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Shadow
of a Doubt |
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Here's an excerpt from Shadow of a Doubt:
The buzzing of the telephone
jerked Liz Ramsey out of a pleasant dream. She rolled over,
disoriented and momentarily puzzled by the noise, then she groped
for the portable she kept by the bed, thumbed the button, and
grunted at it, "Yeah? "
"Ramsey?" the speaker asked. "Yeah. Wes? What's up?" Wes Drimble was the night duty officer for the Hartersburg police force. "Homicide." His voice almost shook with excitement. Hartersburg wasn't more than a blip on the map and didn't have a crime problem big enough to make murder a routine occurrence. Liz squinted at the digital clock on the bedside table: one-fifteen. "Who and where?" "Caucasian female, early twenties, no ID. Multiple injuries, possible strangulation. Grounds of the Kettering Inn. Carter Street. You know it?" "I think so." Holding the portable to her ear, Liz jumped up, stripped off her nightgown, and began to search for a clean blouse and slacks. "Carter Street's about half a mile off South Main if I remember right. Who's on the scene?" "Kerris. Call came in half an hour ago. Someone at the Inn thought he heard a scream. Kerris checked it out and found the body." "You've called the medical examiner?" "Next on my list." "Okay." Liz buckled her belt and slid the leather holster over her shoulder. "On my way. It shouldn't take more than ten minutes." She switched off the phone and bent to tie the running shoes she'd just slid her feet into. She ran a comb through her hair, dabbed on a few drops of Chanel #5, but didn't bother with makeup. Traffic was thin, but she stuck the blue light on her dashboard and flipped it on. Getting up in the early hours of the morning didn't bother her. In the two years since she'd become the police department's only detective, she'd been roused from sleep only three times. But since she doubted she'd be getting back to bed again any time soon, she wished for a cup of coffee. Good coffee. Even if she hadn't remembered the inn's exact location, she'd have had no trouble finding it. Three marked units stood in the parking lot, two of them with blue strobes flashing. Lights blazed over the rambling, three-story Victorian frame structure of the inn itself, but after pulling her equipment case from the trunk, Liz followed the sound of a commotion around the side of the building and across a broad expanse of well-tended lawn to the far edge, where a group of people had gathered near a shrubbery border. She had to push through a crowd of excited onlookers to approach officers Jason Kerris, Dot Markland and Major Roy Brandon. Markland and a couple of civilians, probably recruited from the crowd, made a valiant effort to keep the gathering masses from pressing closer to the body while Brandon and Kerris were setting up the portable lights. One light already functioned, and by its glow she took a quick glance at the body. The slender female form was sprawled on its back, limbs splayed in random directions. A tight, mid-thigh-length skirt was crumpled around her hips, topping stockings of some shimmery material, shredded now and bunched at the knees, and open-toed sandals with four-inch heels. Roy beckoned her to his side, and she joined him as he fitted the pole for the light into the base. "What do we know?" she asked. Major Roy Brandon, a twenty-year veteran of the force, was one of her favorite people. He'd been hired after a frantic search for a black candidate to make sure the department couldn't be accused of racism, but had proved himself more than equal to the job. Two years ago he'd been offered the position of deputy chief, but he'd turned it down, insisting he preferred to continue working in the field. Last year he'd been made head of field operations. "Probably not much more than Wes already told you," Roy said. "Kerris responded to a call complaining someone heard a scream. He checked it out, found the body. Kid had sense enough not to touch her beyond making sure she was dead and checking her pockets for ID. He didn't find anything. Ryland's on his way. The photographer's already here, waiting for us to get the spots up." Chuck Ryland's status as medical examiner generally dovetailed conveniently with his position as head of emergency at the only local hospital. "No pocketbook?" she asked. Ray shook his head. "We haven't found one. No wallet or anything else." He looked up and didn't quite suppress a grimace. "Look who's here." Liz turned and sighed. Two more of their people had arrived, another off-duty officer, who began to help Kerris string yellow tape around the area, moving the crowd back in the process, and Captain Cal Dennison, the man who'd been