Sweet After Death

by Valentina Giambanco

  Sorensen, who had run back to the senior center to check the progress of her temporary lab, came through the door with a blast of icy air.

  “We have a match for the bullet recovered from Dr. Dennen’s body,” she said, and the whole room stopped. The deputies paused their monitor and twisted in their chairs to hear.

  Sorensen was not one for dramatics, but she seemed somewhat unhappy with the result and reluctant to share it.

  “I’m running it again and I’m going to eye-match it to be one hundred percent certain,” she said.

  Madison did not like the sound of it one little bit.

  “The bullet recovered in Dr. Dennen’s body is a match to three bullets recovered from the scene of an armed robbery in a pawn shop four years ago,” Sorensen said. “In Florida.”

  In the silence that followed her words it was Deputy Kupitz who spoke first. “But . . . but that’s all the way on the other side of the country.”

  “I know you said you’re going to countercheck but . . .” Madison said.

  “I will, I absolutely will, but in the meantime you should face the numbers,” Sorensen said. “In terms of my experience of the system getting it right the first time, the odds the database got it wrong are tiny.”

  “But—” Madison protested.

  “Tiny,” Sorensen interrupted her. “It would be wise to proceed with the understanding that whoever shot Dennen used a firearm that had been used in Florida four years earlier. And the cherry on the cake is that it looks like the shooter used a silencer.”

  How in the sweet name of everything holy did Jeb Tanner get his hands on a piece with a silencer that had been used to shoot a clerk three thousand miles away?

  Madison met Brown’s eyes. “Let’s go over this again,” she said, and he nodded.

  “This time, though, let’s leave the cloth out of it,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Let’s just leave it to one side. It was found in the doctor’s drawer, but that’s incidental. We don’t know that it played any part in what happened in the clinic the night the doctor died. What we do know is that the killer wanted to look at the medical file, that he forced the doctor to show him and, having accomplished what he set out to do, he took the doctor to another location and killed him there.”

  Sorensen shrugged off her coat and joined them around the table. Normally it stocked all the brochures for the local attractions; that day it was covered in the faxed pictures from Dennen’s postmortem.

  Madison cleared her mind and followed the evidence. She needed to think without Tanner in the picture, because whenever he was in it her logic seemed to sway under the weight of her dislike.

  “Okay,” she said. “So, the killer intercepts Dennen on his way home from the Jacobsens. It’s the middle of the night, and there’s no way the good doctor wouldn’t stop for a stranded driver, whether he knows him or not.”

  “The killer takes him to the clinic. They get in with the doctor’s key, and access the file,” Brown said.

  “We don’t know yet if other files were accessed,” Sorensen consulted her notes. “But we know the killer wanted to read whatever was on that specific set of medical records.”

  Brown was reading the copy of the medical examiner’s report on Ty Edwards’s body. “I think I know why,” he said. “And it has nothing to do with his murder, which is why it wasn’t brought to our attention.”

  “What do you mean?” Sangster said.

  “Ty Edwards only had one kidney,” Brown said. “He lost the other one to illness a long time ago, apparently. The ME found only one kidney, which had grown to compensate for the lack of its twin, which would indicate that Edwards had lived most of his life without it.”

  “It would have been in the file,” Madison said.

  “For sure,” Brown agreed.

  Sangster looked from one to the other. “Why would the shooter give a damn whether Edwards had one or two kidneys?”

  “We don’t know that yet,” Brown replied. “But it definitely made his medical file stand out, wouldn’t you think?”

  “I’m calling Dr. Lynch,” Madison said, and stood to grab her cell.

  Sangster did not want to be the kid who kept putting his hand up. Sorensen leaned forward.

  “At this point the smallest detail might tell us why the killer wanted that file and not, say, yours or somebody else’s,” she said. “How many people in Ludlow have only one kidney? It’s a pretty good identifying characteristic, and not one that’s immediately visible.”

