by Linda Ladd
Somebody must’ve been smarter than him. Somebody who managed to kill him and pass it off pretty damn well as a suicide by hanging.
Mary Fern waited for the next question, the picture of cooperation now, but my cell phone rang and interrupted us. I pulled it out of my red crocodile bag, flipped it open, and read the caller ID. Buckeye Boyd at the coroner’s office.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Murphy, but I’ve been waiting for this call. I’m gonna have to take it.”
Standing up, she smoothed her skirt down over her hips and said, “I really need to get back downstairs and be there for my children. Some of them are taking this awfully hard. Could we finish this later?”
I wondered if she planned to be there for all the children or just her own. “Yes, of course. I think I’ve got all the information I need at the present time. I’ll call you and set up an appointment, if I think of anything else.”
“Thank you, Detective. I hope you understand me a little better now.”
Yeah, but so what?
“By the way, that’s a nice bag you’ve got. It’s Hermès, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Yes, Mary Fern was well versed in expensive designer bags. Why wasn’t I surprised? After she turned around and headed across the vast polished floor, I punched on. “Buck?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Hold on for a sec, will you?”
“Sure.”
I stood and waited until Mary Fern disappeared into the hallway and then I moved to a window overlooking the lawn. About thirty people were outside, milling around, carrying plates and cups or goblets. I didn’t see Black; he was probably still counseling the ditzy redhead with the crazy uncle.
“Okay, now I can talk. What’d you get on the girl?”
“I got something, but you probably won’t like it.”
“Well, that’s nothing new.”
“We ran tests on that hair out of the hairbrush and compared it to the one I took from the charred body.”
“Yeah?”
“It didn’t match. Your victim is not Li He.”
“You are kidding me.” Yes, I was stunned.
“That’s what I said, too. I don’t know who she is yet. There’s always the possibility that someone else used her hairbrush, but all the hairs in the brush were identical, which makes that a remote possibility. Did you verify the brush was hers?”
“Yes. It was inside her room, and her roommate, Dee, identified it as hers. Did you find anything else?”
“The vic’s Asian. She’s definitely young, but her DNA did not match anything in the database. I got a fingerprint, but it’s probably distorted by the burnt skin. You might be able to use it in AFIS. I’m working on the report right now. Want to come by or should I fax it to your office?”
“Fax it to Black’s office. I’m in Jeff City, but I’ll be back at Cedar Bend later tonight. I’ll go over it then. Damn, I thought we had her ID’d, and now we’re back to square one.”
“’Fraid so.”
“What about Mikey?”
“Death was caused by a ligature around the neck. Asphyxiation. He died from the hanging itself.”
“That all you have?”
“Yeah. But I’ve still got the girl from the gasoline explosion to do. I’m not gonna find much on her, I can tell you that in advance.”
“Okay.”
“Gotta go. We’re busier than hell down here. Good luck.”
I gave him Black’s fax number, and about the time he clicked off at the other end, I saw two kids I recognized immediately as members of the Murphy clan standing at the other end of the ballroom.
Walking toward them, I said, “Hello. Can I help you?” Or can you help me was a better way to put it.
“Yes ma’am,” the girl said. She looked down the hall behind her. She was nervous, and so was her brother. My gut was telling me big-time that whatever they had to say was going to be useful to the investigation. They hesitated some more, looked at each other uncertainly, but it was the girl who was the designated spokesperson. “I’m Mitzi Murphy, and this is my little brother, Robert Murphy.”
“I’m not either little,” said Robert.
Truth was, he was little, both in stature and in age. He looked about twelve. His sister looked about sixteen or seventeen. She ignored his comment. “Mom doesn’t want us to talk to you. She said it’d be too hard on us. She called your sheriff and told him that she didn’t want us kids interviewed about”—she hesitated, looked away—“about, you know, what happened to Mikey.”
Her eyes filled up. So did her brother’s. They had loved him, no doubt about it.
“I’m really sorry about your brother.”
