Lana said nothing. She had her eyes closed and her head resting in her left hand as if she was ready to pass out. She started to cry silently.
What a waste, she thought, what a waste. Rose had a wonderful life and all those plans to improve her community. Now she's gone.
Sheski's eyes met those of one of the staties standing over the body. They stared at each other, then back at Lana, both unsure of the part their witness really played in this mess. After all, she was the first person on the scene, and as of now, they knew little about her.
Lana's hometown, Danville, Pennsylvania, began in the eighteenth century as white settlers came to the area. The community's history is rich with stories of the Native Americans who were already there.
Lana was fond of the place of her birth as well as her present home in Riverside, a community just across the bridge. Returning to her hometown when she had was not an option, it was a necessity. She was getting older, and was at a point in her life when she needed to touch base with family and old friends. To be with people she knew and understood, and who cared about her.
As the youngest child in a large family of five girls and one boy, Lana had learned some hard lessons very early in life. Lessons that would prove invaluable to her when, as an adult, she was the charge nurse in a hospital. You did not always get everything you wanted and you worked for what you got. Immediate gratification had yet to come into vogue. However, the longer Lana was in nursing, the more health care became a dollardriven industry. Although her love for her patients never changed, her view of the wisdom of choosing the industry as a future had.
After her interview with Lieutenant Sheski, Lana drove across the Susquehanna to Riverside and pulled into her carriage house. She got out of the car and went out the back door of the building, locking it behind her.
Still fearful, she rushed up the slate walkway onto the back porch and through the door. When he saw her, Bunky began jumping up and down, staring anxiously at his mistress. He was hungry and she was late with his meal.
Lana bent down to pet her Yorkie, thankful that he was there to greet her. The big house would have been lonely without him.
After serving the tiny dog his supper, Lana took a hot bath. She put on flannel pajamas and a robe and settled into an overstuffed chair to rest with the six-pound dog at her side. "Bunky," she said, looking into the furry, trusting face. "This has been a horrible day" The dog cocked his head as if trying to understand, and snuggled closer to his best friend.
Lana couldn't bring herself to start any of the work she had brought home. It would have to wait. Her mind was reeling with the memory of the crime scene. Blood everywhere, Rose murdered, and her body grotesquely sprawled on the marble floor. She recalled her fears that the killer was still in the Stones' house when she was there, that he knew who she was.
Those fears nagged at her throughout the evening, and she double-checked the five entrances into her old house. She even locked the metal storm doors, something she had never done before. Lana was scared.
The state police wasted no time in examining the crime scene. Wealthy, well-known clients made this a highprofile case, and they were eager to handle it correctly.
The investigation started immediately after Lana called 911, and continued into the night. Sheski and some troopers, including Doug Zimmerman, a very young, new academy graduate, were now outside the Stone home, near the spot where Lana had seen the gardener.
Doug, of average height and build, with short blond hair, was on his hands and knees busily poking around the shrubbery, while Sheski was probing flower beds. Doug had recognized Sheski's Polish name and slight accent and, without thinking, proceeded to make the serious mistake of trying to kid his superior about it.
"Hey Polock," the exuberant trooper yelled excited ly to Sheski. "Come here, I have something you might be interested in."
The older statie bristled. He was proud of his heritage and had learned to take his part at times like this. Obviously, this green trooper had a lot to learn or he never would have used the P word.
The others knew Sheski and how he hated it with a passion when he was called a Polock, even in jest. A quiet collective gasp was heard from those nearby. As heads slowly turned to face the two men, they waited expectantly for the inevitable response.
Doug saw the expression on the older detective's face and realized he had done something wrong. His smile evaporated and his eyes were fearful. As a new graduate, he was still on probation and could not afford trouble.
Sheski slowly turned to see who had called to him. Spying the offending party, he pulled himself up to his full height and headed toward the inexperienced trooper with blood in his eye.