  Brown’s gaze traveled over the report. How much of a man’s life was not immediately visible? How much was missed by reports like the one he held in his hands? Had someone sought out the old man because of that one specific characteristic?

  “Edwards had only one kidney,” Madison said after she hung up. “I got Lynch to admit that, yes, that was the case—not that he could deny it. The detail was in the file. He had lost the other due to a childhood illness and had suffered no consequences because of it. Aside from that, there was nothing else of any note in the file.”

  “So,” Brown said, “what happens next?”

  “The shooter kills the doc,” Sangster said.

  “Sure,” Brown agreed. “But he doesn’t shoot him in the clinic, as soon as the doctor has done his part. The shooter removes him from the office—having made certain that it didn’t look like a break-in. And he takes him someplace else for what I can only consider an execution.”

  “Damn it,” Madison said. “He could have shot him there and then, but he didn’t. What he wanted was . . .”

  “. . . not to draw attention to the clinic and to the file,” Brown concluded her thoughts.

  “And we wouldn’t have known it, if not for Dr. Dennen’s quick thinking in leaving us a little calling card in the wastebasket with his DNA on it,” Sorensen said.

  Brown’s voice was calm, but Madison recognized the anger under his composure. “Which means we wouldn’t have known that Ty Edwards was the primary target the whole time, and Dennen was merely incidental.”

  “That’s why he took the dog only after he was positive that he had the right man,” Madison said.

  “About the dog,” Sorensen said. “In the combings from the fur I found a whole number of useless trace, but I’ve got something cooking in my special pot . . . a nice juicy handful of fibers. Man-made, ugly, and perfectly shaped for the scanning electron microscope.”

  “Carpet, car, a fake wig?” Madison said.

  “Too short for a wig, I think. Don’t break out the champagne yet—the fibers could belong to the Edwardses’ home. That curly fur picked up every single bit of debris on the forest floor.”

  “How long before we know anything?” Brown said.

  “This is not where you want to rush me,” Sorensen replied, and Brown was smart enough to let her be.

  With the roads as difficult as they were, Chief Sangster phoned Lee Edwards instead of dropping in on her in person.

  She was fine, everything was fine. The neighbors had been visiting her and there was always someone keeping her company, bringing food, and chatting if she wanted to chat. No, she didn’t need anything. No, she didn’t remember Ty mentioning anything about his kidney. They had been together for near on thirty-five years and they had only spoken about it maybe three times. Did it matter?

  The chief had no real answer to give her. He repeated for a third time that she should call him if she needed anything at all and then hung up.

  The cloth, Madison reflected, the cloth that bore the appeal and the desperation of one of the Tanner children—and so far even that was conjecture—was not part of the narrative at all. If it had been important to the killer, if it had been in any way significant with regard to why the killer was in the clinic that night, he would have removed it. Madison didn’t know what to do with that. Her thinking kept getting snagged on Tanner. They had to follow the evidence. Always follow the evidence. Where that small scrap of white would have le
d them, Madison didn’t know.

  “Do we have a list of who bought the white fabric?” she asked Sorensen.

  “Yes, but Tanner’s not on it, you know that,” the investigator replied.

  “Can I see the list?”

  “I haven’t been through all the records yet.”

  “Let me see what you have.”

  Sorensen flipped her notebook to the right page and passed it to Madison.

  She read the lines of names and dates. “There,” Madison pointed. “Five years ago Mrs. Clay bought thirty yards of it.”

  “And . . .”

  “And if Mr. Clay is friendly enough with Tanner to give him an alibi, his wife might have given Naomi Tanner the fabric. Or maybe they swapped, I don’t know.” Madison reached for her cell. “He said that he barters deer meat for dry goods with his neighbors. He could have bartered deer meat for the fabric.”

  “They did buy from the store at different times.”

  “Maybe it was a particularly difficult year and they didn’t have the cash for it.”