tapped to be deputy chief when Roy had turned down the offer. Dennison was in his fifties, a small, wiry, plodding man who qualified for the job with thirty years of undistinguished experience and a solid belief in his right to it. He actually got the position because it would be a relatively safe place to park a man who could no longer work the streets and had neither the tact nor the intelligence to handle more sensitive assignments. The duties were largely administrative and the chief could keep him under thumb. Dennison was suspicious of everyone below him in the official pecking order, but reserved particular animosity for the officers who came in with college degrees, referring to them as 'our frat boys', and explaining as often as possible that the BS in their degree stood for a term more elementary and less classical than Bachelor of Science. Liz held a special place in his resentment. Her college degree and her FBI training only added insult, in his eyes, to the injury of allowing a female into the inner sanctum of what Dennison still firmly believed should be a male preserve. White male preserve for that matter. Fortunately for everyone, Dennison's breed appeared to be dying out, but he held the banner, and the chief wasn't ready to stir up the kind of storm his dismissal would cause. Roy groaned softly. "He must've had his scanner on. I'm sure Wes didn't call him." "His wife says she can't hear the TV; he has it on all the time. Let's hope he keeps his hands off things anyway." Roy nodded agreement. Dennison joined them. "So I gather we have a problem here," he said, running his eyes over the body. "Somebody want to fill me in?" Roy repeated what he'd told Liz. "Take a look?" Dennison suggested, when he finished. "The photographer hasn't finished yet," Liz reminded him. She saw the flash of resentment in his face when he glanced at her. "I said, 'look', not touch." Liz would have felt more chagrin, might even have apologized, if Dennison hadn't amassed a significant track record for messing up crime scenes. She shrugged and they both approached the body, getting close enough for a good look without getting in the way of the photographer recording the scene. The victim was quite young; Liz thought early twenties might be an exaggeration. Her hair was bleached pale blonde, and she wore far too much makeup, including one false eyelash that now rested half on her cheek. Scarlet lipstick smudged chin and jaw, partly disguising other marks that weren't cosmetics. The low-cut, ruffled blouse of cheap, almost sheer chiffon hung open where the top two buttons had come off. One sleeve was torn at the seam. There wasn't much blood on her or on the ground, but she had a number of scrapes and cuts on her face, arms, and hands. Easy to see why Kerris had suggested strangulation. Cyanosis was pronounced, the bluish discoloration of the skin visible through the thick, streaked layers of foundation and powder. Liz and Dennison backed away when the photographer, using a video camera, finished his overview shots from each corner and moved in to record from a tighter angle. Liz turned her attention to the crowd, slowly scanning faces. Most were probably guests or employees at the inn. She recognized one young man from a youth program she'd worked with in the local high school. The first television crew arrived and began to set up their equipment. The rest of the onlookers were an assorted lot, mostly middle-aged or older, male and female. One couple still wore bathrobes, but the majority were dressed, frequently in clothes that showed signs of being hastily donned. One particular face in that group drew her attention. It belonged to a man, a tall man, judging by the way his head loomed above the others. The light from the portable spots threw deep shadows across lean cheeks and jaw, emphasizing the sharp angles of the bones and defining the elegant line of nose and chin. He looked to be in his early thirties, until he shifted, and the light glanced off the extensive threading of silver through hair that was otherwise dark enough to blend into the night. As if he felt her gaze on him, the man turned and met her eyes. The contact sent an unexpected jolt through her. Not recognition, per se, because she was sure she'd never met him before. She wouldn't have forgotten a face so striking and distinctive, nor the impact of his glance as it bored into her. It seemed to search for something in the depths of her being, almost to reach in and touch something there. An awareness of some kind. A connection that took both of them by surprise. She watched his eyes narrow and flicker, as though he felt the same impact and wasn't any happier about it. In the punctured darkness, she couldn't tell the color of those eyes, only that they