The Waves Break Gray (The Raleigh Harmon mysteries Book 6)

by Sibella Giorello

  Rain smeared the glass. But something else was blurring the landscape. I opened my mouth, and hoped that everything wouldn’t spill out.

  “Harmon, it’s going to be okay. The roads’ll probably be clear by tomorrow.”

  “Jack, I—”

  “Don’t have to say anything,” he said. “I already told you. We’re two of a kind.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  With rain pelting, the lake looked like hammered steel. I found the cabin key and opened the door. Madame raced inside. I dropped my pack near the door, then took out my phone and called Aunt Charlotte.

  “Seattle Stones,” she answered. Her voice was full of robust cheer. “Where Mother Nature heals all wounds.”

  Right.

  “Aunt Charlotte, it’s me, Raleigh.”

  “Oh, no—I didn’t call you back, did I?”

  “That’s okay. Could you possibly visit Mom today?”

  “Today?”

  I explained yesterday’s less-than-ideal series of event. “Now I’m stuck in Leavenworth. Landslides closed both passes.”

  “Oh, honey, don’t you worry, I’ll call Claire right now. She can watch the store.”

  Claire. The “clairvoyant” friend. At least she wasn’t going to the asylum with my aunt.

  “Thank you, Aunt Charlotte.”

  “I’ll bring turquoise,” she said. “It’s heals painful emotions.”

  I said the only thing possible: “I love you, Aunt Charlotte.”

  “Love you, too, honey.”

  * * *

  I found firewood in the shed and made five trips, stocking the living room’s pot-bellied stove.

  In the kitchen, where red gingham curtains covered the cabinets, I found jelly jar drinking glasses, white Correll plates, and a cookbook from the 1950s that was a fundraiser for Our Lady of Snows. I stared at the hand-drawn cover. It showed a child and a quote from the Book of James: “True religion is this, to care for widows and orphans in their distress.”

  Something about the image gripped my heart. Maybe the word distress, and thinking of Annicka. I thumbed the pages. Veal bratwurst. Sauerkraut. Kugel.

  I found canned chili, and a can opener. The oven range was gas-fired but no pilot light was on. And no smell of gas, so the service must’ve been cut off. I poured the chili into a saucepan and placed it on top of the woodstove. As it heated, I pulled a rocking chair over so I could sit by the fire and still look out the front window to the lake.

  I tried to say grace. But my mind kept filling with that image of my mother, all alone. So lonely, yet she didn’t want to see me. That was probably why the quote from James struck a chord. My mother was a widow, in distress. And I couldn’t be there. Help her. Because I blew it. Again.

  I checked the chili. It was warm enough, but my appetite was gone. I placed the sauce pan on the stone hearth and called Madame. Her tail wagged happily as she dove into the chili. I sat down again, staring into the amber flames. When my phone rang, the Tijuana Brass suddenly sounded like a funeral march.

  I walked over to where my rain jacket hung on a peg by the door. The sleeves dripped water on the slate floor. I dug the phone from the pocket. The screen read, unknown caller.

  Jack.

  I slid my finger over the screen. “I’m fine.”

  “I am glad to hear that.”

  Not Jack.

  “I’m sorry—who—”

  “Johann.”

  “Oh. I thought you were Jack.”

  “Ah, yes. He would call you.” He paused. Then: “We have a room. For free.”

  “Thank you, that’s very generous. But I’m already at Jack’s cabin.”

  “Good, good.” He sounded pleased. Or relieved. My free room probably bothered Helen Engels right now. “You call me,” he said, “if you need anything.”

  I thanked him, disconnected the call, and dug the battery charger from my pack. All the while I couldn’t stop thinking about the Engels. What strong people. To keep working despite their child’s murder, this investigation. Keeping their hotel open and taking in guests, yet still thinking of me. Preston Baer was right. Hard-working Germans. Good people.

  My own self-pity disgusted me.

