Death in the Secret Garden

by Forrest, Richard;

  Lyon looked toward the house in a bewildered manner and continued his stumbling forward movement.

  Rocco took the stairs two at a time and reached the front door as Lyon lurched through the entryway.

  The broadsword clattered to the floor and Lyon leaned against the wall. His breath came in short gasps. It took a few minutes before he registered Rocco’s presence. A half smile of recognition and relief crossed his face. ‘My God, Rocco,’ he said in a choked voice. ‘Something happened to me out there last night and I’m not sure what.’ He stumbled forward and grasped the stair banister with both hands.

  Rocco noticed that the touch left bloody prints on the burnished wood. His friend’s torn shirt was covered in blood, with streaks down the length of his khaki pants and across his face.

  Rocco overcame his initial surprise and moved quickly to help his friend. He placed his hands on Lyon’s shoulders and gently forced him down until he sat on the steps. ‘Easy now. Do you know where you’re hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m concerned about shock.’ He strode down the hall into the living room, where he grasped the edge of a heavy window drape and yanked it from its runners. Bundling the material, he reached through the swinging door into the kitchen and snicked the phone from its wall mount.

  ‘Damn,’ he said into the dead phone as he recalled that the lines were out. Rocco hurried back to Lyon and began to wrap him in the drape. ‘I’ll get the first-aid kit from the car and radio for an ambulance. Hold on, old buddy, and we’ll pull you through.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m hurt, Rocco. This isn’t my blood.’

  ‘You look like a fugitive from a fire fight. Are you sure you’re all right? What in the hell happened?’

  ‘I’m OK, just dazed,’ Lyon insisted as he unwound himself from the drape and stumbled up the stairs toward the master bedroom.

  Rocco followed as his friend stripped off his bloody clothes and dropped them in the center of the bedroom floor. Lyon stepped into the shower and turned the water on full force.

  Police Chief Rocco Herbert stared down at the pile of bloody clothing heaped on the floor. He grimaced as he pulled out a mechanical pencil from his breast pocket. He inserted the point under the edge of the torn clothing and gingerly lifted the sport shirt and khaki pants into the acetate evidence bag he always carried folded in a rear pocket.

  ‘You know, I could send this stuff to the state forensic lab for testing.’ There was no answer from the man in the shower. ‘Do you have any cuts? Perhaps a nosebleed that would account for the blood?’ Still no answer. He sealed the evidence bag and continued staring at it. ‘Can you hear me in there, Lyon? This could be damn important.’

  The water was abruptly shut off. Lyon came out of the bathroom wearing a terry-cloth robe and toweling his hair. The shower seemed to have refreshed him to the point where his manner had begun a return to normalcy.

  ‘There’s not a cut on me except for a bruise on my forehead,’ Lyon said. ‘That isn’t my blood on the clothes.’ He threw the towel toward a hamper in the corner of the bathroom. It missed and draped over the sink, where it hung loosely toward the floor.

  ‘Then whose blood is it?’

  Lyon Wentworth lowered himself on to a straight chair near the mirrored clothes closet, where he dressed in khaki pants and a sports shirt similar to the bloody clothes in the bag at Rocco’s feet. The two men in the bedroom of the house on the promontory high above the Connecticut River were a study in contrast. Lyon was a tall slender man with a shock of sandy brown hair that often fell in an unruly forelock. A children’s book writer, he was well known for the Wobblies, a pair of benign monsters who specialized in adventure and rescue. His fey grin, usually accompanied by a somewhat bemused look, often made him appear distracted.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’ Rocco snapped.

  ‘I think I’ve pieced together what happened to me last night,’ Lyon said.

  ‘Where did you get that gigantic pig sticker you dragged across the lawn?’ Rocco pressed.

  Lyon shook his head in a gesture of confusion. ‘It was evidently left by my attacker. The whole bit had the feel of a nightmare, but it was real enough.’

  ‘Please explain.’

  ‘Since I dragged the sword home, I obviously wasn’t dreaming. I think I may have been drugged with some sort of hallucinogen.’

  ‘Tell me what you remember.’

  As he finished dressing, Lyon described the attack in the dark by the hooded figure with the sword. ‘I thought I was going to be killed,’ he concluded.

