Requiem for Innocence

by BV Lawson

  REQUIEM FOR INNOCENCE

  A Scott Drayco Mystery

  BV Lawson

  Crimetime Press

  Copyright © 2015

  Requiem for Innocence is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, places, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead,

  is entirely coincidental.

  For information, contact:

  Crimetime Press

  6312 Seven Corners Center, Box 257

  Falls Church, VA 22044

  Trade Paperback ISBN 978-0-9904582-4-1

  Hardcover ISBN 978-0-9904582-5-8

  eBook ISBN 978-0-9904582-3-4

  Other Books by BV Lawson

  SCOTT DRAYCO SERIES

  Played to Death: A Scott Drayco Mystery

  Requiem for Innocence

  Dies Irae

  Elegy in Scarlet

  False Shadows, Eight Scott Drayco Short Stories

  Ill-Gotten Games, A Short Novella

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Best Served Cold: Stories of Revenge and Betrayal

  Deadly Decisions: Five Short Tales of Crime and Suspense

  Death on Holiday: Four Short Tales of Mirth, Murder and Mayhem

  SIGN UP for the author’s newsletter and receive a FREE Scott Drayco novelette!

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  PART FOUR

  Note to Readers

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PART ONE

  Of the dark past

  A child is born;

  With joy and grief

  My heart is torn.

  —From the song “Ecce Puer,” poetry by James Joyce,

  music by David Del Tredici

  Monday 6 July

  Scott Drayco leaned into the Brahms Rhapsody, the piano keys like daggers of silk beneath his fingers. The music washed over him with sounds akin to barbed, red amaranth flowers—a fitting soundtrack for the graphic crime scene photos lying on the piano.

  He dug into the thirty-second-note scales. Maybe a little too hard, opening a cut on his index finger. With his eyes half-closed, he could blissfully ignore the streak of blood on the keyboard.

  What he couldn’t ignore was the cellphone shattering the music’s spell. He grabbed the phone and almost hurled it across the room. Not that it was the phone’s fault—it was July, the air conditioner was broken, and despite being stripped to his boxers, he was drenched in sweat.

  It wasn’t a call from the client he was expecting. Or anything at all he was expecting, for that matter. Maida Jepson’s voice on the other end was minus its usual robin-like chirp as she pleaded, “I hate to bother you, Scott. But I’m convinced someone tried to hurt a friend of ours. A twelve-year-old girl in a wheelchair. Her mother is beside herself with worry. Sheriff Sailor is busy working another case, and besides—he thinks it was just an accident.”

  Then, a slight hesitation as she added, “Can you come?”

  Sailor was a thorough and compassionate lawman, and Drayco was inclined to believe his opinion. Yet, though Drayco had only known Maida for a few months, that was long enough to know she didn’t indulge in flights of fancy.

  “I can’t promise anything, Maida. I’ll be happy to do some checking and get back to you.”

  “Thank God. I knew we could count on you.” The frown lines disappeared from her voice.

  He gave up on the piano, since he was sticking to the bench, and grabbed the Manhattan Special he’d put in the freezer to chill. Forgoing a glass, he rubbed the frost-covered bottle on his forehead, then on his cut finger, and finally against the jagged pink scars on his right arm to dull the throbbing. Draped on a chair next to the piano with his feet propped out the open window, he took a few sips of the bittersweet espresso soda and let the liquid trickle down the back of his throat.

  His townhome might be hot, but it was also quiet, even located near Capitol Hill. The sight of the small park across the street, with one lonely bench set under a weeping cherry tree, was a visual sedative for chaotic thoughts.

  He reached to grab the four photos stacked on the music rack above the piano keyboard and spread them over his lap. Maida had mentioned a child. Yet, none of the four victims in front of him, sitting dead in their wheelchairs as if posed for a macabre slasher film, was younger than forty-five.

