No Good Deed

by Lynn Hightower

  She was listening, listening hard. Not to her colleagues. Not to the wind.

  To the killer.

  This was where he would talk to her. This was his or her strongest voice, the big statement, the death scene.

  Sonora moved in closer, hands working to slide into the latex gloves. She moved sideways to the manure pile, still steaming from the center where Mickey’s crew had foraged.

  Joelle Chauncey had been buried more than sixteen inches deep, wrapped in a thin mud-stained emerald-green blanket that had been tucked around her arms the way a mother would bundle an infant. Her face was covered, the top of her head visible, a crown of thick brunette hair crusted with dried black blood.

  Sonora nodded at Mickey, flipped back the edge of blanket that loosely covered the face.

  There was dirt in the hair, cold, hard manure, and Joelle’s eyes were open and soiled. The sun on her face did not warm the blue-white cast of her skin. The right pupil was a huge black pool, like a bull’s-eye, the left constricted to a tight pinpoint. Brain hemorrhage, blunt trauma. But in that left eye, the blood vessels were thick, ropy and red.

  Sonora knelt beside the body. For an unexpected moment she could not seem to catch her breath, and she was enveloped in a panicky asthma-like sensation that promised her that no matter how much oxygen she sucked in, her lungs would ache and strain, unsatisfied.

  ‘Sonora?’

  She looked up, saw Sam. He crouched on Joelle Chauncey’s right side and they huddled together over the body.

  Sonora felt sweat film the back of her neck, and then she was okay.

  ‘Look at her eyes, Sam. Look at those blood vessels.’

  ‘Petechial hemorrhaging. She suffocated.’

  Sonora shone her tiny penlight into the child’s nostrils, looking for dirt and fiber. Touched the mannequin-like wrist, testing the stiffness, thinking about time of death. Had they all gone home while Joelle was breathing her last?

  She studied the face, remarkably clean under the circumstances, no blood on the forehead, one smudge of dirt on the left cheek. The arms were folded neatly across the chest.

  ‘Placement,’ Sam said.

  ‘Yeah. Very deliberate. You think she was alive when this sonofabitch buried her?’

  ‘Let’s wait for the autopsy. Maybe we’re wrong.’

  ‘Come on, Sam, don’t duck out on me. You said it yourself. He tucked her in like a baby, while she was still alive, and she suffocated in the middle of a manure pile. How long did it take for her to die, do you think?’

  ‘She wasn’t conscious, Sonora, not with that kind of head injury.’

  Sonora thought of herself, soaking in a hot tub of bubbles, listening to Janis Joplin, while Joelle Chauncey, bundled in the emerald-green blanket, waited for someone to come and help.

  Sonora was sitting sideways in the car with the door open, filling out forms, trying not to watch while Mickey and an assistant she did not recognize tucked Joelle into the heavy black plastic body-bag. She heard the metallic rasp of the coarse zipper, winced when it snagged on God knew what, and sighed when it shut, sealing Joelle Chauncey’s young blue-white face away.

  Sonora caught her breath, hit by a spasm of claustrophobia that made her chest go tight.

  She watched Mickey take the top end of the bundle, heaving Joelle’s body gently on to a stretcher. He covered the bag with a white sheet, then strapped the bundle, working the buckles with the deft precision of someone going about a familiar task. He always covered the young ones personally and carefully.

  The first raindrops fell as the stretcher was loaded into the back of the coroner’s van.

  Mickey turned to supervise the techs who were gathering the layers of dirt and manure that rested under the body. They moved quickly, trying to beat the weather.

  A hand on her arm. ‘Sonora?’ Sam leaned toward her, left arm braced on the roof of the Taurus.

  Sonora put her chin on her elbow. She watched the strobe lights arc across Sam’s face. He looked like he always did, boyish but not youthful, lines of experience, lines of trauma, giving his face a plane of character that was as attractive as it was comforting. She knew better than to ask how he was holding up. Deep down inside, he was a much nicer person than she was. She used to think it made him more vulnerable, but it seemed instead to lend him strength.

  ‘It’ll be easier on the dad if we just show him the picture.’

