A Twist of the Knife

  He appeared with an unusually large grin and a Pug on his lap, clearly hoping to cheer me up. I imagined even the Pug was grinning on both sides of his lolling tongue. I could see the kitchen behind them and knew they were sitting at the dining room table, Carlo’s iPad leaning up against the small pile of books that seemed to serve as our only centerpiece. I wished I could spirit myself there for a breather before whatever was going to happen next. “Which one is that?” I admitted to not being able to tell.

  Carlo wagged a paw at me. “It’s Al.”

  “Hi, Al,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?” Carlo said, dropping the grin. He bent to the side for a moment and then came back without the Pug, having dropped him, too.

  Maybe sometime I would be specific about what I’d said to my mother, and her reaction, but it would have to wait for his real presence rather than virtual. “It’s a shitstorm. Everything is going to hell. Dad is getting better and out of nowhere Mom breaks down like she’s not thrilled about it. I’m in the middle. What do you do with parents like this? And I have my doubts about Laura’s stability after watching Creighton get executed. It’s for sure she was in love with him.”

  He didn’t look surprised. “And you’re trying to fix it all.”

  I ignored that, took a deep breath, and said, “And this morning I found Shayna Murry’s body.”

  He pursed his mouth in a whistle, but no sound came. “Was she murdered?”

  I bit lightly at the inside of my lip. “Nothing is certain yet, but until the autopsy report comes back they’re treating it like a homicide. The Vero Beach detective in charge is reluctant to admit it, but I think there’s a connection to Marcus Creighton’s execution. I’m pushing that theory on all fronts.”

  “It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Carlo’s usual aspect is more ironic than sober, and you’d have to know him a while to detect the change that came over his face as he said, “I want you to tell me if you’re in danger.”

  “No!” I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I finally let it out on that word. “That’s why I wanted you to see my face. You’re getting good at knowing me, and I wanted to tell you there’s no danger here. At least not to me. I was on Creighton’s side, remember?”

  “You said you found the body. What did you see?”

  The molecules of decomposition wafted back into my senses so I couldn’t tell if it was imagination or coming from my clothes in the plastic bag.

  “You’re not talking,” he said. “What are you not telling me?”

  “Stop trying to be pastoral, I’m just thinking.” One more pause and then, “You know, Dad used to come home and tell Mom and the rest of us everything that happened. There was one night where over dinner he told us how someone died in their Jacuzzi and the body had to be removed with a strainer when it was discovered three weeks later. Ariel spewed her Hamburger Helper. He didn’t seem to have any boundaries between his job and his family.”

  “Didn’t your mother do anything to restrain him?”

  “Maybe at some point she did, I can’t remember. But if she ever tried, she gave up early on. Anyway, when I grew up and knew other colleagues in the business, I found out not everyone was like my dad. Most didn’t pull their families into the business, didn’t subject them to secondhand violence. I admired that. This is the first time I’ve been in the position where I have a mate. Here’s how I’m going to play it. It was really grim, but you’re a grown-up. If you insist on knowing the details, I’ll tell you when I’m home. I know I promised to be honest, and I know I shouldn’t try to protect you, but it’s the closest I can get right now.”

  “You need me to be there,” Carlo said. “I’ll get a ticket and let you know when I’m arriving.”

  I didn’t tell him that he would just be one more person I’d feel compelled to look after. So sue me. “Oh sweetie, no, I’ve got everything under control and I’m in a really good place in my head, I swear. It’s just like today some clown has been following me around smacking me with a pig bladder. One thing after another.”

  “How long, do you think?”

  “I can’t tell right now.”

  “Well, do me a favor and call every day, would you?” He leaned forward and kissed the screen, and his nose ballooning up like that made me smile even now. “I love you, O’Hari.”

  “Love you too, Perfesser.” And then of course I had to make a joke. “And I promise I’ll make it up to you. Anything you want, cowboy.”

