Shades of Deception

by Charlie Hudson

  Bev stood abruptly. She was a kid for God’s sake. She paced around the kitchen and tossed the empty bottle. Okay, set aside Crystal’s age for a minute. There were three dead people in the space of a couple of months from fatal accidents. If Crystal was linked to Pierce, that meant she was the single common element in all three. What in the hell were those odds? The Occam’s Razor point was a mantra, but there was also Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous quote from Sherlock Holmes, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

  The glaring question was where did Crystal fall — impossible or highly improbable? Another fragment of conversation sent Bev back to the computer. I said something like conditions were good for being on the Spiegel and he made a comment about him and Crystal doing a pony bottle drill — she was thinking of working toward dive master.

  Why was pony bottle familiar? She knew what one was, but neither she nor Kyle had one as part of their scuba equipment. Walt. Walt had said something, hadn’t he? It didn’t take long to find it.

  The simple answer would be give him a bad gas, but his tank and pony bottle were checked and everything was normal. Turning off his air and preventing him from getting to his pony bottle would be a Hollywood style touch and highly improbable. The correct kind of poison is the logical thing.

  Bev called Walt’s cell and apologized for interrupting him at home.

  “Not a problem — what’s up?”

  “Can you tell me what a pony bottle drill is?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Easy. It’s when you get an out-of-air signal from your buddy or another diver and you pass the regulator of your pony bottle over instead of your octopus. Having the pony bottle gives you an extra measure of control because you’re not sharing your own gas. Given the size of the pony bottle, you ought to be able to start your ascent and still do a safety stop. If you’re too deep for the bottle to give you time to safely surface, you’re probably in a situation where you’ve got a stage bottle hanging and the pony bottle ought to have enough gas to let you get to that. You know about stage bottles, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” When on the deep wrecks, dive boats often hung an extra scuba tank under the boat at around fifteen feet, near the anchor line, in case a diver was low on air, but needed to stay underwater to complete his or her safety stop.

  Walt chuckled softly. “You are going to tell me what this is about one of these days, aren’t you?”

  “I’ll bring a cold six pack or a bottle of rum when I do,” Bev said. “Talk to you soon.”

  She began pacing again, forgetting the idea of another beer. When she and Kyle went through certification training, they elected to do the old-fashioned buddy-breathing exercise that was optional. In the earlier years of scuba, if you were in an out-of-air situation underwater, you gave the signal of your hand slashing across your throat and came face-to-face with your dive buddy. He or she took a deep breath of air, then passed the regulator to you while slowly exhaling. You breathed once or twice, no more than ten seconds, and passed the regulator back, your turn to slowly exhale. You repeated this process as you made your way to the surface. The process was effective, although awkward and definitely not ideal. The dive industry solved the problem by developing a second regulator to attach to your tank. The second regulator fit into either the pocket of your buoyancy compensator device, or more often, into a special holder on your BCD. Since the hose was a couple of feet long, you extended it out somewhat like an octopus tentacle, and the out-of-air diver took it. While you were still sharing air from a single tank, you were both able to breath simultaneously. It made sense that a pony bottle took the process to a safer level because it had its own air or gas depending on what it was filled with and gave the out-of-air diver a separate source of gas. Neither she nor Kyle did the kind of advance diving to make owning one practical.

  Based on what Walt said, she could envision the scene though. Both Nina and Walt had emphasized if Raney had been poisoned, it would have been a delayed reacting one because otherwise, he wouldn’t have been deep when he drowned. But, if he breathed in a toxic mix from a pony bottle it could be practically instantaneous. Raney’s equipment had been taken for analysis as part of normal accident protocol. There would have been no reason to take Crystal’s.

  In the strictest sense, if Fitzhugh knew about the pending pony bottle drill, he might have had access to Crystal’s equipment, but that was much less likely. Except, if Crystal had set Pierce up to keep her away from Raney, why the hell would she turn on Raney so soon after? And how was Catherine Sharpe’s death anything other than an accident?

