The Trophy Exchange (A Lucinda Pierce Mystery)

by Fanning, Diane

  “Bear in mind why she’s here, Dawson. Those detectives from the city only come to town when they want to share the blame, never when there’s any glory to pass around.” Fred twisted his neck in his collar and moved down the hall with Max on his heels.

  “Lieutenant Pierce,” Fred called out. Lucinda turned in their direction.

  “Shit! What happened to you?” The words flew from Max’s lips before he had the chance to think.

  Fred pinned Max with a can’t-take-you-anywhere look as the sergeant fumbled to find words suitable for an apology.

  Lucinda cut him off. “Shotgun blast. Domestic violence call.”

  Both men nodded their heads and Fred said, “They’re the worst. Never know which way they’ll go. This way, Lieutenant.”

  The two detectives were entering unfamiliar territory with this recent murder. They anticipated criticism or scorn from the detective from out of town. Now that the shock over her disfigurement passed, they fell back into reticence. Lucinda felt the rigidity and defensiveness in their handshakes.

  They all sat at a wooden kitchen table in the break room – Lucinda on one side, Fred and Max on the other. She tried to break the ice with idle conversation at first. She asked about the town, its people, their workload, but none of those topics diminished the chill.

  Beneath a thatch of gray hair threaded with a few stubborn strands that maintained their original pale red shade, Fred’s light blue eyes would not meet her eye. He watched her out of the corner of his vision as if she was a shoplifter and he was trying to catch her in the act. His arms folded across his expanding midsection as he sat in a chair pushed back from the table. Up to now, his communication consisted of a series of grunts, nods and head shakes.

  Max rested his arms on the tabletop and looked Lucinda straight in her good eye when she spoke, keeping his focus off the black patch and ravaged skin of the other side of her face. His trim-cut black hair framed a face that looked fresh out of high school. Lucinda suspected he was a good decade older than he looked. He kept his verbal responses to a minimum using only one syllable when possible. After he made each one, he gave Fred a sidelong glance.

  The hell with being sociable, Lucinda thought and whipped out the three photographs of Kathleen wearing her ring. She spread them out on the table. “Gentlemen,” she said tapping her index finger on the ring in each shot, “does that look familiar to you?”

  Max leaned forwards and gasped. He turned to the other detective. Fred inched his chair forward and peered at the shot. He pulled a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and lifted the photos closer towards him to look at them again. He lifted his head and looked at Lucinda. “Hard to believe there’re two rings that look like this one, isn’t it?”

  “My thinking exactly,” Lucinda said.

  “Let’s go down to the property room and check on the one we’ve got.”

  Lucinda followed the men down a half flight of stairs lined with a concrete block wall painted in a putrid green. At the landing, the stairway took an abrupt turn down to the lower floor.

  The property room in the corner was a renovated cell. The two sides with bars were lined with a more substantial wire than seen on an average chicken coop but it looked a lot the same. The lock on the cell door had some age on it – it was the kind opened by an old skeleton key. Wrapped around the bars, a bicycle chain with a padlock added an extra measure of security. Before opening the door, Max entered the date, time and all three of their names on a log hanging on a peg.

  A long wooden table that appeared to be a recycled altar table from a church sat in the middle of the room. Its surface was bare except for a dispenser box of latex gloves. A roll of white butcher paper in a metal holder was fastened with sturdy nails on one side.

  Plywood shelves lined the two solid walls. A large, metal, double-doored cabinet sat up against the side with the wire covered bars. A handwritten sign on it read: “Weapons and Narcotics. Two officers must be present to open – NO EXCEPTIONS!”

  Max pulled a shoe box labeled “Haver” from a shelf and placed it on the table. The three officers gloved up before lifting the lid. Fred looked inside and pushed it over to Lucinda. The ring looked exactly like the one on Kathleen’s hand in the snapshots. She plucked it out and looked inside. “Forever” was etched across the gold. “This is it,” she said.

