by Rose Beecham
Pratt hesitated for a split second before conceding, “Good thinking.”
“Have we ruled out Ms. Calloway?”
Pratt regarded her like she was crazy. “There’s no way she did it. Look at her. Ninety pounds wet. Hysterical with grief. They had to give her a shot to calm her down.”
None of which proved anything. Patiently, Jude said, “We’re going to need her clothing. When is she being transported to headquarters?”
“We’re not going that route tonight. I want her taken to the hospital. We can get her statement tomorrow.”`
“Sir, she’s probably the last person to see the victim alive.”
“Which is why we should show some sensitivity.” Pratt sounded protective. He was the father of several girls, one of whom looked a little like their witness. “She’s not a suspect. But if you want a quick word with her, I’ll go give Koertig the good news.”
Relieved, Jude took the steps onto the verandah and strode over to Phillipa Calloway. After identifying herself, she said, “I’m very sorry for your loss, Ms. Calloway.”
Upon closer inspection, the young woman was probably in her twenties. Corkscrews of auburn hair framed the face of a dreamer. Even puffy from crying, her eyes were a beautiful almond shape, their shade a dark aqua blue that reminded Jude of the Colorado spruce trees around her house. Her coloring was Celtic, the skin a milky tone that would never tan. Red blotches marred its translucent perfection. From the tear-ravaged look of her, she was every bit as innocent as Pratt claimed.
“Who would do this?” She directed her anguished question at Jude.
“We want to find out as much as you do,” Jude replied.
The answer was standard, but she always meant what she said. Her sincerity seemed to calm Calloway. The paramedic seized the opportunity, jumping up like she was relieved to escape.
“I need to check on a couple of things,” she said, patting their witness’s shoulder. “Can I leave you here with the detective, Pippa?”
Calloway nodded vaguely and Jude took the responder’s place. “This must have been a terrible shock,” she said.
“I had a flat tire. Otherwise I’d have been here. Oh, God. Maybe I could have done something.”
Or maybe they would be taking two bodies to the morgue. Jude kept the thought to herself. “Where did the flat tire happen?”
“On the Devil’s Highway. There was a sign. Toad Porter’s Haysales.”
“Not far from Towaoc?” Jude knew the area well. She drove out that way to visit her friend Eddie House.
“Yes. A couple of guys stopped to help me. A father and son. They mentioned they lived somewhere nearby.”
Jude was relieved that someone would be able to verify Calloway’s story. Piecing together the rest of the alibi, she asked, “Do you remember what time that was?”
“Yes. I saw it on my cell phone while they were working on the tire. 3:26 p.m.”
“Ms. Calloway—”
“Please, call me Pippa.”
“Thank you, Pippa. Did you get the names of the men who fixed your tire?”
“Yes.” She frowned as if she’d been about to speak but the words had slipped from her mind. With a dismayed “Oh” she stared at Jude in confusion.
“Don’t worry if you can’t remember right now,” Jude said gently. “You’ve had a terrible shock. Do you remember anything about them?” If they lived around Towaoc, it would be pretty easy to track them down.
Pippa frowned. An edge of frustration lifted her dull tone. “Why does it matter? Shouldn’t you be thinking about who did this?”
“I am,” Jude said. “But one of the first things we have to do is rule out the people closest to your uncle. I know it’s upsetting to have to think about all this now, but you were the last person to see Mr. Maulle alive.”
Pippa’s frown gave way to comprehension. “So I need an alibi for when he was attacked?”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“The father looked Native American, but the son was blond. They had a three-legged wolf.”
Jude veiled her astonishment. “Is the name ‘Eddie House’ familiar?”
Pippa looked startled. “Do you know him?”
Jude kept their personal acquaintanceship to herself. “Mr. House is a famous Ute pottery-maker.”
“He knew my uncle,” Pippa said. “Uncle Fabian collected pottery. It sounds like he bought some of Mr. House’s pieces.”
