by Harry Kraus
John shook his head. “She must have snuck in, hung around the back. I did glimpse her once, but there was no way I was going to make a scene about it and ruin the reception.”
Claire sat quietly for a minute. Her eyes seemed to see beyond him or through him, unfocused, a look he had seen before when she contemplated something serious. Then, slowly, her head began to nod and her eyes brightened. “John, Ami killed my father.”
He straightened. “What?”
“Don’t you see it, John? She’s been stalking you, wanting to be in your life. She set herself up to be my counselor just to get closer to you, to find out about you.” Claire cupped her hand over the phone mouthpiece. “John, she was always interested in you, encouraging me to stay away from physical contact with you.” She shook her head. “All in the name of helping me work through abuse issues. And all she wanted was to drive a wedge between us.”
“And how does that mean she killed Wally?”
“She recorded me making a mock confrontation with my dad over the abuse issues. She must have used the recording to make it look like I killed my father.”
John’s confused look prompted her to continue. “John, Kyle told me about a 911 tape where you heard me accusing my father.”
“Sure, but — ”
“Listen to me. Ami urged me to confront my father about the supposed abuse, and she taped the whole thing.”
“So you think she killed Wally and called 911 and played your taped confession?”
She nodded her head emphatically. “Exactly. What better way to frame me?”
Claire’s excitement was contagious. “I’ll call Joel Stevens.” He halted as another piece of the puzzle shifted into place. “Ami claims to have been raped by a man of Sol Diaz’s description. When I told her that he had died of a knife wound to the back and that he was found in your car, she just freaked. She ran off like what I said scared her to death.”
“Maybe he attacked her. Maybe she was the one who killed him. Then she dumped the body in my car to frame me.”
“So how do you explain your hair being on his body?”
She shrugged. “Maybe it was in my car.”
“Inside his shorts?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Ami planted it there somehow.” Claire looked at the clock. “We don’t have much time.”
“I need to talk to Ami.”
“Talk to the police, John. She might be dangerous if you confront her. Remember what she did to you before.”
“I’ll be careful.” He touched the glass with his hand. She responded by lifting her hand and placing it against the glass opposite his. “I love you,” he whispered into the phone.
Claire nodded and wiped away a tear. “I love you.”
Joel Stevens opened the formal report from the medical examiner on the autopsy of Tyler Crutchfield. He read the conclusions and looked at Randy Jensen. “I think old Garland might be jumpin’ the gun on linking Claire Cerelli to the Crutchfield murder.”
Randy set down his coffee cup. “What’s up?”
“The ME report says two types of hair were found in Crutchfield’s shorts.”
“Two?”
Joel slapped the report with his hand and read from the conclusion, “Contents of pubic combing: short curly black hair with follicles inconsistent with the victim, consistent with pubic hair of possible sexual contact. Long strands of blonde hair, typical of scalp covering with follicles containing DNA consistent with individual with known genetic makeup.
See appendix one. Appendix one: DNA typing from Brighton University genetics laboratory shows hair consistent with Claire McCall.”
“So?”
“So maybe this Claire Cerelli wasn’t his last victim. Maybe old Garland is so anxious to secure his political career that he’s getting sloppy.”
Randy stood up and looked over Joel’s shoulder. “The ME didn’t tell us about the two types of hair when I first called.”
“Maybe he didn’t know that yet.” He looked at the bottom of the page. “This document was just typed on Friday.”
“This information still links Claire to Crutchfield.”
“But it doesn’t necessarily mean she was raped.” He pointed at the conclusions again. “It says it was her scalp hair.”
Evie appeared in the doorway. “Joel, a John Cerelli is on line two.”
He nodded. “I’ll take it here.” He punched a button on the phone and lifted the receiver. “Detective Stevens.”
“Mr. Stevens, thanks for taking my call. I have some information that I thought I should pass on. It’s about the Wally McCall death investigation.”
Joel sat at his desk and picked up a pen. “Go ahead.”
“A woman who worked with me, Ami Grandle, made a tape of Claire McCall saying the things you heard on the 911 tape.”
“She taped her? When?”
“She posed as a sexual assault counselor. She came to see Claire at her office to help her deal with issues after Crutchfield attacked her.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Only that this could explain what you heard on the 911 call. Ami must have called 911 and played what she recorded.”
The detective sighed. “Interesting theory, Mr. Cerelli.”
“You’d have to know this girl to understand. You can check with your colleagues in the Brighton City police. They know all about her. She was stalking me.”
“Stalking you.” Joel scratched his head. “And what exactly are you suggesting? Even if all of this were true, what would her motive be to murder Wally McCall?”
“To frame Claire. To get her out of the picture. Ami is very jealous.”
“Mr. Cerelli, I know you want to exonerate your wife, but all of this is sounding a bit like a red herring, if you know what I mean.”
John sighed. “Just check her out. At least see if she has a good alibi.”
“Okay, Mr. Cerelli, I’ll take it into consideration.” He hung up the phone and looked at Randy. “Don’t you hate it when family members try to tell you how to do your investigations?”