Doug stiffened and took a step back as he observed the much bigger, much annoyed Lieutenant approaching. Face slackened with apprehension, he steeled himself for an expected confrontation.
Sheski's body language told it all. Towering over the much smaller trooper, clenched fists at his sides, he got in the speechless man's face. Through gritted teeth, the older policeman made it clear that if he couldn't call him Lieutenant, Sheski, or Sir, he was NOT to address him at all. There was a long silence with Sheski stand ing his ground. Doug got the message. His face burned crimson and he mumbled an apology.
Sheski said nothing for a few minutes while his anger subsided. He looked around at the others, who pretended not to be paying attention.
Doug busied himself with tasks and remained quiet until the detective addressed him again.
"Now, what do you have for me, young man?" Sheski asked him. Although he was still annoyed, he was not one to hold a grudge. Besides, he was fairly certain the incident would not be repeated. Doug showed Sheski something long and heavy that he had spotted in the shrubbery. Sticking out from a bunch of Japanese Holly bushes was a four-foot garden pruner with wooden handles. It lay heavy end in first, as if someone had tossed it in haste. Small twigs were broken from the greenery where the weighty, vise-like jaws had smashed against them.
Taking a white cloth handkerchief out of his pocket, Doug reached down and picked it up. The metal end had unmistakable blood and flesh on it. Thinking of the dead woman just yards from him, Sheski said that he bet he knew who it came from. But, just to be sure, they carefully bagged it to be checked for a match with tissue from the corpse. Since they were doing their own forensics, results would be forthcoming a lot quicker than in the past.
From the garden, deep, undefined boot prints tracked through the rain-soaked ground and led to a small path behind the garage. They were lucky to still have some daylight available in which to view them.
The men thought the rain could start again any time now. The sky had ominous patches of black and the wind was picking up. Sheski was chilled. "November," he complained to no one in particular.
He pulled his overcoat closer to his neck and followed the damp path down about a hundred feet to a dirt road at the back of the property. He picked his way through the area, careful not to obliterate any evidence. From there, it appeared that whoever had made the tracks had gotten into a vehicle and left. Sheski called to the others to get castings of the footprints and tire tracks, although in their present rain-soaked condition, he doubted their usefulness.
"I hope we can get what we need here before the reporters and sightseers descend to contaminate the area," Sheski said, looking over at Doug. He knew that in a small town such as this, a lost cat was a big deal, so this murder was sure to draw attention as soon as word got out.
"Yes," added Doug. "We're gonna have to work fast" He knew the older detective was right, but would have agreed to almost anything to make amends for his earlier gaffe.
When the Sweetriver development was new, plans had called for the dirt road behind the Stones' home to be paved. The rolling acreage would then be cleared, underground utilities installed and the lots sold. Dr. and Mrs. Stone had put an end to that by purchasing the remaining heavily-wooded property. Rumor had it that they paid plenty for it, but the
Stones could afford the additional cost. Besides, they didn't want the mature trees cut, preferring the pristine view. Included were about a dozen rare chestnut trees, some of the few in the state that had somehow survived a Pennsylvania blight in the early part of the 1900s. Also, they did not want anyone building on lots behind them.
The dirt road behind the home was the only other access route into the development but was not usually used because of its poor condition. Only utility men who served Sweetriver properties drove on it. Dr. Stone kept promising to close the road off but Rose had liked the idea that her hired help could get to their home without coming through the development. After all, she'd said, the men were usually soiled and drove old trucks.
"The gardener must have had his vehicle here and walked back to it when it was time to leave," Doug said.
"Maybe," Sheski replied. "Unless he's our guilty man. Didn't he hear what was happening inside the house and check it out? And where is he?"
Sheski and Doug reviewed notes of what they knew so far. Looking up, they saw Sergeant Cromley, who had been working on the interior crime scene, approaching them. Cromley gave the younger statie a "Boy did you goof" look, having heard about Doug's Polock remark. Doug got the message and turned away.
