by Ann Self
“Oh my God!” she gasped. She pulled everything through the zipper opening of the bag, and nothing was whole. The white breeches had been hacked to pieces and only white strings clung to the leather knee patches. The jacket did not have a piece big enough to qualify as a rag. She dropped the shredded remnants and looked at her door. The large, heavy bolt was still in place. Right at the foot of the door her black top-hat was stomped and crushed almost flat on floor boards. Jane stood with her hands clasped over her mouth. She looked back at the shredded pieces of her riding clothes and sincerely wanted to burst into tears, but could only produce a little mewling noise at the back of her throat. The violence with which someone had hacked the material to pieces made her shudder, and she could sense a presence so evil it made the nerves crackle down her spine.
“Madeline? It’s me, Jane,” she cried into the phone.
“Jane, what’s wrong!?”
“Do you think you could come to the barn right away?” she gasped.
“I was just about to get in my car. What in God’s name is wrong now? I can hear the terror in your voice...”
“Someone got into my room during the night and hacked my show clothes to pieces.”
“Get out of that barn now—get Sam and Lars. I’m on my way.”
Thirty-five minutes later, Madeline was in Jane’s room with Sam and Lars, looking over the damage. “How could anyone get in here to do this if the bolt was in place?” she asked.
“They couldn’t break through that and re-lock it,” Sam stated, thinking out loud. “You sure it was locked?”
“Yes definitely! I never go to bed now without locking it. And when I found my clothes shredded—the first thing I did was check the bolt. It was firmly locked, the way I left it last night.”
“Then how could this happen?” Madeline demanded.
“There’s got to be an explanation,” Lars said.
Sam shook his head in disbelief at the tangled mess of rags that was Jane’s riding clothes. “I called Detective Westerlund at home. He’s on his way.”
A half hour later, after fighting his way through the show traffic on the ground level, Detective Westerlund was poking around Jane’s apartment, looking for another way in. “If the bolt was in place, then plain and simply there has to be some other access,” he stated, looking up at her ceiling. “Must be attic space up there, the roof over this is enormous.”
“Yes,” Jane answered him, “there is an attic—but there’s no access to it through this room.”
“No little hidden door in the ceiling, no trap doors in the closet?’
“None whatsoever. I know every inch of this apartment.”
He kept staring at the ceiling intently. “There is a small hole up there, however.”
Everyone looked up at the black, dime-sized hole in the ceiling. For some reason, it made the hackles on the back of Jane’s neck raise up. She had never noticed the tiny hole over her sofa before.
“Not enough room to stuff chicken through,” Sam joked.
“Not enough room for anything except spying,” Westerlund stated. Then he dropped his gaze back down, his sharp eyes wandering from corner to corner.
“How about the dormer windows?” he asked.
“They were partially open—but there’s no way to get to them...and the old screens weren’t touched,” Jane answered.
Westy walked over and looked out, checking the horseshow activity far below. “You’re right, these old screens haven’t been disturbed, and you’d have to be the Flying Walendas to get over that roof anyway. God forbid there was a fire in the barn...you’d never make it out of this room. They should provide you with some type of emergency egress. What’s this little door here? Storage?” He indicated the three-foot door under the slanted ceiling, in the knee-wall between the dormer windows.
“Yes, storage under the eaves,” Jane answered, keeping her hands gripped to her sides to stop the trembling. “But it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s just a small closet...”
The detective took out a handkerchief, then bent down and opened the small door between the two dormer windows. He leaned in to look. “You got a flashlight up here?” he asked. “So I don’t have to go back to my vehicle?”
“Sure...but I don’t know what there is to look at.” Jane handed him a flashlight she kept in her bedside table in case of power failure. The detective took it and aimed it inside the little closet. “Ah...hmmm…”
“Ah, hmmm what?” she demanded, dropping down beside him.
“See this?” He gently poked a plywood partition on the left side of the low closet with the flashlight and it fell back flat on the floor. The flash beam then sailed into the dark eaves, running under the whole length of the roof, almost as far as the eye could see. Jane shuddered, looking at the dark triangular tunnel running beside her room.
“God...” she gasped.
“This looks like it runs down beside all the rooms up here,” Westerlund offered. He leaned further in, his knees cracking in protest. “It narrows a little where it goes under the dormer window, but it seems to be an easy passageway to the other rooms.”
“I can’t believe this!”
Other people crowded around to see. Westerlund then aimed the flash on the floorboards at some twisted ten-penny nails. “Somebody’s been very busy,” he stated. “The nails were removed, then your visitor propped the partition back up against the rafters when he was done.”
Jane was aghast. Her face was close to the detective’s, and he watched her reactions closely. The cobwebs and large roof rafters reflecting in the flashlight beam suddenly made her heart pound with fear and the crawling tingling feeling returned full force. She scrambled back out and stood up.
“Don’t anyone touch a thing in this closet,” Westerlund commanded, as he stood up with the flashlight and straightened his suit jacket. “Are the other two rooms still empty?”