“Did you happen to notice if any items are missing from your uncle’s collection?” Jude couldn’t imagine a burglar killing a rich collector and walking away empty-handed.
“I didn’t look. And this is my first time here. I don’t know what he kept in this house.”
Her tone was so weary and despondent, Jude said, “We can talk again later, Pippa. I’ll need to take a statement from you about finding your uncle. For now, can you confirm what time you arrived here?”
“Around 4:40. I kept phoning once I reached the mountains, but he didn’t answer. The last time I called was just a few minutes before I found the house.”
“Thank you, that’s helpful.” Jude stood. “I need to go talk with the other detectives now. Do you have some clean clothes to change into?”
“All my stuff’s in there.” Pippa pointed toward the Mazda SUV parked below the house. “I didn’t even bring my bags up.”
“I’ll have someone fetch a change of clothing so you can get more comfortable. Is there a family member we can call?”
“My parents are in Boston. Uncle Fabian is all the family I have…had, out here.”
“Then we’ll help you get situated until you decide what you want to do.”
“Thank you. Everyone’s been very kind.” Pippa stared out at the mountains. Wistfully, she said, “It’s so beautiful here, I can’t believe this could happen.”
“I’m very sorry,” Jude said once more. “People thought highly of your uncle.”
Before Pippa could give into tears once more, Jude moved away and signaled a female deputy to sit with Pippa. Stepping under the tape, she stepped into the house, acknowledging several members of the Crime Scene Unit. They’d set up a portable workstation near the entrance for their equipment and evidence inspection and were milling around waiting for the coroner to arrive. Jude pulled on latex gloves and a pair of boot protectors, and picked up a bunch of evidence pouches and security strips so she could offer an extra pair of hands. Pratt, already garbed, fell into step with her as she moved farther into the house.
“What’s your take on the niece?” he asked.
“Same as yours. Innocent family member. She has an alibi. We’ll have to confirm her story, but that shouldn’t be difficult. I’ll take a full statement once they’re done with her at the hospital?”
“Let’s give her some time to get over the shock. Maybe she’ll remember more.”
“I’ll be in town for a while.” Jude had expected to stay in Cortez for several days after the Telluride briefing. She was thankful she’d packed extra clothing. With the homicide landing in their laps as well, she could be stuck down here for a week.
“Your FBI friends arrive tomorrow, don’t forget about that,” Pratt said.
Jude wasn’t sure if Arbiter intended to inform the left hand what the right hand was doing. He’d been cagey when she asked, saying if too much was divulged they would know he had an asset in the mix. It was better for all parties if her cover remained intact. She wondered how long it would take the task force to discover that she was a “friend” of Harrison Hawke. Once they made the connection, what then?
She took a few cautious steps into the living room and absorbed the million-dollar view. Even in the fading light the panorama held her spellbound. The San Juans rose dark purple against a red-streaked sky, stretching north toward Telluride. She could imagine the owner of this house sitting in the single black leather armchair opposite the windows, soaking up the splendor. She picked up a book from the occasional table next to the armchair and check
ed the cover. The Dance of Anger. Yep, that made sense. Who wouldn’t want to dive between the covers of a self-help bestseller when they had this house and this view?
She slowly absorbed the rest of the room. Nothing seemed out of place. Fabian Maulle’s log home was photo-perfect and belonged in a ritzy real estate show on TV.
“Nice life,” she said.
“I met the guy a couple of times. Not your typical loud mouth fat cat.” Pratt picked up the book and thumbed through it, pausing occasionally like the contents spoke to him.
Jude picked a careful path toward a display cabinet in the adjoining dining area. The contents had to be worth a fortune, but there was no sign of a smash and grab or even an attempt to force the door. Either the burglar was in a hurry to leave, or he had no clue what antique Pueblo pottery was worth.
“The attack occurred in Maulle’s office upstairs.” Pratt placed the self-help book back where he found it. “The place was ransacked. They were probably looking for cash. A safe, maybe.”