  “How can you be sure?” Fred asked.

  She handed him the ring. “Check out the engraving.”

  “The Spencers’ names in there?”

  “No, look.”

  “Initials?”

  “Look at it,” Lucinda insisted.

  “Sorry. Can’t. Left my reading glasses upstairs.” He handed the ring to Max.

  “Forever?” Max asked.

  “Yes. That’s the one word Evan Spencer said I’d find in his wife’s ring.”

  “No initials or names?” Fred asked.

  “No. Nothing but “Forever”. I suppose he thought that said it all.” Lucinda’s attention moved back to the shoe box where a tired cheap watch rested beside a single silver hoop earring. “She was wearing these?”

  “Yeah. The watch was working when we found her. Looks like it gave up since then.” Fred searched Lucinda’s face for answers.

  “Just one earring?” Lucinda’s stomach quivered as she thought of the implications of one missing earring.

  “Yeah. That was odd,” Max said. “We tore the place apart looking for another one but never found it.”

  “Really?” Puzzle pieces clicked together in Lucinda’s mind.

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” Fred said. “And what are you thinking that means?”

  “Not sure.” Lucinda’s thoughts raced. Was this a peculiar coincidence? Or no coincidence at all? “I brought along my crime scene photos. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  Fred grinned at the language of an old childhood dare. “Let’s head on back upstairs.”

  In the break room, they swapped file folders. As they looked through the shots, Fred grunted and Max said, “Oh shit,” again and again.

  Lucinda studied the Haver homicide photos with amazement. Instead of a concrete block, this woman’s face was smashed with a large rock, its edge worn smooth as if it had rested under rushing water for hundreds of years. “Did she live near the water?” she asked.

  “Yep,” Max said. “She had a rickety old shack her father built right on the banks of the Roanoke. Can’t figure why flood waters hadn’t washed that place away years ago.”

  Lucinda focused next on a shot of the woman’s face after the rock was removed. One silver hoop pierced one ear. The other lobe was empty. Around the neck, the clear, unmistakable slash of a ligature mark. “Did you find a rope or any other ligature?”

  “Nope,” Fred said. “Tore the house apart for that, too.”

  “Any fingerprints?”

  “Not prints but we think we have marks. Hand me those photos,” Fred said. He grunted as he stretched across the table. He flipped through until he found the one he wanted and slid it across the table. “See that,” he said pointing to the small pool of blood by the victim’s head. “See those rounded impressions. Looks to me like someone wearing gloves pushed himself up off the floor right there.”

  “Yes, I can see that.” Lucinda paused before she set foot in touchy territory that might dampen the new spirit of cooperation. “I saw the woman’s mother on TV.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Fred said.

  “But what she said about the ring?”

  “Damned woman is trying to protect her son Darrin.”

  “You think he killed his sister?”

  “No. Nothing like that. But we figured he stole that ring from somewhere and gave it to his sister. Darrin’s been nothing but trouble for years: vandalism, petty theft, small time player in the drug scene. We figured his sister got tangled up in one of his bad drug deals and she paid the price for his sins.”

  “Bad Deals? What do you mean?”

  “Da
rrin ain’t too bright and he ain’t a bit ethical. We busted him one time with a shitload of cocaine – at least that’s what we thought. That stuff was cut so many times it couldn’t get a cockroach high. There was only enough of the real thing in all those baggies for a minor possession rap. He got probation – nothing more. Sure wouldn’t surprise us if he did something that stupid again and really pissed someone off. But right ‘bout now, I’m figuring we might be wrong. Is that how you’d see it?”

  “Would Darrin have any reason to come up our way?” Lucinda asked.

  “Shoot, I don’t think that old boy’s ever been out of the county. But I can check it out,” Fred said.

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “What do you think is going on here, Lieutenant?”

  Lucinda paused, uncertain about how much to reveal. She evaded the question for the moment with one of her own. “Any DNA profiles from the scene?”

