by Linda Ladd
“Not much. Everybody who worked in the shops along here knew who Murphy was, but nobody really associated with him, not socially anyway. Thought he was a nice weirdo who made awesome pizza, especially the one called Mikey’s Special.”
Oh, yes, yes, there was a cruel joke in there somewhere, but none of us wanted any part of it. “Same here. Sarah at Stonecrest Book and Toy knew he dated some Asians but nobody by name. Sounds like he had a long list of honeys.”
“So what now?”
“Let’s go back in and take another look around. See if Buck’s found anything relevant.”
The three of us entered and not one of us acknowledged the stench of burned human flesh still hanging malodorously in the air. Forensics were too busy dusting for prints and taking videos and crime photos to notice us. I was glad to see the victim’s body was long gone, already bagged and delivered into the ME’s van. That was one autopsy I wasn’t looking forward to, not that I ever looked forward to them.
A minute later, Buck caught sight of us and immediately pointed a forefinger up at the ceiling just behind us. We all turned and followed his direction. “Vicky discovered a well-hidden security camera when she was filming in here. You might want to get back upstairs and see if you can find some monitors. There aren’t any down here. We’ve already looked. If you’re lucky, you just might have yourselves a live action account of that poor girl’s murder.”
Now that was good news, to be sure. I peered up in the corner he’d indicated, but didn’t see anything. It was well hidden, all right. Why would anyone hide the security camera focused in on a restaurant’s kitchen? Afraid the cooks would steal the pizza dough? I said to Bud, “Did you see any monitors when we were upstairs?”
Bud said, “Hell no, but I wasn’t looking for them, either.”
Black spoke up and joined the fun. “He’s probably got them hidden in some cabinet or closet. I do that in some of my buildings.”
I said, “Well, it looks like we might’ve gotten a break, after all, fellas.”
We wasted no time hightailing it back upstairs and found that the security monitors were well hidden, all right. It took about ten minutes for us to find them. Turned out there was a hidden room behind the giant midnight-blue painted silk hanging in the dining room, the one I’d admired so much but never considered that it might be keeping secrets. It concealed a doorway that led into a large walk-in closet, about seven feet by nine feet, and where, not only did we find the camera focusing on the kitchen island and ovens, but five more cameras, all top-notch quality and functioning just fine.
Camera one focused on the cash register at the end of the mahogany bar, number two showed the inside of the stairwell from above, and all the others were outside the building, two focused on the front door and front parking lot, two more on the rear door and alley behind the building. Since Bud and I didn’t notice a single one of them, all must be very cleverly hidden. Something that I thought sort of defeated the purpose, you know, like being a deterrent for criminals loitering about outside waiting for Mikey to come outside with the day’s cash intake, and all, but Mikey must’ve had his reasons.
Bud said, “Hallelujah, God is good. We’re gonna get this guy in spades.”
I said, “Only bad thing is we’ve got to watch this girl get put into that oven.” We all looked at each other in turn, none of us relishing that idea. In fact, I was looking forward to that like a hole in my head.
Here Comes Trouble
Everyone believed his sob story, of course; he was really that good. They were just so glad he’d been able to save poor little Destiny from being murdered by her own mother. People were just so damn gullible, especially his own relatives. But he laid it on pretty thick for them, too. Lots of pretend throwing up in the bathroom, weeping hysterically, and even some keening, which he threw in after he saw an Arab funeral where all the black-clad women were making high-pitched sounds that really got on a person’s nerves after about two minutes.
Also, he locked himself in his room periodically and refused to let his dad come in and check on him. He refused to go to the funeral, sure not wanting to see how bruised and cut up his mom looked after getting all busted up on the rocks. Sometimes in the weeks that followed, he pretended to get up in the night and call out his mom’s name down the hall, really loud so his dad would hear and believe he was having nightmares and grieving. That was pretty upsetting to the younger kids, but it pretty well convinced his dad that he was suffering and had gone slightly cuckoo after having to watch his own mom commit suicide and try to kill her own baby. The more he’d thought about it afterward, the more he decided that his mom probably would have done it herself, sooner or later, if he hadn’t helped her along with it first. She really did suffer that postpartum depression thing and was unhappy down deep inside, being alive and all, without Lyla around anymore. Mom was better off and so was he. The whole family was, really.
