Stone Maidens

by Lloyd Devereux Richards

  “St. Mary’s was torn down ten years ago,” Branson said. “But the hospital records must be stored somewhere.”

  “Something’s written on the back of the index card.” Prusik drew closer.

  He handed it to her. The name Donald was deliberately crossed out and the name David written in its place. Donald. Below that was something else.

  “Sons’ father?” Prusik placed it in front of Branson. “In your lifetime of experience in the baby-dealing business, what do you think it means, Mr. Branson, when an s trails a noun?”

  “More than one son?” He gazed at her with a furrowed brow.

  “Very good. And wouldn’t the fact that the name Donald is crossed out and the name David written in its place bear that out? Wouldn’t Mr. Crowder have been indicating that the mother had two sons? It is Mr. Crowder’s writing, isn’t it?”

  “I see your point, yes. Perhaps it was the mother’s decision not to give up the other son?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Branson.” Prusik tucked the cards and the note into her overcoat pocket, showing herself out.

  “Ms. Prusik.” Branson followed her out into the hallway, clasping his hands in a praying gesture. “You won’t be needing to come back again, will you?”

  She gave a sweet smile. “Let’s just see how things go, shall we?”

  Prusik sat in the idling car with the air on maximum cool, studying the yellowed Crowder Agency cards. She pondered the significance of the erasure. Had Bruna Holmquist had a change of heart about which baby to give up for adoption? Had she planned to give up both, then decided to keep Donald? Bruna Holmquist had no doubt been poor, vulnerable, and new to this country. With spotty English and twin babies, her road would have been a hard one. So she’d tried to do her best for them by giving up one of them, who’d become David Claremont, a troubled loser. The other son, whom she kept, became Donald Holmquist, a bona fide serial killer. She’d get Eisen on it immediately. Have him reverse the image of the photo of Claremont and circulate it, with information that he might have been a painter on the museum project last March who could have gone by the name Donald Holmquist.

  Prusik’s hands were trembling as she reached for her cell phone. And her pinkie throbbed mercilessly.

  She took her time driving back into the city. When she finally got downtown, she accelerated past the underground parking garage entrance to her office building, needing to think in peace. Fifteen minutes later she was in her Speedo, muscling down a smooth lane of water between the float lines. She’d already come up with a plan, and she was praying to God that her next move wouldn’t cost more lives than it would save.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Prusik eased the sedan into the government-only spot at O’Hare Airport and levered the shifter into park. Thick gray clouds drifted in from the west, cutting the muggy midafternoon heat by a few degrees. Sheriff McFaron had accepted her proposal and would be arriving shortly.

  In the past four hours, Paul Higgins had found out that Donald Holmquist had only made it through his junior year at Southside High. The school’s guidance office had his last known address listed as 1371 Hawthorne Boulevard, apartment 3C, Delphos, Illinois, which was a tenement building among a raft of condemned blocks that were scheduled to be torn down next spring. A scan of police records in the greater Chicago area had yielded another hit, which had led to a meaningful conversation with a Sergeant Gatto, who seemed more than pleased that someone was looking for Donald Holmquist five years after five-year-old Benjamin Moseley, who had lived in the same building, had disappeared. Holmquist had been the last to see the young child. Gatto had suspected him of foul play but had been unable to prove it.

  Bruce Howard and the field unit remained in Weaversville, assiduously searching the Claremont property, ferrying planeloads of bagged items back to Chicago for Prusik’s team to examine. Thorne’s last voice message had demanded that she hand in an overdue summary report of evidence findings to substantiate the case against Claremont, as if the case was all but sewn up. But there were no findings to substantiate the case.

  Her BlackBerry beeped. Brian Eisen’s name flashed across its screen. “What you got, Brian?”

  “What I got is a copy of Bruna Holmquist’s St. Mary’s Hospital admission. You’re not going to believe this. Three years ago she was admitted, having suffered a stroke and been rendered aphasic. Unable to do more than blink, according to the nurse’s station notes.”

  “Yes?” Prusik scanned the entrance doors looking for the sheriff.

