Twisted Reason (A Lucinda Pierce Mystery)

by Fanning, Diane

  “When the first death happened – a poor old lady died in her sleep clutching a teddy bear – Dad trained me to do the pick-ups. He called them rescues and he had me convinced. I saw myself as a hero for a while. I thought we were working in the service of a noble cause and never wavered in that conviction. Not until Dad made us dispose of the first body. I wanted to bury Adele on the hill with the others. But he wouldn’t hear of it. I should have listened to Derek – he argued against it, he begged me not to dump her in the middle of nowhere. But I did what Dad told me to do like some stinkin’ robot. Then, I did it again with that crazy guy, Francis DeLong.” Don dropped his head to the table and sighed.

  Lucinda reached across to him and patted his shoulder. “I think that’s enough for today, Don. The prosecutor will want to talk to you tomorrow to hammer out a deal. And I’ll be back at some point to let you know what we find in the backyard.”

  Lucinda flipped off the audio, leaned forward, turning her face away from the camera. “Don, get an attorney to guide you through the plea bargain.” She stood up and left the room.

  As she stepped into the hall, a trooper was at her elbow guiding her in the opposite direction of the exit. “This way, Lieutenant. The captain is ready to take your statement.”

  “Excuse me,” she said, shrugging off his hand. “It’s been a long day. I need to arrange for cadaver dogs and an excavation team and I need to get to the hospital.”

  “You’ll have to talk to the captain about that, Lieutenant.”

  Lucinda strode ahead of the trooper down the hall and threw open a door marked Captain P.L. Johnson. “Sir, I need a couple of cadaver dogs and personnel experienced with the excavation of bodies to search the Blankenship’s backyard tomorrow morning.”

  “You certainly do. I was informed of that by the trooper monitoring your interview and have already gotten the ball rolling. They’ll all be on-site at daybreak. Now, if you please have a seat, I’d like to get your statement about today’s events.”

  Lucinda remained standing. “Captain, it’s been a long, freakin’ day. I’ve been shot at and dunked in water. I haven’t had a bite to eat since I gobbled down a pitiful container of yogurt at 6 o’clock this morning. My partner is in the hospital with a gunshot wound. And I’ve gotten enough information from Don Blankenship to keep you busy for days. My body is beat. My brain is fried. It can wait until tomorrow.”

  “We still need your statement, Lieutenant.”

  She glared at him without saying a word.

  “Okay. Okay. It can wait until morning.”

  “Make that afternoon. Since your people are digging up a backyard in my jurisdiction, I need to be there.”

  “I’d rather take care of this matter first thing in the morning, Lieutenant,” the captain said rising to his feet.

  She grinned and straightened her posture when she realized he was shorter than her. Tactical error, Captain. “No can do, sir. I’ll be out here soon as I can. Thank you for your patience.” She turned and walked through the doorway.

  Looking back, she added, “Oh, yeah, don’t screw with Don Blankenship, okay? Don’t knock him around, badger him or give him a hard time. Give him a nice, warm meal, get a trooper to pick something up for him if you can’t fix it here. Okay?”

  “All right, Lieutenant. No need to be a smart ass. We’ll take good care of your boy.”

  “Don’t call him a boy – his dad did that. He hates it. I don’t want him pissed off when I get back here. And I don’t want to waste time listening to him bitch about you.”

  “Do we need to give him a pillow and tuck him in, too?”

  “Why don’t you toss in a lullaby while you’re at it, Captain? See you tomorrow.”

  Back in her car, Lucinda paused before starting the engine. Why is it I piss off captains wherever I go? She turned the key in the ignition. Face it, girl, you don’t really care. She pulled out of the parking lot and raced to the hospital.

  Forty-Two

  She was halfway to the hospital when her cell rang. “Hey, Lieutenant. It’s Hirschhorn. Jumbo’s doing fine. In fact, he’s asking for you.”

  “Thanks for calling, Chief,” she said and pressed down on the accelerator. She muttered a prayer of thanks as she raced through the night.