“No,” Sam answered, “the next one is occupied by three of the stableboys. Sort of bodyguards.” Sam scratched his head and raised his eyebrows at Westerlund. “Worked well, didn’t it?”
Westerlund didn’t criticize. “This guy is maniacal. He’s sparing no effort to continue the attacks on Miss Husted and remain undetected.”
“Jeez,” Sam said, “you’re right. This freak is now creeping around under the rafters.”
Madeline stood close to Jane, alarmed at her white pallor. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I guess I’ll have to be. How will I ride now?”
“Your boots are unharmed, Jane,” Lars said. “And I’m sure we can find a jacket and top-hat for you. You have other breeches and a shirt?”
“Yes—not in great condition, but they’ll do.” Jane walked over and looked down at her boots still standing neatly by the closet door. “Why weren’t these touched? I don’t understand. The boots are custom made, worth more than the whole second-hand outfit. There’s no way to replace them.”
“Maybe the psycho ran out of time,” Sam said, and Jane glanced at Madeline. Now everyone’s thinking psycho.
Lars looked at the garment bag again. “Is everything completely ruined?”
“Don’t touch anything Lars,” Westerlund cautioned. “We’ll want the forensics lab in Sudbury to go over every fiber in that bag...” He tucked the flashlight under his arm.
“Sorry.” Lars backed away from the bag.
“Can we get into the next two rooms?” Westerlund asked Sam, as he snapped on gloves.
“Sure can. The stableboys are all out, but neither room is locked.”
Detective Westerlund had radioed his partner on his way to the estate, and Russell rushed to the scene with a camera and a large brown evidence bag with a bright label that had plenty of room for writing. Russell’s bed-head and rumpled clothes suggested hasty dressing. After he photographed Jane’s small closet and retrieved the nails to the evidence bag, they went as a group to the last empty room; Russell scribbling notes as he walked with the camera under his arm.
Detective Westerlund was quick to spot black and white cloth fibers on the floor, which he retrieved with tweezers and placed in a cellophane bag, sealing it and popping it into the stash of evidence and hastily recording his find on the label.
People crowded in the doorway to watch. Westerlund then squatted down and swiveled around to regard the room from a low vantage point. His eyes were drawn to the upholstered chair with its slightly askew cushion, and he stood up to check it.
“Well, what do we have here?” he said, as he pushed aside the seat cushion and reached into the upholstery. Russell flashed away and took notes with gloved hands. Westerlund gingerly pulled a nasty looking pair of shears out of the chair, and they gleamed wickedly—reflecting the popping flash—as he held them up with a pen through the thumb handle.
Jane looked at the shears from the doorway, and her mind suddenly presented her with a vision of the shears dripping with blood. It made her body tremble from the depths of her bones.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Sam asked her. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”
“I’ll...be okay...”
Westerlund dropped the shears into another plastic bag and handed them to Russell, who popped them into the evidence bag and again scribbled something on the outside. “I have no doubt the perp wore gloves, but you never know, we could get lucky.”
“Maybe we should get the techs back here,” Russell offered.
Westerlund nodded. “Might have to do that.” He opened the little door to the eaves that matched the doors in the next two rooms, including Jane’s. He flashed the light in. “Yep, someone’s been very busy taking down plywood partitions,” Westerlund yelled to the people standing in the hallway. “Must’ve done all this carpentry at an earlier time, when there was no one up here. Couldn’t do this quietly.”
Russell leaned in to take a few shots of the eaves, the triangular passageway under the edge of the roof that led all the way back to Jane’s room. Then they left to look at the next room—the stableboys room, which was a jumble of unmade bunk beds, dirty socks, shirts and jeans.
“If there’s any evidence in this pig pen, we’d never find it,” Russell sneered.
Westerlund checked the small door to the eaves in that room, and it opened easily. “This barn is a goddamned rabbit warren,” he complained, as he left the room with the crowd following him. They congregated in the wide hall outside Jane’s room. Westerlund brushed his suitcoat back and rested hands on rangy hips, as he snapped looks up and down the corridor, frowning. The bulb hanging from the rafters high overhead burnished his buzz-cut sandy hair. Everyone watched him silently. “I don’t think the perp dragged your clothes through the eaves,” he stated to Jane.
“But the pieces of cloth in that last bedroom...” she began.
“Oh, your outfit was definitely shredded down there—that was no doubt his staging area.” Westerlund scratched his chin as he thought, and then looked back at them. “The perp removed the partitions behind that knee-wall at some earlier time when the rooms were empty, and then just stood the one in your closet back in place, in case you happened to look in there for some reason.”
Westerlund continued to rub his chin contemplatively, deep in thought, as he placed himself in the killer’s mind. “Last night, this nut crawls quietly down the passageway under the eaves while you and all the guys in the next room are sleeping—then when he reaches your room, he carefully lays down the partition inside your closet. I noticed there was a partially hammered-in nail in the upper corner of the partition, to facilitate dropping and raising it quietly.”
