Stone Maidens

by Lloyd Devereux Richards

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” He wrung his hands under the table.

  “Fair question. We’re after the killer. If your DNA clears you, it means the real killer is still out there and will go on killing.” Prusik looked for any sign of hostile movement, observing nothing more than the expected wariness. “We’re not looking to pin something on you that you didn’t do.”

  Claremont lowered his right hand to the tabletop. She removed a small puncture blade from its antiseptic seal and extended her hand toward his.

  “A skin prick and two drops of blood on this special cardboard and we’ll be all set.”

  Prusik firmly gripped the suspect’s index finger, harpooned the tip, and touched the deep-red bubble twice to the rectangular test pad. Claremont withdrew his hand.

  “Would you like a Band-Aid?”

  He shook his head. The man’s face muscles tightened around the bony protrusions of his browridges. If sculpted from stone, Claremont’s visage would have represented midstage in the carving, needing many more refining rubs to smooth out its exaggerated appearance.

  Prusik noticed some adhesive tape covering the outside of his left palm. “Hurt yourself?” She nodded toward his hand.

  Claremont slipped it beneath the table and shot her a steely look. “Not what you’re thinking.” The tendons in his forearms tensed, pressing against the table’s edge.

  “What am I supposed to be thinking?”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong!” he said. “This is all a mistake.”

  Prusik nodded. “That’s what we’re hoping the DNA will show. Now show me your hand, David.”

  He slowly pulled back the tape, wincing, and revealed a nasty human bite mark—unmistakable and recent. Prusik swallowed hard. Her rational mind could frame the question, but deep inside, a voice was shouting for her to get out of the room.

  “How’d that happen?”

  “I…I don’t know exactly.” Claremont’s voice faltered. His agitation seemed genuine enough.

  “I would like your permission to take a bite impression of your teeth.”

  He obliged her without having to be asked a second time. She unzipped the forensic pouch around her waist and removed stainless-steel calipers, thinking how Brian Eisen would compare Claremont’s uppers and lowers with the digital postmortem photographs of the teeth marks on Betsy Ryan’s shoulder, close-ups he’d enhanced using the Lucis software.

  Prusik went to Claremont’s side of the table and asked him to display his teeth. His hot exhalations against the back of her hand triggered another uncomfortable wave of anxiety. She couldn’t stop the pulsation emanating from deep within her amygdala—the primitive seed in her brain, the animal part she couldn’t control, and the problem area researchers had successfully isolated as the main source of debilitating fear and panic reactions. She rested her hand on the table edge and waited for the moment to pass.

  “Sorry,” she said. Regaining her composure, she said, “Let’s try that again. Open wide, like you do when the dentist cleans your teeth.” She measured the gap between his eyeteeth on the upper jaw, then applied the calipers between the lower canines. She then measured the clear eyetooth punctures on his hand—it was a perfect match, meaning the wound had been self-inflicted.

  Prusik removed some blue molding adhesive from its airtight package and pressed it firmly against his uppers, carefully repeating the procedure for the lower dentition. She would compare the impression with the Ryan victim bite mark.

  “Why’d you bite yourself?”

  “I…I can’t remember.”

  Prusik didn’t press the point. She removed a yellow legal pad from her briefcase. “Let’s talk about your daily routines, shall we?” Abruptly changing gears was a questioning strategy she preferred, believing it prevented a suspect from having time enough to fabricate answers. “Give me a sense of your workweek, how you spend the hours of each day. How much time do you spend on the farm?”

  “Most days, I guess.” He shrugged. “On and around the property.”

  “Dawn-to-dusk hard work?”

  “Here and there, running errands mostly.” He studied the top of the table.

  “According to your father, the bottomland is leased out to a neighbor who works it. He says you hardly do any chores at all on the place other than hang out in the barn a lot.”

  David’s upper lip was beginning to shine. “Not true. I stained the neighbor’s barn. I did the whole thing myself.”