  Reaching into my pack, I pulled out the binders Culliton gave me and carried them to the rocking chair. Madame lifted her head from the pot of chili, licking her whiskers.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I told her.

  She wagged her tail and went back to her meal.

  Sitting beside the fire, I opened the first binder, but started reading from the back.

  The initial report about Esther Heller’s murder showed that on the cusp of turning eighteen and heading for art school in Seattle, she was found in room 412. In the white-tiled bathroom by her mother. Her skull had been shattered, her throat slit, and her body then bled out in the same bathtub she’d just cleaned.

  I checked the report. Culliton had been at the scene. He was the officer writing up this initial dispatch. He noted that the water flowing from the shower head was hot. As it rained on the dead girl’s body, the warm water quickened her blood loss. The water also washed away evidence.

  In fact, the crime scene was so clean that only two sources provided trace evidence: Esther and her mother, who had climbed into the tub.

  Culliton had written, “When officers arrived, Mrs. Heller was in the tub rocking her deceased child and weeping.”

  My eyes burned. I held my breath for a count of five before checking the crime photos. The images had an unusually stark appearance, probably from the camera’s flash on the bathroom’s white tile. I let my eyes roam the terrible truth. What struck me was there was no blood spatter. No mess. The killer—or killers—had taken her life with almost laser precision. Who does that?

  I read through the rest of Culliton’s investigative notes. He had locked down the hotel and interviewed every guest along with the staff. No one appeared to be a viable suspect. Also, Esther Heller had no boyfriend, no enemies, and no life outside of school and work at the hotel. I also saw that Cullton pursued any lead that arose, including the séance in the hotel’s lobby.

  In his recent notes, he acknowledged the possible connection between Esther and Annicka’s deaths. I thought of his shotgun gaze, and how it fired when I accused him of getting a paycheck no matter what happened with the case. No wonder he was angry. Six years after Esther died, he was still thinking of her.

  I closed the binder, and watched Madame lick the pot clean. Then she lay down beside the rocking chair.

  The second murder book was thinner, but its details were just as gruesome.

  “Partially masticated right hand,” Culliton wrote, “protruding from the ground.”

  Like Esther, Annicka’s skull had been shattered and her throat slit. The neck wound was so clean that the detective speculated on the knife. It had to be extremely sharp, and the killer had to be an expert with it.

  The coroner’s report offered all the medical-legal terminology that I could translate from my time in the Bureau’s Materials Analysis Unit. Hypovolemia. Blood volume loss. Her jugular vein opened in one smooth movement of the knife. Intracranial contusions. Traumatic brain bruising from the shattered skull.

  The shovel?

  I tried to picture Mason swinging that tool. If he hit Annicka’s head with the metal face, he could knock her out. That would leave her unable to fight.

  But the coroner’s notes on the skull injury said the initial blow struck Annicka’s forehead. And the impact created a concave bone injury. Most likely the object was round, “with an approximate three-inch radius.” The blow cracked her skull and created “a pattern of fractures radiating from the point of impact.” A kill-shot.

  I tried to think how Mason could accomplish that with the shovel. The only way was if he struck Annicka’s forehead with the tip of the shovel’s handle. Not an easy move. Especially if the other person was moving.

  Either Mason was stronger than he looked, or Annicka was alread
y neutralized before he drove the handle into her head.

  I opened Esther’s file again. Her head injury was eerily similar. Round object, three-inch radius, similar fractures that spidered out from the point of impact.

  Three inches?

  Most shovel handles were two inches, at most. Mason’s shovel included.

  Culliton had circled the words postmorten lividity in Annicka’s file. That’s where the blood pools in the body’s lowest parts, drawn by gravity. Lividity gave the skin a bluish color. The coroner noted it in Annicka’s hands, arms, and legs. Even with the blood loss from a slit throat. Perhaps because she was running. Her skin was already flushed from exertion.

