No Good Deed

by Lynn Hightower

  She wound up at a Dairy Mart that had an automatic teller machine inside, got cash and picked out Dunkin Donuts and a glass bottle of Tropicana orange juice to take back to the house. And some milk and Sugar Frosted Flakes. Broke a twenty – the twenty – so she could leave the kids lunch money.

  No matter how late she worked tonight she was going to have to hit the grocery store. She wondered, just for a moment, what other homicide cops did, then remembered that most of them had wives.

  Sonora had hit upon a sure-fire method of staying awake when she was driving and dead tired – budget review and a plan for paying her bills, including short-term projections involving Visa, MasterCard, and the water company, plus a long-term question as to how much it was going to cost to send Tim to college, if he changed his mind about his career direction from his current ‘do you want fries with that?’.

  It had rained again and the pavement was drying black to gray. The reflection of headlights on wet asphalt created a hardass glare. Her eyes were going. Menopause would be next.

  She leaned over the steering wheel and squinted. Reached for the caramel-iced donut that sat on a piece of tissue on top of her purse. Slammed on the brakes when the car in front of her changed into her lane and inexplicably slowed. The donut slid off the seat and landed next to the accelerator.

  She grimaced. Kentucky tags. These people should either stay home or take a course in maniacal driving, like everyone else in Ohio.

  Maybe you had to be born with the talent.

  Someone honked. Sonora shrugged, leaned down to grab the donut. She waved it in the air, pretending that any dirt and dog hairs would magically fall off.

  Sometimes you just had to have faith.

  Donna Delaney lived in a four-plex off Elsted – not what Sonora expected. She’d pictured a farm of some kind, not the faded yellow brick that had looked snazzy in the seventies but was tired now. Not exactly suburbia either, more like aspirations to.

  An asphalt drive ran up one side, to a backyard parking lot with covered carports and a sidewalk to a back door. Sonora left the Pathfinder next to a patrol car and a green Ford Escort. The crime scene van was at the foot of the driveway, blocking everyone in.

  Sonora locked her car, glanced over her shoulder. The sun was coming up, the sky going dirty mocha brown. The pavement was still soaked. It had rained more here.

  The screen door was propped open. Sonora went into the hallway, spotted muddy tread marks from the wheel of an ambulance gurney. Must have still been raining when the ambulance arrived. Sonora checked her watch. If Delaney had gone out on a stretcher, she’d gone out in shock. She wondered if the woman had been sedated. If she’d be too whacked to talk.

  It would take some time, getting used to the idea of waking up with a bandage instead of a finger.

  Sonora shook her head, but she was glad she had caught this case. Not the usual drug-burn bullshit, marital squabbles, sweeps picking up glassy-eyed hookers on loads. This was one perp she wanted to meet.

  If Crick was right and there was no such thing as coincidence, how did the assault on Donna Delaney connect to Joelle and the disappearing horse? There had to be a reason for the timing, a reason Donna Delaney has been attacked today, not yesterday or the day before.

  Cause and effect. They were going to have some fun on this one.

  A uniform stood outside the doorway – female, brown hairnet and a bun. Crisp and professional at 6.27 a.m. Sonora wiped caramel icing off her mouth, flashed the ID.

  The woman looked at the donut and grinned. Sonora felt old and traditional. What did the new cops eat? Bagels?

  ‘You here when the call came in?’ Sonora peered at the woman’s name tag. Yolanda Sikes. ‘Officer Sikes? Were you here?’

  The woman put her hands behind her back and took up the at-ease position you see in the military when soldiers aren’t actually at ease.

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘All that for no ma’am?’

  ‘No, sir?’

  ‘Let up, Officer Sikes. I’ve got teenagers of my very own if I want bullshit this time of morning.’

  Sonora headed through the door, which opened on to a square slate foyer, four by four, tiny, tracked with mud. The living room branched from the left. Old carpet that topsoil shade of beige favored by apartment complexes because it does not show dirt. Only this one was showing dirt – footprints. Sonora looked around the room. Three uniforms and two crime scene guys – Mickey and some guy she didn’t know too well. Donald Finch, maybe? Couldn’t remember names – a bad trait for a cop.