  Christine flashed on the paint fragment evidence. “What sort of errands do you run?”

  “In town, up to the farmers’ co-op, getting more stain, groceries, things like that.”

  “The farmers’ co-op. I heard about some trouble you had there recently, attacking some woman in the parking lot?”

  “No! I didn’t attack her. I carried a roll of wire out to her car for her. It was heavy, and I…I…”

  “You thought she owed you something for your trouble?”

  “No! I was helping her. She…she didn’t press charges. She knew I didn’t mean her any harm. She knew. I don’t even remember exactly what happened,” he concluded softly, defeated somehow.

  Prusik nodded and switched directions again abruptly. “Your mother said this spring and summer you took a bus to Chicago twice without saying a word about where you were going.” She took out a large gray file from her forensic case. Dr. Irwin Walstein had dropped it off at the police station at her request.

  Claremont’s leg began to wiggle.

  “That’s a pretty strange thing to do. Chicago’s a long way off. What were you doing there? Did you meet anyone?”

  “Getting hobby supplies mostly.”

  “What sort of hobby is that?”

  “Carving. I like to carve things.”

  Christine swallowed hard and looked down, pretending to consult her notes. She let a moment pass, then looked up again. “How come you didn’t tell your parents you were going? Your mother was very upset about it, David.”

  “Don’t know. I just didn’t.”

  “So when did you take the bus to Chicago?”

  “I’m not sure. I think it was in March.”

  “And the second time, when was that?”

  He shrugged, looked down at his lap. “Might have been two weeks or so ago, I’m not sure.” The dull slapping thud of his knees increased.

  Perhaps he had stashed a vehicle in the Chicago area; keeping it away from home would have been smart planning. But not telling his parents and being gone for nearly twelve hours on each occasion was plain stupid. Surely they’d worry. They might even have called the police, searching for him. Unless, of course, they hadn’t, to cover for him, to protect him, assuming they knew something far worse. Yet when Prusik had briefly met with Claremont’s parents before the interview, neither had impressed her as being capable of the kind of behavior necessary to protect a lawbreaking son, nor did they seem like the kind of people who would be able and willing to conceal evidence of horrifying crimes.

  Prusik had confirmed with the Weaversville police what both David’s parents had said—he did spend most days, including weekends, around the farm, keeping to himself. He was kind of a homebody. And he didn’t usually venture by himself much farther than the farmers’ co-op. Except for these secret adventures to Chicago.

  One thing that surprised Prusik was the quality of Claremont’s responses. His short denials belied the impression she’d gotten from Dr. Walstein—that David behaved fearfully. The doctor’s file notes disclosed that he frequently displayed a helpless attitude toward his disabling visionary attacks—hardly befitting the profile of a confident and efficient killer.

  “Tell me what you like to carve, David.”

  “Animals, figures, anything that comes to mind.” He rubbed a hand over his short-cropped hair. “They’re at home. You’ll see them, if you haven’t already.”

  “By any chance, did you visit our fine natural history museum while you were on one of your jaunts t
o Chicago? The Museum of Natural History?”

  Prusik felt the table shake from David’s vibrating leg. But he wouldn’t answer the question.

  “Ever experience blackouts before, David? Hear voices in your head? Have an upsetting vision that seems real as life? A person screaming, a bad dream?”

  Prusik presented the facts that had been written down in the psychiatrist’s file as questions, piling them up, pushing him toward the edge of toleration, which wasn’t nearly so invisible now as it had been earlier.

  His brow furrowed. “You’re working with Dr. Walstein?” He lifted his head, focused on the documents open in front of the forensic anthropologist. “That’s whose file that is?”

  “Yes, I’ve read your medical files. We subpoenaed them. It’s my job as a forensic investigator to be thorough, David. Tell me about these visions of screaming girls. According to your file, they started last March?”

