Even someone who knew all the roads in the county couldn’t travel them in the dark at the speed of light. While I waited for Gisborne, I went back inside for a circumspect tour of the house, keeping Peppy on a tight leash. Crime-scene protocol meant I should have left her outside—dog hair and paw prints would contaminate the evidence. Only a really chicken detective would need the comfort of her dog to go through a house with a dead body in it. I couldn’t possibly be a chicken, so I must have felt I needed her expert tracking skills.
Although the victim had been dead for some time, at least a week, I returned to the car for my gun first. Leaving my running shoes by the back door to minimize the dirt I was bringing in, I tiptoed around the edge of the kitchen, flipping on an overhead light with my gunstock. Peppy was on hyperalert, her ears cocked at the sounds of critters scurrying from the body—roaches, slithery animals. I tried not to look, but my gorge rose anyway.
I stood with my hands on my knees, breathing hard, risked messing up evidence by running my face under the kitchen tap and gulping down water with my cupped hands.
“Okay, girl?” I chirped at Peppy.
She was whining and straining on the leash, wanting to go after the rats and roaches, but I forced her to stay with me. I turned on lamps and overhead fixtures in the rooms as I came to them but didn’t find anyone. No more bodies, no lurking assailants.
The place had been searched—drawers were open and papers and books scattered about—but it wasn’t like August’s apartment in Chicago since no furniture had been destroyed. Whatever they wanted, the invaders must have found it. Jewelry to feed a local meth habit? The women at the church had suggested that the nearby missile silo might have been taken over by meth heads.
As I went through the house, it didn’t strike me as the home of a woman with valuables, but maybe there’d been family silver or something of that nature. An addict with a craving to feed would take pretty much anything that could be turned into cash.
The ground floor included a powder room off the kitchen and a full bath built awkwardly into an alcove by the front door. A room beyond the powder room seemed to be Doris McKinnon’s bedroom—it held a small TV, a number of pill bottles for the conditions that beset aging bodies, and a stack of library books. She wasn’t a novel reader. These were tomes on the Second World War, especially the Eastern Front, and on contemporary weapons of mass destruction. She might have been ninety-something, but her brain had stayed active. Brain. That thought brought the insects crawling out of what was left of her eyes—if those were McKinnon’s eyes—unwelcome to my mind. I pulled on Peppy’s collar so hard that the dog whimpered.
Beyond the dining room were two parlors, which looked like shrines to Emerald Ferring. Photos of her covered the walls: as a tap-dancing little girl, in her high-school graduation robes, stills of her from Pride of Place and the rest of her Hollywood oeuvre. Ferring had won two Emmys for Lakeview, the Jeffersons look-alike series she’d starred in. She’d been photographed at one White House gala with President Clinton and another with Michelle Obama.
The most interesting photo was next to McKinnon’s bed. It showed Ferring at the Kanwaka missile protest back in 1983. It was a black-and-white shot of her at the gates, looking over her shoulder at the crowd behind her while a young man was using bolt cutters on the lock. Soldiers in riot gear were approaching the pair; whoever had taken the picture had chosen exactly the right moment, when everyone was poised on the brink of action. Ferring’s expression was intense, Joan of Arc trying to raise the Siege of Orléans, not an actress trying to boost her career. Or maybe she’d been a gifted actress channeling Joan of Arc.
The photo was signed to “Aunt Doris, I owe you much. This comes to you with love, not obligation. Emerald.”
A strange inscription. I frowned over it, until Peppy jerked against me again, reminding me to keep moving. I glanced at pictures of what I assumed had been Lucinda Ferring, some with Emerald, one of her on a tractor, mugging for the camera, another of her with McKinnon, the two women in floral-print dresses on the porch, martini glasses in hand. Nell Albritten said there’d been gossip, but you couldn’t tell from the photo if they’d been lovers or comfortable companions.
We went up the front-hall stairs to the second floor, which held six bedrooms, three on either side of a long hall, with another full bath at the back, the end that overlooked the fields to the north. The only sign of use in the bathroom was a bottle of All Ways shampoo in the walk-in shower.