were light. His sharp gaze moved her like a magnet, making her want to join him, to find out what force stretched between them, to explore further the strange effect his concentrated attention had on her. He didn't drop the contact, though no change of expression moved his features out of the tense, unsmilingly remote set. She wondered what he'd look like in daylight. The face, she suspected, would be handsome in a fine, hard-boned way, but cool and uninviting. Why did he focus on her like that? Did he know something about this crime? Or was the reason more personal, an acknowledgment of something that seemed to move between them? Liz dragged her eyes from the man's enigmatic gaze, and almost stumbled as she half-turned away. Whatever it was that passed between them had shaken her, and she had to draw a deep breath while she pulled herself together. But she needed to get back to the work at hand. It was grim enough to force her to put aside any personal issues. She approached the body when the photographer signaled that he'd finished. Careful where she stepped and paying attention to what marks might be visible on the lawn, she started to walk around the prone form. Nothing foreign stained or rested on the ground around the head and upper torso. At the feet, however, a faint but unmistakable set of twin lines showed where the grass had been compressed. One line ended in a smudge a few inches to the side of the victim's right shoe, the other directly beneath the left, confirming what Liz had already begun to suspect, based on the lack of blood in the immediate vicinity around the victim. She tapped the photographer on the shoulder, pointed out the lines, and told him to be sure he got shots of those marks as he followed after her. Then she switched on her flashlight and set off to trace the path of those not-quite-parallel tracks. Dennison followed behind her. "What are you doing?" Liz pointed to the marks in the grass. They led to a row of ten-foot high shrubs that screened the yard from the road alongside the inn. Near the line of bushes, a patch of grass showed signs of disturbance: trampled ground, stains, and, almost at the base of a rhododendron, a button nestled among dead leaves. Liz would bet money it matched the others on the victim's blouse. Dennison reached down to pick it up, then stopped when she asked him to wait and let the photographer record its position. Roy and the photographer approached. Liz used her flashlight's beam as a pointer to show her findings and illustrate what she needed taped. "The M.E.'s checking the body now," Roy volunteered. "Need some bags?" "I've got some in my case." Dennison went back to watch the medical examiner do his work. Liz and Roy checked the area within ten feet of the disturbed spot but found no additional clues. She got a length of cord from her case and placed it on the ground where she'd found the button, then measured out the length from there to the road at the front of the inn. One of the television reporters approached and tried to ask her questions, but she brushed him aside. When she returned to the site, the photographer had finished. Roy was working on a hand-drawn diagram of the layout. Liz handed him a waxed-paper bag when he was done and asked him to get the button. Using a sterilized tweezers, she removed a few blades of blood-soaked grass from each of three spots and bagged them. She ran the flashlight's beam in closer on the disturbed ground, searching for footprints, but wasn't surprised not to find any. It hadn't rained for almost a week; the ground was dry and hard. She went back up to where the victim lay and sent Kerris down to the other site with more of the yellow tape. Chuck Ryland, the medical examiner, worked over the body. Liz said hello to him but nothing more, knowing he wouldn't want to talk until he'd finished his immediate chore. Officer Markland and the off-duty officer had already started working the crowd, trying to find someone who might give them more information about the crime. She scanned the ring of onlookers, searching for the face that had struck her earlier. The man was no longer there. She'd have to find out who he was. A guest at the inn, perhaps? Instinct told her he knew something she would find interesting. She just wasn't sure whether that something would relate to the murder. Chuck Ryland called her to his side where he knelt by the victim. "Strangulation?" Liz asked him. "You don't need an M.D. to figure that out," the man said, rubbing his eyes. In the last year, Chuck had acquired a perpetual squint bespeaking chronic shortage of sleep. The paramedics arrived and went off to get a gurney and body bag. Ryland waited until they'd departed before he added, "I'll check her more thoroughly at the hospital. The