  When she arrived, she jerked to a stop along a yellow-painted curb and ran inside. Stepping into his room, she doubted what Hirschhorn had said. She stifled a gasp. Wires and tubes ran from Jumbo’s body to equipment and apparatus on both sides. His eyes were closed and his small face too pale. His red hair stuck out in every direction like a visible aura around his head.

  She approached his bed as quietly as she could and slipped her hand into his. Eyelids blinked and he turned to look in her direction. “Lieutenant!” He smiled big, color rushing into his face and his eyes danced with pleasure.

  She returned his smile, “Hey there, Jumbo. You gave me a big scare. You shouldn’t have stepped into the line of fire.”

  Jumbo shrugged. “What can I say? There was a guy heading straight for you. What else could I do? But he wasn’t the one that shot me, was he?”

  “No. The shot came from the boat. It was serious, Jumbo, but no main arteries were hit. They say you’re going to be all right. It’ll just take some time.”

  “I’m not complaining. I get a paid vacation from work just in time for the baseball season openers. And I now have an interesting scar I can show my grandchildren one day. But, I tell ya, Lieutenant, homicide is not for me. A little too much agitation and high-speed action. I like Missing Persons where steady on wins the day.”

  “Still, I bet our caseloads will intersect again,” Lucinda said. “And, hey, did you notice I am calling you Jumbo now?”

  He nodded. “Yes, I did, Lieutenant. Thank you.”

  “Well, don’t you think it’s time you called me Lucinda?”

  “Yeah, well you would think I would, wouldn’t ya?” he said with a laugh.

  “Using my own words against me?” Lucinda chuckled. She answered all of his questions about what happened after he was shot and laid out the plans for the next day. Noticing the heaviness in his eyelids, she said goodnight, promising to come back the next day as soon as work allowed.

  Lucinda slid the key into her apartment door wondering how her cat would react to her long absence that day; would he pout or be glad to see her? Chester didn’t leave any doubt the moment she stepped inside. He ran up to her, sat at her feet and meowed. Then, he went berserk. He dashed through the kitchen, circled around the living-room furniture, raced to the bedroom, skidded into the wall with a thump and galloped back up the hall, making chirping noises that sounded more bird-like than feline. He screeched to a halt beside his food bowl.

  Laughing, Lucinda plucked a tin out of the pantry and piled the food into his dish. He snarled as he gobbled it down. She was flat out too tired to prepare anything for herself. She settled for an apple and a chunk of Cheddar and carried them back to her room to eat while she dressed for bed.

  The events of the day and the tasks scheduled for tomorrow were enough to keep her mind churning, but those thoughts were overridden by the persistent worry that something was missing. It was as if she’d completed a large panoramic jigsaw puzzle but an irregular shape defined an empty space in the middle of the sky.

  She returned to the kitchen to dispose of the apple core and found Chester on the counter rubbing his chin against the container of treats. “Okay, fella, I can take a hint,” she said, lifting him to the floor and placing a couple of treats at his feet.

  She picked up her telephone to check her voicemail. A couple of messages from Captain Holland were first; she skipped over them without listening. She paid attention, though, when she heard Charley Spencer’s voice. “Lucy, Lucy, I saw this really cool place on the news. It was in the woods and I couldn’t figure out everything on accounta the pictures were shot from an airplane or helicopter or something. But it looked like there was a Ferris wheel and a boat and then they pu
t up an arrow beside this little person on the ground and they said it was you. Was it you, Lucy? I really—” The message cut off.

  The next one was from Charley, too. “I guess I talked too long. But, anyway, I want to go out there and see that place. Would you take me, Lucy? I saw Rambo at a PTA meeting. I asked him when he was going to fix your nose. He said he was waiting on you. You need to do that, Lucy. Oh, it’s gonna cut off again. Call me or—”

  In the bathroom, Lucinda brushed her teeth and stared at her reflection. She dreaded another surgery but hated that side of her face. She reached into a drawer and pulled out a photograph she called her reminder picture. It had been taken right after the incident and before she had any plastic surgery.