They said nothing, so I said, “It’s a tough thing havin’ to go through something like this at your age.”
“Yeah,” said Mitzi.
“Maybe your mom’s just trying to protect you from the pain of talking about your brother.” I suggested it, but I didn’t mean it. Mom was as cold as Frosty the Snowman’s carrot.
“Maybe, but she’s awfully strong. She didn’t even cry when she told us about it.”
Lo and behold. Why wasn’t I surprised? I bet the woman had never shed a tear about anything, except maybe a broken fingernail. “Do you have something to tell me, Mitzi? Something important to the case?”
“I dunno. I just know I want to help you figure this out. Daddy said you’re a really good detective and that you’d crack this case wide open in no time flat.”
“You sure you want to do this?”
Both nodded. “All right, let’s sit down and talk a minute, okay?”
Once we were settled, I looked at the door to see if Guard Mom was coming for me. She wasn’t. “When was the last time you saw your brother?”
“The weekend before he, well, died.”
This conversation was very stressful for them, and getting worse. It was written all over their young faces. They hadn’t learned how to hide their emotions yet. Maybe the Ice Queen was right, maybe they shouldn’t be talking about it. “Where was this?”
“At his pizza place. We’d drive over to his pizza place whenever we could and hang out with him and his girlfriend. Mom didn’t like us being around him, though, so we had to sneak over without telling her. We didn’t really lie, we just didn’t tell her.”
“Why didn’t she like you being with him?” As if I didn’t know.
Robert spoke up then. “She said he’d made lots of bad decisions and caused the family embarrassment it didn’t need. But Mikey wasn’t that bad. He was always real good to us. Gave us free pizza and Cokes. Took us down to Bagnell Dam and let us play at the arcades. It was fun.”
“What was his girlfriend’s name?”
“Li He. She’s a Chinese girl, and real nice, too.”
My heart sang. Everything had pointed to Li He being our vic, but now she was not and I didn’t have to tell these two nervous, grieving children that she was dead, too. All I had to do was find her, which was suddenly high as a kite on my agenda.
Mitzi said, “Yeah, she’s really nice and pretty, too. Real little, you know, petite. She barely comes up to my chin. Mikey’s just crazy about her, or was, I mean. She’s gonna take this real hard when she finds out. Have you told her yet?”
I shook my head and took a right turn in subject. “I haven’t interviewed her yet, but I will. Did the two of them get along well together?”
“Oh, yeah, they’re in love. Li told me she was gonna marry him someday, but that he hadn’t come right out and asked her yet. She said that when he did, she would find a preacher real quick before he changed his mind. Yeah, we were real pleased because we weren’t sure Mikey’d ever get over Sharon.” Mitzi grinned slightly, but it faded away soon after.
Sharon Richmond, I presumed. “And who is Sharon?”
“That was his very first girlfriend. You know, his first true love. They dated for a long time. After they broke up, she went back to Tennessee and got together wi
th this other guy. I think she even got married to him.”
“What was Sharon’s last name?”
“Richmond.”
So far so good; all was checking out. “What was her new boyfriend’s name? Do you remember?”
She shook her head. “I just know Mikey wanted to kill himself when she left.” Stricken, she realized what she’d just said.
I changed the subject on a dime. “Li He goes to school at Missouri State, right?”
“Yes ma’am. She’s a sophomore over there.”
I said, “Where did the two of them meet?”
The kids looked at each other again, debating on whether or not to tell me, I sensed from their reticence. Mitzi said, “They were both patients at the same time up at the Oak Haven Clinic. They met there.”
“Why was Mikey admitted there?”
“He just wasn’t ever the same after Sharon left him. That, and sometimes, for no real reason even, he’d just get real down in the dumps and upset about his life and the way things were going without Sharon, and then he’d lay in bed and say he hated himself and everybody else and Sharon most of all. He was always fighting with Mom and Dad, and they were always picking on him and telling him he was a messed-up kid, especially Mom.”
Robert said, “Yeah, they told him he was a bad influence on the rest of us kids, but he wasn’t.”