  ‘Why would we want to be easy on him?’ Sonora said.

  ‘You think the father did this?’

  ‘I don’t know. Placement says it was someone who cared about her. Covered her up, set her arms like they did.’

  ‘You think the dad took the horse? Cut off Donna Delaney’s finger?’ Sam shook his head. ‘If you want to kill your kid there are easier ways. And I’m sorry, Sonora, that guy doesn’t have the balls for something like this.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘Let’s just take him the Polaroid. We haul him down to the morgue and there’ll be a big scene.’

  ‘He’ll still have to go down there. He’ll want to. They always want to go see for themselves.’

  ‘He can come down to the morgue later, with a friend, when he’s got himself together. For now, let’s just show him the shot, tell him as soft as we can, then get the hell out. This guy isn’t exactly a rock, you know? Do it now, he may puke or pass out.’

  ‘That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The reaction, Sam. I want to see it. Don’t you?’

  He rolled his eyes, went around the back of the car and slid behind the wheel. Sonora closed her door against the rain, the mud, the arcing lights.

  Sam started the engine, cranked it a couple of times though it had already caught. ‘Let’s just play it by ear, okay, Sonora? Be nice. Taking him through that whole morgue thing … the guy’s daughter just got murdered. Let’s go easy.’

  ‘It would be a mistake, Sam, to confuse me with somebody nice.’

  ‘You always say that.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sam turned down the gravel drive to End Point Farm, serpentining the Taurus to avoid the worst of the rain-filled potholes. Sonora looked out the window. Even with the investigation in the infant, raw and frantic state, the farm gave her that peculiar sensation of home-coming that she often got from crime scenes, so strongly did they permeate the landscape of her mind.

  The small gravel lot in front of the barn was overflowing – white vans, Pintos and Subarus. A baby Mazda pickup, teal green, sideways in the grass.

  The press had arrived ahead of them.

  Sonora ripped off her seat belt, listening to the snort and scream of horses who called to each other, restless in all the commotion.

  ‘Wait till I park,’ Sam said.

  ‘Just pull it off the road and come on. The van isn’t even at the coroner’s yet. How’d word get out so fast?’

  ‘That we found her? What makes you think it did? They’re just here over the vanishing. Girl and horse, gone like that.’ He snapped a finger, put the car in park. Patted his pocket. ‘You got the Polaroid?’

  ‘I want to do the morgue thing.’

  ‘We’re not doing the morgue.’

  Dixon Chauncey was standing on the steps of his mobile home, surrounded by a horseshoe of reporters with microphones that looked like thick, fur-covered bananas, camera operators standing stoically in the rain. The camera guys were the same as always, never a word, no animation crossing their face.

  Chauncey was spelling his name, chest thrust out, till he caught sight of Sonora and Sam. He looked away, unwilling to meet their gaze. He seemed to shrink, head bobbing, like a hermit crab scuttling for the shell. His eyes were wide, and he gave Sonora a fleeting deer-in-the-headlights look before his attention was caught by Wyndham from Channel 10.

  ‘Ma’am?’ he asked, ducking his head. ‘No, ma’am. I just would like whoever took my little girl to please just bring her back.’

  ‘Shades of Susan Smith?’ Sonora muttered to Sam.<
br />
  ‘Hush, Sonora. He didn’t do this.’

  ‘Mr Chauncey, have the police found any leads to your daughter’s disappearance, other than the blood-soaked riding boot?’

  ‘Uh, no, ma’am. Not so far as I know.’

  ‘Do you think your daughter is still alive?’

  His eyes went to Sonora and Sam. A ripple of interest moved through the knot of newspersons. They were recognized.

  Tracy Vandemeer from Channel 81 went straight to Sonora. ‘Specialist Blair, from Homicide, is here on the scene. Detective Blair, have you found any new leads in this case?’

  Sam took the opportunity to race up the staircase, leaving Sonora to draw the fire. She wanted to be the one to race up the stairs, but it was too late, she was surrounded. Sam had Chauncey’s elbow – the man seemed reluctant to give up his place on the porch, and he stumbled going into the house, causing a flurry of camera shots. Sonora was too short to see what happened next, but she heard a door open and close. They had left her behind.

