks at me quizzically. I roll my eyes back over my shoulder, a reminder that poor Stewart isn’t that far away and might be listening.

  “Oh, right,” Brenda says quickly and half under breath. She clicks a button on her shoulder radio, informs the dispatcher that things are under control and then asks for an ambulance to be sent to the address.

  I walk over to the huddled mess that is Marla and stroke her hair with one hand while I pet my dog with the other. We stay like that until the EMTs show up, and then there is a half-whispered side discussion about how safe it will be to transport Marla to the hospital without restraints or a police escort.

  “Let me and Roscoe ride in the rig with her,” I suggest. “I think she’ll behave if Roscoe is there.”

  Judging from her expression, Brenda is clearly on the fence with this idea. “Okay,” she says finally, “but I’m going to follow right behind you. If she starts to act out in any way at all, you pull over immediately and I’ll be on it, okay?”

  The EMTs are fine with this idea, and after they look over Stewart and clear him to drive himself to the hospital, we pile into our various vehicles to head out. Marla gives us a moment of grief when she tries to get off the ambulance cot when the EMTs go to strap her in, but I tell her that it’s for everyone’s safety and that even Roscoe will need to be restrained inside the ambulance.

  Marla does fine in the ambulance with Roscoe at her side. It’s a relatively short ride of just under ten minutes, and by the time we hand Marla over to the ER staff, she is glassy-eyed and meek, worn out from her alcohol- and adrenalin-fueled breakdown.

  The staffers are all familiar with both Marla and Stewart, and I can see the weary determination on their faces as they gird themselves for yet another round in this family’s drama. Marla never adheres to any of the plans put in place for her for long-term care, in part because she refuses to get any of her care through the VA, and her short-term commitments never last long, either.