  “This is bullshit. Your goddamn imagination is in overdrive,” is what Chief Taylor would growl to her.

  She circled back to what Kyle had said about the bizarre case he’d prosecuted. The deaths of the young women weren’t linked by police because nothing seemed to be unusual or related. The truth wouldn’t have been discovered if the sister and the private investigator hadn’t insisted there was something to find.

  Bev paused and took another beer from the fridge. Impossible versus improbable seemed to be where she was. The only thing she was sure of at the moment was she and Kyle were going to have a hell of a discussion when he arrived. How would he react when she laid everything out?

  Bev settled as comfortably as she could on the straight-backed, armless chair. She and Kyle had stayed up late, his analytical mind useful and frustrating. He agreed with each of her points and flipped them over as if coins to emphasize the circumstantial nature that yes, thank you, she was well aware of. His acceptance of the possibility of Crystal’s guilt was important and his assertion it was nowhere near what a prosecutor could move on was irritating as hell. After talking through everything, Bev decided to try and verify the story about Crystal’s grandmother. Was there any truth to Catherine Sharpe’s apparent belief her mother had been responsible for not one, but three murders? If true, did it tilt the odds toward Crystal having a psychopathic nature?

  Even though the rectangular room doubled for small conferences, it wasn’t designed to be pleasant. She’d closed the blind over the single window and put the Conference in Progress sign showing out. The first call of the morning had been the logical place to start after an on-line search had revealed a newspaper article of the sentencing of Lila Catherine Harper for first degree murder of her husband. Rather than sift through earlier articles, she’d telephoned the warden of the Kansas state penitentiary where Harper had died while serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole. He described Harper as unrepentant and gave the name and telephone number of the prosecutor who convicted her.

  The prosecutor was retired and in recovery mode from a lingering bout of pneumonia. In a wheezy voice, he told her Harper was as cold-blooded as anyone he’d come up against and suggested she reach out to retired Fire Marshall Roy Knox if she wanted a chilling story. It had been his intervention that convinced the prosecutor they should aggressively seek the maximum penalty as well as a guilty verdict.

  “You got time young lady, the long version is what you want to hear,” Mr. Knox had said after some initial confusion as to why she was calling. “Lila wasn’t a Harper when I knew her. Only child of Rose and Wilbur Johnson. Decent couple who had a house barely in the town limits. It wasn’t anything fancy, but paid for. Wilbur worked at the only gas station, Rose stayed home, but did some sewing for folks, too. Lila was a pretty little thing and had mean streak in her a mile wide. Maureen, my missus, was a teacher and not much slipped by her. No need for me to get into those details since being mean to other kids was nothing compared to what happened. “Course in looking back, it might have been an indicator of what she really was.” He paused and Bev heard a sipping sound. His voice was strong though and she wondered what he looked like.

  “Lila was nineteen, graduated from high school and still living at home. She’d taken a job at the grocery s
tore, saving up money to go off to college I think, or maybe secretarial school. We got a call early in the morning around 3:00 a.m. and it was the Johnson house. Place was in a blaze, no way to save it, so all we could do was try and keep it from spreading. Lila, she’s out in the yard, gown and robe, no slippers. Looked a mess, as you can imagine. Said her parents were inside and she couldn’t get to them because the fire was moving too fast. Nothing we could do and it being a small town, everyone felt terrible. This was my first case with a fatality and my boss took extra time when we finally got to investigate. Wasn’t too hard to find the source. A pole lamp had a frayed electric cord and it was run underneath a braided rug — you know how you do to keep a cord from showing.”

  “Oh sure,” Bev said, hoping he was as lucid as he seemed to be.

  “The bulb in the lamp was too high a wattage and must have been left on when they went to bed. There was a stack of magazines on the floor close to the lamp and between the fabric of the rug and the paper, the fire had plenty of fuel once it sparked. There was only one smoke alarm and the batteries hadn’t been changed since who knew when.”

