by Jan Burke
“I have to admit that I wasn’t really paying much attention after that, because my hand was bleeding and I was focused on that. I just remember that we got into his car, and my mother drove, and he held on to me in the backseat, as if I were a much younger child, but I remember liking it, feeling safe and—” He paused, then said, “I had a towel wrapped around my hand, but I still bled all over him. I remember watching the stain soak from the towel onto his shirt and telling him I was ruining it. He said not to worry about it, the shirt wasn’t important, I was the one who mattered most to him. I remember him trying to soothe me, to keep my mind off my hand. I think he must have told my mother something about Gwendolyn’s murder while they first took a look at my hand in the emergency room, because Mom was the one who got rid of the car.”
“She what?” I asked, shocked.
He turned red. “Whatever my father is guilty of, my mother engaged in a criminal act that night. When we first got to the emergency room, it was really busy, so they just cleaned my cuts and then put some kind of a temporary bandage on my hand, just to stop the bleeding until the hand surgeon could come in. My dad stayed with me while they were doing that, and Mom went out to the car. She wiped off the steering wheel and the door handle, then took the car to a bar not far from the hospital and left it parked in the parking lot. She said she thought of setting it on fire, but decided that would attract too much attention, and might result in damaging someone else’s property. So she just left it there and walked back and waited for us in the waiting room.”
Apparently Rachel was just as stunned as I was, because she just sat there staring at him.
“She was really very cool-headed about it. I had seen that side of her before—the protectiveness, I mean. Mom was shy and timid, except in one circumstance: when anything threatened someone she loved. Then she turned into this fierce Irish warrior woman.”
I smiled. “My mother wasn’t as shy as Briana, but she was just as protective of her family. God help anyone who so much as said a word against any of us.”
“So the car wasn’t really stolen?” Rachel said.
“Well, yes, it was, but from that lot—not the hospital, I mean. She said she thought it might get stolen, because it was a tough neighborhood. The car was a new T-Bird, and she left the windows down and the doors unlocked. The more my father and I thought about it, the more we realized how dangerous it had been for her to be walking around in that area by herself at two-thirty in the morning. God knows who might have come out of that bar. My mother always said a lot of prayers for that car thief—that he’d keep the car and never steal another. She was grateful to him for putting a little truth in her lies to the police.”
“Your dad didn’t know what she planned?” I asked.
“No. Neither of us did. We were both amazed when she told us.”
“But what if the police had found the car?”
“Well, I suppose she thought that it might help my father’s lawyer raise some questions about where the blood came from—if the police had found any traces of blood on it. But mainly she wanted the police in Las Piernas to be able to attest to the fact that my dad was there that night.”
“How long were you at the hospital?” I asked.
“Oh, a long time. I had to have surgery, because I had severed a bunch of tendons. I wasn’t ready to go home until about ten or eleven o’clock the next morning; then we couldn’t find the car. So by the time we talked to the hospital security people and did the police report—they just took the report by phone—and hired a taxi to come home, it was early afternoon on Saturday. We were all exhausted.
“My parents put me to bed, then they stayed up talking for a while. I was really excited, because I thought they were getting back together. Then when I woke up, late on Saturday, my mother told me that Gwendolyn had been murdered, and that my father didn’t kill her, but he would be blamed. She said that if anyone ever asked me, my father had been home with us all evening. I guess I knew right at that moment that we would only have a little time together. There wasn’t any way that things were ever going to be okay again. Maybe I should have told the truth to the police, but I loved my father—I had figured that out that night, when I got hurt, that even if I was angry with him about some things, I loved him. If he were alive right now,” he said, his voice breaking, “I would lie for him again.”
Neither one of us said anything. I could tell that his story didn’t sit well with Rachel, but she didn’t criticize him. I sat trying to imagine what it would have been like to be an eleven-year-old boy in that situation.
“Rachel,” I asked, “wouldn’t his hand print have remained in the blood on the sheet?”
“It probably was there,” she said, “and might still be on the sheet if they’ve kept it. But as I said, the scene was disturbed. The housekeeper and several other people—including Richmond—were leaning on or kneeling on the bed to look at the victim. It may have gone unrecognized after that.”
Travis drew a deep breath and said, “So, back to distraction. What have you got to show us, Rachel?”
Rachel pulled out one of the copies of the crime scene photos. It was a sharp image in black and white—too sharp.
“That’s an actual print, not a photocopy,” I said.
She smiled. “Switched them on old Richmond. I’ll give these back to him when we’re done with them.”