"According to the local police," Cromley said, "the Stones' gardener is named Barry Brown, and he drives an old Ford pickup. We were given a description of the vehicle and he said he'd fill you in later on what he knows about him."
"Thanks," Sheski replied. He assigned Doug the task of tracking the gardener down.
Back inside the Stones' home, Sheski started to address the questions that were swimming around in his head. Was this just a robbery, or was there another motive? If it was just a robbery, why was the victim so savagely attacked? Why not just knock her out and then take what was wanted? After all, she was a small person. Just about any man, or woman for that matter, could have cold-cocked her without too much trouble. Who was the person Mrs. Stone told Lana that she was expecting that day? Was anything else taken besides the jewelry? And where is Barry Brown? He had a lot of questions that needed answers.
Sheski was getting tired, but an investigation always succeeded in pumping him back up. He glanced over the shoulders of the other policemen, gleaning information from their conversations and notes.
One of the troopers, Jeff Morgan, an art aficionado, identified the blood-soaked shards near the body as the remains of an original 1925 Etling opalescent glass figurine. "Very expensive," he said, drawing the words out to emphasize their meaning. "Art Deco in style and probably made in Paris in the twenties," he went on. Jeff picked up the largest piece of the broken sculpture, the luminous orange torso of a woman enveloped in a pale blue-green diaphanous garment. Turning it over and over in his hand, he stated facetiously, "I'd kill for one of these"
Death was instantaneous, Sheski was told. Whoever killed Rose knew what they were doing. The massive blow to the brain stem smashed the midbrain, pons and medulla into pulp. It happened so fast that the reticular formation had scant time to relay life-sustaining sensory information to any part of her body. Respiratory and cardiac functions ceased almost immediately. Those who loved her could take solace in knowing that she did not suffer.
There were no defensive wounds on Rose's hands. Her acrylic nails, painted dark red, were all intact, and there appeared to be no material beneath them. She hadn't had time to protect herself. The attack was sudden. She probably didn't even know what hit her. Why, then, did her assailant continue to pummel her? Sheski wondered.
Rose's expensive black suit now looked like a rag. Shards of dark silk were hanging off her body like party crepe paper. The amount of blood around was enough to ensure that whoever had killed her probably got some on himself. Sheski wondered whether the killer was the same person that Rose told Lana she was expecting. They would need an inventory of exactly what jewelry she had been wearing today. He was certain that Rose would only have expensive items. Things worth killing for.
While he was mulling over his questions and the evidence at hand, a statie approached and informed Sheski that Dr. Stone was at Stone Haven and had been told over the phone what had happened. When advised that a detective wanted to speak personally with him, the dead woman's widower insisted that Sheski come to his office for the interview. Sheski thanked the officer and began to mentally review what he would ask the surviving spouse. He would need someone with him, he reasoned. It's now time to link up with Mike.
Sheski stepped outside of the Stones' home to wait for his partner of many years, Lieutenant Mike James, a state police detective who was doing some background work at their office. He would be glad to see him.
In less than five minutes, his sidekick pulled in the driveway, got out, and spent a few minutes surveying the crime scene. Sheski waited at the car for him. When Mike came back out he gave a loud whistle and shook his head back and forth. Sheski opened the car door on the passenger's side, got in, and said, "Let's go see the doc."
On their way, Sheski filled his partner in on the details of the crime and they discussed their impending interview of the victim's husband.
Sheski thanked his lucky stars that Lieutenant Mike James was on duty. He enjoyed the mental stimulation of interviewing suspects, but appreciated what Mike could bring to the job. Mike was smart, observant, and skilled with the public. He was known as a good family man to his wife Lillian and their two daughters. At average height, in his forties, with sandy brown hair and brown eyes, Detective James appeared kindly and maybe even naive to those who had not met him on the wrong side of the law. Appearances are deceiving. Mike was intelligent, wiry, and quick. His All American wrestling background at Bloomsburg University had gotten him out of more than one grapple with a punk who thought he could take the smaller lawman. Sheski often chuckled at the sight of an overconfident thug in a chicken-wing hold. He was glad Mike was going with him to Dr. Stone's office at Stone Haven. He needed his friend's expertise for this one.