  “Not a bad trade for another lonely day,” he said, his voice sounding more amused than aroused. “Call your mother. Tell her how much stress you’ve been under.”

  How could I claim stress when I had no idea of hers? I picked up my phone several times that evening to call Mom, but still couldn’t imagine what I would say. It wasn’t avoidance. Better to have a cool-down period, I told myself. That’s what I told myself, and it helped the guilts, not much, but some.

  Thirty-four

  I was still giving it time to cool down the next day.

  It worked out well that Shayna Murry’s partially decomposed body was taken to Palm Beach for the autopsy, where they had more pathology bells and whistles given the sometimes deadly high jinx of an area wealthy enough to make Vero look much less Very.

  Madeline Stanley had convinced Gabriel Delgado of the sense of making the investigation a joint one from the start. Laura Coleman was included because she knew so much about the original case and could go across jurisdictions. I was included because I had gotten involved, and knew her and Todd.

  We gathered in one of the conference rooms of the FBI office in West Palm Beach, the middle-class city west of Palm Beach. Paneled ceiling with recessed lighting, particle board conference table surrounded by vinyl-covered swivel chairs—the usual.

  Detective Delgado led the meeting, at least ostensibly, and next to him sat Dr. Oliver Brach, the ME I had last met at Shayna Murry’s homicide scene. Madeline sat next to Todd but leaned away from him, her arm resting on the arm of her chair, the way you sit next to a stranger on a plane. She was here because of her connection to Delgado and her brokering of the meeting, but she would stay respectfully detached, not get in Todd’s way. Laura sat brooding by herself, erect, steely-eyed, appropriately FBI-ish, the only suit at the table. Her hands clasped on the table before three huge binders filled with all her research on the Creighton case. While Delgado seemed to have set aside any hard feelings about her attitude toward how he had handled things, Laura made a point of not looking at him while he spoke.

  Correction, there was another suit. The boss that Todd had mentioned, Captain Wayne McClay, listened to our conversation without comment, corners of his mouth turned down and eyes shifting to each speaker. He didn’t ask for an introduction to anyone. He was one of those commanding presences that made everyone in the room speak as if justifying their existence to him.

  Delgado and Brach passed crime scene photos around the table while they took turns giving us the reconstruction of what we were now certain was Shayna Murry’s murder:

  The assailant entered through the front, the only door in the house, without any signs of forced entry. The victim was in the front room, which she used as her art studio. She may have known the identity of the assailant, because she reacted very quickly, throwing a metal sculpture across the room.

  “I’d been to her studio previously, and saw the sculpture hanging on the wall about here,” I said, pointing to the spot on the photo.

  “Then let’s say the victim was standing near it, maybe at the worktable in that corner of the room,” Delgado said. “The assailant reacted just as quickly, attacking the victim from a distance.”

  “We know this because of the wounds,” Brach said.

  He passed around four close-up photos taken on the autopsy table. It was difficult to see with the decomposed flesh, but arrows pointed out what looked like vampire bites on Murry’s chest.
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br />   “Those double-pronged tears, those are electroshock weapon marks. The assailant used a stun gun as a weapon,” Brach said.

  “Can you tell the distance between her and the assailant?” Todd asked.

  “If it was law-enforcement issue, could have been a maximum distance of thirty-five feet. Max distance for a civilian defense weapon is only fifteen feet,” Delgado said, looking at McClay.

  I pointed to the photo of the studio. “Distance from the front door to the workbench is about twenty, the length of the room,” I said. “But the assailant could have come in further before activating the gun.”

  “Do you need a permit in Florida?” Laura asked.

  “Nope, unless it’s concealed carry.” Delgado picked up the thread from there. “She would have dropped to the floor, everyone does. Then it seems the victim was allowed to come to fully rather than be killed immediately, and with the front door blocked ran down the hall, putting herself in even greater jeopardy because there was no way out.”