  The living room was messy, layered with dust that had taken months to accumulate. The couch was khaki and faded, but it looked deep and comfortable for all that. A navy blue and yellow quilt was tangled at the bottom, and pillows were propped at the opposite end as if someone had slept there. The coffee table was stacked with magazines – Equus, Arabian International, Michael Plumb Journal. There were catalogs from State Line and Wiese. A leather buckle and strap sat next to two cans of Budweiser that Mickey was putting into a plastic Baggie.

  Sonora peered at the couch, noticed droplets of blood freshly drying on the carpet and on the arm of the couch.

  ‘Not too messy, considering.’

  ‘Considering what?’ Mickey asked.

  She hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud. ‘Considering they cut off the finger.’

  ‘I saw it,’ one of the uniforms said. He was a short guy, hair gelled in place, a square sort of head and neck arrangement that reminded her of football players.

  ‘You saw the finger?’ Sonora asked.

  Mickey’s head swiveled. ‘Why didn’t you speak up, kid? We been going nuts, trying to find that thing.’

  ‘No, no, sir, I mean I saw her after. Saw her hand. It was all bandaged up, looked like a professional job. There wasn’t like a pool of blood or nothing.’

  ‘Droplets down the side of the couch.’ Mickey inclined his head, and Sonora went to look.

  The blood had already dried, but it looked fresh, just hours old. Not much, just speckles, on the khaki curtain that draped from the bottom of the couch to the floor.

  ‘Not enough blood,’ Sonora said.

  ‘Yeah, see, the guy taped it up,’ said the uniform.

  Mickey exchanged looks with Sonora, looked back at the uniform. ‘What guy?’

  The uniform frowned, hunched his shoulders together. ‘You know, the one that, umm, the one that done it. The perp.’

  ‘The perp bandaged it up?’ Sonora looked back down at the tiny spray of blood, thinking you wouldn’t even know it was there unless you looked for it.

  The uniform was nodding. ‘Sick, ain’t it?’

  Sonora folded her arms. ‘Let me get this straight. Guy breaks in, cuts off Delaney’s finger, bandages it up, and she sleeps through the whole thing?’

  Mickey opened his arms. ‘Hey, Detective, we don’t write the script, we just read the scene.’

  ‘Well, reread it, this isn’t possible.’

  Mickey pointed to the coffee table. ‘Lookit, Blair. Two beers, one half full, the other almost three-quarters.’

  ‘So there was another person.’

  ‘Yeah, plus she was drugged, don’t you think?’

  ‘What I think is the whole thing is weirder than shit.’

  ‘Sherlock Holmes used to say the same thing all the time.’ Mickey looked at the uniform. ‘Put that in your report, kid, weirder than shit. Maybe if you drink your milk every day you can grow up to be one of the greats like Blair here.’

  Sonora shook her head. ‘There’s not enough blood, Mickey.’

  ‘Don’t look so disappointed, they were neat.’

  ‘My kids should be so neat.’

  ‘Rules out teenagers.’

  The uniform opened his notebook. ‘Perpetrator is over twenty-one.’

  Sonora was beginning to like this kid. She stood up, touched the small of her back. ‘Hair on the pillow, Mickey.’

  ‘I’ll get to it, Mom.�
��

  Sonora looked over her shoulder at the square-necked uniform, caught his grin. ‘You first on the scene?’

  He nodded.

  ‘She say anything?’

  He referred to his notebook. ‘Sonofabitch, sonofabitch, sonofabitch.’

  ‘That it?’ Sonora asked.

  ‘Like a mantra.’

  ‘How’d the guy get in?’

  The uniform led her into the kitchen, pointed to a groundfloor window that was still open, six to eight inches. ‘Forced the window, climbed in.’

  He pointed to streaks of mud on the windowsill. Sonora looked out. Hedge, about waist high. A broken arm of foliage on the ground next to the grass.

  ‘You check out there for footprints?’

  ‘Got a toe smear,’ Mickey said. ‘My guess is a male in Adidas, size eleven and a half. Heavy. Look for a big guy.’

  ‘That narrows it down,’ Sonora said.