  ‘And you have no idea who it was?’

  ‘Its face was obscured by the cowl of the robe.’

  ‘Could it have been Morgan playing another one of his sadistic games?’

  ‘Not tall enough for Morgan,’ Lyon responded.

  It was Rocco’s turn to shake his head. ‘People running around in the middle of the night waving crusader swords? What is this?’

  ‘When I woke up, the sword was sticking upright in the ground not ten feet from where I was,’ Lyon said. ‘It was late and dark. Whoever attacked me thought I was Morgan. They pursued me until they discovered at the last moment that I was not Morgan. That’s when they backed off and left the sword and blood as a sign of some sort. If we have the blood tested, I wager it’s not human blood.’

  ‘Maybe. What about Morgan? Isn’t that his RV in the drive?’

  ‘He sleeps and eats in there,’ Lyon answered. ‘But the way he’s got that thing constructed, he’s safe enough.’

  ‘Is he in there now?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘He didn’t open the door for me. When I first arrived, I pounded on the door loud enough to wake the … I think we had better have a look.’

  Lyon led the way down the wide stairs to the front door that led into the drive. ‘How about coffee before we wake Morgan up?’

  ‘Come on! I can’t do anything until I see if that guy is all right.’

  ‘I guarantee it,’ Lyon said. ‘He gave me the guided tour the other day and I’d feel safe in that RV during a war.’

  Rocco circled the Winnebago. ‘Well, I hope so, because I can’t get inside it. I think we had better find out if we have a crime scene here. I checked all the rooms and didn’t find a thing. Was anyone else here overnight?’

  ‘No. There were a few people over for drinks and barbecue but everyone left except Morgan. He locked himself in his RV fairly early on. Bea’s away at a conference for women legislators in Washington and will be back sometime later today.’

  ‘I know. She’s concerned about the threats to Morgan and called me at home this morning. She said she’d been trying to get in touch with you for hours, but the phones are out of order.’ Rocco pounded on the side of the RV. ‘Morgan! I kid you not, open the door.’

  Rocco appraised the modified RV again. ‘I estimate that doing what he did to this vehicle would have set me back about two years’ salary.’

  ‘I know the amount of your salary, since it’s in the town’s annual report, so make that about three years’ worth.’

  Rocco began to impatiently pound on the side of the Winnebago. ‘Damn it, Morgan! Open this can of tuna fish or you’re getting a citation. You hear me? It’s going to cost you a fine.’

  ‘Morgan is contrary. He opens up when and if he chooses to,’ Lyon said.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Rocco said with a twinge of anger. ‘Well, I think something’s happened out here. Look at that.’ He pointed to a thin trail of blood across the drive that the sword had left as Lyon dragged it to the house. ‘Something’s damn sure coming down unless you were hunting rodents with that crusader impaler.’

  Lyon shook his head. ‘You’re an alarmist. I’m still convinced that’s animal blood meant for a warning. Morgan’s OK unless someone put a lot of pounds of plastic explosives underneath the RV, which they obviously haven’t. He modified the thing for protection and I think he succeeded.’

  R
occo stalked around the vehicle as he examined it for damage or means of entry. ‘Hell, I don’t know. Maybe they gassed him through the air vents or something.’

  ‘He anticipated that possibility and installed an air-filtration system. It’s built into that air-conditioning unit on the roof.’

  ‘Isn’t there a way to get into this damn thing?’

  ‘It’s a combination lock and only Morgan and I have the combination,’ Lyon said.

  Rocco stopped to glare at his friend. ‘This is all a set-up to get me, right? Crusader swords and impregnable vehicles are Morgan’s idea of funning me, right? Listen, you two wise-guys, I have a meeting with the first selectman in half an hour and she is trying to cut my budget. No more fun and games this morning or I will get really grumpy.’

  ‘No games, Rocco,’ Lyon said.

  ‘If you have the combination, open the damn thing. Under the circumstances, I can hardly leave the premises until I am satisfied that Morgan is alive and well.’

  Lyon punched two numbers into the combination panel next to the door, cleared them and inserted another set of three. He cleared those and hesitated. ‘I forgot it.’

