The Lillian Byrd Crime Series

by Elizabeth Sims

  She’d been bludgeoned. A flap of her scalp hung off to one side, the right side of her head; I saw mashed tissue there, bone and brains, oozing blood.

  I’m not up to the task of describing how much blood there was. It had soaked through the futon, the carpet, and the flooring, which I knew to be old and cracked. The air in the room was heavy with that warm-sharp smell that women know so well.

  She was surely dead, I thought, but in the next second I heard a ragged sound and realized she was still breathing.

  I dived to her side, my mind racing. Mr. McVittie had followed me upstairs and was frozen in the doorway as I had been.

  “Call an ambulance!” I shouted, “and the police! Nine-one-one, Mr. McVittie! Oh, God, keep breathing.”

  Direct pressure, I knew, stops bleeding, but if I pressed on the back of her head, I’d be pushing skull fragments into her brain. I didn’t dare touch her.

  “Breathe, honey, breathe, breathe, breathe.” I saw that her head was actually turned slightly to the side, away from the door. I lifted the blanket and bent down to look into her eyes, which were half open. They looked completely blank. I couldn’t tell whether her pupils were symmetrical. Her lips were parted; I could see her beautiful teeth. They were undisturbed.

  I knelt with her. “Oh, breathe, Minerva, help is coming, help is coming. If you can hear me, honey, you’d better breathe. Breathe, goddamn it.”

  Someone had fallen upon her so suddenly and with such force that she’d had no chance to struggle.

  I heard Mr. McVittie yelping into the phone.

  The mind-shattering implications of what had occurred came rushing to me: I had discovered her, she was in my bed, I had been the last to see her, we had been seen together by many people.

  Minerva’s shoulder bag lay where she had placed it, on the floor near her clothes. Then I saw the weapon, tossed aside and spattered with blood: It was my two-by-four; which I’d handily left next to the front door. The doors. Someone had sneaked in here. My God, I must have left the doors unlocked in my hurry to meet Uncle Guff.

  Mr. McVittie returned to the doorway, hugging himself. “They’re coming. Oh, Lord!”

  “Did you see or hear anything?” My voice was a rasp.

  He shook his head and backed away from me, then turned and ran down the stairs. I heard his door slam.

  Had someone watched the house all night, waiting for me to leave? Or had they simply shown up at five a.m., assuming I’d be home in bed?

  I looked at Minerva again, and a spasm ran through me: It could have been me lying there.

  She and I were the same general size and shape, the same hair color. Whoever attacked her might not only have thought they were attacking me; they might have thought they killed me.

  Who would have wanted that? Bucky Rinkell, if he’d gone psycho? The Creighters wanted me dead, or were they so calculating as to suppose that if they killed someone in my home it could implicate me, perhaps get me arrested and convicted? Did they think I might flee?

  Lou might have wanted to kill me or Minerva, or both of us. How many of these people had been watching me?

  Holy hell.

  Sirens.

  _____

  The paramedics arrived first and sprang into action, pushing me out of the room. I was standing in the living room gripping my head when Tom Ciesla, Erma Porrocks, and four uniformed officers came in. The faces of Tom and Erma were hard.

  In one sentence I told them the immediate facts, then watched them move through the flat to the bedroom doorway.

  Ciesla stopped there and barked, “Is she dead?”

  The paramedics, two of them, were yelling to each other, and one was yelling into a radio, while equipment was flying all over the place.

  “I said, is she dead?” Ciesla shouted.

  “No!” snapped the one in charge, a compact black woman with a shaved head. Somehow she was threading a tube into Minerva’s mouth. “Imbecile,” she muttered.

  “Is she gonna die?”

  “Yes! Shut up and get out of here.”

  “Then we’ve got a murder scene,” Ciesla said. He started giving orders to the badges, who dispersed. One talked into his radio, requesting a photographer and lab people.

  I indicated Minerva’s purse, anticipating their request for her I.D. “The last I saw, she had a gun in there,” I told them. I was acquainted with a couple of the cops. They stared at my knees. I looked down and saw them bloody.