  “Or she could have been dragged while unconscious,” Todd said, more for the sake of his boss than from any strong conviction, “which would indicate a fairly strong male assailant.”

  Delgado found the photograph of the palm frond pulled across the hallway and slid it across the table to Brach. It was getting to seem more like table hockey. “We think it was a chase, that she went on her own steam, because someone pulled this down, possibly the victim to block the assailant. The assailant would have been close enough behind her, that is, a maximum of thirty-five feet, because the electrodes were still stuck into her.”

  The others could talk about victim and assailant as they did their reconstruction. Delgado and Brach told the story as detective and medical examiner, nice and dry, but my mind kept saying Shayna Murry, Shayna Murry, Shayna Murry. And as they spoke I watched the story.

  Maybe Shayna Murry doesn’t have her blowtorch to cover the sound of whoever is coming through her front door just like I had the day I visited her. He, let’s call it He for the time being, doesn’t stop to announce his presence, but comes as close as He can in one second and then fires the stun gun at her the moment she turns around.

  Shayna Murry shouts, “Oh!” from the pain and her little elfin body gives one huge convulsion and then falls back against her workbench and onto the floor of the studio. It will be hard to see her bruises after her body is found.

  He waits. He has two more charges to deliver in this particular model before needing to reload.

  She’s still relatively young. Within a few moments, Shayna Murry’s muscles relax and she is surprisingly in good enough shape to get up off the floor. To defend herself. She tries to pull the wires from her chest, but the device has prongs in each one that anchor in her flesh. She can’t go out the front door because He is blocking it.

  Shayna Murry takes the metal sculpture off the wall, the one that’s shaped like a Roman shield, and hurls it, Frisbee-style, across the room. He dodges it easily. She wishes she had her blowtorch turned on, because she could defend herself with that, but there’s no time. He doesn’t even have to come at her. All He has to do is press the lever and deliver another shock to bring her down again. Then He can finish her off.

  But He doesn’t.

  Trailing the wires behind her that connect her to him like a deadly umbilical cord, Shayna Murry goes the only way possible, down the hall and into her bedroom. Maybe she thinks she can close and lock the door.

  But He gets there first and stops the door with his foot. She finds herself trapped now. Does she know who this is? Has He told her yet why He is there? No. There is no stopping to talk, at least not now, but He thinks He has time. Shayna Murry is terrified and tries to break through the boarded-up hole that is her window. She pounds at it and hysterically claws the wood as if she can dig her way through it.

  He delivers another shock. It goes throughout her body, causing all her muscles to cramp simultaneously. She goes rigid again, again shouts OH with the pain. Does He only want to inflict the pain? Does He want her dead, but not immediately? Or does He want something else?

  Shayna Murry comes to, although this time it takes a little longer, this time it’s with the help of a glass of water thrown in her face to revive her. A glass He got from the bathroom.

  What now?

  No matter what now, whether they talk, whether any sense is made out of an otherwise senseless act, Shayna Murry takes one more jolt. As if her body is giving up, this time she barely twitches at all. Then she is still.

  He throws more water on her. But this time Shayna Murry doesn’t come to. No matter how safe the weapon is for law-enforcement defense, in Shayna Murry’s case the third time is the charm for death. A heart can only take so much.

  Is He disappointed? Did He get what He came for?

  He pulls the barbed prongs out of her, without the care that might have been taken for a living victim, leaving two tears, the same size, side by side, in her flesh. He leaves.

  As if they had rehearsed for a television crime drama, Brach had ready a microscopic photo of Murry’s fingertips that, despite the rawness that welcomed the earliest insect activity, distinctly showed the splinters from the wood panel over the window.

  Dr. Brach brought me back from the scene reconstruction to the ME report. “Cause of death, cardiac arrest brought on by repeated stun gun shocks,” he finished.