  Rocco pointed to the long sword on the floor just inside the vestibule. ‘You see that thing. Forget your hooded apparitions; I am going to cut your head off with it. You forgot it! Wake up, Lyon!’

  ‘Come to think of it, I do believe I made a note of the numbers in my study.’

  Lyon hurried through the house and into his study down the hall from the kitchen. Sitting at his desk in front of the computer console, he pulled out the secretary drawer. Years ago he had taped a piece of yellow typewriter paper on the pull-out and had made a practice of jotting down serial numbers there that he never seemed able to remember. These included their car and truck marker plate numbers, his social security number, their safe deposit box number, and the other useful numerology of their life. Scrawled in the far right-hand corner was an unlabeled series he had recently written. He remembered the sequence as the RV’s door combination. He glanced at it and hurried back to the drive.

  ‘Got it,’ he said to Rocco as he punched the numbers into a combination panel to the right of the door. ‘Have it open in a sec.’

  The door swung open and Rocco stepped inside and stopped. His body blocked the entrance. ‘Good God!’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘What is it?’ Lyon asked, suddenly aware of the alarm in his friend’s voice.

  Rocco stepped back out of the Winnebago and leaned against the side of the vehicle with both hands pressed against the metal. Lyon started inside until Rocco’s hand grasped his shoulder. ‘Don’t,’ the large chief said. ‘You don’t have to. I do.’

  Lyon shook off the restraint and stepped into the RV. Once inside, he saw what Rocco meant. The chief re-entered and stood by his side.

  ‘He’s been butchered,’ Lyon said.

  ‘And that sword you dragged across the lawn is what probably did it,’ Rocco said.

  ‘This is impossible,’ Lyon said in an attempt to deny the undeniable. ‘There was no way for anyone to get inside to do this.’

  Two

  Lyon Wentworth sat on a wrought-iron chair on the patio by the parapet at Nutmeg Hill. He looked, without seeing, at the hills bracketing the Connecticut River as it wound its way toward Long Island Sound.

  ‘This is impossible, you know,’ he repeated to Rocco, who sat nearby on the parapet wall. ‘There was no way anyone could get inside that van to murder Morgan.’

  Rocco looked past his distraught friend, toward the rapidly filling driveway. The accumulation of cars and vans was in response to his radio call to the town dispatcher. Near the drive entrance a second Murphysville cruiser was parked on the grass while its driver directed traffic at the secondary highway below the house. An ambulance passed several state police cruisers, a state forensics lab truck, and the medical examiner’s car before stopping near the RV. Two uniformed attendants exited the ambulance and casually opened the rear doors to pull out a folded gurney. They weren’t in any hurry, since they knew it was a homicide.

  ‘You’re the ones who always say there’s an explanation for everything,’ Rocco said as another state police cruiser occupied by two corporals and a captain turned up the drive with an impatient honk. ‘Oh, Christ,’ Rocco mumbled. ‘Here comes my brother-in-law the Lone Ranger with his two Tontos.’

  Lyon stood so abruptly that his chair fell backward on the fieldstone with a clatter. ‘There’s got to be a way someone got into that RV and I’m going to find it.’ He started off the patio toward the driveway.

  Rocco took two quick strides. His hand curled over Lyon’s shoulder. ‘Let the pros handle it.’

  Lyon abruptly halted and turned toward Rocco. ‘Is that a suggestion or a command?’

  ‘A little bit of both. You can’t go in there now. It’s a crime scene.’

  ‘Am I allowed back in my own house?’

  ‘There’s a uniform in the doorway who will keep all unauthorized persons from the premises until it’s released.’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound like an official manual,’ Lyon said.

  ‘These guys seem to have a pretty good handle on things,’ Rocco replied. ‘They’ll wrap it up as quickly as possible and depart.’

  ‘What I’m beginning to wonder,’ Lyon said, ‘is whether I’m going to be required to go with them when they leave.’

  ‘That depends,’ Rocco replied

  Both men watched the medical examiner leave the RV and give the signal to the two ambulance attendants to remove the body. A forensics tech came out the front door, carefully carrying the sword cradled in his arms. He had fashioned a large evidence bag from several smaller ones until the weapon was completely encased in transparent acetate.

