by Gayle Roper
“It looks new, doesn’t it?” Jo asked, still studying the tattoo.
I knew nothing about tattoos except that they were permanent and that it hurt to get them. Oh, and that as you aged and your skin sagged, so did your tattoo.
The first response team arrived in an amazingly short time, swarming the area, cordoning off the crime scene with yellow tape. My friend Sergeant William Poole led the police contingent.
“What is it with you two?” he asked, his furrowed face curious as he studied Jo and me. “You turn up at an inordinate number of homicides, especially you, Merry.”
I gave him a sickly grin. “You think I enjoy it?”
He smiled kindly, his furrowed face wrinkling like a shar-pei’s. “Of course you don’t, any more than I do.” His eyes took on a teasing glint. “But I think you love the stories.”
I couldn’t deny that, ghoulish as it made me seem. For a reporter everything is a potential story and bomb-shells like local murders are guaranteed to interest readers. I looked at the crime-scene investigators hovering over Martha. “The stories may be great, William, but I’d rather not have them. They hurt too many people.”
I thought of Martha’s family. Were her father and stepmother about to be devastated? Or wouldn’t they care? Did she have more siblings than Tawny and Shawna, perhaps ones who shared the same mother? Had Martha been close to her much younger half sisters? Where was her mother now? Had Martha had contact with her or had she disappeared completely from her daughter’s life?
Oh, Lord, they’re all going to need your comfort. Be there for them.
William nodded. “This one definitely hurts. I watched her grow up.” He sighed. “Her family lives down the street from us.”
“What kind of a young woman was she?” I asked. There I went, story-writing again.
“Most of the time she was great. When she was in high school, she babysat for our kids. At college she went a little wild for a time—a couple of DUIs, a bust for pot—but she straightened herself out.”
“Did she still live at home?”
“No.” He and Jolene said it together.
“She had her own place,” William said.
“Over in those new condos off Chestnut Street,” Jolene said.
I knew the condos she meant. They were nice, moderately priced units, built about four years ago. They didn’t begin to compare with the luxury condo that Jolene shared with Reilly, but then, not many did. Not many people had an income like Jolene’s. Twenty-five thousand dollars a month for twenty years. She and her late husband, Arnie, had hit it big in the state lottery.
“Did she live alone?”
Jo shook her head. “Her latest boyfriend is Ken Mackey. They share.”
“Mackey?” William cast an unhappy eye in her direction.
Jo nodded but for once kept her mouth shut. Hmm. Definitely something to be learned there. Between Jo’s silence and the way William said Ken Mackey’s name, we had an issue with a capital I. When Jo and I were in the office, I’d nail her for the scoop on old Ken.
“You two can go home and get ready for work,” William said. “Just stop at the station today and give a formal statement. If I’m not there, ask for Officer Schumann.”
We nodded and turned to leave. I paused and took a few shots of the men and women working the scene. William saw me and gave me an unhappy look, but he didn’t forbid me. I appreciated his trust.
Poor Martha appeared to have trusted the wrong person.
THREE
As William suggested, I went home and showered. I ran my mousse-globbed hands through my hair, trying to make it look stylishly spiked instead of like I hadn’t bothered to brush it today. I put on navy slacks, a pink wide-strapped camisole top and a white sheer blouse covered with pink flowers. I liked the way the pink in the cami made the pink flowers in the sheer blouse so vivid. And I immediately felt guilty for thinking about something so frivolous with Martha lying dead.
With a sigh I snuggled Whiskers, my much-pampered cat, for a moment, then went to the kitchen. I kept one eye on the clock as I toasted a couple of slices of Jewish rye nice and crisp. I slathered them lavishly with real butter and ate them with a Diet Coke as I drove to the office, all too aware that deadline was looming. I needed to do my piece on Martha.
This wasn’t the first time I’d written about a crime with which I was intimately connected and I disliked it this time just as much as the first time I’d inadvertently found death. My heart bled for the lost life, for the lost opportunities, the lost joys and sorrows, and most deeply for the lost chances to know God intimately. My soul shriveled at the audacity of someone who thought that the right to decide life and death was his. How heinous, how prideful, how offensive. How evil. It was Cain and Abel wearing modern garb, man killing man for power and greed, love and hate. It was proof positive that mankind had not changed though we dressed better and enjoyed luxuries those biblical brothers could not even imagine.
And there were those left behind who through no choice of their own were forced to share Eve’s sorrow and loss, compelled to forfeit part of their lives, too. I’d seen their faces and their pain. I’d written about it, attempted to comprehend their great bereavement and make readers feel it and understand that as the victim had been robbed of so many possibilities, so had those who loved that person.
I wanted to be a voice for the dead and for those they left behind, to articulate their horror, their despair. If in this way I could make some contribution to the apprehension of the person responsible for all this pain, I would feel I had offered some small compensation to those who remained.
Chin up, shoulders back, I marched into the news-room, Joan of Arc to my own fields of Orléans.
“How many inches?” I called to Mac, the can of Coke still in my hand. I swallowed the dregs as he called back, “As much as you need. We’ll adapt.”
I stared. I wasn’t used to such freedom and it felt strange.
