by LS Sygnet
My eyes bulged. “Shit is right! When did she talk to Waters?”
“Apparently after our uniformed officers delivered his drunk ass home,” Johnny growled. “Wasn’t good enough for Ms. Fair-and-Balanced Wannabe. She had to drag Crevan’s dad into the fray.”
I looked at the inset photos next to the story. Aidan Conall. Alex Waters. Another name I didn’t recognize. “Who is Reverend Luke Napier?”
“Head bible beater at Foundations Baptist, and if you want my gut instinct, leading candidate for Waters’ Reverend Hellfire.”
The implications of Belle’s murder slowly sunk into my brain. “Ah crap. If her murder is related to Goddard and Tippet –”
“No way is this a hate crime,” Johnny muttered. “Which puts us exactly back at square one. I don’t get it, dammit. This article makes Alex Waters look like a raving lunatic and Conall and Napier like the salvation of mankind’s eternal soul.”
“Take a step back. Let’s go to the crime scene and make sure that this isn’t something else entirely. What on earth made Briscoe leap to the notion that they’re related?”
Johnny’s chest expanded with a sucking deep breath. “He hasn’t been there yet, obviously, but the uniforms on the scene who called him said there’s another message. Something that Briscoe thinks fits with that whole abomination thing from Tippet last night, though God knows why, since he hasn’t seen anything yet.”
“All right. If it is, we’ll readjust the profile.”
He rolled his eyes. “So are we going to get to the point where you actually give me one, or do you intend to let me continue to flounder through this one indefinitely, Helen?”
“Hey –”
“I understand what you’re doing, really, I do, and under any other circumstances, I’d find it the sweetest gesture in the world.” He tapped one finger against the side of my head. “But I need you here, in the case working it with me. All I ask is that you share with me all of those thoughts you normally hold close to the vest. I don’t want you running off and closing it while the rest of us look like a bunch of stoned, knuckle-dragging lackeys. Deal?”
“I wasn’t holding anything back. Didn’t you think that the Tippets were behind this?”
“Honestly? No, not really,” Johnny said.
“Shit. Well it looks like I was way off base too.”
“Is that because of this thing between us?” His fingers gripped my shoulders. “Has my fucked up memory, your guilt, what we did tonight, has all of that created some kind of bizarre perfect storm that made you off your game as much as it has me?”
Had it? I wasn’t sure. Devlin’s warning echoed in my head. He saw that my head wasn’t in the case, but mistakenly believed what I wanted him to believe. I was boosting poor Johnny’s tattered confidence. In the meantime, they were all wrong. Another victim was dead while I plan B plotted all day and carved a few escape hatches into existence.
A lifetime of strangling a normal healthy conscience to death had been undone in a fraction of the time it had taken to accomplish that singular feat – becoming a conscienceless killer like my father. Johnny Orion resuscitated my guilt right back to larger-than-life.
“Tell me what you’re thinking.” He gave a light shake to the shoulders still in his grip.
“Our little personal drama might’ve thrown me off. We won’t know for sure until we get to the crime scene and look at whatever made the uniforms think it’s related to our other cases.”
“Doc, what if this is our fault? We were so focused on the hate crime angle –”
“If we were wrong, we have a duty to look at all of this with a broader scope and fresh eyes. And we’ve got to try harder to leave the other stuff out of the mix. If this thing between us is dulling our ability to work together, maybe there should be a buffer between you and me while we’re on the case.”
“I don’t know how that helps anything.”
“Are we at least past the irrational jealousy?”
The wrinkles on his forehead smoothed. “Yeah, I’m over that. What about you?”
“Me?” I know I sounded offended.
“Doc, this has been eating at you a little bit. Please tell me that I haven’t misread what I’ve seen.”
“Oh. Of course it has. I guess I’ve always believed that my ability to compartmentalize personal from professional…” I glanced up at his twinkling eyes and inappropriately satisfied grin. “You shouldn’t be so happy that you breeched the barrier, you know. This isn’t a good thing, Johnny. In case you’ve forgotten, we have another victim.”