  I stared at the first photo. It showed Annicka in her shallow grave. She laid face-up, with grains of soil embedded in her delicate eye lashes. Her right arm was extended in that rigored wave, and her long legs were tucked beneath her. I pulled the photo closer.

  That bluish lividity ran down her thighs. The tops of her arms. I’d used these same discolorations to reconstruct a dead body’s original position. But if Annicka lay face up in the grave, her lividity should’ve run down the back of her body. Gravity would ensure that. There were only two explanations for lividity showing up on the front of her body. One, the weight of the soil bruising the skin. Or two, she died in a different position.

  I read the coroner’s notes again. He detailed the lividity, remarking on the same questions I had. He also noted maceration. Or excess moisture in her skin. I picked up another photo and examined her left hand. It had stayed buried. Her fingertips showed the rippled texture of raisins. Like skin kept in water too long.

  But there was no water where Annicka was buried. None.

  Except the river. I thought of Mason standing in the water, arms raised in some kind of penitence.

  I went back to Esther’s file and checked the coroner’s report. There it was. Macerated dermis. Waterlogged skin, from the shower raining water on her body.

  I set the binders on the floor, side by side, and opened my notebook.

  I made two columns and lined up the similarities.

  Same head injury, I wrote.

  Slit throat.

  Waterlogged skin.

  I watched the flames flicker through the stove’s iron slats.

  Turning eighteen.

  Moving to Seattle.

  Parents own hotel.

  I drew a line horizontally, then made another two columns. Under Annicka’s name I wrote, Mason Leming.

  But for Esther’s column, Mason was highly questionable. Barely thirteen when she died. And the photos all pointed to a professional crime scene. I wrote down, Mason helped someone kill Esther?

  Or, another idea. Everybody knew everybody. What if Mason heard about Esther’s murder, knew the details. He could kill Annicka the same way, and throw even an experienced investigator like Culliton off his track.

  Was Mason that smart?

  I picked up the photo of Annicka in her grave. Her face was barely recognizable. Bruised, swollen, bloated. Forehead dented by the blow to the skull.

  A crime of passion?

  Mason.

  Mason, who Preston Baer never suspected. Who Johann didn’t suspect—until Fritz convinced him otherwise.

  Fritz.

  I wrote his name under Esther’s column. And under Annicka’s.

  I stood, paced the room, and threw another log into the stove. When I walked over to my phone, it was fully charged. I called Culliton.

  “Yeah?” His voice was raised, almost yelling. In the background I could hear something like static. Rain. Heavy rain. And cars hissing past.

  “I was just wondering if you had time to check on Mason,” I said.

  “No. I’m still on road duty. It’s a mess out here. But I’ve got somebody stationed outside his room.”

  A car honked. Culliton muttered something.

  “Roads are really bad?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Where’re you?”

  “At a cabin. On Lake Wenatchee.”

  “Too bad,” he said. “Edwina’s going to have him lawyered up before he blinks one eye.”

  “I can get there.”

  “Don’t risk it.”

  “From here to Leavenworth, is the road clear?”

  I couldn’t tell if I heard more hissing cars, or a sigh. “The road’s clear but—”

  “On my way.”

  I disconnected the call and picked up Madame’s licked-clean pot. I set it in the sink, and was passing the refrigerator when the white piece of paper caught my eye. Held to the fridge with a blue magnet advertising Lake Wenatchee.

  The handwriting. That same girlish penmanship. I told myself to keep walking.

  I grabbed my coat, pack, and car keys. I called to Madame.

  But my voice sounded choked. Because the words on that note were now etched into my mind. They would never leave.

  Jack,

  I waited here all day.

  Where are you?

  Love you with all my heart,

  —M.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  It took me twice as long to reach town, but maybe it only felt that way. My heart weighed a thousand pounds.

  Madame sat rigid on the passenger seat, staring through the rapid beat of the windshield wipers. At the medical center’s entrance, two ambulances were parked, red lights flashing.

  “Wait here,” I said.