  Bev remembered Kineski telling her about the fire that killed Catherine Sharpe’s father and sister, but there was one before? “You had reason to think it wasn’t an accident?”

  “Well, now, not exactly. My boss said Rose and Wilbur were the frugal type and he was surprised about the bulb since it would have been more expensive and used more electricity. We asked Lila and she said the lamp was next to her mama’s chair where she did some sewing, and she’d been having trouble seeing so Lila thought she’d gotten some bigger bulbs. That didn’t account for it being left on, but people can forget. The thing is, we were both struck by how matter-of-fact Lila was reacting to the whole thing. Folks were sympathetic of course, but she wasn’t receptive to people reaching out. Took a room in a motel and didn’t do visitation time at the funeral parlor or a church service, just graveside. Said she didn’t want anything after either. That took people by surprise, too. The truth is, Lila was what you’d call stone-faced and barely spoke to anyone. Strangest service any of us had ever been to. Didn’t even have a song. Pastor read a short scripture and we were done. Lila walked off before everyone was able to give their condolences. It happened as my sister-in-law worked in the insurance office where Rose and Wilbur had their policies. They didn’t have life insurance and the policy on the house wasn’t much, but Lila had been in the day after the fire making sure they started processing the claim. My sister-in-law said Lila called every day asking if the check was ready and when she went to pick it up, her old car was packed and she headed out of town. Hold on a minute while I have a swallow of coffee if you don’t mind.”

  Bev did the same, thinking she knew where this might be going.

  “All right, where was I? Oh, yeah, well, Lila’s behavior might have been a little strange and it did get talked about until folks moved on to something else. I could tell something about the whole thing bothered my boss, and when I asked him, he said Rose and Wilbur found in their bed didn’t seem right. Said he’d never seen that except in cases of people falling asleep with lit cigarettes and neither of them smoked. Folks getting confused by smoke and not being able to find their way out was what you usually saw. This was like they never knew there was a fire. I hadn’t thought about that, but could see his point. So, anyway, life goes on and I can’t say I gave much thought to it. You got my name from the prosecutor, then you know about Lila killing her second husband?”

  “Yes,” Bev said, not wanting to get into the situation with Catherine.

  “The arrest and trial were quite the sensation and made all the papers around here. None of us knew she hadn’t moved more than sixty-seventy miles away. It was for sure, the topic of conversation and everyone who remembered the fire had plenty to say about how peculiar she’d been after her parents’ death. What really got my attention though, was one of the reporters dug around and brought up the fact Lila’s first husband and little girl had died in a house fire and only Lila and the oldest girl escaped.”

  “You must have been shocked at that,” Bev said with what she hoped was the right amount of surprise.

  “Enough to make me call up the investigator who handled the fire,” Knox said. “It was almost exactly the same as the other fire. Frayed cord of a lamp run underneath a braided rug, stack of newspapers close by, over-sized bulb in the lamp.”

  Bev shivered involuntarily. “Exactly the same?”

  “If it worked once, why not? There would be no reason for anyone to think there had ever been another case. You don’t have a detectable accelerant like gasoline and who’s going to be suspicious? Electrical fires happen all the time and it gets written off as one more tragedy. What with people being killed, it would have been a front-page story locally, but not anywhere else. I sure as heck never heard about it and wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for the murder trial and that article. I got on the phone fast as I could to the prosecutor and sent him a copy of our file and the name of the investigator in the second fire. Not that it had anything to do with his case in the legal sense, but it did... What is it you call it?”

  “Showed a pattern,” Bev said quickly.

  “Right, that was the phrase he used. He couldn’t bring it up in court, of course, and I understood that. There was no way in the name of the good Lord — excuse my language — I wanted that woman to not be known for the evil being she was. I don’t know how her oldest daughter escaped the second fire, but I’m willing to bet Lila was surprised she did. I admit I didn’t and, still don’t, have a scrape of real evidence to hold up in a court. You being a detective and all, understand what you can prove and what you know to be the truth aren’t always the same.”

