No such luck.
The top layer was a bunch of newspapers. They were yellowed with age, and had that papery-musty smell. Beneath that smell was one of lavender. She stepped aside from her own shadow, looked at the papers. They were old, as in very old. The date was Monday, July 18, 1917. The headline was: Number of Holland County Men for Draft.
She gently placed the newspapers aside, along with a few layers of tissue paper. On top was a small velvet jewelry case. She opened it. Inside was a delicately beautiful gold locket, with what looked to be a pearl embellishment of a bird in flight.
Detta took the necklace from the case, slipped it around her neck. Then, as if the day could get better, she moved the next layer of tissue, and what she found beneath took her breath away.
The trunk was full of clothing. Women’s clothing.
Beautiful vintage women’s clothing.
On top was a white cotton chemise. It was trimmed with a beading lace at the top and bottom and had the kind of neckline that could be worn off the shoulder.
After a few more layers of tissue was a headpiece, the kind with lace and small silk flowers. The pink blossoms were sewn onto a metal comb.
Beneath this was a corset cover with shell button and lace trim, a beautiful ivory.
Item after item in the steamer trunk were gorgeous, exquisitely preserved articles of clothing. Scattered throughout the trunk were lavender sachet bags.
At the bottom of the trunk was a thick layer of tissue. Detta found that she was holding her breath as she removed them.
She gently peeled back the final layer of tissue and saw that the last article of clothing was a ball gown. The overdress was a lustrous peach with white lace ruffles at the neck and shoulder. The overskirt had a white netted lining. There was also a white underskirt with matching taffeta ruffle.
Detta took it all out and draped the clothing over the boxes. She crossed the room to the other side and retrieved the full-length mirror leaning against the wall. With a little bit of a struggle she got the mirror to the center of the room, leaned it against a support beam.
She held up the ball gown, fitting it to her shoulders. Whoever this dress was made for was just about her size. The gown looked almost like custom fit for her. As was the locket.
She couldn’t wait to get all this upstairs in some decent light. She would—
Before she could finish the thought a shadow skittered across the floor. She jumped. She turned 360, expecting to see someone in the basement with her.
‘Dad?’
No answer.
‘Dad?’ This time louder. Still no answer.
Another shadow, this time on the other side of the basement room.
Was someone looking in the windows?
Was it that skanky bitch who had followed her?
Detta stepped behind the brick pillar, took a deep breath. She looked at the beam of light on the basement floor.
Nothing moved.
She made a decision. If there was someone, she was not going to get trapped down here. She put the dress back on top of the steamer trunk, took a deep breath, and sprinted back up the stairs, across the dining room.
By the time she opened the back door, whoever was looking in the window – if there had been someone looking in the window – was gone.
58
With the exception of Walt Barnstable, Ivy had never seen anyone eat quite as much as Will Hardy. The man was bottomless. He was about as fit as a teenager, tall and athletic, without an ounce of fat on him. Ivy hated him.
She’d called him, absolutely certain he would tell her to leave him alone. Either that or put him on the village payroll.
He did neither. When she told him about the boxes at Joe McGrath’s, and her mother, he came right over.
When Will finally pushed his plate back he said, ‘I have a confession to make, Mrs Holgrave.’
Ivy June looked at her daughter, then back at her guest.
‘Will I be scandalized by this knowledge?’ she asked.
‘I don’t believe you will.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Shoot.’
‘That is the best fried chicken I’ve ever had.’
Ivy June blushed. It didn’t happen that often.
‘Learned at the apron bow of my mother, also named Ivy.’ She pointed at the stove. ‘That’s the same cast iron skillet she used. I think maybe it’s the pan.’
Will shook his head. ‘It’s the hand that turns the drumstick.’
‘Thank you for the kind words.’ Ivy June got to her feet. ‘Now, I know you two want to get to what’s in those boxes we got from Joe McGrath,’ she said. ‘You go on and get to it. I’ll clean up.’