John looked at the phone and shook his head, feeling very much like the police cared little about the information he’d given. He walked to the kitchen, where he ate two pieces of cold delivery pizza and formulated a plan. If the police weren’t interested, he’d just have to confront Ami himself.
He crumpled a pizza box and shoved it in the garbage can on his way out. A minute later, he was standing on Ami’s small porch and knocking on the painted door. As he knocked, the door pushed open, unlatched. He rang the doorbell and called, “Ami?”
He turned around to see her car at the curb. She should be here.
“Ami?”
He skipped off the porch and walked around the house, looking for lights inside the house to see if she was home. The kitchen light was on. He tapped on the back door. “Ami?”
He waited a moment, then returned to the front porch. He rang the doorbell one more time before pushing the front door open. He stepped into the front room. A large recliner faced away from him, and from the doorway, he could see the feet of a person sitting there. “Ami?” Immediately, he sensed alarm. He walked to her side and saw her there, her complexion ashen and her chest still. She was fully clothed, wearing a wedding gown. He lowered his ear to her face. Her eyes were open and unblinking. He touched her skin and recoiled at the cool temperature. It was then that he saw a needle and syringe in her arm, puncturing the skin right at the inside of the elbow. He instinctively backed away.
Ami Grandle was dead, her body assuming room temperature.
I need to call the police, he thought.
He heard a creak of the floor behind him. As he turned to look, he felt a sharp pain on the back of his head and everything went black.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
John awoke and strained to open his heavy eyelids. A ceiling fan came in and out of focus. He sensed a dullness in his scalp and a mild euphoria. He closed his eyes again and drifted as a buz
zing sensation circuited through his forehead. Waves of slumber lipped at the shore of consciousness. He was aware of the hard floor beneath him and mild pain in the back of his head. But he didn’t care. Warmth seemed to flood his head, radiating into his limbs. He tried again to open his eyes and remember. Where am I?
“You’re a strong one,” a female voice said. “And from the looks of you, I can see why my daughter was so infatuated.”
He tried to respond but managed only to open his mouth. His lips were uncooperative sponges, feeling strangely floppy and unwilling to curl around the words his mind imagined. After a moment, he realized he could make a smacking sound by opening and shutting his mouth. He tried to focus on the direction of the voice, but got distracted again by the pretty ceiling fan. Around and around it went, a butterfly with helicopter wings.
Sleep called to him, screamed to him, coaxing him to surrender. But somewhere at the rim of his euphoric state, an alarm sounded. He tried to force his eyes open again, but his eyelids felt fat and couch-potato lazy, so he squeezed his eyelids shut, as if the act would shrink them back to normal size. He wanted to raise his hand to his face, but his limbs were in full rebellion, unable or unwilling to do what his brain requested.
“I’m going to have to give you even more.” It was the female voice again, soft, alluring, like Ami’s, but older.
He looked around. I’m in a kitchen. What happened? John blew his breath through his boat-lips, flapping them and thinking that this was very funny, but very sad. His lips were bird wings, flapping beyond his control. After a minute more, he tried again, willing himself to focus on his surroundings. Things in his environment began to sharpen. The floor was hard, his head pounded, and the helicopter above him was a ceiling fan. He formulated the words and forced them from his mouth, willing them forward, but they seemed to lodge first on his tongue and only dribble from his lips. “Whhhooo aaarree yyyyhhoouuu?”
A face appeared in front of him. Gray-streaked black hair fell forward and tickled his face. “I’m Nancy, Ami’s mom.”
Slowly, a memory puzzle began to fit together. I saw Ami in a wedding dress. She’s dead. His alarm at the recollection drove him further from the clutches of slumber. “What did you do to Ami?”
The woman sat next to him on the floor in an Indian-style position. “Ami was a very troubled girl. Very unstable. She committed suicide.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He rolled his head to the side to study her. For an older woman, she was lean and even muscular — strong enough to give him serious trouble, even if he wasn’t in his current state. He wanted to lift his arms, but they were still uncooperative.
She brushed away something at the corner of her eye and stared beyond him. “It doesn’t matter if you know. You will die soon, like Ami.” She nodded her head. “A suicide pact. Or a murder suicide. A troubled young woman and her married lover found together in the clutches of their sin.”
She’s going to kill me! John tried to wiggle a finger. His right index finger cooperated, but his hand remained glued to the floor. He needed to keep her talking until he regained strength enough to flee or fight. “Why?”
“She was getting so attached to you, John. She was going to tell you everything. She has always been weak, you know.”
“You killed your daughter? You’re a sick woman.”
Nancy’s face reddened. “You have no idea. My daughter was suffering. I didn’t want her to suffer so.” She took a deep breath that was accentuated by a sudden gasp, as if she couldn’t hold back a sob. “She hasn’t been stable since her father died.”
“Her father is in prison. She told me.”
She chuckled without happy emotion. “That’s what we always say. It is so much easier than the truth.”
“Tell me. I want to know before I die.”
Nancy cursed him and ignored his request. “You think I’m a beast.”
John tried to lift his head. He needed to make her talk, to keep her distracted. “You’re going to get caught. I’ve called the police.”
“You’re lying.”