Westerlund continued his reconstruction as he paced the corridor. “He—or she—opens the little door between your windows, creeps into your room, and then gently slides the bolt back on the door to the hallway and opens it. Then the perp removes the garment bag and hat, takes it down to the empty room, two doors down, so he can hack the clothes to pieces and stomp all over the hat at his leisure and in private. He puts the shredded rags back in the garment bag; tiptoes back down the hallway, slips into your now unlocked door...” Westerlund moved through her door as he spoke, “and neatly re-hangs the bag.”
They all crowded back into Jane’s room to follow Westerlund’s reenactment. “As I said, the perp hangs the garment bag back on the closet door, places the mashed hat on the floor, and carefully slides the bolt back in place, locking himself in the room with you. Probably if you had awakened, he would’ve jumped back out the door in the dark and disappeared that way.”
“But,” Madeline added, “since Jane was exhausted and slept soundly, this sinister figure decides to bolt the door and slip back into the passageway under the eaves, prop the partition back up and return to the empty room.”
“Exactly,” Westerlund agreed. “I think we are dealing with a psycho. Only a psychotic personality would care about a detail like that. Somehow it’s much more frightening to feel you’re bolted in with the menace. Only problem for him, though, is it forced us to uncover his real access to this room.”
Jane looked at Madeline with blank terror.
Westerlund sighed, and his brow furrowed. “What I don’t understand, what doesn’t make sense...the last two attempts were clearly designed to kill or seriously maim you. Why would the killer simply crawl into your room in the middle of the night and attack your clothes and not you?”
Jane spoke, trying to control the quaking in her voice: “Maybe just to cause me serious misery before they finish me off.” She trembled from head to toe, and Westerlund watched her closely.
Then he shook his head. “Someone was trying almost desperately to kill you. Now they still feel driven to manifest the hatred, but for some reason not kill...yet.”
“She may be in more danger than ever—now that she’s supposed to ride in that show,” Madeline stated, putting a comforting arm around Jane’s back. Westerlund nodded. “We’ll just have to watch her very carefully until then.”
“I’m going to stay here overnight,” Madeline told him.
“And,” Sam said to Jane, “I’ll get a hammer and put that partition up with enough nails that’ll take someone all night to rip it down.”
‘’You’ll have to wait until the techs go over it,” Westerlund told him.”
“Okay, sure,” Sam agreed. Jane smiled half-heartedly at him.
“Let’s get a chair over here and stuff a rag in that hole,” Madeline ordered.
“Hold on a minute,” Westy stopped her. “I’m going to take a few shots up there, and then have Kenny take all this stuff and have it logged in by the Evidence Control Unit.” He handed the bags to Russell and took the camera.
“Where’s the access to the attic?” He asked no one in particular.
“The stairway up to the observation tower,” Sam informed him. “Halfway up there’s a little door on the side.”
“Jesus. Another damn little door.”
“All the better to terrorize the riding coach,” Sam made a weak joke.
Westy left for the attic with his camera, and was back down in the room within minutes. He handed the camera back to Russell, and Russell headed for the door with his load of evidence. Elliot plowed into the room, nearly mowing down the departing detective.
“Good God Jane...what is going on now? This is all I need, to have all this trouble on the day of the show!” Word of Jane’s clothes disaster had spread like wildfire throughout the barn—creating a buzz from one end to the other. Elliot paced around the room, breathing hard from the steep climb up the circular staircase, looking like he would explode. “What happened to your clothes?” he demanded. “And why did you have to go and call the police again?”
D
etective Westerlund walked over and stood face to face with Elliot. “Someone snuck in here in the middle of the night and shredded Miss Husted’s clothes to ribbons. I want to be informed of everything that happens here that has any bearing on an ongoing investigation. Everything!”
Elliot shrunk just a little. “I understand detective, you will have our full cooperation. I just don’t want to be making mountains out of molehills—you know how women can get...”
“No, not really. If I got up in the morning and the suit I was planning to wear looked like the streamers in a used car lot, I’d be...upset.”
Elliot marched over to Russell holding the garment bag.
“Don’t touch that please.”
“My God, it really has been shredded!”
Cecily came through the door a little breathless from the climb. “Jane...I just heard from Dylan that your clothes have been ruined—I can’t believe someone would do this on such an important day! This is awful!”
“Don’t touch please!” Westerlund repeated himself, as Cecily tried to detain Russell to look in the garment bag. He held it out of her reach and glared dangerously.
“Sorry,” she said. Russell frowned at her and marched out of the room.
Dylan charged through the door next, carrying a tailcoat.
“Where did you get that?” Sam asked.
“It’s Owen’s. I think he left everything but his car here.” Dylan handed the coat to Jane, and she slipped into it, her expression remote.
“At least he was the same height as you,” Cecily stated. “We could move the buttons over.”
Jane looked down at the coat. The arms were slightly long and the shoulders were a little broader than hers, and the waist gaped. She felt repulsed at the thought of Owen’s coat wrapped around her. Cecily fussed and plucked. “If we just pull it in here…”
“That’ll do,” Elliot said dismissively, waiving Cecily away. “This isn’t a fashion show. A slightly large coat won’t be noticed by people in the gallery. You can get back to work now,” Elliot dismissed Dylan. “How about the breeches?”