way she seems to have struggled and the condition of her clothes..." "Yeah," Liz agreed. "I'd like to know." Chuck nodded and blinked. "Is somebody contacting the family?" "No ID." He sighed deeply. "Not surprised." Of all the men she'd met since college, Chuck was one of the few she could really get interested in. In his early thirties, he had a degree from Duke Medical School and a sense of humor that had survived it. He worked in this section of the North Carolina mountains, fifty miles southwest of Asheville, because he liked hiking and skiing. But he also had a wife and two kids to whom he was devoted. The paramedics returned and loaded the body to take it away. Liz scanned the crowd, which had started to disperse with the removal of the main attraction. A second TV crew had arrived and both cameras were rolling. Dennison made himself available as spokesperson; one reporter waited while the other filmed an interview with him. Liz was just as glad to let him handle that chore; they hadn't yet learned anything that could compromise the investigation if revealed prematurely. She still didn't see the man who'd struck her so forcefully earlier and wondered why he had disappeared, and if any of the officers had talked to him. Roy had joined Dot and the off-duty officer who were still interviewing the bystanders. Her watch said three forty-five. Chuck left, saying he'd call her as soon as he had a chance to look at the body. Roy joined her. "Not much help so far from these folks," he reported. "I talked to the guy who called in. He heard a scream out here. He looked out the window but didn't see anything. Swears he didn't see anyone moving. He said it wasn't so loud he was even sure of what he'd heard, so he debated a while before he called. Maybe ten minutes, he thinks. His wife said she didn't hear anything; she was sound asleep. Her husband's a lighter sleeper." The other two officers came over after all but a few die-hards dispersed. Dennison finished or cut off his interviews to join the conference. "Got a woman who thinks she heard a scream, too," Markland reported. "Can't place the time exactly, maybe around twelve-thirty. Her room looks out the front so she didn't see anything." Liz nodded and turned to Ray. "Will you get the fingerprints sent off?" "I'll check missing persons, too," he added. It was well after four by the time they got the equipment repacked, almost five when she got home again. She debated going back to bed. Nothing at work pressed so hard she had to be there early. But she was too keyed up. It would take so long to settle down enough to go back to sleep, it wasn't worth the effort. Instead, she set a fresh pot of coffee brewing, changed into her running clothes and went out for her daily five mile trot. Inevitably, while running, her mind slipped back to the body she'd viewed a few hours earlier. Instead of concentrating on facts, though, she considered what the evidence suggested, what she could surmise or guess about the crime. Given the clothes and heavy makeup, the victim might be a hooker. A young one, but that wouldn't be unusual. No doubt you could find citizens of Hartersburg who would swear the town had no vice, narcotics, gambling, or other sleazy activities, but Liz knew better. She'd picked up more than one teenage prostitute in her career. She always hoped a brush with the law would scare or startle them into reconsidering their dangerous, self-destructive lifestyle. It rarely worked. On the other hand, she might have been an ordinary young woman with too many insecurities and too little taste in clothes and makeup. But then, why would she be roaming the streets at midnight? And, in either case, who would want to kill her? A john she'd refused? An angry boyfriend? A pimp she'd tried to break with? Or a psychopath of some kind? Liz hoped it wasn't the latter. Psychopaths were the hardest kind of criminal to track down since they frequently had no connection with the victim other than the crime itself. Worse yet, a psychopath meant this might not be an isolated incident. But who else? A couple of people had heard the scream. No one had mentioned hearing an argument. Didn't mean there wasn't one, though. The face of the man in the crowd suddenly popped onto the screen of her mind. An interesting, enigmatic face from the brief glimpse she'd had. A guest at the inn? Why had he disappeared so quickly when most of the crowd had hung around until the body was removed? Something about his expression suggested he wasn't just the average curious onlooker. Which was as good a reason as any not to let her imagination or libido get carried away with reaction to him. When she finished her jog, Liz checked the roses growing in the small patch of garden behind her equally small house, then