  Captain Norbert of the state police followed the medical examiner out of the RV. Both men examined the encased sword in the tech’s arms until the doctor gave an affirmative nod.

  ‘Looks like the sword was it,’ Rocco said softly.

  ‘If that blood on my clothing matches Morgan’s …’ Lyon left the remainder of the thought unspoken.

  Norbert, deep in thought, walked slowly toward the patio steps. He was followed by a corporal. He nodded at Rocco. ‘Chief Herbert.’

  ‘Captain Courageous, I presume,’ Rocco replied.

  ‘Cut the crap,’ the captain snapped.

  Norbert was a bantam-size man. He had barely qualified for the trooper height requirements, but, as the years passed, he compensated for this lack by increasing the girth of his upper body. He now appeared to be slightly top-heavy. His forward momentum had matured into a minor strut that seemed necessary to propel his pyknic physique forward.

  ‘Here they are, Captain.’ The second corporal hurried to the captain’s side and handed him the acetate bag containing Lyon’s bloody clothing. Norbert took it with a grimace and thrust it toward Lyon.

  ‘This your clothing, Wentworth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Norbert handed the evidence back to the corporal. ‘They tell me you were wandering around the woods carrying that sword.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The medical examiner informs me that it might be the murder weapon. Lab tests will or will not confirm that.’ The last remarks were directed directly at Rocco. ‘His prints are probably smeared all over the damn thing.’

  Lyon seemed oblivious to the remarks. ‘Since the death threats against Morgan began—’

  ‘That’s Warren Morgan, the victim,’ Rocco said.

  Norbert snapped his fingers and the first corporal began to take rapid notes.

  ‘Morgan,’ Lyon continued, ‘has recently been living in his recreational vehicle. It’s a radically modified Winnebago. It’s those structural changes that complicate matters.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I was never quite sure what kind of attack he expected,’ Lyon said. ‘He had modified it until the whole thing became a rolling fortress.’

  ‘There was a
bsolutely no way to get into that vehicle when Morgan had it buttoned up,’ Rocco said. ‘And on the night of his death it was shut up tighter than a Sherman tank. Theoretically there was no way anyone could get in without his permission. And since he always locked the door when he left, if Morgan came outside voluntarily and was killed in the open, there would be no way to get his body back inside.’

  ‘But you somehow managed to open it and find the body?’ Norbert said skeptically.

  ‘Morgan had installed a combination lock on the Winnebago’s side door,’ Rocco said. ‘He changed the number settings yesterday and, as far as we know, Lyon was the only person who had the combination to that lock. He’s the one who opened it for me.’

  ‘How cooperative of him,’ Norbert said. ‘Getting this down?’ he snapped at the corporal.

  ‘Yes, sir. Every word.’

  ‘Let’s proceed with the matter of the death threats. Exactly who was threatening Morgan?’

  Lyon looked out over the hills. ‘It’s a rather extensive list. I suppose you might start with two literature professors from Middleburg University, and include his half-brother and sister.’

  ‘Then there’s the Satan crew,’ Rocco said. ‘They call themselves the Brotherhood of Beelzebub. We understand from the broadsides they posted that a few dozen of them have sworn a sacred vow to kill Morgan.’

  ‘Satan worshipers?’ Norbert asked. ‘Do we know who or where they are?’

  ‘We haven’t been able to track them down yet,’ Rocco said. ‘Probably a bunch of disgruntled college dropouts. The broadsword fits rather nicely into their ritualistic beliefs. The chief mucky muck of the Brotherhood of Beelzebub, whatever they call him, recently placed a hundred-grand bounty on Morgan.’

  ‘The brother and sister were after the control of the trust fund,’ Lyon added. ‘But I don’t know how much money is involved there.’

  ‘Tell me about these Beelzebub characters. Why were they so upset?’ Norbert asked.

  ‘Their leader was displeased, and that’s putting it mildly, with a series of articles that Morgan wrote for New Forward magazine. That really set them off,’ Lyon said.

  ‘Some sort of pungent postmodern criticism, I suppose.’