  “She died the same night she was admitted. An autopsy yielded one significant contributing factor. Her throat was partially blocked by a coarse granite stone that had been wedged there. Her esophagus tissue was heavily abraded. Mystifyingly, there is no follow-up report. No notice to the prosecuting attorney’s office. I guess public hospital patients don’t count for much.”

  Prusik said nothing but wondered what this mother had done to her son to deserve that. “As always, excellent follow-up work, Brian.”

  McFaron’s tan trooper hat appeared through the automatic sliding doors. Christine got out of the car and waved him over. “I’ve got to go. Keep me posted.”

  Quickly she scanned the street to be sure that no one from the bureau who might recognize her was in the area. She gave Joe a kiss, slipped her hand inside his arm, and coaxed him toward the waiting vehicle. His clear brown eyes sent a surge of warmth coursing through her, which made what she had to do even harder.

  “I have a confession to make, Joe,” she said as soon as they were both in the car. Her head slumped forward, her short hair momentarily concealing her eyes.

  McFaron rested his trooper hat on the large sedan’s dashboard and looked at her, puzzled. “I’m listening.”

  “I really wanted to see you, and that’s why I asked you up. But not just for dinner.” Christine felt embarrassment and shame. Had she taken unfair advantage? Probably.

  Joe remained silent.

  She peered out the window, searching for the right words. A huge jetliner, its flaps and landing gear fully down, descended straight at them. Christine blinked as its shadow and thunderous engines passed not more than a few hundred feet over them. McFaron sat expectantly, waiting for her to speak.

  “I haven’t exactly been truthful.” She looked him squarely in the eyes. “Whatever you might think of me, please remember that I really wanted to see you. But it’s not the main reason I’ve asked you here.”

  McFaron gazed at her levelly. “OK. Spill the beans already.”

  She took another deep breath. “Unbeknownst to Thorne or Howard, I’ve been investigating a different line of information that my team has developed.”

  “Sure that’s the right thing to be doing?”

  “Obviously not, and it’s why I feel troubled about involving you directly in it without warning you, either.”

  “So what are you saying, Christine?” McFaron’s expression was hard to read. “Are you telling me now to see whether I’ll cut and run, or are you asking me to stay? Is this some sort of test to see if I’m worthy? Wait and see if Joe flies up, spring it on him, and then see if he leaves or stays?”

  She told him what she’d learned from Dr. Katz about mirror imaging and the twinning bond and about delving into David Claremont’s past at the adoption agency.

  “So will you stay?” she pleaded, searching his face for signs. It was McFaron’s turn to study an incoming plane, its landing gear in the ready position.

  The sheriff waited for the flickering shadow overhead and the loud engine noise to subside before answering her. “You don’t make it easy, Special Agent Prusik.” A small smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “But I’ll stay. You got that good place to eat picked out yet?”

  Christine let out a sigh of relief. “You’ll have to earn your keep first, cowboy.” She drew closer, still a little cautious, and kissed his cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  From O’Hare Prusik gunned the sedan down the interstate conn
ector south under a thin veil of building clouds. She filled McFaron in on the details: information she’d picked up at the adoption agency and the fact that Claremont not only had a brother named Donald Holmquist, but that Donald had grown up in Delphos, just down the road. And that his mother had died of a stroke three years earlier—with a stone lodged in her throat.

  “Holy Jesus,” the sheriff said, shaking his head. “From what I hear, Claremont has not been very cooperative. He still maintains his innocence, and nothing has come my way to corroborate his being seen in either Parker or Crosshaven, aside from Joey Templeton’s lineup ID.”

  “In my last call with Bruce, he didn’t sound too pleased with the recovery effort at the Claremont place,” she said.

  “Does Thorne still feel it’s a wrap?”

  She glanced at the sheriff and then quickly turned to watch the traffic. “He hasn’t said anything yet to suggest otherwise. These new developments and whatever you and I turn up will change his mind.”

  Less than an hour later, she signaled right, turning onto Second Avenue in downtown Delphos. They passed block after block of boarded-up tenements. A hangar-size battery plant at one end of the avenue stood like a great rusted mausoleum, a tribute to better days gone by. Prusik wondered whether Donald’s mother had worked in the battery factory, maybe even met his father there. She took a left onto Hawthorne.

