Twisted Reason (A Lucinda Pierce Mystery) Read online

  “What about their spouses?”

  “She said that she never knew her mother-in-law. Family told her Mom ran off with a man she met in a bar when the kids were little – haven’t had a chance to follow up on that yet. And neither sibling was married. Well, her sister-in-law had been for a few months – a real nice guy according to Charlotte – but Donna walked out on him. ‘Just like her worthless mother,’ Charlotte said.”

  Twenty-Six

  As soon as the ambulance pulled away with Susan Jones, Lucinda followed it down the gravel drive and out to the highway. Her mind buzzed with the things she needed to do and the problems that needed solutions.

  She thought she’d gotten Evan Spencer off the hook on the false charges filed against him but she’d have to find time to talk to the DA. She knew he’d be long gone by the time she got to the office; he was probably already home by now. But where is this case going? Is the Blankenship clan connected to Joan Culpepper’s missing mother, to the death of Edgar Humphries and the bodies of Francis DeLong and Adele Kendlesohn who turned up in that pond?

  What about Rachael Kendlesohn? Something about that woman isn’t right. Is she simply a self-centered bitch or is it something more sinister? I’d like her to be responsible. I’d enjoy slapping cuffs on her wrists. But what if she is involved but only responsible for what happened to her mother-in-law? What if none of these cases are connected? Rachael’s mother-in law and Francis DeLong have to be connected. There’s no way they would both be found in the same remote spot otherwise.

  Could there be a conspiracy between Rachael Kendlesohn and DeLong’s son-in-law Mark McFaden? Mark was very solicitous of his wife but what if that was an act, a cover-up of a crime? If he and Rachael acted together, then those two deaths wouldn’t be connected to the attempted abduction of Juliet Szykely, the death of Edgar Humphries or the disappearance of Joan Culpepper’s mother. But does that make sense?

  Maybe there really are two scenarios here: the McFaden-Kendlesohn conspiracy and the other three cases that are all tied to Dorothy Jenkins. Her name popped up again this morning. But why? What motive could Dorothy Jenkins possibly have? She took care of one of them, met another one and only had a telephone conversation with a family member of the third.

  Doesn’t River’s Edge make more sense? Yes. That facility is connected to all five. I wonder how Ted is progressing with those background checks.

  I need to be careful. I can’t get so caught up in the most recent suspects to forget about all the others. I can’t afford tunnel vision. Everything has to be considered. Everyone explained. No possibility ignored, no matter how improbable. It seems impossible to follow all these threads at once, but I have to do it. Someone else might be abducted. Someone else might die.

  Lucinda pulled into the parking lot of the Justice Center with no memory of the drive. She’d navigated on instinct, lost in her thoughts about the case. The realization hit her as she stepped out of her car and made her more than a little anxious.

  She ran up the two flights of stairs and strode straight to Ted’s office. “Background checks. Anything interesting?”

  “Not yet,” Ted said, “but we’re—”

  “Search warrant?”

  “Two, three minutes more, it’ll be ready for the judge.”

  “Butler?”

  “Sergeant Butler? What about him?”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. He might be in Research, might be in his office. But he left a note on your desk.”

  “Thanks,” she said, spun on her heels and walked out.

  Ted stepped into the hallway. “Lucinda . . .?”

  “Later, Ted. Bring me the warrant request when you print it out.”

  Lucinda picked Jumbo’s note off of her desk and read: “Got Research looking for information about Charlotte’s mother-in-law. Plan to make phone calls on anything they turn up. I’ll call if I need to pay anyone a visit. Jumbo”

  Lucinda forced all thoughts out of her mind but the warrant. She had to get it. She reviewed the arguments she would make to the judge as she waited for Ted. True to his word, he popped in minutes later.

  “Here you go,” he said. “Judge Glass is still in his chambers working late reviewing appeals documents.”

  “Judge might have a question for you – are you coming with me?”

  “Anything, any time, Lucinda.”

  As they walked down the stairs, Ted said, “Actually, Lucinda, what I said wasn’t exactly true.”

  “What? What’s not true?”

  “I won’t be able to do anything, any time for much longer. I’ve decided to take the job up in Charlottesville.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. But I haven’t given notice yet so if you could keep quiet about it . . .”

  “No problem, Ted. In fact, right now, I don’t have the brain space to even think about it.”

  Everything went smoothly with the judge – the warrant was signed; now it needed to be delivered. Lucinda called Marguerite Spellman’s cell phone. “Marguerite, are you in the building?”

  “No, Lieutenant. I’m at home. But that’s not a problem. What do you need?”

  “I’ve got a search warrant. I need the place scoured for any biological evidence that any one of four different people ever spent any time in there. And if there are any signs of anything suspicious.”