Mac scowled at me. “Just write, Kramer. Fast.”
I blinked. “Right.”
I wrote a straight news piece, not too long since the incident was only an hour or so old and neither I nor the police had had time to gather much information. Then I wrote the personal piece, adding quotes from Jolene to flesh it out, trying my best to communicate the horror without titillating. I dragged the icon for the pieces and dropped them into Mac’s in-box, then sat back in my chair and thought about the morning. I got up abruptly. I wanted to go to the crime scene and see firsthand if anything new and interesting had developed.
I parked in the Bushay lot, now full of cars. Most were those of employees, but several had flashing lights and crackling radios. I followed the jogging path to the yellow crime-scene tape. Sergeant Poole looked up from his blue study of the matted grass where Martha had lain. He stood alone, but clever sleuth that I am, I knew there were other cops somewhere because of the cars in the lot.
William’s craggy face grew ever more furrowed as he frowned at me. “Merry.”
I decided to ignore the lack of enthusiasm in his voice. “Hi, William. Anything new happening?”
He extended his arm to indicate the empty space around him. “As you can see, not a thing.”
“Any comment for the paper? What have the crime-scene guys found?”
“The investigation is continuing apace.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. He was the only person I knew who said apace.
“Sorry, kid,” he said, not sorry at all. “That’s it.”
“No weapon? No motive? No suspect?”
“Merry, the woman’s been dead mere hours.”
“Hey, William! Come ’ere quick!”
He and I turned to the woman who burst out of the woods, ducking under the graceful branches of a dogwood. She wore a uniform like William’s without the stripes of rank. Her face was alight with excitement.
“Oops.” Officer Natalie Schumann skidded to a halt as she saw me. “Uh, Sergeant Poole, may I see you for a moment,
please?”
“If you’ll excuse me, Merry,” William said. “I’m sure you need to leave and get about your reporting business somewhere else. Maybe there’s a fire in West Chester or a drug bust in Downingtown.” He nodded and turned to follow Natalie into the woods.
As soon as William and Natalie disappeared into the trees, I followed as quietly as I could. At times like this I find it wonderful that my work provides me a legitimate excuse for my nosiness. No guilt for a change.
About a football field into the woods I saw a cluster of cops standing around what appeared to be a large thicket of raspberry brambles growing in a patch of sunlight. One of the men was picking ripe berries and popping them in his mouth as he and the others watched someone in the middle of the thicket intently.
That officer was taking pictures of something from all angles. He muttered words that I would never say as thorns tore at his uncovered arms and clung to his uniform pants. His particularly loud snarls seemed reserved for the ripe raspberries that insisted on bleeding all over him.
I snuck up behind Natalie and tried to peer around her. I needed to see what had attracted all this attention. When I couldn’t see as well as I wanted, I stepped forward and trod on a rock hidden under the natural refuse littering the ground. My ankle turned and with a squeak I pitched forward into the raspberries. Normally I love the wild raspberries that grow profusely on fences and stone walls at the edge of fields as well as in clusters like this where sunlight penetrates the canopy of leaves. The early flowers smell spicy with a hint of cinnamon and I enjoy picking the fruit when it ripens. However, falling into a thicket is a different matter.
I threw my hands out as if they would protect me. It raced through my mind that the scratches I was sure to get should clear up before the wedding. Unless they festered.
Just before I went in headfirst, a strong arm grabbed my blouse in the back and pulled me up short. When I got my feet under me, I glanced over my shoulder at William.
“I thought I told you to get lost,” he growled.
Ever astute, I deduced that he was not happy to see me. Ignoring his comment, I smiled at him. “Thank you, William,” I said most sincerely. “The bride wore scratches isn’t the look I want. What are you all looking at?”
It was obvious he didn’t want to tell me, but at that moment the cop emerged from the grasp of the raspberry brambles, still muttering under his breath as he tried to detach one long tendril that insisted on clinging to his pants. His arms were laced with red scratches and berry stains. His light blue shirt would be a total loss if the red polka dots stained as I thought they would.
William forgot me as he stepped close to examine what the cop held balanced on a piece of toweling.
“Paper bag,” William called and Natalie flipped open what looked like a bag from the grocery store. Carefully the officer from the raspberries slid his find into the bag—a jagged rock large enough to be a deadly weapon, a rock stained with blood, a rock that had strands of hair stuck to it.
My stomach churned as I pictured the murderer bringing it down on the head of an unsuspecting Martha.
“Natalie, take it to the crime-scene guys at the Lancaster barracks,” William ordered.
With a brisk nod, she and her paper bag were gone.
“Why a paper bag?” I asked William. On TV they always use plastic bags.
“So moisture doesn’t build up inside and break down the chemical properties of the blood and the other trace elements.”
“I’m assuming that’s the murder weapon?” I indicated Natalie’s retreating form.
“I don’t know.”
“But the blood and hair—”
“We don’t know that they belong to the vic.” He stared at me. “Goodbye, Merry. I have work to do.”
He turned to the officer with the camera and he and the others made a circle that shut me out. And rightly so, I admitted. It was time for me to go.