  “Then you already know everything.” He scowled. “What’s the point in asking?”

  Prusik steeled herself—the time bomb inside David Claremont was fused to go off at any moment. She knew all too well that world of out-of-control, pile-driving fear. Easing, she changed her tack.

  “You don’t know what’s happening to you when a vision strikes?”

  “There’s a difference, you know, between seeing things and doing them,” he said forcefully. “They’re not the same thing at all.”

  Prusik nodded, sympathizing. “You’re right. There is a big difference.”

  She slid a blank piece of paper and a pencil across the table. “Do me a favor, David. Write down your name.”

  He picked up the pencil with his hurt left hand and printed out each letter.

  “This time I’d like you to try writing cursive, in long hand,” she urged. “Using your right hand.”

  Claremont put down the pencil. “Can’t write that way.”

  “Some people are naturally ambidextrous,” Prusik said. “Maybe you’re one.”

  The pencil clumsily popped out of his right hand twice. Breaking off the pencil point, he scratched a hole in the paper. The muscles tightened around his jaw. He cast a despondent gaze down at his lap.

  Claremont was most definitely a lefty. From the forensic evidence the killer was clearly right-handed. And the implication was just as clear to Prusik. Claremont was not the man responsible. But she could not dismiss the possibility that he was somehow involved, either.

  “Ever give someone a ride in your truck, David? While out running errands?”

  “Might have once or twice.”

  “A girl, for instance? Ever offer a ride to a girl walking home?”

  He bowed his head. “I…I don’t really know any girls.”

  He sat stiffly. The sound of knuckles cracking under the table confused Prusik. So many of Claremont’s nuances and behaviors ran counter to his seeming helplessness, as if the man was a battleground for good and evil and the winner hadn’t yet been declared.

  “You’d remember taking a girl somewhere, wouldn’t you?”

  He looked her straight in the eye, desperate. “You want me to say it, don’t you? That I’m the one you’re after?” He tapped his temple with a sardonic grin. “A damn killer’s trapped in my mind is what.” His face became somber. “You think asking questions is going to help any? It’s not going to change one thing, no matter what I say. The way people always look at me twice. Their eyes say it, their frowns. They see something’s not right. Like I should have been the one born dead.”

  Prusik wrinkled her brow. “Why would you say that?”

  Claremont continued staring somewhere past the far corner of the room. “Could I have been born dead? That would explain it, all the things I see. Coming back from the dead, they say you remember seeing things.”

  Concerned, Prusik reached out her hand, touching the top of his. It felt clammy and tense.

  “I read about it once,” he continued, in a more animated frame of mind, “the way people can come back from awful experiences, from drowning, car accidents. When their hearts stop.” His face eased noticeably. “Seeing themselves all torn up from far above their bodies, like they’re in two places at once.”

  “Is that what you feel, David, in two places at once?”

  “Seeing them lying there on the ground…all cut up.” He hung his head, defeated again.

  “Covered in your blood, David, or someone else’s?”

  He flicked his hand away from hers, as if electrically charged. He scrubbed his fingers across his crew cut again, his biceps bulging noticeably under his shirt.

  “Car-accident scenes are different, aren’t they?” Prusik said, playing along with his idea. “You look down. You see yourself, maybe another passenger who was with you in the crash. But the action’s stopped, hasn’t it? It’s over, except for seeing the mangled body down there, and you looking down from above…”

  She needn’t have repeated his words; he was already there.

  “Right, right! So does that make me a killer? Seeing it? Hearing it?” He crossed his arms and gripped his biceps, his fingers white with tension.

  “Your visions are pretty upsetting,” Prusik said sympathetically.

  What Claremont had said a moment ago—that he should have been the one born dead—intrigued her. As had his reference to being in two places at once. Both were said reflexively and sounded truthful. Prusik returned to Dr. Walstein’s file, reviewing one paragraph she’d earlier marked off in which the psychiatrist had summarized his comments: “The patient shows remarkable recall for certain events that take place during his blackout periods in the wakeful moments afterward. Descriptions include that of a girl’s face, identifying clothing, seeing her running and screaming and falling down in the woods, then being butchered.”

