Bitter Blood

by Jerry Bledsoe

  As Nobles and Swinney were climbing the steps, Officer Steve Sparrow announced by radio his arrival at the front of the house.

  “Don’t let anybody come up here,” Nobles told him over his hand radio.

  But Sparrow misunderstood him to say “Come up here,” and he got out of his car and started for the back of the house.

  He called to Nobles and Swinney as he topped the steps and saw them on a small concrete patio checking a locked sliding glass door. Both jittery officers whirled on him with their revolvers drawn.

  Sparrow returned to secure the front of the house, and Swinney made his way to another door near the far end. He saw that the glass storm door was closed, but the inner door stood open. As he was about to open the storm door, he noticed what appeared to be a bullet hole in the gutter drain at the end of the house and silently pointed it out to Nobles.

  Both officers were anxious about what they might find inside. Nobles’s first thought—that the daughter who was supposed to be in the house might have gone berserk, killed her mother, and still be holed up inside—had been joined by other possibilities. Perhaps the daughter, too, was dead, the victim of murder or suicide. Maybe she had killed her mother and fled. Or perhaps she had been kidnapped by the killer. Maybe she had been taken hostage and her mother’s killer was at this moment waiting for a policeman to stick his head inside the house so he could blow it off, too.

  The storm door was unlocked, and Swinney pulled it open gingerly, to be greeted not by gunblast but by the barking of two small skittish dogs weakened by hunger. The smell of dog feces and urine assaulted his nose. The door opened into the kitchen, and as the two officers stepped into the air-conditioned coolness, crouching, seeking cover from a counter jutting out to their left that enclosed the electric stove, they saw two drops of dried blood on the floor beside the counter, just inside the door, near a telephone on the wall.

  From the kitchen, the officers could see into the family room at the back of the house and the dining room at the front. Swinney checked the dining room and adjoining living room, stepping over a folding dog gate as he went. He noticed that expensive Oriental carpets on the floors and a silver tea service in the dining room were undisturbed. Nobles stepped over another dog gate into the family room, where he saw nothing out of the ordinary. A cheap, plastic-webbed chaise longue sat in the middle of the floor near the sliding door, as if somebody recently had brought it inside from sunning on the patio. Nobles peeked into the hallway at the foyer, where he again was joined by Swinney.

  Neither officer spoke as they clung to the walls, creeping down the hallway, pushing open doors to peer into a bathroom and seldom-used bedroom. The door to the linen closet in the hallway stood open, revealing a tiny red light aglow on a control box, indicating that the burglar alarm was off.

  As Swinney poked his head around Janie’s open bedroom door on the front side of the house at the end of the hallway, he saw the contents of her purse scattered on her bed and a jewelry box dumped upside down. Boxes filled with items moved from Janie’s apartment occupied one side of the room. An open suitcase lay on the floor. Swinney started to call to Nobles, who’d just stepped into Delores’s bedroom at the back of the house, but Nobles called first.

  “Tom, she’s in here. I found her.”

  Janie lay facedown on a small rug in a sun room with jalousie windows that reached nearly to the floor on two sides. The room adjoined Delores’s bedroom at the end of the house. The sun rarely penetrated the room because Delores kept the beige draperies drawn most of the time. Visitors who pulled into the parking area at the side of the house often saw her peering through those draperies to see who was outside. The room was called the French room because of the double doors that opened into it from Delores’s bedroom, the only access. The French doors always stood open, and bead curtains had been hung there. The French room was filled with wicker furniture and a few plants. On one wall hung a bamboo scroll bearing the reassuring rules for serenity of the Desiderata, some of them incongruous considering the present setting.

  On another wall, a wide-eyed owl stared down from a calendar onto a scene of horror.

  Janie was barefoot. Her slim, sun-browned legs protruded from black nylon jogging shorts. The black-and-white-striped jersey that she wore had been torn by a bullet that struck her in the back near the right shoulder blade. Her hair was in white plastic curlers, one of which had been driven into her brain by a second bullet, which caught her at the base of her skull and exited from the left side of her neck, leaving a gaping hole. Her left eye stared blankly. Definitely no suicide.