“Still, I can’t help but be a little thrilled to know that I really did get behind the fortress wall of the Impenetrable Helen Eriksson.”
“This is exactly the kind of insanity that landed us in a bad spot in the first place. Yes, you know me. Yes, the normal distance I hold the rest of the world at bay with doesn’t seem to apply to you anymore. Can we please figure out who’s killing people left and right now?”
“With or without a liaison?”
“How about if we see if Belle’s murder is related or a stand alone crime first?”
“No deal. We work better together and you know it.”
“Fine, no liaison. Will you please get dressed now? I shudder to think what’ll happen if you let Briscoe get to the crime scene first, and I’m assuming we’ve got a greater distance to travel than he does. Crevan told me his house was an old Victorian in Downey that he worked very hard to restore before the marriage fell apart.”
“Speaking of Crevan, did you catch that part of the conversation?”
“I assume they’re sleeping in shifts tonight, and he’s unaware that the divorce won’t ever be finalized.”
“Yeah.”
“Good plan to keep him away from the crime scene. I know he didn’t love Belle, but it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to see her like this.” I thought of Rick’s murder and the fallacy of my belief that seeing the grieving ex-wife try to contaminate the crime scene might suddenly make me appear innocent.
He squinted. “Like you did?”
Great. No point in denying it. That much of my criminal past was common knowledge. “Yeah, Johnny, like I did. Go get dressed.”
By the time we backed out of the driveway in my Expedition, a warm front had moved over Darkwater Bay. It felt downright balmy compared to this morning, and the black ice on the street was gone. I told myself that was why beads of sweat formed and trickled down my back, because it wasn’t bitter cold anymore.
It appears that I’m capable of lying to myself as much as anybody else.
Chapter 30
By the standard of historic Victorian houses, the size of Crevan’s old home was commensurate with that of a public servant who didn’t make a whole lot of money. It was obvious that Belle wanted the modest abode to hurt her husband, not because it was a particularly valuable piece of real estate.
It was an odd moment for me to notice that there was no fog obscuring the view of the house, or magnifying the flashing police lights outside the residence. Two police cars were parked at the curb, the uniformed officers having already cordoned off the crime scene. Briscoe’s sedan was conspicuously absent. CSD’s van had not yet arrived, not to mention anyone from Bay County Medical Examiner’s domain.
No Briscoe.
No Forsythe.
No Maya.
The crime scene was as close to pristine as I’d discovered in my tenure in Darkwater Bay. Question was, would that make a lick of difference this time? It sure as hell hadn’t on New Year’s Eve.
“Ready?”
I nodded. “Let’s go see what’s what.”
Johnny’s cell rang as we stepped under the yellow tape strung around trees in the front yard and the columns of the wrap around porch.
“Orion.” He paused. “Hang on, I’m gonna put you on speaker, Tony. Doc and I just got to the crime scene.”
“You there?” Briscoe’s scratchy voice boomed over the tiny cell phone speaker.
“Well, for starters, Puppy woke up before Lou got down here.”
“You cannot let him come to the crime scene,” I said.
“Don’t I know it. Besides the point now. Lou’s got him in her office layin’ down the law. That’s why I ain’t over there yet, on account of Puppy threatenin’ to kneecap me if I left without him.”
Was that it? This was the news Johnny thought I needed to hear straight from Briscoe’s ignorant lips?
“Here’s the kicker,” he continued. “Lou was on her way down here anyhow, on account of the Sentinel callin’ old George Hardy about some weird sorta manifesto document hand delivered to their offices tonight.”
“Go on,” my ears perked with interest.
“Well, we ain’t seen it yet, but George told ‘em to send a courier over here with the original, not to touch it or copy it or otherwise fuck up any evidence that might’ve been left behind by the perp.”