  A guy she didn’t recognize, from Channel 26, thrust a microphone in her face.

  ‘My superior officer, Sergeant Crick, may have a statement later today. I have no comment at this time.’ She looked at Brian Fiore from Three, waiting to catch his eye. Gave him what she hoped was a significant look. If she caught him in private she would give him some copy. It was payback time, but she’d have to talk to Chauncey first.

  ‘But you are working the Joelle Chauncey disappearance?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sonora said.

  ‘Have you found the horse?’

  ‘Have you found the girl?’

  ‘Have you found the other boot?’

  They were going through the motions, wasting her time and theirs. They knew she could not make a statement unless it was cleared through the department, but they were compelled to push.

  Sonora put her head down, folded her arms, and headed up the steps till she could hang on to the rail and look down. One of the cameramen had followed her up. Stoically, of course, but he’d followed.

  She was very aware of the dirt stains on the knees of her khakis, the sleeves of her shirt. Her hair, frizzing in the rain, blowing every which way. Everything about her screamed body, we found the body, but no one seemed to pick up on the evidence.

  Why did they never catch her on a good hair day?

  ‘We are pursuing more leads, yes to that question.’ Sonora held up a hand. ‘It would be inappropriate for me to comment further. Any enquiries should be directed toward Sergeant Crick of the Cincinnati Police Division.’

  ‘Detective?’

  She turned her back and went into the house, heard someone commenting on her mud-stained knees. Likely there would be a close-up on the six o’clock news. She hoped they would call it mud, and not something worse.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Sonora went through the front door with something more like speed than decorum. Sam and Chauncey were seated on the black leather couches, both of them perched on the very edge. One slip and they’d be on the floor, next to the children, cross-legged in front of the couch, working a book of puzzles and mazes in pencil. The little girls were much too quiet. They sat side by side and watched with wide eyes.

  ‘See? The penguin is over here.’ Mary Claire spoke in a whisper and Kippie nodded, but watched the room.

  Mary Claire looked up at Sonora. ‘We didn’t go to school today.’

  She wore bluejeans and a long-sleeved blue shirt, and her hair was not combed. Kippie, however, was neatly turned out in a pink-and-yellow jumper, and her hair had been put back in inexpert fashion with two red barrettes. Sonora guessed that Mary Claire was taking charge of her sister. Which made her wonder how Chauncey was holding up.

  Not well, she decided.

  Chauncey sat limply, shoulders slumped, large hands hanging loosely between his legs. She took a step backward to lock the door and he looked up. For a minute his eyes were alive with a light and a focus that Sonora found hard to meet. She studied his hands, looking for scratches, wounds. Nothing but calluses that she could see.

  Sonora tried to catch Sam’s eye. Had he delivered the news? Surely not, with the children in the room.

  ‘Guess who’s been calling?’ Sam said.

  Sonora sat on the footstool in front of the wide easy chair that she was sure would be the room favorite. It seemed a bit more worn than the others, and something sticky had been spilled on the armrest. Looked like Coke.

  ‘Montel Williams wants Mr Chauncey for an interview.’

  Chauncey swallowed. ‘He wants me to appeal to the kidnappers – ask them to …’ The voice broke. ‘… to give me back my little girl.’

  Both children looked up sharply, watching him.

  Look to your daughters, Sonora thought, appalled to find herself feeling such a mix of annoyance and impatience. Chauncey was soft, unpalatably soft. She wanted to shake him. She did not like the way he stood like a lamb for the reporters, putting up a brave front. She did not like the way he crumpled down and waited. Where was the anger? Where was the fight?

  Why was she such a hardass?

  ‘When is the interview?’ She wondered what Crick would say about a Montel show. Another media blot for Cincinnati, still trying to live down their jailing of a grandmother for a parking meter violation.

  My home-town.

  ‘I told them no,’ Chauncey said, lips tight. He did not want to talk about it.

  Sonora did not argue. A plea to kidnappers was a moot point. This was a homicide now.

  Sam looked at Sonora, and they stared at each other for a moment – who would lower the boom?