At present, as an extra touch, he had landed himself in the hospital. Cleverly, he had decided to do a mock slitting of the wrists in a fake suicide attempt, just to concrete everybody’s belief that he was an unwilling victim that had to be the one to watch his mom and Lyla die. And in a way, that’s exactly what he was. But he’d been smart about it. He’d researched on the Internet on how to make the cuts, and then he made sure both were superficial and shallow and totally missed any veins or arteries. Didn’t hurt much, but would it ever pay dividends with his dad. Did he ever love the Internet.
At the moment, he was lying in bed in his own private room in the psych ward of the local hospital. Leaning back against the pillows, he placed his hands behind his head and smiled. This last stunt had really jolted his dad, nearly put him over the edge. Now he was really freaked out big-time and didn’t know what to do. His dad was depressed himself, anyway, and very concerned about his son doing himself in, while everyone was still grieving over his mom.
On top of that, his dad was all stressed out because he had to take care of a newborn infant, too, and had finally given up on that one and turned Destiny over to a sister-in-law till things settled down at home. All the other kids had totally taken a backseat to the son and Destiny since the Grand Canyon incident, and that’s exactly the way he liked it. Now he was riding high. His dad would do just about anything he wanted, anything at all. The whole suicide idea had been brilliant. He could coast on it for years, probably. People were just so, so stupid.
And the nurses here, whoa, they were hot, a couple of them, anyway. Especially one with huge boobs and long dark red hair that she wore back in a bun. He was getting to the age now where he noticed the way the nurses’ breasts looked pressed up against their pastel scrubs, and when women wore skirts how their legs disappeared up underneath them to their female private places. They all felt so sorry for him, too. Coddled him and hugged themselves against him when he cried. It was freakin’ perfect.
When he heard his dad’s voice out in the hallway, he took off his iPod and stuffed it under the pillow. He put on his morose act, oh, so sad and pitiful. The one that usually made his dad end up crying, too. But it served its purpose. He wanted attention and sympathy, and he was getting plenty of it.
His dad had stopped just outside the door to speak with one of the doctors. He looked terrible. Dark circles under his eyes, skin white and sallow, new lines all over his face that hadn’t been there before, but the son decided to make him feel better, so when his dad came into his room, he said, “Hi Dad. I’m sure glad to see you. I miss being with you and the other kids.”
“How’re you feeling, son?”
“Okay, I guess, a little better.”
Taking hold of a chair, his dad dragged it up close beside the bed. He reached out and took hold of his son’s hand. He touched the clean white bandages on his right wrist with a gentle finger, and then he said, “I’m so worried about you. God help me, I can’t believe you actually tried…to hurt yourself like this. You’ve got to remember that you have so much to live for. You’re speci
al, son. You’ve got such a bright future. You’ve got to remember that.”
The son kept his voice low, made sure it sounded tortured. “I just keep seeing Mom…seeing her fall like that…” He stopped, as if overcome, and made himself shiver. When his dad squeezed his fingers, he said, “I couldn’t stop her, Dad. I tried to, but I couldn’t.”
“Of course, you did, son. Everybody knows that. And we all know you saved Destiny. Don’t blame yourself for what Mom did. I shouldn’t have gone on and left you and Mom behind. Oh, God, and you had to find poor little Lyla, too. You saved the baby, and we’re all so grateful you did. Thank God for that.”
“Yeah. Destiny would be dead, too, if I hadn’t waited there with Mom.”
They both looked down, and the son made himself appear very sad, but he was smart and perceptive, and he sensed his dad was hesitating. Something else was going on here, something important. He waited, wondering what it possibly could be.