They climbed the stairs, avoiding photo evidence markers and tape barriers. Deputy Belle Simmons met them at the top where a large area of blood spray and bloody footprints had been marked. Belle was in charge of the MCSO crime scene technicians and was one of the few officers with major crime scene experience. As usual, her makeup bore testimony to hours in front of a mirror. Jude had never seen her without the works. She was still in her summer shades: bronze foundation, frosted copper lipstick, and green eye shadow. In winter, she favored coral lips and more dramatic eyeliner. Her bold red curls were scraped into a bun and adorned with a spangled pink hair net.
“How’s it coming?” Pratt asked.
“Well, it’s quite a blood scene. Everything’s taped off and we’ve taken the wide-angle views. Just waiting on the coroner now.” Belle gave Jude a smile. “Good to see y’all, Detective.”
“You, too. How are the kids?”
“I’m about ready to send them back where they came from.” To Pratt, Belle said, “Count yourself lucky you just got those gorgeous little girls to worry about, Orwell.”
The sheriff looked smug. He and his wife had daughters so sweet and well-behaved that Belle wondered if they were quite right in the head, at least that’s what she’d confided to Jude. She and her mild-mannered husband, refugees from Louisiana, had two boys who didn’t know the meaning of discipline. One of them, the twelve-year-old, had recently driven the family car onto the street and rear-ended a neighbor’s BMW. Luckily, he wasn’t injured and they could afford the repairs. Belle’s husband had an Internet shoe business and did okay.
Jude was always surprised when good people had monsters for children. There was a time when she blamed parents for every failing of their children, but that didn’t explain all the creeps who came from good homes, or the responsible adults who had shitty childhoods. The more homicides she investigated, the more she believed in the idea of evil in its many facets. What else could explain the brutal banality of the Menendez brothers, or the calculated sadism of a child killer?
She hoped Belle’s boys were just going through a phase. She was a good woman and a good cop. She deserved kids she didn’t have to apologize for.
“Are you hanging around after you finish with the scene?” Belle asked.
“I can if you need an extra pair of hands.” If there weren’t enough technicians, Jude sometimes helped out, labeling bags and sorting evidence.
“No, we’re okay,” Belle said. “Three more deputies finished their CSI certificates this year, and one of the guys added a bloodstain analysis course.”
“There’s plenty for him to do here,” Jude remarked.
Pratt excused himself to answer his cell phone, returning a moment later to announce, “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, the media’s here, and the coroner is on his way up.”
Jude’s stomach stopped curdling when she heard the word “his.” She would have been surprised if Mercy Westmoreland attended a Montezuma County crime scene at this time of day unless no one else could be found. But the Maulle killing would be a high-profile case, and the sheriff liked to involve Mercy in those. Thanks to regular stints on Court TV, her name had courtroom cachet, a state of affairs that bugged other hardworking but unglamorous forensic pathologists in the Four Corners.
She and Belle stepped back as the wiry figure of Norwood Carver came into view downstairs. Jude knew exactly what he was wearing under his bunny suit: high-priced cycling apparel he didn’t care to sully on the job. No doubt he’d pedaled up here on his carbon-framed racing bike, complete with support crew bringing up the rear in an SUV with a spare bike strapped to the roof. The sides of Carver’s vehicle bore the legend I Brake for Cadavers, his idea of sophisticated wit.
Sure enough, a red-faced dweeb Jude recognized as a pathologist’s assistant from Carver’s office came panting up the stairs after his master, weighed down with body bag and field kit. Carver occasionally glanced back at him with the cheerful disdain of a man accustomed to leading the meek.
“Dr. Carver. Good evening. Thank you for coming so quickly,” Belle said deferentially. “This way please.”
Carver marched toward the room at the end of the hallway. Jude always had the impression that he was driven by a mental stopwatch that never stopped counting off the seconds until he could return to the real work of fitness training.
He called over his shoulder, “Step on it, Fritz, or that’s your brain in the next jar on my desk.”