The rooms were presumably the ones McKinnon had rented to the Ferrings and other African-Americans back in the fifties and sixties. Four stood vacant now of everything but their narrow bedsteads, chenille spreads laid over bare mattresses, empty deal chests lined with shelf paper.
The two bedrooms at the front of the house were the biggest, and they’d been used recently: the beds were fully made up, the radiators were on, and towels hung on racks by the doors.
I took off my windbreaker and wrapped my hand in it to pull open the bureau drawers. In the east room, the most carefully decorated room in the house, with sunflower-bedecked wallpaper and curtains, I found a bra and two pairs of panties in one drawer. La Perla. The owner—Emerald?—must have taken off in a hurry. Each wisp of Italian lace sets you back a few hundred dollars. I ran my fingers across the delicate fabric, then on impulse stuck them into my pack.
Nothing had been left in the room across the hall, but the sloppily made bed showed that someone had been in here recently. I flipped the covers back. Nothing except rumpled sheets. I shone my flash under the bed and in the corners but came up empty.
The room overlooked North 2800 Road. I could see the flashes of strobes heralding the arrival of the sheriff’s police. Peppy and I trotted back along the hall, turning off the lights behind us. I went slowly down the stairs so that I didn’t inadvertently touch the railings. Peppy growled as the squad cars reached the drive. I wished there’d been time to explore the attic and the basement, but you can’t have everything.
The flashlight on my cell phone picked up something at the bottom of the stairs, a black shadow. I froze for a second, thinking of the roaches in the kitchen, but when I made myself look, I saw that it was a thumb drive. I slipped it into my jeans pocket and went outside to greet the sheriff.
“So the dog persuaded you to enter,” the sheriff said when we were back in town, in his office. “And you turned on the lights, even at the risk of tampering with the crime scene.”
I had my temper on a lead as tight as the one I’d kept on Peppy. “A rat about as big as your size-thirteens was nibbling on the victim’s nose. It seemed respectful to keep the lights on, not to let the vermin do any more damage than they already had.”
“You didn’t find anything you took away with you or buried in the grounds or something, did you?”
“Your crew patted me down, Sheriff, and they could search my car—assuming they had a warrant, of course.”
The pat-down had been part of the confusion around the law’s arrival on the scene: when there’s a dead body and a live person, the first impulse is to connect the two. It’s usually a correct impulse, so I didn’t hold it against them. The thumb drive I’d picked up was wedged deep in my jeans and they’d missed it. They must have assumed the La Perla belonged to me.
“Yep. The judge figured we might want to take a look.”
I got up, forgetting I was controlling my anger: he’d consulted a judge, gotten a warrant. “Then I’d better check on my dog.”
There was a uniformed deputy in the room who looked as though he wanted to block my exit. It was just as well that the sheriff nodded at him to step aside—my self-control was in shreds, and I would have slugged him if he’d tried to stop me.
They hadn’t forced the locks—they apparently had one of those devices that can open cars electronically—but they hadn’t relocked the car either. Peppy wasn’t happy: strangers in the car made her uneasy. I put my arms around her, petted her, calmed her and myself.
<
br /> The deputy tapped my shoulder through the open door. “Sheriff Gisborne has a couple more questions.”
I leashed up Peppy and took her in with me. The sheriff’s questions were time markers, just to show he was in charge, but he didn’t try to challenge my having my dog with me.
Why was I in Kansas? Why had I gone to the McKinnon farm? Why had I gone into the house? Nothing else was relevant, but Gisborne also wanted to know why it was I who’d found Sonia Kiel, what I’d said to Randy Marx at St. Rafe’s—
“Sheriff,” I interrupted. “Do you or any of your team drive a Buick Enclave?”
He compressed his lips in annoyance. “I want to know what you and Randy Marx were talking about.”