  The paramedics came through the living room with Minerva lying on her side, frighteningly still; then they were gone.

  I didn’t see Todd anywhere.

  More cop cars pulled up, more cops came in, until it looked as if they’d been spread on with a knife.

  Porrocks asked me a few questions. I told her who Minerva was and how my morning errand had taken me away from home.

  “Where’s your camera?”

  I looked at her blankly, not remembering.

  “Retrace your steps from the car,” she prompted.

  It took me a minute to do so in my mind. I pointed to the stairs; she followed me down to the landing. The camera and doughnut-and-coffee tray were gone. I turned and pounded on Mr. McVittie’s door.

  Porrocks called, “Police!”

  Mr. McVittie opened the door and handed out the camera. His mouth was full of fresh cruller. He glared at me defensively.

  “You’ll want to talk to him too,” I said as he shut the door.

  Fortunately, he hadn’t monkeyed with the camera. I handed it to Porrocks, knowing she’d want the film as evidence. “You’ll be careful with the film?”

  “You can count on that.”

  “Because it’s an extremely important roll of film, the pictures in there. Not just as evidence. It’s my family, you see.”

  She looked at me searchingly. “What do you think happened up there?”

  “Oh, God, Erma.” My chest felt empty. “I don’t fucking know. Whoever did this could be any of three or four people I know.”

  “You have that many enemies?”

  We went back upstairs, and Erma sent a junior detective down to interview Mr. McVittie. I got down on my hands and knees to look for Todd.

  As soon as he saw my face at floor level, he wriggled out from behind a bookcase and into my arms. I held him tight. “Oh, Toddy.”

  His food and water dishes needed attention. I filled them, anticipating what was next.

  “We want you to come to the station and tell us everything,” Ciesla said. He’d been in the bedroom studying things. “We need to know every detail of where you went and what you did yesterday. And more before that.”

  “Sure, Tom. Where’d they take her, do you know?”

  “Probably Beaumont.”

  I got my bag and keys, and went around to all the cops and told them to be careful of Todd. Some of them were taking notes and making diagrams; others were going through my stuff in the rest of the apartment using latex gloves. They wouldn’t start going through my stuff in the bedroom until the photographer and lab people had come and gone.

  Ciesla told me the police would probably do all the work they needed that day. I was grateful that he didn’t assume I’d be under arrest before the day was out.

  I followed Ciesla and Porrocks outside. Gaggles of neighbors had alighted at the property lines. The police were tying their yellow ribbons.

  “Is that your car?” Ciesla asked, staring.

  “Yeah. It went through the mill last night.”

  “You’ve got a lot to tell us.”

  28

  Porrocks set a cup of coffee in front of me. “You look like hell.”

  “No shit.”

  “You want sugar or cream?”

  “No.”

  The detectives’ office smelled of floor wax and copier toner. One of the tubes in the overhead fluorescent fixture buzzed and flickered. My ankles were wrapped around the legs of the same chair I’d sat in a few days ago when I’d tricked Porrocks into leaving the ro
om so I could steal a look at Iris Macklin’s postmortem. The same chair Ciesla put me back into for my scolding afterward. I thought it was a hot seat then.

  Now the two detectives were ready, Bic Stics poised, to try to make sense out of, most probably, yet another murder in their jurisdiction, yet another unpleasant surprise connected with a brainless reporter who should’ve gone and gotten a job somewhere else, anywhere else far, far away: the French Foreign Legion, the Alaska pipeline, an asbestos mine.

  The cops wanted to know every goddamned thing I did and said, everything that’d happened to me since I’d seen Iris Macklin in the Snapdragon. I told them all over again about that, and stabbing Bucky, and Bucky in the darkroom, and snooping around the Creighter house, and talking to Greg Wycoff, and meeting Mrs. Creighter again, and Lou’s attentions.

  “You’ll find a letter from her in my kitchen junk drawer.”

  Ciesla unwrapped a hunk of coffee cake he’d baked, and we shared that. I was hardly hungry, but thought I could use the energy.