Finally, his dad cleared his throat and said very softly, “I’ve been talking to your doctors, son.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, they’re good, you know. They say you need to get some therapy to help you deal with all you’ve been through. They say you have to come to terms with your grief and loss and what you tried to do to yourself.”
The son had been expecting this, so he nodded. “Okay. It’s just going to take me some time to get used to Mom not being around. I miss her so much. I miss talking to her.” He forced up some tears and made a show of wiping them off with the hem of the crisp white hospital sheet.
“Don’t cry, son. There’s this clinic for kids your age. Oak Haven. The doctors want to send you there for a while so you can talk all this through with professionals. They say it’ll get your life back on track.”
Uh oh, he wasn’t expecting to have to go to a loony bin. “For how long?”
“They don’t know. Not long, I promise. I couldn’t deal with that, but I think this’s a good thing, that it’ll help you, so I’m giving permission. They say it’s in your best interest, and that’s all I care about. Home isn’t a good place for you to come back to right now, not with your brothers and sisters so torn up about Mom.”
“But I want to come home, Dad.”
“I know, but I have to listen to the doctors. They know what they’re talking about. It’s temporary, I promise. This place is a residential clinic, and you can take classes there so you can graduate on time. They’ll help you cope with all you’ve been through.”
Tears were running down his dad’s cheeks again, and he wished the guy would get some guts and pull it together. He was a man, for Christ’s sake. Step up to the plate. Lots of guys had lost a wife and a daughter. His dad looked really old now, too, wasn’t shaving every day anymore, and his whiskers were turning white. In fact, he looked about fifteen minutes from a massive stroke.
“Okay, Dad, if you want me to go there, I will. Don’t worry about me. You’ve got enough to worry about.”
Relief flooded his dad’s face, man, he was so easy to read, but he couldn’t quite muster up any kind of smile. He said, “Oak Haven’s got a nice gym and tennis courts and a swimming pool, all the amenities. You’ll like that, I bet, and the kids are all around your age.”
“That sounds good.”
Actually, it really did; it sure beat the hell out of hanging around his own house with all the whiny kids going nuts about not having a mom to tuck them in at night. Maybe there would be some hot girls there, even hotter than that redheaded nurse who liked to comfort him. He wanted to have sex with a girl. He hadn’t done that yet; he’d been biding his time, but now he was going to find a way to do it, and this psycho clinic sounded like a place that could serve him up a smorgasbord of chicks to hook up with.
His dad said, “Oak Haven’s close to home, so we can come out and see you a lot.”
“When do I go?”
“As soon as you heal up some and get out of here. I’ll drive you out there myself.” He reached over and laid his hand on top of his son’s. “I’m going to miss you, but this is for the best. I’m convinced of it.”
It sure was. Maybe the son could have some laughs for a change. Nobody in his family ever wanted to do anything fun since his mom had made him kill her.
FIVE
“Okay, I’ve got the tapes rewound and ready to go,” said Bud.
I looked at him and said, “This is not gonna be fun.”
Black said nothing, just leaned against the wall behind Bud’s swivel chair. He knew how to keep out of the way. Or maybe he was standing there so he could close his eyes and not watch that poor girl get cooked to a crisp. Maybe that’s what I should do, too. Shut my eyes. Wish I could.
I said, “Let’s go with the kitchen camera first. Start it this morning, early, and fast-forward until you hit something.”
Bud had done this before, many times, and he hit a red button on the console, and presto, we were fast-forwarding through a day in the life of a closed pizza parlor. The tape had no sound, and none of us said a word while we watched the hours fly by. No relevant action occurred at all until around noon.
Bud said, “There she is.”
He punched another button and the film slowed to normal speed.