  Nobles and Swinney continued their search of the house, moving on downstairs, even checking closets to make sure that nobody else was present, before going back outside through the kitchen door. Both knew they’d have to call a mobile evidence lab.

  “Let’s call Jefferson,” Nobles said, meaning the Jefferson County Police in Louisville, “and I’m going to go ahead and call the state.”

  Nobles’s cursory inspection had told him that this was going to be a difficult case—two women murdered in a big house in a wealthy area with no weapon in sight and few clues evident. His entire department amounted to nine officers, only two of them detectives, one of whom—his brother, Lennie—only recently had been elevated to the job. He had neither the manpower nor the money to conduct a big murder investigation. He would need the Kentucky State Police and their far greater resources. Besides, he didn’t want to shoulder full responsibility for the case. If it weren’t solved—and from the looks of things, it might well not be—he wanted to share the blame.

  Nobles told his dispatcher to call an evidence unit and inform the state police that he had a double murder. “And get Dennis out here,” he said.

  Sergeant Dennis Clark was the department’s public information officer. Nobles knew that reporters soon would be swarming on Covered Bridge Road, and he wanted Clark there to hold them at bay.

  The previous weekend had been a busy one for Katy and Howard Cable, Delores’s next-door neighbors. They’d driven to Akron, Ohio, so that Howard, a retired engineer, could play in a golf tournament with their son, who lived there. As always when they were to be away, Katy called Delores to tell her how long they’d be gone. The two neighbors looked out for one another’s houses when either was away. The Cables felt confident with Delores looking after their place. She was quick to call the police at the slightest hint of suspicion.

  Whenever the Cables traveled, Katy usually brought a small gift back for Delores—a book, a whatnot, a household gadget—and delivered it to her on their return in appreciation of her watchful eye. But this had been a rushed trip, the Cables hurrying back on Sunday because their daughter from Virginia was to arrive with her family for a visit. The Cables got home Sunday to find their daughter already there, and in the excitement of the visit, Katy forgot to deliver her present to Delores, or even to call and let her know of their return.

  Two days later, Howard walked into his house and said, “Honey, the police are next door. There’s something wrong.”

  Katy drove over only to be stopped at the top of Delores’s driveway by Officer Steve Sparrow. She explained who she was and that she had a key to the house.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Something’s happened to Mrs. Lynch,” Sparrow said.

  “Oh, for goodness sakes,” Katy said. “Whatever you do, be sure you don’t let her daughter, Janie, come in and just walk into something like this. She and her mother are really close.”

  Sparrow thanked her and told her that somebody would be over to talk with her later.

  Susan Reid soon returned to the house on Covered Bridge Road. Still trembling from shock, she was driven by a co-worker, Terry Barrickman. Susan also had keys to Delores’s house. Sparrow let her car into the driveway and called Swinney to talk to her. Swinney confirmed what she’d feared—that Janie, too, was dead. She told him that Delores had a son in Albuquerque, a dentist, TJ, Tom; somebody would
have to let him know. Swinney assured her that they’d take care of it.

  “What about the dogs?” Susan asked.

  “They’re all right.”

  “Can I have them? Can I take them to the vet? They were like Delores’s children.”

  Maybe later, Swinney told her. Meanwhile, he’d feed and water them. “You go on home and try to rest, Mrs. Reid,” he told her, “and we’ll call you after a while.”

  Not until six hours later, when Susan called, would she be allowed to come with her vet and pick up Pooky and Poppy.

  Lieutenant Dan Davidson was working on reports at his desk at Kentucky State Police Post Five on State Highway 146 near La Grange, the county seat, about ten miles from Delores’s house, when his telephone rang and the post dispatcher told him about the murders. He pulled a plaid sport coat over his white short-sleeve shirt and the .357 Magnum on his hip and went out the back door to his white 1982 Ford cruiser. Officers from Post Five, uniformed troopers and detectives, were responsible for six counties along the Ohio River—Oldham, Henry, Trimble, Carroll, Gallatin and Owen—reaching to within thirty-five miles of Cincinnati. It was a big territory, and the criminal division, of which Davidson was in charge, had only a handful of men to cover it. Four detectives, a detective sergeant, and an arson investigator answered to Davidson.