  Todd was looking closely at one of the crime scene photos that he had held back as the others were passed around. These days everybody in law enforcement needs to be scientific, show off their forensics. “I’m not convinced about the stun gun theory,” he said. “Could have been some sort of sharp-force trauma that broke the skin there without breaking bones.” He jabbed with his index and middle finger extended. “What do you call those—”

  “A meat fork?” I said. I’ve been learning how to cook.

  Todd nodded. “Otherwise, how do you account for the blood spatter?”

  “I’m sorry?” Brach answered, puzzled to know what he had missed.

  “Here on the floor in the bedroom next to the body.” Todd shot the photo he was looking at across the table as if he was taking Brach’s queen in a game of homicide chess. Hockey, chess, the boys are always playing some game.

  Brach looked again at the photo with a studied casualness and smiled. “It’s a little harder to tell from the photos, but that’s not blood spatter. It’s tracks from insects that got to the corpse early on before the blood was fully coagulated. There was evidence of roaches in the place.”

  Brach had Todd in a velvet vise. McClay cleared his throat. Todd cleared his throat, too, despite his best effort not to do so, yet tried to cover his ignorance with one more question. “The weapon is silent, but what about the screams?”

  Delgado said, “Murry’s home is pretty secluded, in the middle of a large yard with nothing real close by. Plus the windows are boarded up.”

  Brach nodded. He seemed to be a man who was comfortable not speaking, and because of that others treated him with respect and not a little gratitude.

  “Was she killed before or after Marcus Creighton’s execution?” I asked.

  Brach smiled at me, too, this time like a professor at a student who was getting, if not the solution, at least the problem. “Ah, that’s what’s hard to determine given the approximately forty-eight hours between the Creighton execution and your discovery of the body, and the speed of decomposition.”

  “But we agree, right?” I said. “There’s a connection between Creighton and Murry. At least there’s a motive in there somewhere.”

  The others agreed with their silence, each probably thinking what possibilities could arise out of it in the days ahead.

  Delgado looked at Laura with a respect he’d gained from the day they found the Creighton children’s bodies. “You’ve been there every step of the way. You know more about Creighton and Murry than anyone else in this room. Even more than I do, and I investigated the case originally. What do you
think?”

  Laura, who had been hunkered down and quiet during all the talk, pushed herself upright in the chair. “I’ve been thinking a lot, but right now all I’ve got is possibilities. It seems pretty clear that there are three possible motives. A) Was it to make her talk—was the killer trying to get her to maybe admit to the role she played in the murder of the Creightons? Did he think she knew who really did it? Was he hoping that her confession would exonerate Marcus? Or B) Was it to keep her from talking? Was he trying to tie up some loose end that would lead to his discovery? Or C) Was it to finally avenge the death of Marcus Creighton? If we could answer those questions, I think we’ll know who did it.”

  I had the sense of brain rubber burning to keep up with her. Even McClay looked impressed, which seemed to mildly piss off everyone else at the table.

  Todd spoke while he passed around copies of a paper he’d kept in front of him. “If it’s A or B, and Shayna Murry is the only person who could have given the killer what he wanted, this was an isolated crime, and up to the Vero Beach police and whoever they want to call in to investigate. But if it’s C, if this is a vigilante killing, there’s a possibility it’s not over. There were quite a few people who could be blamed for Creighton’s death. Agent Coleman and I got together before the meeting and compiled this list of people in my jurisdiction.”

  When we each had a copy of the list of names and addresses in front of us, McClay finally deigned to speak. “We keep this to ourselves for now. The media won’t make a connection between Murry and Creighton unless they’ve dug deep into the case investigation or the appeals, and we have the benefit that most of the journalists are too young to remember all the details of the original case.” He tapped his index finger on a name about halfway down. “Tracy Mack. The fingerprint examiner. I think he’s the most obvious next target. And Detective Delgado, I’d take some precautions if I were you. Detective Quinn, keep me apprised.” Then McClay left the room.