  A green Tombstone pizza box, ripped open and empty, sat on the small maple kitchen table over a stack of old mail, newspapers, a pile of towels and brushes one might use to groom a horse. A rusty hoofpick sat next to the pizza box, like it had been used to rip the edges. The pizza was still on the stove, more than half of it, sausage, the edges dried and hard. A stained, smeared pizza cutter was on the counter at the end of a trail of crumbs. Sonora bent over and squinted. Just pizza sauce and cheese.

  Be awkward to remove a finger with a pizza cutter anyway. Too much sawing. She wondered what the guy had used.

  Something scalpel-sharp.

  Sonora went past Mickey, who was humming under his breath, past the uniform, and into the bedroom. The bed was made up. She touched the edge and it gave – a water bed. Looked perfectly comfortable, so why had Delaney been sleeping on the couch? Drugged, Sonora remembered. So someone could cut off her finger.

  The bedroom was crowded – too much furniture, like a person who has moved from a large house to a small apartment. None of the furniture was in particularly good condition, though some of the pieces were antiques. There were boxes in one corner, the one on top open. Sonora looked in, saw crumpled and faded ribbons. Horse shows – greens, pinks, whites, the occasional blue and red. The box emitted the distinct odor of ancient cat urine.

  There were pictures on the wall, of Donna Delaney with children – always around horses. Were they students? Children of her own? Somehow Sonora did not see her in the mommy role, but a little blond boy showed up in enough pictures to make Sonora wonder if the woman had a son.

  The pictures looked old. Nothing since the last ten to fifteen years, judging from the clothes. The boy never seemed to grow older than eight, and he looked like Donna, particularly around the eyes.

  The furniture was crammed in any which way, as if Delaney were storing things and had no intention of staying. The desk was a huge mahogany roll-top with a hutch of tiny drawers hidden behind stacks of mail. Sonora sat in a wood chair that swiveled, the eighteenth-century precursor to the modern roll chair. The wood creaked. She scooted close to the desktop and began going through the mail.

  Bills. Lots of them. Utility companies threatening cut-off at the barn address. Feed stores – Southern States closing her account. Tax liens from the state of Ohio.

  Sonora felt a twinge. Some of this looked like her own stack at home.

  She picked up an envelope with a clear Plasticene window. Not a bill, a bill of sale. Donna Delaney had paid two thousand eighty-seven dollars for a saddle made by somebody named Kieffer. German?

  Cash.

  Sonora frowned at the stack of bills. A couple of the envelopes looked like they were from collection agencies.

  Where had Delaney gotten that much cash? Why would she spend two thousand on a saddle if she owed so much? Was she expecting an influx of money? Would she make a horse disappear for the insurance money as in the horse Joelle had been riding? Had the horse been insured?

  But the horse, supposedly, had been an old brood mare, not worth much, used by the caretaker’s kids as a trail horse.

  From the living room, Sonora could hear Mickey singing a song she remembered from when the kids watched Sesame Street, and every finger had a name.

  ‘Where is Pointer? Where is Pointer?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sam met Sonora in the waiting room of Jewish Hospital with a cup of coffee. She handed it back to him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s cold, Sam.’

  ‘It wasn’t cold forty minutes ago, which is when you were supposed to meet me.’

  ‘I went to Delaney’s place on the way.’

  He leaned forward, drinking from her cup. ‘What was it like?’

  ‘Dump.’

  ‘I’m not asking for the Better Homes And Gardens report.’

  ‘Forced entry through the kitchen window. A few specks of blood on the couch. Toe smear in the mud from a ‘big guy’ and that’s official, from Mickey. A lot of mud on the carpet but most of that was from the cops and the ambulance crew.’

  ‘She say anything?’

  ‘Sonofabitch, sonofabitch, sonofabitch.’

  Sam scratched his cheek. ‘Doctor says she’s sedated and in shock and he wants her vitals to stabilize before we talk to her.’

  ‘Who’s the doctor? Not Maiden, I hope.’

  ‘No, some new guy I don’t know. Gillane.’

  ‘What kind of a name is that?’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘After the doctor, Sam. Let’s get on with this.’

  Sonora headed for the desk, looked around for a familiar face. Why couldn’t her bud Gracie be on duty? If she had to be working, so should everyone else.

  The woman behind the desk wore blue polyester, shapeless, comfortable, and she did not look up from the computer.

