“Oh, no, I washed all his clothes before I packed them. He takes nearly everything when he visits his mother. He never knows if a crisis might prevent him from returning when he planned.”
Lucinda considered confronting her with Karen’s denial of having a son but decided against it. If she knew, she would either have a ready excuse or she might muck up the investigation with that knowledge. “If you think of anything, please ask the officer to come and get me right away.”
“When will I have my house back, Lieutenant?”
“I honestly don’t know, Ms. Whitehead. After we get your fingerprints, I would be glad to drive you to a friend’s house – or anywhere you like – if you’d be more comfortable elsewhere.”
Victoria sniffed. “It’s all right. For now. With the nice breeze, it’s quite a pleasant day.”
Back in the house, Lucinda roamed from room to room on the first floor, looking for anything that might harbor a DNA sample or a good fingerprint. She stopped in the middle of the kitchen, spun around, and bounded up the stairs, calling out: “Spellman! Spellman!”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“What is the one place men often touch, but women seldom do? The one place a woman might forget to eliminate a fingerprint?” Lucinda held her breath, watching realization wash away the confusion on the forensics tech’s face.
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Marguerite said.
Both women raced into the master bath. Marguerite carefully lifted the toilet seat and dusted powder on the front edge of the underside. They watched the ridges become visible. Four fists went into the air and a jubilant “Yes!” echoed off the tiles.
“Is the crime scene at the Sterling house still sealed?” Marguerite asked.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think we checked under the seat there. I’ll get back to you if I find anything.”
It was early evening before the forensics team finished and turned the house over to Victoria Whitehead. Finally, Lucinda’s long day was over. Hopefully, that fingerprint would provide her with Jason King’s real identity. But she knew she still needed his DNA. She needed it to check out Victoria’s story of a genetic link between King and the boy. She doubted that they were brothers but she wondered if King was Freddy’s father.
Lucinda did not like Sunday afternoons. It was a day most folks spent with their families. The thought of that made her stomach queasy. It was also a time when she didn’t feel right intruding on anyone else’s life unless it was an emergency.
She spent her time trying to relax – playing with Chester, reading a book, watching a movie DVD. On this day, though, she was more restless than usual. She’d already spent over an hour working out in the gym, not stopping until her knees wobbled from the exertion.
She couldn’t escape the relentless thoughts in her head. Freddy’s words about the seance and the overheard phone call with Jason made her anxious for him and concerned about his safety. His grandmother’s behavior troubled her, too – was she simply that tidy and devoted to cleanliness all of the time or had she intentionally set about destroying evidence?
It was all on an endless loop; she had to find a way to distract herself. She grabbed her laptop and stretched out on the sofa. Pulling up Google, she typed in Jason King. She was more than dismayed when 37,700,742 entries popped on the screen. She put quotation marks before and after the name. It helped some but she still had 248,000.
Scrolling through them she found a British TV series, a web designer, a journalist, a professor, a band, an architect and an expert on yeast infections – that certainly was something she never expected to find. She went through page after page without finding anything useful at all.
The answer seemed obvious. She needed to go to Texas. She should get the trip approved before she went. But maybe, she thought, I should just head to the airport, fly out today and worry about the expense reimbursement later.
She jumped up from the sofa and pulled a suitcase out of the hall closet and rolled it into her bedroom. Opening her dresser drawer, it hit her: I can’t go now. Ellen’s competency hearing is tomorrow. And I promised I’d be there. She slammed the drawer shut and stomped out of her apartment, hoping a walk by the river would clear her head.
Twenty-Four
Lucinda slipped into the back row of the small courtroom – only four rows of pew-like benches for the audience behind the bar. The few observers scattered about like fallen petals. The defense and prosecution tables were surrounded by suited men.
Lucinda preferred the rooms in the old courthouse with their soaring ceilings, arching woodwork and tall windows that imbued the place of judgment with the sanctity and loftiness of a gothic church. The practicality and compactness of this space left no room for drama, as if what occurred between these walls was of little import.
A side door opened and Lucinda gasped. Ellen Branson shuffled into the room with a pair of guards at her elbows. She wore a tan, white and black shirtwaist dress that hung from the bony peaks of her shoulders. Ellen had lost a lot of weight since the day she pulled a gun on Lucinda in the parking garage.
That wasn’t the most disturbing thing about her appearance, though. Her eyes were open but did not appear to see, her jaw hung slack, her hair lacked luster and she had no more color in her complexion than a corpse. She certainly did not look capable of aiding in her defense. It made Lucinda angry that the district attorney insisted on prosecuting this obviously pathetic woman.
Once Ellen was seated, a man in the row directly behind the defense table leaned forward and patted her on the shoulder. She turned and looked at him, emotionless. Her attorney, Richard Barksdale, flashed a smile at the man, reached out and shook his hand. Is that Ted? It can’t be. Then the man turned enough in his seat that she could see his profile. It is Ted. What a pleasant surprise.
Lucinda paid little attention to the dueling psychiatrists on the stand with their shrink jargon. She wondered, though, if the one testifying for the prosecution had completely forgotten his oath as a physician to do no harm. She leaned forward in her seat when Ted Branson took the stand.