  Drayco took on this current case as a favor to a Kennedy Center exec whose brother was photo number three, the man’s murder unresolved after six months with the Metro D.C. police. No officers liked to use the “S” word, but after four similar deaths, there was talk of a serial killer. The Metro force hadn’t called in the feds yet, especially with no new murders in nine weeks.

  Still, when an officer-friend recommended Drayco to the client, he was careful to play up Drayco’s Bureau years. Not that it was unusual for agencies to hire him when they wanted the FBI touch without the FBI bureaucracy.

  He put the photos back on the piano and picked up the cellphone to tap a number in the address book. “Sailor,” the booming baritone voice answered. The amber-tipped ovals were pleasantly neutral to a synesthete, one of the many things Drayco appreciated about the man. It was the kaleidoscopic voices that bothered Drayco the most, spewing forth from their owners’ mouths like firework bombs exploding inside his head.

  “Sorry I haven’t gotten those tickets to the Nationals game yet, Sheriff. I’m working on them, I swear.”

  Sailor chuckled. “Yeah, right, Drayco. You’re too busy wining and dining those hoity-toity clients of yours.”

  Drayco looked at last night’s takeout from the SiAm Thai Emporium, congealing in cardboard boxes on the coffee table. The owner of the restaurant was so accustomed to Drayco coming in, he jokingly offered to adopt him. “Yep, it’s filet mignon and Chablis Grand Cru every night.”

  “My wife would kill me for looking at beef. And that’s before the red meat had a chance to kill me first. You can eat all you want, Ichabod—which reminds me, the NBA after you yet?”

  “Too old, too uncoordinated, and too short.”

  “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was still playing when he was forty-two, so you’ve got six years. But yeah, your measly six-four does make you a shrimp next to Kareem. Or Shaq. Call me crazy, but somehow I don’t think this is a social call since it’s not yet eight. What’s up?”

  “Thankfully, you are. I got a call from Maida Jepson about an attack on a girl in Cape Unity. She made it sound like you were writing it off as an accident.”

  Sailor sighed. “Virginia—not the state, that’s the name of the kid—has an overprotective mother. There was a big crowd at the Fourth of July picnic, she got pushed in front of a car. These things happen.”

  “So definitely an accident.”

  “The witnesses weren’t helpful, there have been no threats on her life, it doesn’t add up. Hell, to be honest, I’ve got my hands full with a bona fide murder that happened a month ago. However,” the sheriff paused. “You’re going to think they’re connected.”

  “Why is that?”

  “The murder victim was disabled and had to get around with a wheelchair.”

  “Another child?”

  “A middle-aged adult male, Arnold Sterling.”

  Drayco stared at one of the photos on the piano, the one of the client’s brother, Marcus Laessig. His hair was as dark as Drayco’s, belying the man’s fifty-plus years. The man was seated in his wheelchair with red, inflamed grooves around his neck from the ligature wire used to garotte him. Purple petechial hemorrhages dotted his skin like a Jackson Polla
ck painting.

  Drayco rubbed his eyes. He forced any emotions he felt about these photos and all the other violent images from his career into the lockbox he stored away in his mind. It was the only way to do this job and stay sane.

  “How was the victim killed, Sheriff?”

  “Strangled. With wire we found near the body.”

  Drayco sat up, dropping his feet to the floor. Some of the details matched those of the Laessig case and the other three victims. But why hadn’t he heard of it? He could understand Detective O’Dowd keeping this from him, but his friend, Detective Skiles? That grated a little. “Did the D.C. police check with you on this?”

  Sailor drawled, “You’re referring to those handicapped murders up your way? Let me guess. You’re in the middle of it. Yeah, they checked, didn’t think it related, but still ‘strongly suggested’ we keep details out of the papers. Whoop-de-do.”

  Drayco grinned. In a few sentences, Sailor had managed to convey a wide range of emotions—his mistrust of the D.C. force, his fear other agencies might trample over his turf, and his relief that if anyone was going to do the trampling, it was Drayco.

  “Can you tolerate a crime consultant playing in your sandbox, Sheriff?”