‘Might need your help on this, Deputy Holgrave,’ Will said.
Her mother blushed again.
She was going for the record.
When Ivy opened the door to her house, she held the door for Will, who shuttled inside the two boxes of files.
‘Where do we want these?’ Will asked.
‘Anywhere is good.’
Will put the boxes on the dining room table. When he turned around, Frankie was standing right behind him. He almost jumped.
‘Oh, hello.’
Frankie gave him the twice over. Will apparently had enough experience and dog-wisdom to let her. When Frankie began to wag her tail, he relaxed.
‘That is one big girl dog,’ he said.
‘That’s Frankie.’
‘Okay to pet her?’
‘Oh yeah.’
Will petted Frankie. Frankie lapped up the attention.
As Frankie gave her new guest one final assessment, and lay down in the corner, Ivy took off her jacket and holster.
‘Coffee?’
Will looked at the boxes. ‘Make it a double.’
Ivy June showed up with a plate of her coconut cookies. They split up the files. Ivy took the photographs and the autopsies and court records. Will took the witness statements and summaries. Ivy June took the newspaper clippings.
They all read and in silence for a while, making notes.
‘Good cookies,’ Will said absently.
Ivy June beamed.
As Ivy sifted through her pile, she soon found the case from 1969. Although it was a photocopy of the photograph, and maybe a second generation one at that, there was no doubt that Carl Tomlinson had been right.
A crown made of crow’s wings had been found at the scene.
She showed the picture to her mother.
‘Oh, my,’ Ivy June said. ‘That’s the girl. The girl we found by the quarry.’
‘Her name was—’
‘Elizabeth,’ Ivy June said. ‘Elizabeth Hollis.’
‘Yes, Mama.’
Ivy read the summary aloud.
An honor student and a member of the Carver High drama club, Elizabeth Hollis was sixteen when she was found. Elizabeth’s father was a long-haul trucker who was killed on an icy road in Summit County when Elizabeth was only five years old. Elizabeth and her two younger sisters were being raised by their single mother, who worked two jobs as a waitress and a house cleaner.
When Elizabeth did not return home from school one day, her mother called the Sheriff’s office. Elizabeth’s decomposing body was found on June 30.
‘Joe made one visit to Carver,’ Ivy June said. ‘Something about one of her teachers, I think.’
Ivy found a summary of the visit. Joe McGrath had made a few notes regarding Elizabeth’s drama teacher, a twenty-seven-year-old man who did not supply an alibi on which Joe was particularly sold. But there was not enough suspicion for Joe to have followed up on the matter.
According to the report, on the morning of June 30, three boys, all around the age of twelve, walked across the vast field and over to the edge of the quarry, perhaps anticipating unearthing some limestone with their explosives.
The oldest of the boys, Tommy Reardon, was the leader of the gang, and therefore the director of the festivities, and the deployer of the more
powerful ordnance.
As the three boys spread out in the field Tommy came first upon an item which he recalled as being a large wicker basket. In front of the basket was a short four-legged stepstool. Although, according to his statement, he could not be positive, he seemed to recall that on the stepstool was a pair of old shoes. Grown-up shoes, a pair in size ten or eleven or twelve.
None of this would have been much worth noting – Holland County was famous for many things, not the least of which was the propensity for people from outside the county to dump their unwanted goods and pets – but for the fact that the only access path to the field, and that end of the quarry, was cordoned off by a chain, which had not been breached. Whoever had dumped these items had walked them back.
‘All these objects,’ Will said. ‘Weren’t there a lot of things placed around the clearing where Paulette Graham was found?’
The word leaped at Ivy. But only because she knew it echoed her own, private thoughts.
‘Placed?’ she asked.
Will thought for a second. ‘I did say placed, didn’t I?’
They held each other’s gaze for a moment. Something – something like understanding – passed between them.