  “I certainly do,” she said, a sense of outrage uncoiling in her stomach. A quick swallow of coffee didn’t quell it.

  “Well now, Miss, I’m not sure what all you were looking for and, quite frankly, I imagine I don’t want to know. Maureen and I have a good life with kids, grandkids, and enough fishing to keep me happy and out from under Maureen’s feet. I hadn’t thought about Lila Harper in a whole lot of years. I’d just as soon put her out of my mind again if you tell me you’ll see justice is done in whatever it is you’re calling about.”

  “Yes sir, I will. And you’ve been very helpful.”

  “You take care of yourself, Miss.”

  Jesus, if ever there was a Pandora’s Box kind of situation, this was it. What the hell had she stirred up? Technically, she supposed Nina was the one responsible. Gary Fitzhugh was the one she’d been expecting to focus on if there was any credible basis for re-opening the investigation into Raney’s death. Instead, she had one individual as the single common element in three deaths and it sure as hell wasn’t Fitzhugh. No, a second common element was each of them was easily accepted as tragic accidents. Bev slipped her phone into the holder on her belt and rubbed both temples with her fingertips. Thanks to Walt and Nina, she had worked out how Raney’s death might have been planned. Was it possible Pierce’s had been as well? If so, how? That was as puzzling as the idea of Catherine’s death as deliberate. How could it be anything other than accidental?

  She returned to the office, glad to see Les was out. She wanted to process her conflicting thoughts. She centered Catherine’s Sharpe’s file on her desk and moved to the coffeemaker. She refilled her mug and sat down to re-read every word. Motive, means, and opportunity. Those three items were the constants in any homicide. Means and opportunity were all that had been made, more or less clear, in Raney’s case. She would leave motive for now and see what she could work out in Catherine’s death looking at it with the new perspective.

  Reports of different people declaring Crystal had a difficult home environment did not match Pam Kineski’s strong and more positive view of her friend. Other than the neighbor, Mrs. Edna Plummer, none of those people making claims against Catherine Sharpe
were close to her. How well Plummer actually did know her was questionable. Okay, if she gave greater weight to Kineski’s opinion, Crystal was as much the issue at home as was her mother. Could the contempt Kineski spoke of stretch as far as hatred? Bev took a clean pad from her desk drawer and made entries. Hated mother? Insurance policy?

  Doc Cooper had quickly locked in on the danger of the pain patch combined with heat as probable cause of death he confirmed during the autopsy. There had been no sign of trauma. It wasn’t as if someone had immobilized Catherine, slapped a pain patch on her and added the heating pad. Doc had also mentioned people were careless about reading drug warnings.

  Had Crystal somehow talked her mother into the circumstances that caused her death? The girl had left the trailer not long before seven o’clock to go to her friend’s and Catherine hadn’t left the bar until close to nine o’clock. Had Crystal left her a note with the suggestion? They hadn’t found one. A phone call to her mother would probably have been more persuasive anyway.

  Bev thumbed through the file for Doc’s report and saw an annotation she either hadn’t noticed before or hadn’t thought was important. She called him and verified Catherine’s blood alcohol level and the presence of an over-the-counter medication in addition to that from the pain patch.

  “The simple explanation is she took something when she first arrived home, didn’t think it was working and decided to use the pain patch, too. A really bad idea, especially when drinking,” he said.

  Bev made another note and looked at the times she wrote on the paper. They had Crystal’s cell phone number. They could get the records to see if she’d called her mother. Opportunity rolled right on top of means if this was how it played out. Shit, shit, shit! She was attributing a hell of a lot to a kid who was barely eighteen. She was talking about set-ups that required careful, cold-blooded planning. Knox said Crystal’s grandmother had been only nineteen when she allegedly killed her parents. She was having problems getting past the idea it would take someone older to be smart enough to pull this off.