  “Maybe if you bring some of that Chablis. Besides, there are several folks who’ll be glad to see you. And better pack your sunscreen. Just don’t bring us more bodies like you did last time, ’kay?”

  Drayco waved off the sheriff’s veiled remark, relieved to have an excuse to escape the stale air and mildew in his furnace-of-a-townhome. Where had he put his suitcase? No time for laundry. He’d cram it in a bag and worry about it later. First, he needed to make a call to Marcus Laessig’s brother. A slim lead was still a lead.

  The brother was patient up until now, but Drayco wasn’t sure how much longer that would last. Not that he’d blame the guy. Over one hundred hours logged on research and interviews already.

  He stripped off his sweat-soaked boxers as he headed for the shower and tried not to think about the four-hour drive across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and down into the southern end of the Delmarva Peninsula. Hopefully, no major traffic accident-related backups like last time. If he left soon, he’d make it well before dark.

  2

  Maida didn’t give Drayco time to dwell on gloomy thoughts or the insanity of the Bay Bridge traffic, welcoming him with a hug and a tall glass of iced tea so sweet he swore he was drinking syrup. She called it “Baptist table wine,” the official drink of southern teetotalers, a philosophy Presbyterian lay pastor Maida definitely did not share. If it were later in the day, she’d be handing him one of her legendary potent toddies with its mystery ingredients.

  “Nice to see the Crab still standing.” He positioned himself in the kitchen in the exact center between opposite open windows where the cross-ventilation was like a cool sheet against his skin.

  At first glance, the Jepsons’ Lazy Crab B&B was the same as when he left three months ago, except for a tsunami of rainbow flowers in the garden. That was due to the devotion of Maida’s husband, Major Jepson, no doubt. Devotion that paid off, for even to a non-gardener like Drayco, the display was eye-popping.

  On his way inside, he did spy an object in a corner of the den that wasn’t there before. A Chickering baby grand, used, since they hadn’t made those since the ’80s. Had Maida purchased it for him? That made him smile. He wasn’t used to such thoughtful gestures.

  He caught an aroma of something spicy, yet saccharine. As he took a few sniffs, Maida smiled and pointed her thumb at the window. “That’s coastal sweet pepperbush. Also called ‘poor man’s soap’ because folks rubbed the flower spikes together for a soap substitute.”

  She bowed, with a flourish of her hand. “Since my better half isn’t here, I have to play Trivia Master.”

  “Where is the Major?” Drayco asked.

  “Just missed him. He stayed through the July Fourth holiday when we had guests, then headed up to Baltimore. His sister is in the hospital with pneumonia. In the middle of summer, no less.”

  “I’m not displacing any tourists, am I?”

  “We’re free and clear until August, our busiest month. When you D.C. types get tired of broiling in hot-air central.”

  Almost an entire month without customers. A patch of peeling paint in the hallway was more noticeable since his last visit, and the sun had faded the red fabric bench in the entryway a shade lighter. “The Crab isn’t in danger of closing anytime soon, I hope.”

  “We get by.” She smiled slightly, running a hand through her Creamsicle-colored hair. “Most years we break even. So your timing is good if the circumstances aren’t.”

  “Speaking of circumstances, when do I meet your young friend?”

  The sound of a car engine complaining from having to sip budget octane drew close to the front of the inn. Maida peeked out the front window. “How ’bout right now?”

  A thirtyish woman in a plain, orange cotton sundress rescued a wheelchair from the car’s trunk before Drayco had time to lend a hand. She eased a young girl in the wheelchair through the doorway as if delivering a crystal chandelier.

  Maida started the introductions. “This is the detective I mentioned, Scott Drayco. Scott, this is Lucy Harston and her daughter, Virginia.”

  The girl’s chestnut hair was tied in a ponytail with a clasp decorated like a Monet painting, and she had bright, intelligent eyes. A normal child from the waist up. No limbs dangled below her knees, the unneeded pant legs of her pink jeans tucked underneath her.