I doubted that any such physical evidence would be recovered. That didn’t rule out something a linguist might find, or a handwriting expert if we were so lucky to have such a manifesto dropped into our laps. In an age of word processing, I highly doubted the latter scenario.
“So the Sentinel starts givin’ Hardy a bunch of shit about it, sayin’ that he got no right to violate their First Amendment protection, and that if he did, they’d have their lawyers up our asses for a bit of reversal of what happened this afternoon. We could kiss that sweet retraction and mea culpa authored by none other than Ms. Belle Conall goodbye.”
I stared at Johnny.
“Uh, I didn’t tell Doc about the agreement that legal worked out with the Sentinel yet, Tony.”
“Oh, well the long and short of it was that Belle had to spill her guts on paper and kiss some serious ass apologizing to both you and Johnny for that unwarranted bit o’ fiction she published in the morning edition. Neither here nor there at the moment. See, the Sentinel told George that this manifesto or whatever, claimed that if they failed to publish it, more people would die.”
“And then Belle’s body is discovered tonight,” I said, as a sort of grim reality settled over me. Missed the boat, had we? It seemed like we were so far from the dock, the boat and the water that we might well have been in land-locked oblivion on this one. “Tony, it’s imperative that we get our hands on that document. If George has to send CSD to the Sentinel to process for prints or other trace evidence, he needs to do it. A copy is acceptable if it gives us some insight into this lunatic’s mind.”
I heard the friction of fingernails over hairy skin. My mind’s eye saw Tony scratching, goatee would’ve been my guess.
“Here’s the deal. Believe it or not, George actually knew what he was doing. He told the Sentinel that they had the right to publish our Kozinsky wannabe’s dissertation on why he has the right to decide who lives or dies, but if they impeded an active police investigation in the process, or tampered with and even so much as inadvertently destroyed one speck of evidence, he’d hold their editors and the owner of the Sentinel criminally liable.”
“So they caved?” Johnny asked.
“CSD’s got a guy picking it up right now, on account of us not wantin’ some random courier throwin’ a little more fingerprints into the mix.”
“We’ll probably find prints from twelve guys at the courier service, twenty from the newspaper, two dozen from Office Depot –”
“I know, Doc,” Johnny said, “but we’ve still got to look.”
“I’m more interested in what this thing says.”
“Which brings me to my final point,” Briscoe said. “‘Cause of all this new drama, Lou wants me to hang out until CSD can glove up and make a copy for you to see, Eriksson. I’ll be over with it hopefully within the hour, but since this case is technically not ours, we figure Johnny can handle whatever went on over there anyhow.”
“Good plan,” I said. “Tony, will you do something for me right away?”
“Uh ... sure, if I can.”
“Tell Crevan that I’m sorry,” I said. “I know what he’s feeling right now. Tell him that Johnny will get to the bottom of this, whether it’s related to our other situation or not.”
“You got it, Eriksson.”
Johnny disconnected the call. “Thanks for doing that, Helen. Tony’s been feeling pretty touchy over this rift between the two of you.”
“I didn’t do it for him. Crevan is my friend, Johnny. While I don’t mean this the same as I do for you, I love Crevan very much. There’s something about him that’s very… I don’t know if I can even explain it. I suppose the closest thing I could compare it to is a soul mate of the non-sexual kind. He calms me without even trying.”
“More than I do?”
“It’s different. I doubt he understands me remotely the way you do, but in some respects, I think he understands my anger better than anybody else. He’s like water on my fuse.”
“Crevan’s had his own struggles with biting back the rage, Helen. First his father, then Belle. He probably relates to your frustrations better than anybody knows. That doesn’t surprise me, to be honest.”
“Huh,” I took the stairs on the porch two at a time. “And here I had him pegged for the human equivalent of Valium.”
“Officer,” Johnny nodded to the cop guarding the front door. “Where’s your partner on this one?”
The officer pointed toward the back of the house. Badge identified him as Officer Franklin.
“Give me the bullet, Franklin,” Johnny said.