  “Kind of bleak, ain’t it?” McFaron said, craning his neck. “Can you read any street numbers?”

  “The number four twelve is above that entry,” Prusik pointed out, “meaning thirteen seventy-one Hawthorne should be on the right.”

  The residences were brick-built units constructed in the late thirties as the country had begun to creep out of the Great Depression. Many had the same sturdy architectural style as the public works projects from that era. Ten blocks farther on, concrete steps led up to unadorned entrances, less desirable places to live for people with even less money than battery-making paid.

  “Thirteen seventy-one,” McFaron said. “Goddamn, it looks like a war zone.” McFaron observed a creek to the right that passed through a culvert under the roadway and spilled out the other side into the Little Calumet.

  She pulled up to the curb.

  The plywood sealing the main entrance looked intact. “What about trying the back,” the sheriff suggested. “Through that alley? It may have an easier access.”

  “OK then.”

  The car rocked over loose rubble in the alley between buildings. They got out into an empty gravel lot covered with weeds. The hush of the abandoned buildings surrounding them muffled the distant hum of traffic on the interstate. The only sound came from the trickle of the creek that ran parallel to the parking lot. No pigeons flew overhead. The sky was fuzzy slate. Life had forgotten this part of Delphos.

  McFaron walked toward a sheet of plywood loosely propped against the back door. He pushed it aside. “That was easy.”

  “Someone’s obviously been here. Better put on these.” Prusik handed him a pair of latex gloves. “To preserve any prints that might be on that knob.”

  “Here goes nothing.” McFaron flashed his Maglite up and down the gloomy hallway and entered the building.

  “It better be something,” she said. “I’m counting on it.”

  The sheriff tested the first-floor apartment door, but it was locked. He wedged a screwdriver into the jamb, dismantling the flimsy hinge. The door collapsed inward.

  “Why are you doing that?”

  “What if this creep has taken up residence downstairs?” He grunted, shoving an old stuffed chair out of his way and inadvertently knocking over a standing lamp, breaking the bulb. Slowly, methodically, McFaron flashed the light through dust billowing in the interior. More of it lay undisturbed on the floor. “Looks like our boy didn’t take up roosting in here.”

  Watching him working in the shadows of the squalid apartment, Christine was grateful for the sheriff’s presence on more than one level.

  “The Holmquists lived on the third floor,” she said. “My money says we start at the top and work our way down if we have to.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.” He grinned, shooing away a cobweb from his Stetson. “Say, how far is that restaurant from here?”

  “Quit the chitchat and get going,” Prusik whispered, stepping over an old pile of newspapers. Her feet crunched on bits of debris.

  “Why are you whispering?” he whispered back.

  “I guess I don’t want to disturb the ghosts.” She was sort of joking and sort of not. “Let’s go.”

  On the way down the hall to the staircase, they passed an old bureau with missing drawers angled precariously on three legs, a stuffed chair with its pillowy contents blackened from a small fire, one squashed shoe without a lace. The smells were musty and dank, devoid of anything resembling life.

  “Third floor,” the sheriff said. “Ready or not.” They climbed the steps slowly, McFaron shining the light near Prusik’s feet.

  The door to apartment 3C swung open at his touch. He scattered the beam of light around the kitchen. Footprints smudged the floor everywhere. “Got that camera ready? Someone’s definitely been in here. Recently, too.”

  From the hallway Prusik flashed several long shots with her camera, and then she knelt inside the threshold for a close-up of one clear boot print. As their eyes adjusted to the dimness, Prusik and McFaron inspected the living room. Daylight filtered through lathe strips that covered the windows. McFaron shone the light past the living room. In the bedroom next to the apartment’s front door Prusik discovered a mattress mounded several feet high with women’s clothes. In one corner a fine layer of dust had collected on an old TV set. It looked untouched. The bathroom window contained the only intact pane of glass, frosted for privacy.