  Madison wanted very much to call Mrs. Clay and ask her a direct question; however, there was no doubt that anything she asked would be relayed back to Jeb Tanner—in all likelihood via the cell phone that didn’t exist. Madison had to find a way of asking the question without it being obvious.

  She dialed, and the woman picked up.

  “Mrs. Clay, it’s Detective Madison. So sorry to interrupt your Sunday again. How’re you faring up there? Yes, here too. A real monster. I forgot to ask you earlier today . . . Mr. Tanner’s boys were working on a deer and he told us that he sometimes barters deer meat for dry goods, tools, other materials—is that true? I’m only asking to have a general picture of the running of the farm. No, ma’am, it has nothing to do with the alibi. We’re just trying to understand a little of the life here, being from the city and all.”

  Sorensen had never heard Madison in full aw, shucks mode—and it was a beauty to behold.

  After a while Madison said, “Thank you very much, Mrs. Clay. Much appreciated. You take care now, ma’am.”

  Madison’s face darkened. “Flour, sugar, tools, coffee,” she said to Sorensen, “and, occasionally, fabric. When Naomi Tanner was still around she made dresses and shirts for the kids with white fabric the Clays had swapped for farm goods. Mrs. Clay uses the eggs from the farm to bake cakes. Apparently, they’re much better than store-bought.”

  It was the first tangible link between the doctor and one of the Tanner children.

  “It would be great to get some DNA trace off the cloth. Did you find anything on it? Anything at all?” Madison said to Sorensen.

  “I haven’t thrown the whole lab at it yet, no,” Sorensen said, and almost regretfully she added, “Right now, I have to concentrate on the bullet and the fibers. As soon as I can, I’ll look into the cloth.”

  “I understand. Of course, it makes sense.”

  Amy Sorensen was, at present, all the Crime Scene Unit lab they had, and Madison knew there were priorities. She didn’t mention it to Brown, because she didn’t want to see his eye-roll, but Jeb Tanner had lived in Kansas and in California; he had contacts in places other than Ludlow, and one of those contacts could have obtained a firearm for him. One that had been used in crimes before and would throw the scent off him.

  Madison didn’t say anything, because she could also imagine Sorensen’s comment. Sure, all that from a guy who doesn’t even own a phone.

  The windows were swirls of white, and behind them there was only more white. A pretty close representation of her own spiraling thoughts, Madison reflected.

  Brown had finished his call with Lieutenant Fynn in Seattle—if asked, they’d both concede that those twice-daily briefings had brought neither of them much joy—and he turned to the room.

  “What do we know about Ty Edwards?” he said.

  Chapter 40

  A late February snowfall is a reminder that winter is not going to let go as easily as some might wish and often it bears down harder and longer than would seem possible. The town of Ludlow was not going anywhere: it was not on a route to some other, possibly more interesting place, and it was not itself a destination for anyone traveling on that Sunday afternoon. All that happened was that the town came to a slow, inexorable stop. People paused where they were and didn’t venture more than a hundred yards from their front door; they checked their furnaces, looked in the pantry, and made sure that they had the number for the snowplows at hand for when the storm would stop. Somehow, the shooting in the square and the murder of the doctor became only another—darker—measure of the sense of being under siege by something unknown.

  For Samuel Tanner it had been a day of firsts, a day when things had been shaken up and could not be unshaken. When their father told Luke to go see to the horses, Samuel stood and followed under the pretext of helping his brother and checking on Flare. If Luke was surprised, he didn’t say anything; the play in the yard had left everyone giddy with delight, and the afternoon hours in the cabin had been quiet and mellow.

  Samuel waited until they were alone in the barn, where the horses’ scent and warmth were a comfort, and he said, “Why did you say that Caleb was a liar?”

  Luke almost dropped the leather halter from his hand. “Why are you looking for trouble?” he replied.