  Sonora flashed her ID. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘One minute.’

  ‘I don’t have one minute.’ Sonora headed for the ER, pushed through the swing doors. She heard voices, Sam’s mumble. Who was he talking to now? The man could make friends with anyone, anywhere.

  She started looking into cubicles, twitching white curtains, trying not to rattle the plastic border at the top, which was impossible. Got a glimpse of a woman, highly pregnant. God, that made her stomach hurt. One who looked like a heart attack, a lot of doctors. She kept moving.

  Found Donna Delaney sitting up on a metal table that was likely passed off as a bed, with a mattress not much thicker than a thumb. All for three hundred dollars a day. Delaney was huddled in a backless blue print gown, looking dopey and bewildered. Waiting to be admitted? Waiting to be released? Waiting.

  Sonora pushed the curtain gently and Donna Delaney gasped and looked up.

  Whatever they’d used to sedate her wasn’t working too well.

  She looked bad. Chalk white. Sonora had not realized the woman was sun-freckled, but the brown marks stood out like leopard spots against her pallor.

  Her hair was still tied back, but it looked slept on and tangled. An IV line was draped across her bruised wrist, connecting her to a metal pole and a plastic bag that was running on empty. Her legs were thin and well muscled. Covered with goose bumps.

  Sonora moved in closely, quiet and soft. ‘Ms Delaney?’

  The woman stared, eyes dark-shadowed like a corpse’s. Her pupils were huge. Her hand was bandaged hugely, but the blood-flecked gauze did not disguise the space between her fingers.

  ‘Ms Delaney, I’m Detective Blair, we met yesterday afternoon. Do you remember meeting me?’

  Delaney stared. Shivered. ‘Have you found her?’

  The voice was flat, hard.

  ‘Joelle’s still missing.’

  ‘The horse. Have you found the bloody horse?’

  ‘No.’ Sonora wondered again if the horse was insured – for a large sum of money. Maybe she was in foal to a valuable stallion. Sonora was out of her area here.

  Delaney put her head in her hands, jarred the bandage. Pulled her hands away and stared at the gap between
her fingers.

  ‘Ms Delaney, I’d like to ask you some questions.’

  The woman’s teeth were chattering. ‘You’ve got to find her.’

  Sonora had the distinct feeling they were still talking about the horse. ‘You want a blanket, Donna? Are you cold?’ Sonora knew her way around enough to find the linen closet. She could be there and back in minutes.

  ‘Two blankets.’

  Sonora nodded, felt the first stir of rapport. She might actually get something out of this woman.

  ‘Two blankets,’ she said. In exchange for some answers.

  The linen closet had just been filled – the blankets were fresh out of the dryer, still warm. Sonora bundled two up, touched a corner to her cheek. They ought to use fabric softener. She headed back to Delaney’s floor, moving quickly. Hoping the woman had not been admitted, or wheeled away for testing.

  The 7 a.m. shift were still doing their changeover, charting, chatting, in their own bubble world. Sonora scooted past the desk without being noticed, turned a corner, saw Sam standing outside Donna Delaney’s white-curtained cubicle, facing a man who reminded Sonora of an undertaker she’d known when she was a child.

  He had the self-important air of a newly minted MD, and he gave Sonora a glance over one shoulder, then turned to Sam.

  Sonora scooted into the cubicle with the bundle of blankets, half her attention on the medic, pontificating in the hallway.

  Something about continuous single-lock sutures.

  Sonora handed the blankets to Delaney, who took them with a surly ingratitude that made it easier for Sonora to look objectively at the bandaged hand.

  From the hallway came the sound of boot heels and a shout for a nurse. The curtains were pushed to one side, metal rings scraping. Delaney raised her head, moving slowly, groggy. But the light in her eyes was intense. Edgy, for a woman who was heavily sedated.

  The man who stood and looked at her had to be a doctor, if you discounted the huge hiking boots and Levi’s. There were clues. A stethoscope around his neck, the pager on the belt, the Rolex on his wrist.

  ‘You’re tall,’ Sonora said, not thinking. He’d be six three in his thick white socks.

  ‘You’re not.’

  Sonora showed her ID. ‘I’m waiting for Dr Gillane.’