“Rachel—”
“Hell, he’s had over a dozen years to look at these things. If he hasn’t memorized them by now, he’s a bigger jerk than I think he is.”
Travis was half looking at it, half looking away.
As crime scene photos go, it wasn’t one of the more gory ones I’ve seen. It was a shot taken inside Gwendolyn DeMont’s bedroom, from across the room, looking toward the bed. The body was not uncovered; there was form under a single, bloodstained sheet. A pillow lay across the face.
Rachel looked at it dispassionately. “There’s a lamp here where your dad said he reached for one.”
She handed the photo toward him, and when he shrank back from it, she gave it to me. She moved on to the next photo, which was taken directly over the bed. It was easy to see why Arthur knew his wife was dead. The one part of her that could be seen between pillow and sheet was her throat, which lay slashed open like a strange dark mouth.
“That was probably one of the last blows,” Rachel said. “Not much bleeding for that type of cut, no arterial spray. I think she was already dead when the killer got around to this slice. The ones over her chest and stomach bled more.”
I made myself ask, “What about spatter patterns?”
“That’s some of the best evidence—Richmond and the housekeeper didn’t touch the walls and ceiling.” She thumbed through the photos and handed me several.
“Even though there isn’t blood all over the place, you can tell that her killer really went at it,” she said. “There’s a pattern to the spray—it’s called cast-off blood, because it was projected or cast from an object, not the site of the wound; it came from the weapon, not directly from the victim, like this arterial spurting, here and here.” She pointed to large spots with long drips running down from them.
“Look at this, then,” she said, showing me other, finer drops. “A bloodstain specialist could give you a good estimate of how far, how fast, and at what angle this blood traveled from the knife, and would have been able to count the blows delivered.
“See the way the spray arcs up the walls, even to the ceiling? Look at the close-ups of the spatter—at the shape of the blood drops. See the tails on these drops? They’re more elongated as they’re more distant from the source. And they indicate two directions—up and back down. He was really putting some swing into it.” She demonstrated with a closed fist, making a motion that would bring a knife up high above the killer and back down in a powerful sweeping curve. “I’d say this killer was pissed.”
She handed me other photos, not as close up as the previous ones. “Some of the spray i
s blocked,” she said, pointing to places on the photos—on the ceiling and the wall nearest the foot of the bed—where there seemed to be “shadows,” or areas where something blocked the spray of blood. “See here?” she said, “and here?”
I nodded, and tried not to think about throwing up.
“There was some spatter on the floor, but according to the reports, this housekeeper had started cleaning up before the scene was secured. Mopped the floor and opened the windows to let some air in. Neither action helped out as far as preserving evidence goes, but the blood traces were found with chemicals used by the lab guys. There was a single bloody footprint impression found on the farther side of the sheets, probably made when he got up off the bed. And in the hallway going to the front door, they did find a series of very faint bloody footprints. So there were probably footprints in the room before she started mopping.”
“From a bare foot?” Travis asked.
“No, the sole of a man’s shoe.”
“So the killer was male?” I asked.
“Yes, probably,” she said.
“What size shoe?”
She looked through the file, then said, “Eleven.”
“A big man, then.”
“Possibly. Most men wear between an eight and a ten-and-a-half.”
“Do you know your father’s shoe size, Travis?”
He shook his head. “I could probably find out.”
I was trying to picture the killer’s actions from what she had told us. “He stood on the bed?”
“No. I think the killer straddled her, pinned her arms down with his knees—there was some bruising there—muffled her screams with the pillow—used his left hand to hold the pillow on her face. Her hands were beneath the covers, no chance to scrape or claw him—nothing found under her nails.
“Killer is probably right-handed—see how the left arm blocked some spray? So did his body, as he bent over her. Wounds are all in the victim’s upper body. The autopsy studies of the wounds also indicate a righty doing the work.”
“Attacker was above the bedding the whole time?” I asked. “No sign of rape or molestation by her attacker?”
“They did all the usual tests during the autopsy—no recent sexual activity.” She handed over the next one, which showed the body without the pillow or sheet.
“Excuse me,” I heard Travis say weakly, and he hurried out of the room. I was regretting the fact that the house had only one bathroom. I winced and pushed the photos back at her.
“Sorry,” she said, but there was an unrepentant gleam in her eye.
“So do you think Arthur told him the truth?”
She lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know. It’s certainly possible. I guess the old cop in me ain’t dead yet, because it pisses me off that these people never spoke up. I guess it never occurred to any of them that someone got away with murdering this woman.”
“I think you’re wrong about that, Rachel. It probably occurred to them every day, and they felt guilty. I think that’s what kept Briana and Arthur apart all those years: Gwendolyn’s ghost.”