When they finished with the files, Ivy went into the garage and came back with a large erasable whiteboard. Will helped her tack it to the wall. When Ivy picked up a black marker, her mother said:
‘Let me do it,’ she said. ‘Nobody can read your writing.’
Ivy June crossed the room to the whiteboard, took the marker from her daughter, and made two columns. In one she wrote:
Victim profile:
Female. Mid-teens. Caucasian. Slight build.
Poor/Working class.
Troubled home life.
Volunteer.
She underlined the last word three times.
‘I’d look there,’ Ivy June said. ‘The papers said that the Graham girl was a volunteer, also.’
Ivy and Will exchanged a glance. Will smiled.
‘If you ever want to come out of retirement, I have a contact at NYPD,’ Will said. ‘They’d be thrilled to get you.’
‘Never been to New York,’ Ivy June said. ‘Might just take you up on that when my hips get better.’
After walking her mother back to the cottage, Ivy returned to find Will lost in thought in front of the whiteboard. He had circled the word volunteer.
‘Sort of cries out, doesn’t it?’ Will said.
‘It does. All these girls did volunteer work.’
‘But not at the same places.’
‘No,’ Ivy said. ‘But it can’t be coincidence.’
‘Are these places part of a larger network?’
‘They might be now, maybe linked at a county or state website, or one belonging to an advocacy group.’
‘But not in 1969.’
‘No,’ Ivy said.
‘Which means that back then—’
‘Someone put eyes on Elizabeth Hollis.’
‘Yes.’
Ivy made a second column. She wrote:
Suspects:
Mid-thirties/early forties
Criminal record
History of violence
‘You’ve got physical evidence at the Graham scene in Lonnie Comb’s tobacco tin,’ Will said. ‘Nothing so far at the Mollo scene. The rest is circumstantial.’
He was right. The photograph on Lonnie’s computer, and Dallas Lange’s sighting of what might have been Chevy Deacon’s truck on Cavender Road was not enough. Even including the page of the newspaper bearing the name Josie in Chevy Deacon’s handwriting at his house.
There was no DNA evidence on either victim, no blood or tissue beneath their fingernails, nothing left behind by the perpetrator. There was no evidence of sexual assault in any of the cases, therefore no transference or semen. There were no fingerprints.
‘Have you ever run a ViCAP?’ Will asked.
Maintained by the FBI, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program was the largest investigative repository of major violent crime cases in the US designed to collect and analyze information about homicides, sexual assaults, missing persons, and other violent crimes. If the signature of a crow’s wings had been used before, and was collected as evidence, it would be in there.
‘I have,’ Ivy said.
‘I did a little work on it with NYPD and a joint FBI task force. Setting up keywords, databases. Maybe you should plug this in.’
‘Good idea,’ Ivy said. In the ten years or so ViCAP had been available through a secure internet website, Ivy had only used it a handful of times.
Will pointed at her laptop on the dining room table. ‘Is this hooked up?’
‘It is.’
‘Okay to use it?’
‘Absolutely.’ Ivy sat down, navigated to the site, entered the login information. ‘All yours.’
Will sat down at the table, picked up his coffee cup, drained it. He looked at Ivy. ‘I’m going to need something a little stronger than this.’
‘I’m on the case, Doc.’
59
The lights were still on in her mother’s house. Ivy walked across the yard. Frankie took off for the woods.
When Ivy stepped inside her mother’s house she saw that Ivy June was on the couch, wired, still wide awake, the TV on low volume.
‘How is it going?’ her mother asked.
‘Ongoing,’ Ivy said.
Ivy reached into the dining room hutch, retrieved a bottle of Maker’s Mark. Her mother nodded at the bottle. ‘Where do you think you’re going with that?’
Ivy grabbed a pair of glasses from the kitchen, poured them each a few inches.
Her mother took the glass. ‘Thanks.’
They clinked.
‘Lots of memories today,’ Ivy June said.
‘Any good ones?’
Her mother sipped her drink.