  “That’s up at the state lab,” Max said. “They’ve pulled the vic’s DNA but haven’t found anything else yet. They’re still looking.”

  “Okay.” Lucinda closed her eye and inhaled deeply. “Before I tell you about what I think is going on, I need you to understand it is just a theory – my theory – and I need your assurances you won’t leak anything I say to the media.”

  Fred and Max looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Media doesn’t hang around here much.” Max rolled his eyes.

  “Oh, we got a few calls after that Nancy Grace show,” Fred added. “Except for you, though, we never returned any of them and they stopped calling. The only thing we’ve got round these parts you could call media is an endless revolving series of young kids at the local radio station and a lazy old reporter at the weekly rag.”

  “That will change soon. The connection between my homicide and yours is bound to leak out eventually – particularly if we find a similar MO in other jurisdictions.”

  “We don’t plan on returning anyone’s calls, do we?” Fred turned to Max.

  “Nope.”

  “The one thing that can’t be released to the press before we have an arrest is the jewelry connection,” Lucinda said.

  “There’s something more than that ring?” Fred asked.

  “Yes. I think so.” Lucinda swallowed hard; doubts about her newborn theory raced through her head along with doubts about sharing it with two investigators she barely knew. She continued anyway. “Kathleen Spencer – a Jewish woman – had a turquoise cross around her neck. Her missing ring showed up on the Haver girl here and one of that girl’s earrings is missing. I believe somewhere another vic has – or will have – that silver hoop looped through her ear.”

  “You thinking serial killer?” Fred asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Shit,” Max said.

  “Maybe not,” Lucinda added.

  As she walked out of the station, Max turned to Fred. “Mmmm, mmmm, mmm, what a waste. At one time, that was one fine-looking woman.”

  “Let’s just hope she’s better at solving homicides than she is at dodging pellets. She screws this up, we’re going down with her.”

  Lucinda drove out of the parking lot with copies of the Riverton crime-scene photos and with the suspect ring itself. She’d signed her life away to get custody of that piece of jewelry but it made more sense to take it with her than to drag Evan Spencer down to Riverton. She crossed back over the state line as her cellphone chirped. “Pierce,” she said.

  “Lucinda, it’s Ted.”

  “Hey, Ted,” Lucinda said with a smile.

  “Have you finished up in Riverton yet?”

  “Yeah, I’m on my way back. Should be in the office in an hour or less.”

  “Useful trip?”

  “I think we’ve got a connection, Ted.”

  “You might have more then one. Four different jurisdictions called in – one with two cases. All of them have smashed faces and ligature marks.”

  “Four departments? Six murders?”

  “Yeah. Five homicides before ours and one since the Haver kill – the body was just found yesterday morning.”

  “Did that vic have a silver hoop earring in one ear?”

  “Don’t know . . .”

  “Was one of the others missing a turquoise cross?”

  “I didn’t ask about the jewelry, Lucinda. I figured that was your hold back and I didn’t want to poison the well before you had a chance to talk to the other detectives.”

  “You could have handled that, Ted.”

  “Hey, Lieutenant, I’m just a lowly sergeant. Don’t want to go mucking about in sanctified gold shield territory.”

  “Give me a break, Ted.”

  “I’m guessing by your questions that the ring was a match.”

  “Think so. I’m bringing it home to get a positive ID from Dr. Spencer.”

  “And there’s an earring missing in Riverton?”

  “Yep.”

  “Doesn’t look good, Lucinda.”

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  “The press is going to swarm when this gets out – serial killers turn reporters into rabid dogs. They’ll be all over you.”

  “Not if I run faster. Besides, most of them are afraid of me.”

  “You’re pretty proud of that fact, aren’t you?”

  Lucinda laughed. “Yeah. I call it my Purple Prose Heart – wounded in the field of battle with the forces of the fifth estate. Where’s the most recent homicide?”

  “Just outside the city limits in Leesville. You heading there before coming in?”