  Lucy glared at Drayco, then turned to Maida with a strident voice that matched its seagull bluish-gray hue. “I don’t understand why you brought in someone from the outside. The sheriff’s department can handle it. I don’t know this man. And you’ve only known him three months.”

  Maida put her hands out with palms upward, likely for his sake as much as Lucy’s. “Now, now, dear, we’ve been through this. Sheriff Sailor’s a fine man, but he has a full plate. Plus, we haven’t convinced him Virginia’s attack wasn’t an accident.”

  “I can’t afford to hire anyone.”

  Drayco said, “I’m looking into this as a favor to Maida, free of charge.” His inner critic heard more echoes of his accountant’s frequent hysterical laughter. Drayco knew a thing or two about “just breaking even” in the overheated cauldron-of-a-housing-market called Washington, D.C.

  Virginia sat silently by, watching the proceedings with her eyes riveted first to her mother, then to Drayco. Flashes of annoyance spiked her glances at her mother, with hints of an X-ray curiosity when she looked at him. She seemed to make up her mind and maneuvered her chair closer to him. “Maybe you can convince Mom she’s too paranoid.”

  Lucy stood with her arms plastered to her sides. “People say I’m overreacting. Think what they want, this was a deliberate attack.”

  Drayco prompted her, “You mean pushing Virginia into the path of that car.”

  Lucy didn’t look at him, her fingers curling up into fists. She looked ready to punch something. Or someone. “I admit there was a lot of jostling from people packed like sardines. Yet, someone pulled me from behind and separated me from my daughter. And Virginia’s too smart to roll herself in front of an oncoming car.”

  “So you didn’t see this person behind you? Or the one who pushed Virginia?”

  “I turned around, thinking it was a friend. Then I forgot all about that when I heard people screaming and the screech of brakes.”

  Maida added, “Virginia fell out of her wheelchair inches in front of that car. Thank God for those alert bystanders.”

  Lucy’s daughter had a remarkable way of appearing defiant and nonchalant at the same time—dangling over the precipice of teenage-hood if not actively practicing for it. Drayco asked, “Virginia, do you feel you were pushed? Or overhear any threats, maybe from other young people?”

  The girl hesitated before answering, then met Drayco’s gaze without fear. “When you’re down low and everyone
else is up high, you get used to staring at belt buckles and purses. I wasn’t looking at faces. Besides, everyone was just having fun.”

  “And the ‘being pushed’ part?” he prompted.

  Virginia shrugged. “Someone coulda bumped into me. A lot was going on—the picnic, the music. Everybody was waiting for the fireworks.”

  She was so poised and self-assured, it was like talking to an adult rather than someone who was twelve. “Have you had any problems with other kids at school?”

  Lucy spoke up, “She’s home-schooled and not around children much. There’s her fellow art class students like Barry Farland, who’s really her best friend. All good kids. I can’t imagine anyone with a grudge. My greatest fear is some random act of evil. How do I protect against that?”

  That was the age-old question for parents, wasn’t it? Raise your kids, love them, teach them to be independent. Then stand back and watch as some unanticipated beast strikes them down—a predator, an accident, cancer. Drayco nodded, hoping his agreement would calm her down.

  Lucy added, “Reece Wable agrees with me Virginia must have been pushed. He’s been amazingly supportive.”

  Reece? Drayco hadn’t heard one peep out of the historian since his last visit. He hadn’t mentioned Lucy before, so maybe this was a new friendship. Or a new something else.

  Virginia fidgeted in her chair, then wheeled herself backward away from Drayco until she was six feet away. To his surprise, she stared at his hands. “Maida says you play the piano.”

  “That I do.”

  “Are you any good?”

  He had to smile at that. “Depends on whom you ask.”

  “You should show me how to play sometime.”

  “Have you taken any piano lessons?”

  When she shook her head no, he added, “I can teach you a few basics right now.”