“A bad influence in what way?”
Mitzi said, “They said he smoked pot and got himself in trouble all the time and we’d all start doing it, too, if we hung around him.”
“But everybody does that, sometimes,” said Robert. He blushed then and looked guilty as hell.
I said, “Well, it’s not a good idea to use drugs of any kind. It’ll screw up your life and land you in jail, or worse.”
“We don’t do it. Uh uh.”
I wondered about that, with their mother to live with, and all, then I said, “Well, I guess I don’t have to arrest you.”
They laughed, but it sounded real jittery. They weren’t quite sure how to take me. I looked at them, each in turn, trying to assess what was really going on here. They had gone to all this trouble for a reason but were reluctant to spill it out. I wanted to know what it was. I am Detective Straightforward so I said, “Okay, let’s hear it. What do you have to say to me that caused you to climb all those steps out there?”
More indecisive looks. I just waited. They wanted to spill the beans; they just had to drum up the nerve.
Mitzi finally stepped up to the plate. “Mikey said he thought somebody was out to get him.”
Okay, Lord amercy, now we’re talking. “When did he tell you this?”
“That last weekend when we were in a booth down there eating pizza.”
“What else did he say?”
“He said he felt like somebody was watching him and he’d seen somebody following him.”
“I guess he didn’t say who it was or why it was happening?”
“No, he just said he didn’t really see them, but he just sensed it. Li was with us, too, and she said she’d had the very same feeling. She got him a bunch of those blue and white bracelets to protect him.”
“Evil-eye bracelets, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what she called them. You know about those?”
I nodded. “So he was pretty upset about that, huh? Had he had a breakin at the pizza place, anything like that?”
“No, I don’t think so. But he was always saying that too many friends in his therapy group died, and he was afraid he was gonna be next.”
I said, “He has a lot of friends who died, patients at Oak Haven?”
“Yeah. See, it was a group for kids like that, you know, kids who were saying they felt like killing themselves. Some of them tried it, too. Mikey said the same thing sometimes, usually to my mom, that he wanted to die, stuff like that, but I don’t think he ever really would’ve done it.”
Robert said, “Yeah, once I started crying when he was saying that kinda stuff up in his room when he still lived at home, and he came into my room later and told me he’d never do it really, he was just talkin’ trash to Mom. He said not to worry, and then he promised me he wouldn’t. He put his hand on a Bible and promised to God, he wouldn’t.”
The boy welled up again, and this time tears ran down his cheeks. I put my hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Robert. Cry if it makes you feel better. This is a real bad thing that happened to your family.”
I turned to Mitzi. “Do you remember who his doctor was? Up at Oak Haven?”
“Yes, his name is Dr. Young. He’s our cousin. But Mikey saw a lot of those doctors out there.”
“Did Mikey ever talk specifically about Dr. Young? Say whether he was a good doctor, or not? Anything like that?”
“They were pretty good friends. Mikey said Marty always sat down and talked to him when he needed him to vent about Mom and Dad, and stuff. Li liked the doctors up there, too. She told me that they helped her understand how she felt.”
“Do you know why Li went there?”
“Mikey said that she threatened to commit suicide if she had to go back to China after her parents finished their stint in that acrobatics show over in Branson. She wanted to stay here with Mikey and get to be an American citizen. He said he’d help her and get her a lawyer, and all that.”
“Did your parents know that he was going to help her stay here?”
“Oh, no, they wouldn’t’ve liked that, either. They didn’t like Li, or Mikey going with her. They wanted him to marry somebody more suitable.”
“Li is suitable,” said Robert. “She’s real nice.”
It looked to me like Robert and Mitzi had turned out okay, despite their bizarro parents. When we finished up, they hurried back downstairs before their mother got wind of where they had been, and I just hoped they would get through this tragedy, because they were both hurting inside big-time and it wasn’t gonna go away. Believe me.
About two minutes after they fled, Black showed up in the doorway and looked around the ballroom.