He felt so tired. He closed his eyes for a long blink. “Tell me about Ami’s father. Maybe I can understand.” He paused. “Maybe I won’t think you’re a beast.”
“Why should I care what you think? You’re going to die.”
John struggled to talk through clumsy lips. “But you do care.”
The woman looked away, either sad from a memory or frustrated by John’s persistence, he couldn’t tell. After a sigh, she spoke again. “Ami’s father was a beast. I told the police how he treated her. They would arrest him, put him away for a while, but he would always get out and sooner or later, he’d be back, breaking every restraining order the judge could issue.” She smiled with thin lips that curved without joy. “So I did what any good mother should do to protect her daughter. I made sure he wouldn’t bother us again.”
“What did you do?”
She stared at him with hollow eyes and stayed quiet.
“Tell me,” he said, attempting to reach for her hand.
“I don’t need to tell you anything.”
“I’ll be dead soon. You’ve been keeping a secret for so long.”
He stared into her face. She was softening.
“Ami loved you. You protected her, didn’t you?”
Nancy looked back at him, her face twisted in anger. “Of course!” She put her hand to her mouth and began to whimper. “Ami was crying out. It was late in the night. I felt the bed next to me and knew the monster was up. I crept to my daughter’s bedroom. I saw him there with Ami. I heard the squeak of the bed and my daughter’s cries.” She halted and steadied her voice. “I stabbed him with his favorite Buck knife.” She looked at John, her eyes brimming with tears. “I’ve never told that to anyone.”
John twitched his wrist and watched as she fingered a vial of a clear medicine and pulled it into a large syringe. I have to keep her talking. His arms were lead. He wanted to close his eyes again, to surrender to whatever she’d given him. “How horrible that must have been for you.” He paused, straining to focus. “What happened next?”
“Ami burned down the house.” She shrugged. “As far as the police knew, her father died in the fire. They found his body at the bottom of the steps.” She pressed her hand to her mouth and cursed the man who’d caused her so much pain.
“Did you kill Tyler Crutchfield?”
“Me? No.”
“Who then?”
“You must know by now. Your wife killed him.”
“He attacked Ami, didn’t he?” He strained to keep Nancy in focus. “Ami told me.”
“She tells you too much. That’s why she had to die.” Nancy pulled her knees up so she could hug herself in a little ball as she continued. “I didn’t kill him. But he deserved to die.”
“If not you, then — ”
“Ami. She’s slept with that Buck knife under her pillow ever since — ” Her voice cracked before she continued in a whisper, “I killed her father.” She looked back at John. “I guess Mr. Crutchfield finally attacked someone strong enough to fight back.”
“So why hide it? It was self-defense.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t want the police asking questions. I couldn’t have that.” She chuckled, but it came out sounding sad. “He thought he had found Claire. Ami was modeling her wedding dress. He was after Claire, but my daughter got what Claire deserved.”
“What do you mean?”
“He must have followed me from the nursing home. I was wearing Ami’s dress so that I’d look like Claire.” She shrugged. “I guess I fooled him.”
“You wore the dress?”
“Ami bought the same dress, dreaming of you.”
“You wore the dress to the nursing home? You led Tyler here. This is your fault.”
She paused, and her voice turned bitter. “You don’t know how you’ve hurt Ami. You and that doctor-wife of yours.”
“Hurt her? How?�
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“You led her on, broke her heart.” She held up a syringe of clear fluid.
“I did no such thing. Ami was delusional.”
“You’re not exactly in a position to argue.”
“You were protecting her. You knew the police would find out about the dress. She killed Wally McCall and you didn’t want the police find-ing out.”
“No,” she said, “my daughter was innocent.”
“I know all about the tape she made of Claire, how she used it to frame her. I’m not the only one who knows.”
“You don’t scare me.” She shrugged. “My daughter made the tape, yes, but I was the one to use it. I never meant to frame my own daughter. I only wanted Claire out of the way.”
John pulled his shoulders up and wiggled his foot. He was waking up. It would be time to make his move soon, but he wasn’t strong enough to run away yet. He tried to concentrate. “It was you? But why?”
“Claire McCall has been nothing but pain to my family. I can’t forgive her for the way she treated my Richard. She’d never give me enough morphine for him.”
“Or was it for you?” He nodded. “You were running from your own pain.”
“You are a perceptive one,” she said, covering a row of needle tracks on her arm with her opposite hand. She locked eyes with John. “Ami had quite a catch in you. But that doctor stole you away. She broke Ami’s heart.”
“So you murdered Wally to even the score?”
Nancy seethed with anger. “I only wanted to get Claire out of the way.” She raised her eyebrows. “I think she knew I needed the morphine.
I was afraid she was going to report me. But Wally needed to die. Just like my Richard. Pain like that wasn’t meant to be prolonged.”
She lifted the needle, aiming for John’s arm.
“No,” he said. “I won’t tell. I know where Claire keeps the morphine. I can get you all you want.”
“You wouldn’t help me.”
“Sure I would. To make it up for all the trouble you’ve had.”
A knock at the door caused Nancy to jerk her head upright. “Ami Grandle? Open the door.” More knocking. “Ami, this is Deputy Stevens with the sheriff ’s department. Open the door, please.”