  It took hours and hours to go over everything. Every time I gave a fact, they had about six questions to go with it. Most of them I didn’t know the answers to. For instance, I knew Lou’s full name, Louise Deronio, but I didn’t know exactly where she lived, or what her days off were, or whether she did in fact drive a brand-new black Mustang, or whether she had a history of mental or emotional instability. They asked about Mr. McVittie, who to them was as much of a suspect as anybody, but Jesus, I’d seen him standing there, uncomprehending, looking at that blood on his ceiling. Did Minerva LeBlanc talk about any enemies? They asked about my stability. Had I ever heard voices telling me what to do? Would I allow myself to be fingerprinted?

  I wished for a simple solution to the troubles of the world: I wished for the police to arrest Bonnie, her mother, Bucky, and Lou, and put them all in jail forever. That way, no more bad things would ever happen again. How very simple.

  I cried, I wrung my hands, I pounded Ciesla’s desk, I spilled my coffee.

  At different times other cops and even the chief, a hairy-eared dude I never liked, stuck their heads in with questions or handed notes to Ciesla and Porrocks.

  The hours went by, and we didn’t get word that Minerva had died. “They’re operating,” said Ciesla after reading one message. “And if she lives, we’re not going to be able to talk to her for forty-eight hours at least.” He paused. “If ever.”

  At one point midday he went out to talk to a few reporters in the downstairs lobby.

  “All I told them was there was an attempted homicide in your apartment, and we’re investigating. Reporters are gonna be bothering you now.” He jabbed a finger at me. “As someone who gives a shit about you, I suggest you say very little.”

  “No problem on that. Did they ask if I was the victim?”

  He laughed coldly. “They did, and I said no comment.” All I could think was, it must have been a slow news day.

  _____

  The questioning went on and on. In the early afternoon Porrocks sent out for sandwiches and Cokes. She and Ciesla tore hungrily at theirs.

  I told them in painstaking detail about Uncle Guff’s Last Day (I was starting to capitalize it in my mind). “The film will show I went there. The pictures will corroborate what I’m saying.” We all understood, however, that the pictures couldn’t prove I hadn’t bludgeoned Minerva LeBlanc. Perhaps I’d done it before or after running down to Ecorse for my alibi.

  I gave them Uncle Guff and Aunt Rosalie’s address and phone number. “He’ll tell you too. I don’t suppose I’m gonna get the negatives back anytime soon.”

  Ciesla snorted.

  Visions of Aunt Rosalie having a nervous breakdown floated through my mind. Some things just can’t be helped. I accepted my fate.

  Now this will either surprise you or not, depending on the opinion you’ve formed about my intellectual competence. I never once thought about getting a lawyer. I mean, not even the faintest concept of “lawyer” crossed my mind the whole day.

  Why? I guess I just thought my job was to help the police find the truth. I totally trusted Ciesla and Porrocks. I had not attacked Minerva LeBlanc with the two-by-four. In the end, I was lucky Ciesla and Porrocks were who they were.

  Ciesla said, “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.” He drummed his fingers on his desk. He and Porrocks looked more puzzled and worried now than when they were first looking around my apartment. They looked tired too.

  “Is someone trying to locate Minerva’s next of kin?”

  Porrocks answered, “The New York police have been notified, and they’re handling it. We’re not going to release her name to the media until that’s done.”

  Ciesla looked at her and said, “Anything more?”

  “No,” said Porrocks.

  “I can go?”

  They nodded together.

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Erma, Tom, do you believe me? Do you believe everything I said?”

  Porrocks’s mouth was grim. “’Course we do. Lillian! Come on.”

  Ciesla just watched me, but I thought I saw belief in his eyes.

  All he said was, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “And of course,” Porrocks chipped in lightly, “don’t leave town. All right?”

  29

  By the time I started thinking about a lawyer, it was getting late. I decided I’d pick one out of the phone book on Monday.