I smiled—not to be conciliatory, just to remind myself I was too far from my support systems to bait someone who could put me in jail. “A Buick Enclave has been showing up around me off and on today. I wondered how you knew I’d been to see Mr. Marx, so I thought perhaps you were following me.”
“I’m not, but maybe I should, the way you’re stirring the waters,” Gisborne said. “Marx called me. You’re in a small town now, Warshawski, not the big city. We all know each other, we all look out for each other. You may think you’re moving around stealthily, but everyone knows where you are and what you eat for breakfast.”
“That’s good. If you decide to lock me up, you’ll know just what to bring me.” I’d forgotten I wasn’t going to bait him. “Since you’re on me like my underwear, you know I was at the hospital. Did you also know that neither Nathan nor Shirley Kiel has been to see their near-dead daughter? Randy Marx either.”
“That’s just what I mean, Warshawski,” Gisborne said heavily. “You don’t know jack shit about these people. Sonia forfeited her right to parental regard a long time ago.”
I nodded slowly, as if he’d said something particularly meaningful. “Before she passed out, Sonia said she’d seen Emerald Ferring in the place where Matt Chastain lies buried. Where is that?”
Gisborne’s eyes darted around the interrogation room, as if a good answer might be posted on one of the walls, next to the don’t spit or smoke in here signs. “If these friends of yours were staying out at Doris McKinnon’s farm, you need to get them in here to answer questions about her murder.”
“Sheriff,” I said gently. “Number one: I’ve never met them, they’re not my friends, I’m here in your county hoping to find them. Number two: this means you’ve identified the body and the means of death already, which is massively impressive. I’m going to get Nick Vishnikov from the Cook County ME’s office to phone your pathologist so he can find out how you did this in three hours. I’ll put it out on my Twitter feed.”
“That’s not for public consumption,” he growled. His phone rang just then, sparing us both further escalation. He picked it up, snapped his name into the mouthpiece but put it against his chest while he told me not to leave his jurisdiction.
Must not bait the sheriff, must not bait the sheriff, I chanted to myself. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Sheriff. I’m having way too much fun.”
21
Voices from Home
It was close to nine when the law decided they’d spent enough time with me for one evening. Before I could get out of the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, Sergeant Everard and his superior, a Lieutenant Lowdham, had scooped me up to ask the same questions as Gisborne. I guess cops don’t feel they’ve earned their pay if they can’t drag a simple inquiry out for most of a shift.
Although the cops, like the sheriff, wanted to accuse Ferring and Veriden of murdering McKinnon, they were more willing to answer my questions about the dead person and the crime scene.
The lieutenant explained that violent crime wasn’t significant enough in Douglas County for them to have their own crime lab or medical examiner, although they had a team of crime-scene techs—EMT crews trained in how to gather evidence. They’d sent the body to the state lab in Topeka, which would perform the autopsy.
“Everyone’s stretched to the limit here with budget cuts, so they can’t give us an autopsy date, and the state can’t help local forces with crime-scene techs, which means we don’t have DNA or prints to make an ID. The guess is it’s Doris McKinnon, but . . . well, you were there, you saw. There was a fair amount of damage to the face and tissues.”
Yes, I’d seen. Every time I shut my eyes, roaches ran underneath my lids.
“Right now your friends are the people of interest here, and the sooner you can produce them, the sooner we can get all this cleared up,” the lieutenant said.
I spoke slowly and clearly to the recording device. “Lieutenant, once a lie becomes an accepted truth, it’s almost impossible to refute, so let’s not allow that to happen here.” I repeated the same message I’d just given the sheriff, about not knowing Ferring or Veriden nor whether they’d been at McKinnon’s house.
Both men shifted uneasily in their chairs, but neither spoke.
“I’m going to give you the phone numbers of Lieutenant Terry Finchley, Captain Bobby Mallory, and Lieutenant Conrad Rawlings with the Chicago Police Department. You can call them to discuss my reputation.”
I helped myself to a piece of paper from a pad on the table—one put there so that suspects could write out their confessions—and copied the numbers from my cell phone.