  A sunken place where one of her eyes should have been. A shredded eyebrow, a convex cheekbone. Half a mouth with no discernible lips. And her nose – one side nice, normal, the other twisted and shrunken. She held the photo beside her face and looked back into the mirror. “You’ve come a long way, baby,” she said out loud and barked out a bitter laugh at her inadvertent theft of a cigarette advertising slogan.

  Sighing, she put the picture back in the drawer. Later. Now I’ve got bodies to find. She slid under the sheets. In seconds, Chester was lying on her chest purring like a mad man. She stroked his head. “So tell me, Chester? What am I missing? What ‘i‘ did I forget to dot?”

  “Meow,” Chester said.

  “Oh, really. It’s the ‘t’? I dotted all the ‘i’s but forgot to cross a ‘t’? Thank you, Chester. That’s good to know.”

  She closed her eyes and focused on the vibration from Chester’s incessant purr. Quicker than she thought possible, she was asleep.

  The alarm clock rang way too early. She almost hit the snooze button but then remembered she had to be at the Blankenship’s row house before dawn for the search of the backyard. She groaned as she pushed herself out of bed.

  Lucinda used the back porch of the Blankenship home as an observation platform. An officer and his cadaver dog, a black and white border collie named Sally, stepped through the back gate. She immediately went to one corner, sniffed the ground and eased herself down. Her paws stretched in front of her, her head resting on them, looking like a canine portrait of grief.

  Sally’s handler released her from her position and urged her to continue the search. The next spot that brought her to a state of alert was by the fence, midway up the yard. Lucinda thought that fit the description of the spot where Don said his father had been shoveling dirt in the middle of the night.

  Lucinda, expecting to locate two bodies in the yard, was surprised when Sally alerted them again to the ground directly under the wooden porch steps. Leaving that suspicious spot, Sally searched the yard for another fifteen minutes without hitting on any other locations. She exited and another handler entered the yard leading Stanley, a short-haired brown mutt. Stanley hit on the same three spots, sitting at each one with his head held high as if honoring the dead with his erect posture.

  Stanley was led out and the three members of the forensic anthropology team entered the yard suited up in Tyvec suits, booties, masks and latex gloves and carrying tile rods. At each spot, they carefully probed the ground and at every one, they nodded.

  Beginning excavation at the site in the far corner, they uncovered the body of a woman in an advanced state of decomposition. The sweet, sickly smell drifted through the air, up to Lucinda, making her stomach churn. Lucinda doubted it was the body of Sadie Blankenship – after twenty years, she shouldn’t be much more than bones. Who was she then?

  Beside the fence at the midpoint, they found – as Lucinda expected they would – the body of a man. The odor of his decomposition, though fainter than the woman’s, still sent a rush of nausea up Lucinda’s throat.

  The team moved to the site under the porch steps. Lucinda went halfway down the open stairs and kneeled backward on a tread and looked through the steps to watch the specialists at work. The first sign of success was the uncovering of the unmistakable white curve of a skull. The team now worked with brushes and small picks and trowels. The unveiling was so slow and magical; it appeared to be an act of creativity, reminding Lucinda of the time she watched a sculptor carving an otter out of a chunk of wood.

  The forensic anthropologist leading the team stood and lowered her mask. “Lieutenant, it’s a skeleton of a woman. At first glance, she appears to be somewhere between her mid-twenties and early forties. I can let you know more after an in-depth study of her bones.”

  Lucinda felt a fullness and buzz in the left side of her chest accompanied by a melodious surge of sorrow and victory. She checked to make sure she was not needed at the site any longer and walked into the house. She went upstairs to the master bedroom and stared at the missing floorboards and cut-out carpet where the blood evidence was found. “Thank you, Sadie,” she whispered to the empty room. “Justice is coming – won’t be long now.”

  She walked down the stairs and out the front door. She looked up and down the street amazed that the world seemed oblivious to the enormity of the discovery in their midst.

  Forty-Three

  When Lucinda arrived at the state police headquarters, she was greeted by Tara Osborne, the state prosecutor assigned to Don Blankenship’s case. Tara’s pixie face appeared even smaller than usual, obscured as it was by the black square frames of her glasses. Her curly light brown hair was fastened in a barrette at her neck but stray strands poked out in every direction.