  “I’m not. But you said that he was a liar, and you must have had a reason.” There was no hostility in the boy, only a steady keenness that caught his brother off balance. Luke knew how to deal with anger or deception; he could dispense with either because he was the biggest and strongest of anyone on the farm—except his father, and he would never have gone against him. Nevertheless, Samuel’s manner told him that the boy was all too aware that he might receive no answer except for a slap around the head, and still he had to ask the question.

  “Why do you want to know?” Luke said.

  “Because Caleb isn’t a liar.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then you tell me. What did he lie about?”

  If Luke’s only power over his brother was to withhold the information he so badly wanted, then it was exactly what he would do.

  “I’m not going to tell you what he lied about,” he said. “But I can tell you that he was found out and he got what he deserved.”

  “When . . . how . . . ?”

  “You don’t want to ask me any more about this. It’s done. It’s over. Go back inside and don’t even think about talking to anybody else about Caleb. Papa finds out about it and you’ll be in the lonely place for a month. Papa finds out and—”

  Samuel nodded and stepped backward until he bumped against the door. His cheeks felt hot in the early evening air and he busied himself with a fallen fence post before going back inside. He needed time to work out what Luke had told him and what he had meant. He had hoped to find out something about Caleb and instead he had seen fear in his brother’s eyes. Hidden under his usual quarrelsome temper Samuel had seen a hint of panic, as if Luke had only just realized that he was in trouble too.

  The words stayed with him all evening and all night. He got what he deserved. There was the lonely place in the yard—just a little shed that no stranger would look at twice—and there was his father’s belt when the punishment required it. Luke had been through both, and his dread had implied that much worse was possible.

  Something cold and clammy settled in the middle of Samuel’s stomach: What had happened to Caleb? His mind wandered to the only safe place the boy knew. He lay on his bed, wrapped in the blankets, closed his eyes, and saw the cave’s wall. He felt it, smooth and cool, as he drew a tiny shape with his fingertip. And falling asleep, he saw the pack move like rushing shadows through the forest, and Caleb was running with them.

  Joyce Cartwell went home in the middle of the afternoon because it was clear that no one would be coming by the diner and, in truth, the conversation with Brown had left her so unnerved that she wanted to be in a pla
ce where she could make sure the windows and the doors were locked and she could be alone with her thoughts.

  All the years that she had spent building a life of quiet contentment were balanced on a razor’s edge. Jeb had left for college, she had married and started the diner with her husband. Jeb had come back and they had spoken to each other three times since: twice around the time of their father’s death, and once when she had bumped into him and Naomi in a store. Then her husband had died of leukemia seven years earlier, and she had found herself running the diner alone. The thought of Jeb only a few miles away had receded into a low-level kind of alarm: he was there, but he had made no attempt to contact her or be part of her life.

  The only way to cope with the unwelcome proximity was to keep away and mind her own business. Few in town remembered that Jeb was her brother, and there were long stretches—months long—when she didn’t even hear a single piece of gossip about the Tanner family up on Jackknife.

  Joyce had thought about it, as Brown had asked, and she had reached her conclusion: if a judge had decided that there wasn’t enough cause to give them a legal way to get their test, she was not going to upend her life and get dragged into the nightmare again. If it was right that they should go after Jeb for whatever crazy thing he had done, they would find a way. It was their job, after all—not hers.

  There was soup in the fridge, and a classic movie on television. Joyce curled up on her favorite chair and tried to care about the love life of an American girl in Rome in the 1950s.

  While the deputies’ list of local residents recognized in pictures and footage of the vigil had grown longer, Brown and Madison had looked into the dim corners of Ty Edwards’s life and found nothing that they didn’t already know. Nothing in the time that the man had spent on earth appeared to indicate a motive for the killing and a reason why someone would go to the length of identifying him by a medical anomaly.

  “The grouping of the shots was less than accidental,” Madison said to Brown.

  They sat at the table with their heads together. Between them the picture of the victim taken at the scene revealed a tight cluster of gunshot wounds on the man’s chest. There had been screaming, hollering, people running every which way, Madison returning fire and emptying her magazine at the sniper.