The attorney led Ted through the background of his romance and marriage to Ellen and the birth of their first two children. He smiled a lot, often looking over at Ellen with undisguised warmth. She, however, seemed oblivious to him and to her surroundings. When he reached the death of their third baby, Ted choked on his words, pausing to swallow and hold back the tears.
Barksdale walked Ted step by step through Ellen’s deterioration from the days she spent silent, staring at walls, to the more volatile times when she shouted and cursed and her obsession with Lucinda consumed every day. “And I was not the husband I should have been. I expected her to snap out of it. I grew impatient with her when she didn’t. I escaped into fantasies about a high school girlfriend and how my life would have been different and better with her. In the process, I neglected Ellen and did not get her the help she so desperately needed. I am more than ashamed. I’m mortified by my self-centered behavior.”
That was the Ted Lucinda knew – the high school boy she once loved, the partner in crime she could trust. She realized that he was, at last, healing from the loss of his child and what he had perceived as rejection by his wife. In the back of her mind, though, the small cynic spoke, warning her that this could all be an act. She hoped that voice was wrong.
The prosecution called Lucinda to the stand. She described the morning in the garage when Ellen had her in handcuffs, on her knees, with a gun barrel against her head. She chose her words with care, hoping to minimize the terror she felt.
Barksdale asked, “What is your opinion of Ellen Branson’s state of mind at the time of this incident?”
The prosecutor objected. “Lieutenant Pierce is not qualified as an expert in this field.”
Lucinda glared at him and wanted to tell him to shut up and sit down. The judge did it for her – although in far more diplomatic language. “This is not a trial. It is simply a hearing to
determine Ms. Branson’s competency to stand trial. Objection overruled.”
“You are the victim here, Lieutenant Pierce. So, please tell the court, what outcome would you like to see in this case?” Barksdale asked.
“That Ellen Branson gets the professional help she needs to regain her mental health and return home to her children.”
“What about the pending charges?”
“I hope they are dismissed.”
With those words, Lucinda noticed that the bored reporter in the second row snapped to attention and wrote furiously in her steno pad. Lucinda felt the woman’s penetrating stare as she left the stand and returned to her seat.
After arguments from both sides, the judge ruled that Ellen was not competent to stand trial at this time. Lucinda hadn’t realized how much tension had bunched up in her neck and shoulders until relief at the decision released the crunched muscles in her jaw and upper back. Lucinda remained seated as the judge left the bench and Ellen was led from the room, as lifeless and disconnected from her surroundings as when she entered.
Lucinda watched as the doors closed behind Ellen, then stood up and moved toward the front to speak to Ted. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the reporter moving in to intercept her on her path. Lucinda turned abruptly and strode out of the courtroom. The quick clackety-clack of the reporter’s heels on the marble floor echoed in the halls behind her, causing Lucinda to pick up her pace.
She pulled her cell out of a pocket as she walked, turning it on. She looked down as it beeped. She had one message. Without breaking her stride, she hit the playback button and held the phone to her ear.
“Lieutenant, this is Marguerite Spellman. We have a match for the fingerprint – both fingerprints.”
A fierce, tight fist formed in Lucinda’s chest. She broke into a sprint, leaving a disappointed reporter far behind.
Twenty-Five
Marguerite led Lucinda to the fingerprint analysis workspace, talking all the while. “The print under the rim of the toilet seat in the Sterling master bath was identical to the one found at the Whitehead house. And your boy’s been busy. We found three outstanding warrants for his arrest under three different names. Ten years ago, in California, Jason [i]Kennedy was arrested for three counts of bigamy, released on bond and never showed up at court. But here’s the good news: his denial of his name and identity caused the state to take a DNA sample to determine the paternity of one of the women’s children. They are overnighting the profile to us. We should have it first thing tomorrow.”
“Good work, Spellman.”
“Thanks,” Marguerite said and continued, “Jack Kraft is wanted in Florida on suspicion of scamming a handful of widows out of their life savings. In Rhode Island, they know him as Jimmy Kellogg. They arrested him when they discovered he was making duplicate imprints of credit cards of customers at the restaurant where he worked. He bailed out before the locals made a match of his prints to the warrants in California and Florida. When they went to rearrest him, he was gone.”
“But nothing connecting him to a violent crime?” Lucinda asked.
“No.”
“I wonder what else he’s done without getting caught. Thanks, Spellman. Thanks for everything. Let me know what you get when you analyze that profile from California.”
“Captain?” Lucinda said, as she poked her head into Captain Holland’s office. “Got a minute?”
Holland grunted and Lucinda chose to interpret that as “Yes.” Stepping into his office and sliding into a chair, she said, I need to go to Texas.”
“The Sterling homicides?”
“Yes.”
“Where in Texas?”
“I’m not sure if I can pronounce it.” Lucinda looked down at the piece of paper in her hand. “New Bra-un-fels,” she said, stressing the second syllable.
“Let me see that,” Holland said, stretching out his hand. He looked down at the address and asked, “German town?”
“Don’t know.”