It was now getting dark, and driving through the wrought-iron gates of Stone Haven, formerly the Danville Medical Hospital, Sheski felt as if he were stepping back into time. Gray night skies and the facility itself had that effect on observers.
Danville Medical Hospital had been built for the area's residents in the 1880s by Andrew Ashman, a wealthy ironworks owner. He donated five acres a halfmile northwest of Danville, and oversaw construction of the hospital on a grassy knoll. On the lower end of the property, there was a pond that provided ice during the winter. When the water froze fourteen inches deep, blocks were cut and placed in sawdust-filled sheds until needed by the hospital.
The brick hospital campus was surrounded by beautiful lawns with a high, iron fence that had been produced at the Ashman Iron Mill in town. Building bricks for the hospital were fired at one of the local factories on Continental Boulevard in Danville. The faux marble fireplaces for heating were painted by Oliver Pratt, a Philadelphia artist admitted to the medical hospital in the 1890s.
The son of a wealthy Philadelphia physician, Oliver was sent to Danville by his horrified father upon the young man's conviction for murder in a muchpublicized trial in the City of Brotherly Love. The city was not feeling very brotherly toward the artist after the facts of his heinous crimes were known. However, his influential physician father got the judge to rule that the young artist was insane and needed to be treated at the small psychiatric unit in the Danville Medical Hospital, which was financially supported by a Pratt family friend, Mr. Ashman. Pratt's father secreted his son out of the city under the cover of darkness, sending him on the 3 A.M. train to Danville to live out the remainder of his life there. Shortly after the killer's admission to the hospital, the judge retired and managed somehow to live very well on a modest pension.
Original florid hospital records and the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer documented Oliver's obsession with little girls and his subsequent conviction for the murders of six blond, blue-eyed females between the ages of five
and ten. All of the victims were found buried in shallow graves in a vacant lot behind Oliver's center-city studio, naked, their necks broken, with unmistakable traces of pigment on their tiny fingers and toes. The various colors of sky blue, ochre, and burnt sienna appeared to the observer as if indulgent mothers were obliging their daughter's budding feminine desire to polish their nails. Only Oliver knew what had transpired between the time these unfortunate towheaded little girls met the congenial Mr. Pratt and the discovery of their bodies. The painter refused to disclose those details, citing an artist's privilege to his secrets. In his twisted psyche, he did not understand the public's rage at his rationale. In Oliver's mind, he was merely protecting himself from others stealing his techniques. The court-committed artist, still alert and agile, and painting each morning in his hospital studio, died suddenly in 1937 at the age of seventy-one.
The beautifully painted fireplaces and murals on the hospital walls give no hint of the painter's gruesome past. His style was unmistakable, and a large P in the left corner of his paintings, with a smiling child's face inside the loop, was Pratt's signature. It could be found on all of his artwork.
Danville Medical Hospital was one of the few public buildings to have electric lights in the nineteenth century. Thomas Edison was well into marketing a delivery system for his incandescent light bulb when the hospital's plans were being drawn. While in Sunbury, Danville's neighboring community, debuting for the first time anywhere the wiring of a city street, the inventor saw the hospital's blueprints. Upon completion of the three-wire electric lighting system installed at the City Hotel, Edison made plans to visit friends upstream in Danville.
The inventor came to town, staying at the Montour Hotel on Mill Street to personally oversee the ten horsepower dynamo-driven wiring of the new hospital. It was rumored that he spent most of his evenings cloistered in a second-floor hotel room, working on his moving pictures invention, barely stopping to sleep or bathe. Upon completion of the hospital's project, he would not visit the town again until arriving in the area in 1922 for the sesquicentennial celebration in Sunbury.
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