  Inside, I found Mason Leming’s room, guarded by a large man wearing a dark blue private security uniform.

  “Hi.” I smiled. “Here to see Mason Leming.”

  “Family?”

  “No.” I reached into my wallet and took out my business card.

  He read it. Nothing registered.

  “You can call Detective Culliton, he’ll vouch for me.”

  I waited while he called and they chatted about the roads. My mind was racing—how did all of these pieces fit together?

  “Louie says you can go in.” He holstered the cell phone.

  “Thank you.”

  I parted the white curtain around the hospital bed. Edwina Leming was sprawled in a reclining chair beside the bed. Her thin mouth was parted, the frizzy-haired head tilted to the side, like someone had pulled the plug on her electrified personality. In the hospital bed, Mason lay tubed up, eyes closed. But water leaked from under his dark lashes. The tears streamed down pale unshaven cheeks.

  I started counting. One one-thousand.

  Two one-thousand …

  At nineteen one-thousand, I decided it was true what they say. People can feel a person staring at them, even under a glaze of narcotics.

  He recognized me and quickly wiped the tears from his face with the hand tubed to an IV. Then he glanced at his mother.

  I walked to the other side, opposite Edwina, so I could keep an eye on her, too.

  “How’re you feeling?” I whispered.

  He took another glance at his mother. One loud word, he could wake her.

  But he whispered, “What d’you want?”

  “I want to know why you ran. Twice.”

  “You were chasing me,” he hissed.

  We both looked at Edwina. She seemed far more narcotized than her son. But she could instantly wake up screaming.

  “Did anyone advise you of your rights?” I asked.

  “Sure.” Another hiss. “In the ambulance. Nice cops.”

  I gave Culliton points. He wasted no time.

  “Why don’t you and I start over?” I opened my notebook. “Did you carry the shovel up there, or stash it there ahead of time?”

  More water filled his milky eyes. But I saw despair behind it. And something else.

  “Mason,” I said his name softly. “You’ll gain nothing by lying.”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Except right now there’s enough evidence to convict you. And not circumstantial evidence. Forensic proof. Do you know the difference?”

  He wiped his eyes.

  “If you w
ant any sort of deal, anything that’s better than life behind bars, you better start telling me exactly what happened.”

  “I was shot,” he hissed. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Yes. But I just looked at the crime scene photos. I’m not interested in making you feel better about yourself.”

  He looked away and placed a hand over his mouth, muffling his sobs. The IV tubes in his arm shook. Remorse. It was always a good sign. But sometimes remorse was about getting caught. Not about doing the deed.

  “Tell me, Mason. Now.”

  He whipped his hand away. The tubes slapped the bed rail. “I didn’t kill her!”

  We both looked at Edwina. She shifted her position. The frizzy hair created a penumbra around her frazzled face. She didn’t wake up. But time was short. I tried a different track.

  “Who told you about Esther Heller?”

  “What?”

  “Esther Heller.” I had a sinking feeling as I repeated her name. His reaction wasn’t right. “Her family runs the Eiderdown.”

  “So?” He scowled.

  “Their daughter died, six years ago.”

  “Six years ago? I wasn’t even living here.” He shifted his eyes toward his mother. “Wake her up. Ask her. We lived in Seattle.”

  No wonder Culliton didn’t suspect him. The sinking feeling gained momentum.

  Mason shifted in the bed, wincing.

  “You alright?” I asked.

  The tears were back. “Why did he shoot me?”

  “You ran.”

  “Because you were chasing me!”

  Another glance at his mother. We waited. But the only sound came from down the hall, the distant call for Dr. Mueller.

  “Tell me about Annicka.”

  “Like, what?”

  “Like what happened the day she died, Mason.”

  “I—”

  “The truth,” I said.

  “If I tell you, will you help me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I found her.”

  It took me a moment. “You found her?”

  “She didn’t come see Buster that morning. It already was past ten. Annika was always there by nine. I drove by the Waterhaus. Fritz said she went running.”