went inside to shower, using her 'Fuzzy Peach' bath gel and dusting with White Shoulders powder afterward. Her coworkers teased her unmercifully about her weakness for anything with a pleasing smell, but at Christmas and her birthday they inundated her with potpourri, sachets, bath salts, fragrant drawer liners, scented stationary, and anything else with an attractive aroma. At her office, she checked the stack of messages, mail, and memos in her basket. Nothing looked urgent. She called to get the case number for the murder and asked to have copies of all reports forwarded as soon as they were ready. Then she called the inn, got the owner/manager, and made an appointment to talk with him that morning. He promised he'd make her a copy of the register of guests from the previous evening and to try to keep people off the grounds behind the building. Roy came in as she hung up the phone. "Didn't you go off-duty half an hour ago?" she asked. "Time's not my strong point." He sniffed delicately and guessed, "Obsession?" "Only yours." Everyone tried to guess what fragrance Liz was wearing on any given day. Roy knew the names of only two perfumes, the two his wife wore, but he couldn't even tell those apart by smell. "You turned in your report?" she asked. "Put a number one priority on it. No ID yet. No missing persons report on anyone fitting the victim's description." He grimaced and shook his head. "I submitted the fingerprints, but I only reckon that at fifty-fifty." "And that much only because of her clothes," Liz observed. "Yeah. I'm hoping there's someone to get worried about her." She nodded. "Seen Dennison again?" "Hasn't come in yet." "We get small breaks occasionally." She pointed at the case folder for the murder. "Got any ideas?" "None you haven't already considered." "Try me," she suggested. "Girl looked like a hooker. Most likely approached the killer herself. She was roughed up a bit, then strangled. Way the clothes were messed, I'd have to guess sexual assault. Wouldn't want to say whether that was before or after. Maybe she changed her mind and tried to resist, maybe the guy got too rough, or maybe it was someone with a grudge against her." "Why was the body moved?" Liz asked. "Killer thought it was too close to the road, maybe?" Roy didn't sound convinced by his own argument. "Too easy to find?" "So he dragged her into the middle of the inn's yard?" "Could be he was taking her to the far end where the bushes are thicker. If he'd dumped her there, it might have been a while before someone noticed the body. Got interrupted before he got her there, though, and just hightailed it." Liz drew a few doodling circles on her desk pad. "Makes as much sense as anything. I hope we get an ID quick." Roy sighed and agreed. "Yeah. You gotta wonder about the family, though." "I do." "Still, these things happen." "In the best of families. Cliché, Roy." "Yeah, well, I can't help it if the cliché's true." She laughed. "I don't suppose it would be a cliché if it weren't." She sighed and grew serious again. "Anyway, that doesn't help her anymore." "No." Roy grimaced and looked fiercely angry for a minute. "Whatever she was, she didn't deserve to die." "No," Liz agreed. "And that's our bottom line, isn't it? She might have had a chance. She might've grown up, turned things around, made something of her life. But it won't happen now. Someone took the chance from her." "We'll find him. Make him pay." It made a good exit line, but Liz called him back as he got to her door. "Roy. You talked to some of those people looking on last night. You remember one in particular? Very tall man, on the lean side, looked fairly young except he had mostly gray hair. I saw him in the crowd, looking a bit odd; then he disappeared. I wondered if he was a guest at the inn?" Roy threw her a startled look. "You didn't recognize our local celebrity?" His surprise increased. "Not a guest at the inn. But I seem to recall his house is next door or near it. That was Greg Conyers." Seeing her blank expression, he added, "The artist? You don't remember him? Former big-time businessman, suddenly decides to cash out at the age of thirty-one and retires up here in the mountains to paint. Turns out he's pretty good at that, too. Has paintings hanging in lots of the big museums and galleries according to the newspaper. They did a spread on him a couple of years ago. He keeps to himself, lives with his mother, hardly ever goes out. Doesn't do his shopping around here, except for having groceries sent in from the Ingles down the road. Nobody sees very much of him. He's kind of a mystery himself."
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All material copyright 1999-2006 by Karen McCullough
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