  Dusk was falling when I rounded the corner in my ridiculous hacked-up car and saw the hard lights of a TV crew in front of the house. I backed up and went away, driving over to a nearby elementary school parking lot. I sat there under a tree in the gathering darkness, glad to not be talking, glad to be aware of my own healthy heartbeat, and growing angrier by the minute at any and all of the goddamn people who were cutting down good women and making my life hell.

  I began to fantasize about doing some murdering myself. Yes, I’d gone way beyond dictator fantasies to the dark, dark regions of Old Testament vengeance. I wanted a fucking necklace of everybody’s teeth: the Creighters, Lou, Bucky. I wanted to see eyeballs pop. I wanted to see blood spurt from severed arteries. I wanted to see dogs feasting on entrails. I thought they were all guilty, and I hated and feared them all.

  I prayed for Minerva, hauling out the Hail Mary and the Our Father, as I shamelessly do in my most desperate hours. If she lived, would she ever be the same? How could her brain function as it had, sharp and clear and cool, when bits of it were strewn across my percale pillowcase? Oh, dear God, this is a big one. Thy will be done.

  A soft flash of heat lightning drew my eyes to the treetops. It was clouding up and smelled like rain. It’d been holding off for days, but now we were in for a storm. I blotted perspiration from my face with the sleeve of the Wayne State University T-shirt I’d thrown on that morning.

  If whoever had attacked Minerva thought they were killing me, they might keep thinking that until the police released her name. How could they know otherwise? If the press had talked to Mr. McVittie, he could have told them the victim wasn’t me, but I thought chances were good he’d be too freaked out to open his door to anybody.

  I was glad Mrs. McVittie was up north looking after her sister and missing this whole gruesome show. She was a sweet old thing. I imagined Mr. McVittie up on a stepladder scrubbing at the ceiling. I wondered whether he’d eaten all six crullers and drunk both coffees.

  I hadn’t gotten to know any of my other neighbors yet. Maybe some of them knew who I was when I walked out with Ciesla and Porrocks, maybe not. I believed I had a chance to play dead, sort of, for a short period of time, maybe just overnight. Aunt Rosalie and Uncle Guff wasted little time watching television news; they listened to oldies radio. If they did hear something distressing, I trusted they’d have the sense to call the police and ask.

  I formed a hazy plan of paying visits to all four of my tormentors that night. Was I thinking straight or what? I wanted to confront each of them and look into their eyes,
in spite of my fear, and make them look into mine. Perhaps I could induce a fatal heart attack or two. At the least I might learn something more.

  All right, this was not a rational, police-like plan. But at the moment it was all I had. It was my plan, goddamn it.

  I checked my watch; an hour had passed. I went back to my corner and saw TV lights still burning in front of the house. I was about to turn away again when I noticed something disturbing. Stuff, a long mountain of stuff was piled up along the curb in front of the house, and the TV lights were trained on it. What the fuck?

  I parked halfway down the block and walked up and couldn’t believe it. The yellow police lines were gone. My stuff, all my furniture and books and clothes and food were piled up more or less neatly on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and curb, eviction-style. My turquoise couch. My photo albums. My golf clubs. My stereo. Where was Todd!

  I turned around to find a TV camera in my face. Hank Lyman, a local reporter I’d met here and there, stuck his mike up and said, “And this is Lillian Byrd, the tenant at this address where the brutal attack took place, coming—”

  I grabbed his arm holding the mike and stuck my hand in front of the camera lens. Hank’s channel had the highest ratings in the city.

  “Hank, don’t. See, nobody knows I’m alive. I mean, I—there’s some people I’d just as soon think I was dead—or pretty dead—right now. It’s hard to explain. Would you, could you please not report that I wasn’t the victim until tomorrow? Please? My safety could be at stake.”

  “Uh, Lillian,” he said, forcing the mike back up to mouth level, “we’re live here.”

  I reeled away from him; he went back to talking into the camera. A few bystanders were eyeing my belongings as if they were gold ingots. I couldn’t tell what, if anything, was missing. Ciesla had told me I’d get a list of whatever the cops took as evidence.

  I asked one of the bystanders, “Did the police bring this stuff out here?”

  He shook his head and pointed. “That guy in there.”