  On his radio, Davidson asked the dispatcher to call one of those detectives, Sherman Childers, and have Childers meet him at the house on Covered Bridge Road.

  Most of Oldham County’s police department was at Delores’s house when Davidson arrived and parked his cruiser at the top of the driveway. A yellow police line already had been stretched around the house. The afternoon was sweltering, the temperature near 90, and Davidson took off his coat and laid it on the front seat as he got out of the car. Sergeant Clark, the Oldham County public information officer, spotted him and came over.

  “Hey, Dan.”

  “What’s happenin’, Dennis?”

  “We got a rough one here.”

  Dan Davidson was an imposing figure, a man who would stand out in any crowd. Wide-shouldered, broad-chested, with narrow hips, he stood six-foot-three and weighed 215 pounds. His hair, swept back on the sides in a fifties cut, dipped low onto the forehead of his forlorn face. He wore a huge turquoise belt buckle, heavy turquoise rings, and a broad silver watchband swathed in the same blue stone. Buckled, low-cut dress boots protruded beneath his tapered slacks. On his right arm was a tattoo that almost kept him out of the state police, which has a rule against visible tattoos. His was just above the sleeve line of a short-sleeve shirt. WARRIOR, it said in neat letters put there by playmates with a straight pin and school ink when he was eight. He was forty-five now, only two and a half months away from forty-six, and not only was he one of the best horseshoe pitchers and bass fishermen in the state of Kentucky, he was one of the most respected detectives. As a bass fisherman, Davidson eschewed the razzle-dazzle and high-tech gimmickry that had turned that once simple leisure activity into a big-time commercial sport. Using only instinct, cunning, and patience, he could compete with the best of the pros. He applied the same techniques to his work. A taciturn man, Davidson moved slowly and deliberately, and when he spoke it was with a mountain drawl that caused some young, big-city reporters in Louisville to make the mistake of thinking him less than bright.

  Davidson succinctly greeted the officers at the side of the house, and went over to look at Delores’s body.

  “We’ve got another one in the house,” Steve Nobles told him.

  Davidson waited a few minutes for Childers to arrive before going in to look at Janie. While he and the other officers were inspecting her body, Swinney noticed a hole in the draperies. He pulled back the curtain to reveal the remains of a copper jacketed bullet imbedded in the aluminum frame of the jalousie windows, one panel of which had been shattered into an intricate but intact web of tiny cracks. It was the bullet that had passed through Janie’s head.

  Davidson saw immediately that this would indeed be a tough case, and he assumed it would be his. Still, it belonged to Oldham County, and formalities had to be observed.

  “How do you want to handle this, Steve?” he asked Nobles.

  “Well, Dan, why don’t you take charge of it, and I’ll assign Lennie to work with you on it.”

  Davidson nodded, and without changing expression went outside and set to work. Later, he admitted to a certain excitement that day.

  “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get charged up on a homicide. Yeah, it was a challenge to me. Any homicide investigator who sees a body laying there and no perpetrator in sight, it’s a challenge.

  “A lot of homicides I went to, a man’s standing there with a gun saying, ‘I did it and I’m glad.’ But you get a body that’s been there a couple of days, that’s a challenge, a real one.

  “You’ve also got an uneasy feeling. What if you don’t solve it? What if you don’t solve it? That’s there every day. Every minute. That uneasy feeling gets worse, too, as the case drags on.”

  6

  Daniel Davidson, Jr., was introduced to homicide at age fifteen by his father, the sheriff of Clay County in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky. His father took him to a cabin where an old man, an old woman, and their two grown but feebleminded children had been slaughtered over a boundary dispute at their crude supper table while eating corn bread and soup beans (the Kentucky mountain term for pinto beans). Davidson never would forget the sight of the old man’s brains mingled on the plate with his soup beans, but it wouldn’t affect his taste for the beans, one of his favorite foods.