As I walked to the car, I knew that rock was the murder weapon just as I knew the blood and hair were Martha’s. Otherwise it was a case of one deer walloping another and tossing the rock in the raspberries where he knew it would be hard to find.
Right.
I climbed into my car, lowered the windows to release the heat that had built up and pulled out of my pocket the slip of paper I’d written Martha’s address on. I pushed the air-conditioning button and drove across town to her condo development with the windows open. My father would think I was crazy for having the windows open with the air-conditioning going, but I find the resulting mixed temperature most comfortable. I also love the air blowing my hair, which couldn’t get too messed up with all the mousse in it.
I wandered up and down the twisting streets west of Amhearst near Sadsburyville for a good five minutes looking for the right road and house number. I became totally confused and began to fear I’d never find my way back out, let alone Martha’s place. Why couldn’t developers put in straight streets anymore? Life had been so much easier when the line from point A to point B was a straight one instead of a corkscrew. Mazes might be fun to solve on paper or in an autumn cornfield, but in developments they leave a lot to be desired.
Finally I stumbled across the right road and followed the numbers until I came to the series of five attached units, the second from the left being Martha’s. Her unit had creamy vinyl siding, crimson shutters and a crimson front door behind a white screen door. The neighboring units were taupe, white, blue and brick. I liked the brick unit best; it had character. But architectural detail wasn’t why I was here. I wanted to see if I could find Ken Mackey. Ken MACkey.
I walked to the front door of Martha’s condo, noting that only her name, not Ken’s, was on the mailbox. A white plastic basket filled with deep red petunias and blue lobelia hung from one corner of the small roof overhanging the front door. In a little patch of soil beside the concrete slab front stoop grew pink geraniums backed by blue salvia and fronted by white alyssum. My heart contracted at the signs of the care Martha had taken to turn her rather ordinary residence into her unique home.
I pushed on the doorbell to the right of the jamb but heard no answering ring. I frowned and pushed again. No trill. I pulled the screen door open and knocked.
And took a step backward as the door swung inward at my touch.
FOUR
I stared at Martha’s front door as it slowly creaked open. Not good.
“Hello?” I called into the shadowed front hall. “Is anyone home? Ken?” I knocked on the doorjamb. “Hello?”
I thought maybe I heard a quiet thud and a soft swish. My heart began beating so hard my ears rang. Someone was here. I swallowed and elbowed the door farther open.
“Hello?”
No answer.
Remembering William’s edict that I never touch anything at a crime scene—and it didn’t take many brains to figure that with the condo’s resident dead and the front door unaccountably open, this was probably a crime scene—I didn’t touch the knob in case the cops needed to check it for prints or something.
I supposed it was possible that Martha had hurried out this morning to go on her run without shutting and locking her door, but I doubted it. Even I, Merry the Forgetful, remembered to lock my front door. Not the car necessarily, but definitely the front door.
If Ken was still home, maybe she wouldn’t have locked up, but she’d have at least closed the door. I became certain of that as air-conditioned air swirled out of the opening to cool my face. No one was foolish enough to leave a door open with the air-conditioning on at this time of year. I pulled out my cell to call William.
“Martha’s not here,” said a voice behind me. “She’s at work down at the supermarket. You’d think people would realize that at ten-thirty on a Tuesday morning.”
I spun and found myself facing a stooped woman with the black hair of a bad home dye-job. Her blue eyes were bright in her wrinkled face and I guessed she was eighty if she was a day. As she gestured toward the house with her chin,
her wattles swung gently.
“I guess you’ve got a key?” She gestured at the open door. “The others had one, too. They said Martha was going to meet them here, but they didn’t wait for her very long. When they left, they went out by the back door, sort of sneakylike if you ask me.”
They? “Who went out the back? Ken?” Maybe he didn’t want to see anyone in his grief. Or if he was guilty, maybe he was grabbing his stuff and getting out while the getting was good. Maybe he thought I was the police.
She nodded her head vigorously and her hair moved not one millimeter. “Ken was first. Then the new boyfriend.”
“The new boyfriend?” What new boyfriend? I couldn’t believe I was learning something Jolene had missed. “Ken’s no longer Martha’s boyfriend?”
The woman bent and twisted a dying flower from one of Martha’s geraniums. She straightened slowly, vertebra by vertebra. “Not for a couple of months. Good riddance, I say. Hated his motorcycle.” She curled her lip. “Loud, smelly thing.”
I smiled. “Motorcycles can certainly be loud.”
“Not the bike. Him.” She gave a sniff. “He was loud and smelly. Never could figure out why she let him stay with her.”
I decided I liked Martha’s neighbor. “So this is Martha’s condo, not Ken’s?”
“Oh, yes. Before he came, she lived here alone. Then after he moved out, she lived here alone. The new boyfriend doesn’t live with her.”
“Who’s the new boyfriend?”
“Don’t know his name. Tall, but then everyone looks tall to me. Very handsome, at least what I can see of him. He always comes late and I don’t see as well as I used to at night or even at twilight. He always wears a cap with some logo on it. I looked at it through my binoculars once.” She made a face. “Oops. You didn’t hear that, now, did you, dear?”