I watched the girl walk into camera view near the base of the steps. I couldn’t tell where she had come from, probably from upstairs but I couldn’t be sure. She was very small, couldn’t be much over five foot, if not less than that. Stark naked and barefoot, her raven-colored hair was very long, waist-length, and covered her bare breasts. She took a few steps toward the center island, then stopped and stared straight ahead. It appeared she was not looking at anything in particular, just staring at nothing. Then she started to move again, like a sleepwalker, and stood next to the sink. We could not see her face at all clearly at this point—no way a vidcap would be used for ID—but she looked like she was probably of Asian extraction. We watched her open a cabinet over the sink and take out a clear glass tumbler. All her motions were slow and deliberate.
“She’s definitely drugged up.” That was Black. He was right.
The girl filled the glass with tap water, then she opened her left palm, revealing a handful of white—maybe pills. She tossed them into her mouth all at once, drank some water, and swallowed them down with a backward jerk of her head. Very carefully, she placed the glass in the top rack of the dishwasher, shut it, and then stood a few minutes staring at the brick wall in front of her. She kept both palms pressed flat against the countertop.
I said, “We need to make sure Buck dusts that drinking glass. And what’s she doing that for? See how she’s pressing down with her hands?”
Bud shrugged then said, “Think she’s waiting for somebody?”
“Nude?”
Bud shrugged again. Black stayed quiet but leaned forward and closely watched the monitor.
After a good five minutes of apparent daydreaming, the girl seemed to come alive. She moved suddenly, took a few steps to her right, and picked up a cell phone off the black granite counter as if she’d heard it ring. She put it to her ear and listened a moment but didn’t say anything. A moment later, she turned around and faced the big wall oven. I swallowed hard, knowing full well what was coming next. She pulled down the door, removed a heavy cooking rack, and placed it on the counter where I’d seen it, and then boosted herself agilely into its depths and out of sight, still holding the cell phone in her hand.
Bud said, “Oh, God, is she gonna do it to herself?”
Black and I didn’t answer, just watched with horrified eyes. And that was exactly what our victim did. She folded her body up into that impossible position in which we’d found her, then she pulled the door closed behind her.
Black said, “She couldn’t do that in a hot oven; no matter how drugged up she was. That oven’s not on yet. See, there’s no light. It’s cold, and she didn’t turn it on before she got inside.”
Bud shook his head. “Why the hell would she just
climb in there like that?”
I said, “Maybe she’s the suicide. Maybe she did herself, then Mikey came in and found her and went crazy and hung himself on the bridge out of despair.”
No one answered. So we waited, watching for her to get out or turn it on, but nothing happened. Nobody showed up, and the girl just lay inside the cold oven, unmoving as far as we could tell, maybe even asleep.
“Fast-forward it.” I didn’t really want to watch the rest of this gruesome crime, but we had to, so I grit my teeth and kept my gaze fastened hard on the monitor.
The film continued to run, but nobody else showed up in the kitchen. Then I realized with some shock what was going on. “Wait, stop it there, Bud.”
Bud pressed the button, and Black said, “I see it now, too. Look, now the oven light’s on. It’s a timer. Somebody set a timer to come on after she got inside.”
I said, “Of course, it was going off when we got here. Rewind, and see when it came on.”
We found the exact frame when the light suddenly blinked on, and the digital time read 1:30 P.M.
My stomach took a tidal wave, forward roll, and I felt nauseous. “My God, how could she stay in there when the heat kicked on?”
Black said, “She either drugged herself into a deep enough sleep not to be awakened or she took a lethal dose of those pills and was dead before the burners lit up.”
“God, I hope to hell she was dead first,” said Bud.
I said, “Buckeye can tell us cause of death. Run it some more, Bud. Let’s see if anybody else shows up in the kitchen.”
Silent now, we watched the film flicker by until Bud and I showed up on the screen, checking out the kitchen, guns drawn. I watched Bud pull open that door, and then both of us backed away, the expressions on our faces not easy to take. We got out of the kitchen pretty damn fast after that, and I wanted to escape this place again. This was so sickening and terrible; it was hard to get my mind around it. I was still having trouble believing it could have actually happened. I’d never in my life heard of anything like this, and I had heard some pretty gruesome things, I can tell you.