  “Not a chance. I want to get this ring secured before I go anywhere. I’m not used to carrying around jewelry worth almost as much as my car.”

  “So does the serial killer idea drop Spencer lower on your suspect list?”

  “Not hardly, Ted. A lot of those guys maintain a respectable front and lead a double life.”

  “Killing a family member doesn’t usually fit into the profile.”

  “Not usually midway into the game. But Spencer isn’t a typical suspect. And he is hiding something.”

  “What, Lucinda?”

  “Don’t have a clue, Ted. But I will find out. The good doctor will slip. And I’ll be there to catch what falls when he does.”

  Sixteen

  Charley snuggled her face into her pillow and smiled. She felt so much better now that Gramma was here. Her hugs were softer than Dad’s and her cooking was better, too. Tonight, she’d made meat loaf, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. It was almost like Mom was here. Charley choked back a sob.

  She wanted to talk to Gramma ever since she’d got here today. Returning home from school, Charley had her hand on the gate to the yard when she’d heard the “toot toot” of a car horn. She’d spun around and there was Gramma pulling up to the curb.

  All evening, Charley looked for an opportunity to speak to Gramma alone, but every moment either Ruby was needing something or Dad was right by Gramma’s side. She loved her dad but she just couldn’t talk to him anymore – not about anything important. Every time she tried, he squeezed her in a tight scary hug and told her she needed to forget about what she saw in the basement, forget about what happened to her mother. He told her not to look back. To let it all go.

  I can’t. I can’t. Tears formed in her eyes and slid across her face. Why was Daddy mad all the time? Maybe Gramma knows. I’ll ask her. Tomorrow, she thought, tomorrow I’ll talk to Gramma. Daddy will be gone all day. I’ll talk to her then.

  She closed her eyes and drifted away. The sound of voices snapped her back to awareness. She heard the angry edge that seemed a permanent part of her father’s deep voice since her mom died. She listened to the soft murmur of Gramma’s responses.

  She slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the top of the stairs. She sat down and listened.

  “The girls need counseling, Evan,” her grandmother said.

  “No,” he replied.

  “Yes, Evan. A good child psychologist could help them both. They need to
talk it all out to get past it.”

  “No, they need to forget.”

  “Forget their mother?”

  “Yes.”

  Charley shook her head. She could never forget her mom.

  “Evan, you know that’s not the answer. They need someone to talk to.”

  “I am not going to expose my children to the well-meaning but ineffective – if not outright dangerous – theories of those so-called mental health professionals.”

  “Evan, this is something specialists are well equipped to handle. They understand a child’s grief – a little girl’s horror.”

  “Oh, yeah, mother, we know first hand how little good they do. All of our lives might have been quite different if you’d never trusted them in the first place.”

  “You can’t blame the psychiatrists. They did all they could. Some things – some people – just can’t be fixed.”

  “But they can be broken. I will not allow shrinks to gamble with my girls’ minds.”

  “They need to talk to someone, Evan.”

  “They’ve got me, mother,” he spat. “I’m their father.”

  “You’re grieving, too, son. And your grief has stirred up a perpetual state of anger. The girls need to talk to someone who doesn’t have an emotional investment in the tragedy. How about a minister?”

  “The girls are Jewish, mother – by birth. Remember?”

  Jewish? What does that mean? Charley wondered.

  “Of course, Evan . . .”

  “You remember Kate was Jewish, don’t you, Mother? You threw quite a fit over that fact when I told you we were planning to marry, didn’t you? And now I don’t have a Jewish wife. Are you happy?”

  “I am not proud of my initial reaction back then, Evan. But I did everything I could to make up for that. You know I did. I loved Kathleen.”

  “But I love her.”

  “I know you do. And I know you are in pain. But we need to think about what’s best for the girls. Charley’s all tied up in knots. Ruby has not uttered more than a couple of words all evening. If not a counselor, why don’t we let them talk to that lady detective? Charley might feel as if she were doing something useful helping to find who did this. It might do her a world of good.”