  Prusik poked around the pile of old clothing on the bed. She detected a sharp ammonia-like odor—bed-wetting was a common behavioral antecedent of psychopaths. And also drunks and drug addicts, she reminded herself.

  McFaron returned to the kitchen. A Formica-topped table looked as solid as new with two stools neatly tucked under it, as if the last occupant hadn’t intended to abandon the premises. He worked loose a window board, letting in more daylight, and pried off the sheathing from another window. A bottle cap blew off the sill.

  They had been working for nearly an hour in the stuffy walk-up—kneeling, poking in corners, finding and bagging as evidence for later examination a moldy, empty woman’s purse with a torn strap, a pair of old pantyhose that were ripped nearly in two at the crotch, and a stack of mildew-stained weekly advertisers. But no sign of stale food—not a crumb, empty cans, or any recent-looking garbage indicating anyone had been holing up, which puzzled McFaron, given the myriad shoe prints covering the kitchen floor. Hunger was past gnawing at his stomach. Christine’s last-minute invitation had wreaked havoc with his schedule. Tired, he leaned his shoulder against a narrow door in the corner of the kitchen. The door suddenly gave way, unbalancing him.

  “Jesus.” McFaron rubbed his arm and aimed the Maglite up a steep passageway. It appeared to access the roof. The sheriff grazed both sides of the passage climbing the flight. Halfway up, a sharp, rotting odor stopped him. Reflexively, he drew his gun and continued slowly, the weapon aimed forward, breathing through the top of his jacket collar. In the line of the flashlight beam, he saw brownish-red stains around a smudgy doorknob of a small room on the way to the roof.

  Fingerprints.

  He eyed them briefly. With the lens end of the flashlight he shoved open the grungy door and quickly shone the light around, aiming his gun chest-high. The light sent shadows dancing against a cracked plaster wall.

  He blinked, his eyes still adjusting to the dimness. Slowly he holstered his gun, finally convinced that he was alone and feeling a bit foolish. When he turned to leave, McFaron caught sight of someone standing still in the corner of the room. Instinctively, the sheriff ducked and withdrew his gun. “Hands up!” No movement. He squinted at the
figure—a mannequin. It was propped against the back wall; a tattered headdress of some kind rested over its plaster head. “What the…”

  “Joe?” Prusik called up the stairwell.

  Around the mannequin’s neck hung a small green stone that gleamed in the beam of his flashlight. On the floor next to it lay a yellow-stained mattress, splattered with dark lumps. A Styrofoam cooler sat beside it, finger markings darkening its lid. It looked recently handled. Nearby stood six filled canning jars, still sealed.

  “What the hell?” He knelt beside the mattress and jars. It took him a few moments to comprehend what he was seeing.

  “You OK up there?” Prusik called again. He could hear her footsteps on the staircase.

  The sheriff stood shakily. He stepped cautiously out of the foul-smelling room and returned to the top of the landing, his revulsion making him queasy. “I need a forensic anthropologist up here, Christine. Quick.” He swallowed, with difficulty. “You’d better brace yourself.”

  The skies were lightening as Prusik and McFaron made calls from the car late that afternoon. Prusik immediately called Managing Director Thorne’s office.

  “Hi, Roger, it’s Christine. I’m at a derelict tenement building in Delphos, sir, which we believe to be a place of significance to our killer—David Claremont’s identical twin. Well, genetically identical, at least.”

  “You’re where? Do you realize Bruce Howard has left at least six phone messages inquiring about the status of your examination of the Claremont farm material?”

  “May I explain, sir? We have uncovered significant—”

  “Christine, consider this a friendly warning. Get back to the lab ASAP. Stop putting your job on the line like this.”

  “But, sir, there is physical evidence here that…”

  “You have mountains of physical evidence waiting for you back at the lab. Get back there and do your job.”

  Thorne ended the call.

  She phoned her lab.

  “I need you and Hughes over here ASAP for some discreet fieldwork,” she told Eisen. She described to him the location of the small room near the roof exit, architecturally designed for holding roofing equipment for the tenement buildings of the day, and told him about the soiled mattress and canning jars.