  “I understand you’ve put a name to it?”

  His gaze narrowed on the file lying open in front of her. “So what if I have?”

  “That you call this man in your visions a two-face?”

  “Is that a crime?”

  “Anyone you know ever double-cross you before?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh come on, David. No one’s life is that perfect. Maybe someone you knew in high school? Someone you ran into while you were out running an errand? Or when you went up to Chicago?” she needled. “Someone you don’t like very much and would rather not speak openly about? People who hurt us, David, we don’t usually like to talk about.”

  His eyes widened, and something stirred behind his lids. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s a common enough thing not being able to trust people.”

  Prusik sensed he was hedging. “Could this two-face be a relative?” she continued. “Someone who might have dropped by the farm infrequently, someone you might not have seen since you were much younger? A distant cousin even?”

  Claremont gazed blankly at the table. “Can’t say exactly where he comes from. But he’s there all right.” He swallowed hard and tapped his sternum when he did. “Right there inside.”

  “So you do know him.”

  “I…I can’t”—he massaged his throat—“stop him.”

  Prusik thought she detected the dilation of his pupils, but wasn’t sure.

  “Look, David, things will only get worse from here on out. A search warrant has already been issued. The field unit will tear up every board in that barn if they have to. They’ll take apart the seats and bed of your truck, and your parents’ truck, too. They’ll go through your room and the rest of the house with a fine-tooth comb. As soon as they find evidence—and a single strand of hair is all it will take—linking you to Julie Heath or any of the other victims, your case will be transferred to the US attorney’s office in Chicago for federal prosecution. Cooperate with me, talk to me, and I’ll see what I can do to help you.”

  “I told you. I’ve done nothing wrong,” David said, his face agonized. “There is no evidence. There can’t be. Except for my blanking out, seeing things…”

  “And
I do believe you.” It surprised Prusik, hearing her own conviction. “But an eyewitness puts you at the scene of Julie Heath’s abduction in Crosshaven.”

  Prusik tapped the tip of her forefinger on the center of the tabletop. “Another witness from Parker claims two days ago you followed her in your truck after her soccer practice. She described the gray fender paint, said you scared the living daylights out of her. I want to help you, David. But to do it, I’ll need your complete cooperation.”

  She played the hunch she’d been considering since Claremont’s puzzling revelation about feeling that he was in two places at once. “If you’re innocent—and I believe you are—it means someone else out there who looks like you is committing these crimes. Someone who’s probably laughing right now seeing it all pinned on some fool named David.”

  He blinked. “Nobody could have seen me in Crosshaven, because I wasn’t there. I wasn’t in Parker, either, unless I was passing through with my parents. It couldn’t be my truck they saw. It’s a mistake, I tell you.” Claremont’s eyes implored her. “What you were saying before…”

  “About your visions?” she said. “Seeing him, this two-face of a man?” She sensed the depth of the man’s despair, felt she could almost follow the neuronal pathway to the very source of his pain.

  “Things have been getting worse.” Claremont rotated his hurt hand in front of his face, staring at it as if it weren’t his own flesh. A bead of sweat raced down his cheek.

  “Tell me.” Prusik’s voice was calm, soothing. “What other bad things does he do to you?”

  “It’s not a dream, is it? It’s too real to be. Oh God,” Claremont moaned.

  Prusik shoved another notepad across the table. “Write it all down for me, David. Everything you can recall about him, about the visions, what he does to the girls, when he does it. Locations, ones that may be familiar to you—it’s crucial that I know every detail if I am to help you.”

  Claremont flattened his palms on the tabletop, surrendering. “Do you think I’m crazy?” On his weary face was the look of a man who very much cared.