“Twelve-oh-two this morning, dispatch called me to the scene. The neighbor, a Mrs. Mussulmen, took her dog out for his last business before bedtime. She noticed that Mrs. Conall’s door was wide open, all the lights in the residence were off. She called nine-eleven to report a possible break in. I arrived, waited for backup and we entered the residence. That’s when we found the body, Commander Orion.”
“Where is she?” Johnny asked.
“Splayed out on the dining room floor about three feet inside the doorway. At that point, we stopped and called division, sir.”
“You didn’t check to see if she needed medical attention first?”
“No sir, it was pretty obvious that she was dead.”
“How could you know that if you didn’t –”
“Detective Eriksson,” Franklin interrupted, “on account of the tongue skewered to the dining room floor. It’s pretty clear she’s dead. Neighbor says that Mrs. Conall usually gets home from work around eleven unless she’s working on some hot story.”
Speaking of hot, my face felt that way in an instant.
“Yes, well, did you look for signs of burglary? Forced entry?” Johnny asked.
“Door’s clean as a whistle. Just left wide open,” Franklin said. “We checked the back. Looks to be dead bolted, though we can’t tell if it’s a key only lock or what since we didn’t go through the house.”
“Has anyone called the medical examiner?” I asked.
“We left that to Detective Briscoe, ma’am,” he said. “He told us to keep the place secure until you all showed up, to stand guard until CSD arrives and then follow orders as Commander Orion sees fit.”
“Tony mentioned some sort of message. I’m wondering what it was if you didn’t actually enter and search the residence,” Johnny said.
“Well, maybe I jumped the gun on that one,” Franklin’s eyes darted away from the intensity in Johnny’s stare. “It’s sort of metaphoric, sir. In light of what she said about you and Detective Eriksson, I figured that cutting out her tongue might’ve been what this guy had to say all along.”
Good point. I had a hard time mustering a whole lot of sympathy for Belle. All of mine was reserved for her victim – Crevan. Johnny and I would be fine, no matter what the press had to write about us.
“Technically, if he w
as sending that kind of message, wouldn’t he have cut off her fingers?”
I shook my head. “Johnny, it’s a metaphor. Said, wrote, you get the connection, right?”
“Sure,” he said. “I still think –”
“Let’s go have a look inside. We can debate the intent later after we’ve got the full picture.”
Franklin offered gloves. Johnny started flipping lights on inside the entry, then the living room. That was far enough to show us what Franklin described. Her little pink tongue, complete with a root longer than I would’ve expected, seemed more torn out than cut. It was indeed skewered to the floor beside her head.
I imagined it wagging, still trying to spew the vicious lies she printed about me on a day that should’ve focused on Darkwater Bay’s loss of an outstanding police detective. Thoughts of Karma returned.
Johnny flipped on the dining room light. “Holy shit,” he drawled. “Helen, what do you make of this?”
The bloody orifice that was once the holder of the tongue was crammed full of something saturated in reddish brown ink.
“Blood?”
“Seems likely,” I said. “But what is it?”
Johnny pointed to a shredded morning edition on the other side of her body. “Speaking of metaphors, it looks like someone decided to make Belle eat her words, literally.”
“More apt, choke on them. Look at how distended her neck is. Jesus, he really packed her full, didn’t he?”
Johnny stole a peek at me. “Or her.”
“Don’t even go there, Orion. I know what I said after the funeral yesterday morning, but even if I had considered acting in the heat of the moment, you’re forgetting one important fact.”
“I know. You’ve got an ironclad alibi.”
“Unless you want to consider that Devlin was snoring away half the afternoon.”
“No way, Doc. I’m not falling for the devil’s advocate thing. We record your mileage every time that car leaves for police business. It’s become habit for you. Bet you didn’t even realize you logged in your mileage on the way to the funeral this morning. Chris did the same when he got Devlin home from the cemetery. That vehicle hadn’t moved a millimeter before we came out tonight.”