“Maybe, but I still don’t like it. They gave false information to people who were only trying to find the murderer.”
“You’ve met Richmond. Do you really believe that? Can you blame them? Arthur would look perfect to any prosecutor. A fortune at stake; an older, reclusive wife; a secret family in another town—”
She sighed. “It’s one thing when an adult makes up his or her mind to impede an investigation. Another to force a kid to go along with the program. Who carried the biggest burden in all of this? Your cousin. You think it was right for them to involve him in this?”
“No, but I don’t doubt they loved him, and I think they would have avoided involving him if they had thought they could.”
“Hmph. Look what’s become of him! He’s a good-looking young man who hides out from the world by living in a purple camper. Spends his time dressing up and telling fairy tales to kiddies. That’s not right.”
“I’m not saying he wasn’t damaged by all of this—he was. But you shouldn’t assume that he’s unhappy doing what he does for a living or that there’s anything wrong with it. It’s important, and he knows that even if you don’t.” At her frown, I added, “You should have seen him today, whenever he had to take on a role or make up some story—he loved it, Rachel. Besides, if this isn’t what he’s supposed to do with the rest of his life, so what? He’s still young. Give him some time to find his way.”
“Find his way? He’s wandering all over the map. You gotta give him something to hold on to, Irene. Some roots. Some roots that won’t let loose of the earth the first time a little ill wind blows his way.”
“Why, Rachel Giocopazzi! You’ve got a soft spot for him.”
“Damned right I do. He’s a good kid.”
We heard the bathroom door open, and the good kid came back out.
“Whew,” he said. “Rachel? Maybe not that much of a distraction.”
“Sorry, Travis. You want to do something else for a while?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be all right—I didn’t get sick, I just felt like I might.”
She laughed. “Oh, is that all?”
He blushed.
“So, back to work,” I said. “Any way to estimate time of death? I think the newspaper said late Friday or early Saturday.”
“Right. Body was found on Monday at six in the morning by the housekeeper, Mrs. Coughlin. Rigor mortis had passed off, and there were other indicators that she’d probably died late Friday. More importantly—and here’s one of the instances in which Richmond really failed to pursue leads—she talked on the phone twice on Friday night. She was called by her cousin Robert, and she called her brother-in-law.”
“When?” I asked.
“Robert called at a little after eight; she called Gerald Spanning at nine-thirty.”
“Any idea what the calls were about?”
“According to Robert, he called to ask for a loan. He said she agreed to give him one, and he was going to come by on Monday morning to get a check from her.”
“Is that very likely?” I asked.
“Robert said she loaned him money all the time. Richmond didn’t check it out. Travis, I’d like to ask your dad’s attorney if we can get a look at his old accounts—he had a joint checking account with Gwendolyn, and I’d like to see if she really did write checks to Robert.”
“I’ll ask Mr. Brennan if he can help us out,” he said. “How soon do you need the information?”
“The sooner the better.”
He hesitated, then said, “I guess I should let him know what’s going on. May I use your phone?”
“Go ahead—use it any time you like while you’re here,” I said.
He came back in a few minutes and said, “I left a message with his service. They’re going to try to reach him and have him call me back here or on my cell phone.”
“You said Gwendolyn DeMont also called Gerald Spanning on the night she died?” I asked Rachel.
“He said she called to ask if he knew how to get in touch with Arthur. Gerald said he told her that he didn’t, but if Arthur called him, he would tell him to give her a call. She said not to bother, she was going to be turning in for the night. He asked her if she needed anything, or if he could help her, but she said no, she was fine, there was nothing urgent.”
“Any signs of forcible entry?” I asked.
“None.”
“Who else had keys to the house?”
“Good question. Arthur and the housekeeper, definitely. The housekeeper said the locks hadn’t been changed on the house in years. Who knows how many people had access. Richmond didn’t check that out, either.”
I was puzzled. “But I thought there were walls and security gates?”
Rachel nodded. “There were. But nothing a novice couldn’t get past. Fence wasn’t electrified or anything like that. It was just a big brick wall.”
“How high?”
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br /> She shuffled through the photos. “Maybe seven or eight feet.” She handed a photo to me. “You can see it here in this shot of the front drive. I’m not exactly sure why they took this photo. Richmond didn’t make any notes about it. Maybe just showing the security arrangements.”
I looked at it for a moment, then pointed at a marking on the gate-post and said, “What’s this, the symbol for the farm? A brand or something?”
She looked at it and shook her head. “I don’t know.”