“Not exactly shabby up here, is it?” he said.
I walked toward him. “Get tired of the redhead and her uncle?”
“Fairly rapidly. I was making sure you didn’t take off without me.”
“Now, would I do that?”
“You have, if I recall.”
“Only in emergencies.”
“I’m ready to get out of here. What about you?”
“More than ready. Did you pick up anything interesting downstairs?”
“No. Nobody mentioned Mikey much. They all talked about what good people the parents are and that they didn’t deserve this to happen to them. Mikey didn’t come up in any conversation I was privy to.”
“That seems to be the consensus. Wonder where all Mikey’s friends are?”
“My guess is they’re locked up at Oak Haven.”
I realized then that none of them had shown for the funeral. Not Doctors Young or Collins. Not Happy Pete, not the inmates. That was a little odd, but everything about this case was a little odd, if not a lot odd. We exited the mansion quickly, walked to my Explorer, and got the heck out of there. For once, I was going to be pleased to contact this girl’s parents, or maybe Bud would get that pleasure. This time we had good news. This time I got to tell them that their daughter was not dead and burned to a crispy crunch. Unfortunately, I also had to tell them I didn’t know where the hell she was, either.
Here Comes Trouble
Tee began to study his books and search the Internet more intensely. He was hungry for new methods of mind control and brainwashing. He was obsessed with it, and very pleased by all his success. As a beginner, he was doing quite well, really. He could make all his flunkies do just about anything he wanted, any time he wanted, and nobody was ever the wiser. Not even the trained psychiatrists running the place could figure out why everyone’s conditions were deteriorating. Most of his friends now had been prescribed mood-controlling drugs. That made Tee their only
real success case at the moment, and the doctors damn near doted on him and his progress. They weren’t exactly Einsteins, either, that was for sure.
One night around three in the morning, Tee hit the jackpot when he happened on a man in one of the psychiatric chat rooms he frequented. The man was from China and an expert in the field of indoctrination. They exchanged e-mails often, and Tee eventually earned his confidence by way of extreme regard and constant compliments. That’s when the guy e-mailed him copies of some of his experiments with extreme mind control techniques, many of which were not legally recognized. He was a Chinese scientist who worked with prisoners and dissidents inside Chinese prisons, the people that Yang Wei had told him about so long ago, and apparently had been given permission to do anything he pleased by the government. He didn’t share everything, said he was afraid of what would happen to him if he did, but Tee read all his writings and read his one published book, which was an obscure little pamphlet he’d written while in graduate school. It was enough to propel Tee into high gear.
He was hooked and intrigued and encouraged, and knew his life’s purpose. When he finally decided to let the doctors know he was okay, he left the clinic and his worshiping cohorts and went to the best university he could find with a good program of psychiatry. He reveled in all his courses, psychology and aberrant psychology, and then specialized in hypnotherapy. He obtained his degrees quickly, and found it easy to do with his high IQ. He worked hard to get all the degrees and diplomas he needed as quick as humanly possible, and all the while, he continued on his own top-secret experiments in mind control. He gradually got better and better at it, and then one day, he was offered a spot at the very clinic where he had gotten his start. How perfect could it get?
It was great. He loved it. He was looked upon as the authority of leading-edge theory in hypnotherapy and group therapy and was given access to nearly every patient’s file. Things couldn’t have been any better if he’d ordered them off a favorite things menu. Then a couple of his experiments went all wrong. His subjects began to question his methods, began to spy on him. Then one day everything went to hell when they stole some of his secret tapes. He had to get rid of them, and that wasn’t the hard part. He had already had them both under hypnosis and had implanted the necessary triggers. They both offed themselves, just like he’d planned, one by hanging, one inside a timed oven, which was a nice, unique touch that burned up all the evidence in one fell swoop. All was well after that, except for the fact that he never found the tapes they’d stolen and worse than that, the police became involved. That’s when he met up with one very slick female detective. He hated her intensely almost at once. She reminded him of Maggie the Witch, although she was a helluva lot better looking.