  Sonora cleared her throat, voice low and quiet. ‘Mr Chauncey, do you think that Mary Claire and Kippie could draw in their room for a few minutes while we talk?’

  He looked up, shoulders drawn. He started breathing quickly and Sonora saw sweat, slick and oily, break out across his forehead. His fingers trembled like butterflies against his knees.

  She bit her bottom lip. She should have handled that better, should not have talked about the children as if they were not there. But it was too late. Mary Claire was snatching up colored pencils and the puzzle books and taking Kippie by the hand. It was too much for a small person. Four of the pencils dropped and she turned a look on Chauncey that made Sonora wish she was anywhere but here.

  ‘Looks like you could use some help, ma’am.’ Sam bent down and picked up pencils, and Mary Claire gave him a mesmerized look. It was likely the first time a strange man had called her ma’am. Sam held out his arms and Kippie went to him, and he led the little girls down the hall.

  Sonora waited for the bedroom door to close.

  ‘Mr Chauncey, we’ve found the body of a young girl, and I’m afraid that she matches pretty closely your description of Joelle.’

  Chauncey bowed his head and began to cry, tiny little sobs like hiccups of grief. Sonora noticed that his hair was thick, clean and blacker than ever. She heard soft footsteps, saw that Sam was back in the room.

  Sonora met his eyes, then looked back at Chauncey. ‘We need to make a formal identification as soon as possible.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ Chauncey’s voice was small. Childlike.

  Sonora looked at Sam, who nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Chauncey’s shoulders slumped. Acceptance, Sonora thought, wondering if this man always did as he was told.

  ‘I don’t think I can drive. I’m too upset.’

  ‘We’ll give you a ride.’ Sam’s voice was gentle.

  ‘Do you want to go to your daughters for a while?’ Sonora asked.

  ‘No.’

  Sonora leaned toward him. ‘Can I get you something? A glass of water?’

  He nodded. Looked up and mumbled something.

  ‘What’s that?’ Sonora was appalled to hear the tinge of impatience in her voice.

  Sam gave her a sideways look. ‘He said no ice.’

  ‘Okay.’ Sonora headed into the kitchen. The dishwasher was ru
nning, sounding like Sonora’s old Nissan when it dropped a brake shoe. Chauncey, whose sobs had subsided while giving the specifics of his water, kicked in with some gusty crying that teetered on the edge of a hysteria that made Sonora wince. She and Sam usually made their exit before this stage. They were going to have to ride with this guy all the way downtown. Sam was going to kill her.

  The kitchen was clean, countertops spotless. The stainless-steel sink was shiny, a tiny residue of scouring powder along the rim of the drain. Not a crumb in sight on the tablecloth, foam-backed plastic, lemon yellow.

  Sonora opened cabinets, looking for a glass. Found canned goods, stacked for the most part in order of size and content, with a few variations. Soups, chowders, jars of spaghetti sauce. Cans of Slim Fast – who was going on a torture diet? Dixon Chauncey, or the young Joelle?

  She hoped it was Dixon and not Joelle. She hoped Joelle had eaten chocolate and pizza before she died.

  She opened another cabinet. All the dishes were perfect, glasses in rows, perfectly matched, unlike her own cabinets with cups with plastic bird feet lined up next to her remaining three crystal wineglasses.

  All of Chauncey’s glasses were clean. Her own dishwasher was leaving dried residue on her dishes, which made the machine something of a moot point.

  She filled a glass with water – no ice. Opened the freezer, in case he hadn’t wanted her looking there, remembering the head found in Jeffrey Dahmer’s refrigerator.

  No body parts.

  Lots of Tupperware, though, all neatly labeled – meatballs, lasagne, chicken noodle pie bake. Chauncey had dinner cooked ahead for the next two weeks.

  He bought Ore Ida Shoe String potatoes, Sealtest ice cream, chocolate chip cookie dough, by the gallon. The ice trays were uniformly filled – none of that pop-out-a-few-cubes-at-a-time behavior acceptable in this kitchen.

  The refrigerator was less than perfect – catsup spills on the egg trays, which were empty of eggs. It would have been hard to imagine a refrigerator any other way, with three kids in the house.