‘I don’t know. I guess what I’m trying to say is that today was . . . ’
‘What, Mama?’
Her mother took a few moments, organizing her thoughts. ‘It’s just too bad it all had to be over these little girls.’
Ivy had an idea about where this was going. She said nothing.
‘But being out there today? Looking at those old case files? Talking to Mickey McGrath again? Working with you and Will?’ She glanced up at Ivy. Her mother looked more alive and vibrant and engaged by life than she had in months. ‘It felt good, you know? Like I was making a difference.’
‘You did make a difference.’
‘It felt like I was important again.’
‘You are important, Mama.’
Ivy June waved a hand. ‘You’re just trying to humor an old mare.’
‘Who elected you mare?’
Her mother laughed. This was an old joke of theirs, rooted in how some people in Ohio and Pennsylvania said the word ‘mayor’. It often was attached to someone bitching about getting a speeding ticket and announcing how they were best friends with the mare.
‘I’m going to get back to it,’ Ivy said.
‘You have to get some rest.’
‘I will,’ Ivy said. ‘You got everything you need?’
‘I do, baby girl. I do.’
‘All right then.’
‘And Ivy Lee?’
‘Yeah?’
‘That Will,’ she said. ‘He’s a good man.’
‘You’re just saying that because he likes your fried chicken.’
Ivy June smiled. ‘Maybe so. Love you.’
‘Love you, too.’
Ivy stepped onto the porch. She glanced toward the river, and the Fairgrounds. The night was still and warm and silent, dotted with fireflies. It was every summer night of her youth.
But she knew better.
Before Ivy crossed the yard she called in to the station house for a status report. Missy Kohl was on duty.
‘Not too much happening,’ Missy said. ‘Pretty quiet, really. A bar fight up at the Riverside, of course.’
‘I�
�m shocked.’ Every Friday was fight night at the Riverside Tavern.
Missy went on to say that the Claytons were at it again. Mitch and Holly Clayton held the record for the longest running marital cage match in Holland County history, going on thirty-seven years of wedded misery. Missy said this time there were broken plates and cups, but no bones. No arrests, either.
‘Also, one of the kids from Carver got into some kind of dustup behind the school tonight,’ Missy added. ‘Got beat up pretty good.’
‘Do we know what happened?’
‘The girl said she was smoking a cigarette behind the gym and she got jumped from behind. She’s up at the emergency room at Hillsdale.’
‘Hillsdale? How badly is she hurt?’
‘The ER doc says she’ll make it just fine, but she’s darn well busted up. Black eyes, fat lip, scraped knees. She says her arm is broken, but the doc says no.’
‘Do we know her?’
Ivy heard some notebook pages turning. ‘Her name is Audrey Lawson.’
The name didn’t ring a bell. Ivy said so.
‘You’ve seen her around,’ Missy said. ‘She’s kind of on the chunky side, lots of hardware on her face and ears. Usually sporting a purple Mohawk.’
Now Ivy remembered the girl. She’d had a few run-ins with her, mostly loitering. Bad attitude, but nothing violent. Until tonight. Maybe the kid mouthed off to the wrong person.
‘Let me know if her condition changes or you hear anymore about what happened,’ Ivy said. ‘I’ll be up for a while.’
‘Will do, Chief.’
When Ivy returned to her house Frankie was waiting on the porch. The dog was covered in leaves and dirt.
‘You’re not coming in like that,’ Ivy said. ‘I just vacuumed.’
Frankie seemed to understand. She tried to shake it all off.
As Ivy stepped into the front room Will was still on the laptop.
‘Any hits?’ she asked.
‘Nothing promising yet. There are a few hits regarding signatures with animals, mostly of the Son of Sam variety. Nothing specific to crows and serial murder. Not yet.’
For the next hour they tried inputting as many variables as the cases called for. Nothing jumped off the screen. Ivy tapped the photograph of the Lonnie Combs scene.
Murder Scene Page 25