  “Lieutenant, we have a problem,” Tara said.

  “What’s that, ma’am?”

  “Everything was going fine until I presented Don with the list of charges that required a guilty plea. He balked but won’t say why.”

  “No explanation at all?” Lucinda asked.

  “He just said that it needed to be changed. Then he asked if you were coming out here today.”

  “Okay. I’ve got to talk to him about what we found in the backyard. I’ll see what the problem is with the charging document. Can I have a copy?”

  Tara turned over the list and Lucinda walked into the interview room.

  “Good afternoon, Lieutenant,” Don greeted her.

  “Hello, Don. The prosecutor tells me that there’s a problem with the deal.”

  “First, tell me what you found this morning, please?”

  Lucinda inhaled long and slow. “Okay.” She described finding what she believed to be the body of Alvin Hodges and the skeleton of Don’s mother. “But, Don, there was a third body found – a woman’s body. Do you know anything about that?”

  Don’s brow furrowed. “Another body? Who is it?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  Don’s eyes drifted from side to side as he thought. He shook his head. “No idea, Lieutenant. I don’t have a clue. I can’t think of anyone else we knew who went missing.”

  “Will you keep thinking about that and get in touch with me if anything drifts up from your memory?”

  “Of course, Lieutenant. Are you positive that the skeleton you found is my mother?”

  “I’m pretty sure, Don, but I won’t know with certainty until the forensic anthropologist makes a formal identification.”

  “How will she do that?”

  “Hopefully, they’ll be able to ID her with dental records. If not, I suppose we will have to extract DNA and take it from there.”

  Don sighed. “Have you told Derek yet?”

  “No.”

  “He’s not going to believe you at first. He’ll probably call you a liar and insist that Dad couldn’t have killed her. He doesn’t remember Mom. It’ll be different for him. His loyalty will be with Dad. But don’t hold that against him. He can’t help it.”

  Lucinda nodded and said, “Now, what was your problem with the prosecutor?”

  “I showed her all of the people that my dad kidnapped and she put the rest of them as counts on my list of abduction charges. But one of them shouldn’t be there.”

  Luci
nda looked down at the document she got from the prosecutor, laid it on the table and spun it around. “Which one, Don?”

  He placed his finger on a name and said, “Adele Kendlesohn.”

  “Okay. Who abducted her?”

  “No one.”

  “Don’t play games with me, Don,” Lucinda said, folding her arms across her chest and pushing her chair back with a push of her foot. “We found her body, remember? You admitted to dumping her body in that pond.”

  “I’m not playing games, I swear. And yes, I did dump her body and I admit to the abuse of a corpse charge in connection with her. But that lady was not abducted.”

  Damn it. What is this? Another con? Has he been playing me? Through clenched teeth, she said, “You’re confusing me, Don, and I don’t like being confused. Explain yourself.”

  “We were paid to pick her up and we’ve been paid every month to take care of her.”

  “What?”

  “To be honest, I think that’s why Dad made us dump her. He didn’t want those checks to stop.”

  The missing piece of blue sky clicked into the firmament of Lucinda’s imagined jigsaw puzzle. Rachael Kendlesohn bothered me from the start. I knew she was lying to me. I knew she was hiding something. “Who sent you those checks?”

  “The Kendlesohns.”

  “Both of them?”

  “I can’t say for sure about Mr. Kendlesohn. Dad only talked to his wife. And all the checks were signed ‘Rachael Kendlesohn’.”

  “How did this happen? How did she know to contact your father?”

  “Before we started running the place out at Sleepy Hollow, Dad was a handyman and I was his assistant. Mrs. Kendlesohn was one of our regular customers.”

  “Doing what?”

  “We cleaned gutters, power-washed the exterior of her house, maintained her pool, replaced light bulbs in ceiling fixtures, made little carpentry repairs, even hung pictures on the wall – stuff like that.”

  “These regular monthly checks she sent, were they made out to your father?”