Holland grunted again and spun around to the laptop on the console behind his desk. He pulled up Google search and typed in the name. “Yeah, it is. Must be New Brawn-fulls.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Not totally. But I’m confident that I’m closer to the correct pronunciation than you are.”
“I can ask the locals when I get there. You will approve the travel, won’t you?”
“Do you want local back-up?”
“I just need to talk to Karen King.”
“Talk, Pierce? Yeah, I bet that’s all you want to do. You want local back-up?”
Lucinda stared at him, wondering why he had to ask.
“Of course not,” Holland said with a shake of his head. “What was I thinking? Get out of here. I need to make some calls.”
“You’re going to authorize the trip?”
“When I decide, I’ll let you know. You can leave now, Pierce.”
Lucinda stood still for a moment, thinking about making a response. She decided against it and left Holland’s office, heading for her own. On the way, she spotted Ted Branson. “Hey, Ted, I was sure surprised to see you at the hearing this morning. Surprised and pleased.”
“Yeah, thanks. But we don’t have time to go into that right now. I was just about to call you. The document analysis guys sent up copies of something interesting that was picked up in the search of Victoria Whitehead’s home.”
“Show me.”
“It’s a lot of pages. I’ll need to spread them out for them to make any sense to you. Let’s go to the conference room.”
Ted stretched out a line of paper that ran from one end of the table to the other, then went to the other side and laid down another.
“What are we looking at, Ted?”
“Family trees.”
“But William Blessing is at the top of each of these pages.”
“Yep. On this side of the table. With a different alias on each page and a connection to all these women, indicating that he fathered a child with each one of them, stretching over a forty-year period.”
“A bigamist?”
“Maybe with some of them – definitely not all of them. The second most current entry is ‘William Blessing aka Parker Sterling’, married to Jeanine Whitehead Sterling with a son named Fredrick.”
“Damn!” Lucinda exclaimed.
“And the very first chronological entry down at the other end is interesting but not very revealing,” he said, walking to the other end of the table. ‘Here William Blessing has no alias and the rectangular box has no name, simply ‘My mother’. And under it, ‘Me’.”
“That’s got to be Jason King or whatever his name his. I got a report from Marguerite Spellman pointing to several other aliases.” She pulled a copy out of the folder and handed it to Ted. She walked down the line, scanning the other names, looking for one that was familiar. “Look,” she said, “‘William Blessing aka Samuel Houston King’. Under that are Karen King and her daughter Trinity. We need to find out all we can about William Blessing and we need to cross-check all of the victims on the list of crimes from Spellman to see if there is any crossover with these documents.”
“I’ve got someone running down Blessing. I can handle the cross-check myself,” Ted said with a nod. “But first, come over and look at the documents on the other side. They’re even more baffling. They go back two centuries. It starts at this end with James Worthington in London in the middle of the eighteenth century. The down arrow indicates that he was married to one woman and had six children. Then the arrow to the right leads to another box that reads: ‘Charles Butler, Massachusetts’. But the most interesting part is what is written above the arrow. ‘Disappeared and became’. And that continues straight down the line for two hundred years. The words above the arrow either read that he disappeared or that he ‘faked death and became’.
“Most of the children on these pages have no dates at all or just a birth date without the year they died, except for a couple of t
hem where murder was indicated. Like right here,” he said, moving up the line and pointing to another page. ‘Beneath Sarah Winslow Clark’s name it says, ‘Murdered in 1847’. The same notation is below the names of each of her four children. The right arrow next to Bartholomew Clark’s name with ‘disappeared and became’ above it points to ‘Ezekiel Young in Salt Lake City’. He had seven wives and thirty-eight children. I suspect a Mormon connection with plural marriages.
“He supposedly faked his death – heck, if I had seven wives and thirty-eight children, I’d either fake my death or take my life – one or the other.”
“If one of the wives didn’t take you out first,” Lucinda laughed. She walked down to the far end of the document string and found William Blessing. Under his name again was a box with ‘My mother’ and another with ‘Me’. The arrow to the right repeated the disappeared line and went to a box that read, ‘See full William Blessing file’.”
Lucinda’s cellphone beckoned. “Pierce.”
“Come to my office, Pierce.”
“Captain Holland?”
“Yes.”
“You approving the travel?”
“Come to my office, Pierce,” he said and disconnected.
Lucinda put away her phone and went down the hall. When she reached Holland’s office, he said, “Your flight is being booked for tomorrow morning. You will not need to check in with the local cops unless you want to do something more than talk to Karen King.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Pierce, I’m warning you. If Jason King answers the door don’t throw him to the ground and cuff him. Just pretend you’re peddling something door to door and get the New Braunfels Police to bring him in. That clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Lucinda said with a sigh.
“I hear what you’re saying but I need to make sure you understand it and know I really mean it.’
That comment really ticked off Lucinda but she held her peace, maintaining eye contact and responding with a quick nod.
‘Okay. I’ll accept that for now. Don’t make a fool out of me, Pierce. The documents will arrive on your computer shortly. Get out of here. I have work to do.”
Mistaken Identity (A Lucinda Pierce Mystery) Page 12