  In the thirty years that had passed since, Davidson had been witness to the effects of more murders than he could remember, so many that he needed something to remind him of individual cases. Under his living room coffee table he kept a grisly scrapbook, fat with photographs of victims of murders he had investigated. In it were people who had been shot, stabbed, garroted, hung, scalded, clubbed, hacked, choked, smothered, left out to freeze, run down by vehicles, and otherwise dispatched, often for trivial or inexplicable reasons. He had investigated cases in which a four-year-old girl shot her three-year-old brother, in which neighbor shot neighbor in an argument over a twenty-nine-cent toy, in which brother killed brother over a slice of watermelon. One young couple doused their four-year-old child with boiling water because he cried too much.

  Of the scores of murders Davidson had investigated in twenty-seven years with the state police, only two had gone unsolved—and they still nagged him. He’d worked ten years on one of those cases: the asphyxiation of an old mountain storekeeper in a robbery. He knew who did it but couldn’t get proof that would hold up in court. “I did everything, by God, except use voodoo on them sons-a-bitches,” he told colleagues in exasperation.

  Solving murders, busting moonshine stills, putting outlaws in jail—all the things his father had done—was the only career Davidson ever considered. In the hills and hollows where he grew up, he knew he’d never face a shortage of work.

  Davidson was born on Bullskin Creek near the tiny coal-mining town of Oneida on the South Fork Kentucky River, delivered by frontier nurses, who took medical care to isolated mountain people by Jeep and horseback. His parents divorced when he was five, leaving him to live temporarily with his grandfather, a storyteller of such repute that people came from all over the hills to hear his tall tales (a noted columnist from Louisville, Joe Creason, even came to record some of them for city folk). After his father remarried and settled into a small white house in Oneida, a settlement built around the Oneida Baptist Institute, a school established for mountain children who had no other place to go, Davidson went to live with him. His father had married a teacher, a proper woman named Ima Jean, who not only had a master’s degree but knew the value of etiquette as well as education. She set about transforming the free-spirited mountain boy who loved fishing and frog gigging into a young gentleman who could make his way outside the hills. She honed his table manner
s, required daily readings of Emily Post, made sure that he did his school lessons, and even, over his protests, taught him such skills as crocheting.

  By the time Davidson was in high school, playing forward on Oneida Institute’s basketball team and winning a state marksmanship contest, his daddy was sheriff, and Davidson already knew that he, too, wanted to be a lawman. As a small child he had been impressed by the uniform his father wore during the year he was a highway patrolman, before the state police agency was formed in 1948. He enjoyed the company of lawmen who were his father’s friends, and by age thirteen he and his own friends had started a weekend game of cops and robbers that would continue for years and range for miles over the mountains. Even then, Davidson took pride in his ability to catch the bad guys.

  Later, he tried to explain why he was sure of what he wanted to do with his life long before he got out of school. “Every movie you saw, every book you read, had something to do with a lawman. It just seemed interesting to me. I thought it would be prestigious.”

  After his graduation from high school in 1956, Davidson was staying with his mother in Cincinnati when his father called to tell him about an opening for a state police dispatcher at London in adjoining Laurel County. He came home, took the required test, and got the job. He lived at the post; worked eight hours a day, six days a week, on the radio; and when he wasn’t sleeping, he was riding with troopers, getting experience for the day when he would become one himself.

  After four years as a dispatcher, he was admitted to the State Police Academy in Frankfort in September 1960. By then he had married a nurse, and two days before his graduation, he drove nine hours round-trip over snow-covered mountain roads to be present for the birth of his first child, a daughter, Deanna Lynn. He made it back to Frankfort in time to complete his training, and returned proudly to the mountains wearing a trooper’s uniform, his youthful ambitions fulfilled. His first assignment was Post Ten in Harlan, the seat of Harlan County, where he had worked his last year as dispatcher.