The coroner called all his assistants “Fritz” in honor of the only one he thought was worth a dime, a minion who had laid down his life on the altar of science, stung to death by a wasp colony at a crime scene.
Picking his way across the ransacked office to the man lying in a dark pool of blood on the floor, Carver said, “I understand we have a positive identification.”
“Yes, the victim is Fabian Maulle,” Jude said. “His niece ID’d him and recorded time of probable death at 4:46 p.m. She was with Mr. Maulle when he stopped breathing but did not attempt resuscitation.”
“Has the body been moved?” Carver asked.
“The victim was dying when his niece discovered him,” Belle said. “She held him in her arms. This is the position she placed him in after he appeared to be deceased.”
Carver took Maulle’s pulse, tested for rigor, examined the torso wounds and what appeared to be blunt force trauma to the head, looked down his throat and up his nose, then crisply announced, “It would seem money doesn’t buy happiness. Wrongful death.”
He rose and moved away from the body, signaling “Fritz” to complete the initial tasks. The ruddy underling took a series of in situ photographs, then rolled Maulle on his side, arranging his clothes to obtain his core temperature.
“He’s still warm. Rectal is ninety-six point two degrees and room temperature is sixty-eight.”
Jude did the math. In an air-conditioned room like this, the normal body temperature of 98.4F would drop at slightly less than one degree per hour. Maulle’s temperature was consistent with the time of death Pippa Calloway claimed. At the postmortem they would get an estimate of how long exsanguination had taken. Depending on which internal organs were affected and which arteries were severed, stabbing deaths often occurred in a minute or less.
While Fritz scraped beneath Maulle’s nails, fingerprinted him, and bagged his hands, Carver admired a parrot staring from a birdcage near the desk. “African Grey. Smart bird. Thinks like a four year old, so they say. Which makes him roughly the equivalent of Fritz here.”
“Great,” Jude muttered. “Our eyewitness has feathers.”
“All yours, Detective.” Carver waved a hand expansively around the blood splattered scene, indicating they could complete their processing. “I’ll notify the sheriff.”
As soon as Carver departed, the photographer took over the crime scene and began setting up his tripod and lights. Jude and Belle issued some instructions and left him to it. The fewer people in the scene at any one time, the more
likely that evidence would be preserved. Jude glanced toward Fritz, who was roaming the hallway with his body bag. A couple of paramedics trudged up the stairs with a stretcher, ready to cart Maulle off to the morgue as soon as the detectives had seen all they wanted to see.
Pete Koertig followed them, his ruddy face scrunched with the effort of containing his glee. “Meet your primary,” he told Jude.
With his scalp aglow beneath the fuzz of short blond hair, and his big white grin, he looked more like a college football player than a detective. His heavyset build made him intimidating, and his general clumsiness gave the impression of a guy who wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box. As a consequence he was often underestimated, a factor in his impressive confession record. When suspects thought they were smarter than the cop doing the interview, they lowered their guard.
Jude had worked several cases with Koertig, and once they got beyond first impressions, they’d settled into a productive camaraderie. She found him methodical and hardworking. He was also self-aware enough to capitalize on his own strengths and weaknesses, something more egotistical males found difficult.
“I thought you’d catch this one for sure,” he said. “All the guys did.”
Jude shrugged. “I’m not the only show in town. Congratulations, boss.”
Chortling, Koertig dragged on a pair of gloves, which promptly split. “Shit.” He grimaced. “Excuse my French.”
Belle took a spare pair from her pocket and checked the sizing on the bag. “These are extra large.”
Koertig peered into the office. “Burglary? I don’t think so.”
“No, the place was tossed.” Jude studied the chaos. Papers spilled from the filing cabinet. Every bookshelf had been emptied onto the floor. Expensive looking paintings were stacked carelessly behind the door. No burglar would have walked out of Fabian Maulle’s house empty-handed if he knew enough to target it in the first place.
“No sign of forced entry,” Koertig said. “I checked all the outside windows and doors.”