This seemed like a good exit line, but as I was leaving, the lieutenant asked, “You being a trained investigator from the big city and all, what did you make of the crime scene?”
I spread my hands: ignorance. “I don’t have enough evidence to make an informed guess. Meth addicts surprising the owner?”
“And the people who’d been staying there?”
“Again, not enough information. I wondered—hoped—it was the woman I came down here to find—but if that’s the case, where is she now? People keep telling me what a small town this is and how you all know everything about one another, so I’d think if Ms. Ferring and Mr. Veriden were here, you’d know.”
I took Peppy’s leash and walked out without looking back, but I could hear Everard and his lieutenant murmuring to each other.
“This town is festering with secrets,” I explained to Peppy once we were alone: golden retrievers are so honest and trusting that you have to tell them when you’ve been ironic. “There’s the whole business of Sonia and Dr. Kiel’s dead or missing graduate student. Gertrude Perec’s dead daughter. The identity of Cady’s father. And no one on this side of the river knows anything about the lives of people on the other side.”
Peppy gave a little bark: she understood.
Even though I would not have found Doris McKinnon—or whoever the dead person turned out to be—without Peppy, I would have to find doggy day care for her tomorrow. It wasn’t fair to keep her in my car for such long stretches. As it was, I was going to tuck her back into the Mustang while I ate dinner: the Oregon Trail Hotel downtown, which advertised itself as a meeting place for the original Free State settlers, had a restaurant that was open late.
It wasn’t until I was leaning back in my booth, head against the padded upholstery, that I realized how tired I was. I’d been up a good chunk of the previous night. I’d spent the day with people ranging from Sonia Kiel’s raging parents to the sheriff of Douglas County. I’d interviewed an old woman who’d had to be rushed to the hospital, before driving out to the middle of nowhere to find vermin nibbling on a dead person.
I took off my muddy hiking boots and sat cross-legged, surreptitiously massaging my sore toes under cover of the tablecloth. A glass of zinfandel gave me an illusion of warmth and home. I couldn’t remember if you were supposed to load carbs or eat lean fish when you were too tired to function, so I compromised: pasta with squid, vodka-tomato sauce, extra mushrooms, romaine salad.
Nell Albritten’s anxiety when I left her had been nudging the back of my mind since I’d found the dead body. When she was semiconscious, she wanted to know what she’d said to me about Doris McKinnon. She’d been rel
ieved to hear she’d said only that McKinnon was a white woman she didn’t often see.
When Albritten had started to say, “Someone would have told me if—” she’d fainted in midsentence. If McKinnon had died, was how I’d have completed the sentence. Albritten struck me as the kind of woman with a rigorous honesty: she’d fainted rather than tell a lie.
Albritten’s story of the flood, its massive devastation followed by the brutal indifference of the landlords, had made me acutely uncomfortable. I shut my eyes, trying to re-create not just what Albritten had said but her body language.
I was holding the cold glass of tea. Peppy was whimpering, aware of the tension in the room. I was feeling shame, but also impatience: I wanted to know what had happened to Lucinda and Emerald Ferring after the flood, and Albritten kept circling the question, giving more details about the flood and the town’s response.
And then she’d received a phone call. That’s what I’d forgotten. She’d made a phone call before she let me into the house. My guess—she’d been asking for advice. She’d told someone—Lisa Carmody?—I was there. After she talked to my Chicago client, she wanted to know how much information she could safely give me.
Albritten hadn’t mentioned Doris McKinnon until after she hung up. The person who phoned her had given her permission to tell me, which meant that Albritten and at least one other person in Lawrence already knew that McKinnon was dead. How did they know? From Ferring and Veriden? If Albritten was hiding them, they couldn’t be in her basement; the house didn’t have one. An attic crawl space? The little locked-up church?
I didn’t think I could stake out St. Silas without the police or the sheriff hearing about it, but maybe Nell Albritten would open up to me now that I’d looked after her, maybe saved her life. Maybe I’d threatened her life with my questions, though.
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