  “Do we need a document specialist?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt. I’m bringing Butler from Missing Persons with me but depending on how much paper is there, it would be helpful to have another pair of eyes.”

  “You got it. Anything else I need to know.”

  “There’s no electricity and no running water.”

  “I’ll pack the truck accordingly, Lieutenant. Should be able to be on the scene in an hour and fifteen minutes – or maybe less.”

  Next, Lucinda called Jumbo. “I’ve got a search warrant for the Blankenship place and the crime scene techs are gearing up to meet us at the house. I’m assuming you want to be there.”

  “You better believe it.”

  “Did you find anything about the woman of the household?”

  “Yeah, but not much. Charlotte’s mother-in-law is Sadie Blankenship – been missing for twenty years. Her youngest son, Derek, was barely a year old at the time. Gary did tell everyone she ran off with another man but I found two of Sadie’s old friends. They said they didn’t know that Sadie had a boyfriend and never knew her to hang out in bars. They also said they hadn’t heard from her since – and one of the women was still finding that hard to believe.”

  “Any evidence Sadie is still alive?”

  “We share the same suspicious thoughts, Lieutenant. I’ve been looking into that. Sadie didn’t renew her Virginia driver’s license so I put out a bulletin to all the states with her married name and maiden name to see if she got a new one. No record of her having any credit cards in her name – one of her friends said that Gary wouldn’t have allowed that. Said Sadie didn’t even have a checkbook, or access to the bank account. Only money she ever had was the cash she got from Gary.”

  “Hopefully, somebody will turn up something. But this just isn’t looking very good.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Jumbo said. “Are we ready to roll?”

  “Meet you in the parking lot in five. Maybe that house will be hiding something that will lead us to Sadie.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Before leaving the Justice Center, Lucinda called Dispatch and arranged for uniformed back-up. Two patrol cars sat in front of the row house when Lucinda and Jumbo pulled to the curb. Four officers stood on the sidewalk, one holding a small two-man ram to breach the front door.

  “We don’t think anyone is inside, but don’t let your guard down – we could be wrong,” Lucinda said and headed up the stairs. She rang the bell, pounded on the door, shouted “Police” and made multiple requests to open the door. When that failed, as she thought it would, she stepped off the porch to give the men room t
o batter the door. Two swings of the ram and they had access to the home.

  Lucinda’s nose twitched in the musty, stale air. She noted some slightly sour odor provided an undertone. She was relieved when she wasn’t assaulted by the stench of decomposition.

  Six flashlights pierced the darkness, the air so full of dust that the beacons looked like solid objects. The detectives and officers moved with caution through every room, checking closets, under furniture, anywhere a person could hide. Lucinda and Jumbo took the first floor. Two officers walked crablike up the stairs checking out that level as well as the attic crawl space. The two others went into the basement where they explored a finished family room, bathroom, laundry room and a large dank storage area with bare concrete block walls. The only sign of life were roaches scurrying back into the cover of darkness.

  They all went back outside to await the crime-scene truck. When it arrived, Lucinda posted one uniform on the front door, another on the back. She told the other two they could leave after they helped the techs maneuver a diesel generator up the steps and into the house. The lights were carried in next. A videographer and still photographer followed shooting every corner of each room.

  Lucinda hadn’t needed to ask for that documentation, Marguerite just did it. She knew from experience that the lieutenant was demanding. Marguerite liked that in a detective; she hated the ones who tried to hurry her up or make her take short cuts. She and Lucinda both wanted a record of everything. Neither woman ever wanted sloppiness or negligence to set them up to be blindsided by a defense attorney in the courtroom.

  When that task was completed, Marguerite and an assistant headed upstairs to look for any out-of-place fibers, gray hairs or locations where it might be useful to apply Luminal. Jumbo went with them to serve as an extra pair of eyes and to lend a hand where he could.

  Another tech got busy dusting high probability fingerprint sites. Lucinda and the document specialist headed into the dining room where a large roll-top desk, bookcase and computer stand occupied one corner. It was disappointing that the computer was no longer there but when they lifted the lid on the desk, the amount of paper inside was staggering.

  There was a high, sloppy stack of newspaper clippings, articles printed from the Internet, and small pamphlets all concerning an alleged connection between diet and Alzheimer’s disease. It included pieces on the importance of blueberries, Himalayan goji berry juice, Vitamin E, spinach, olive oil, Vitamin C, coenzyme Q10 and more in Alzheimer’s prevention. On the right, a shorter stack was an assortment of alarmist manifestos claiming a conspiracy by the military-industrial complex, the Russians, the pharmaceutical companies – all of the usual suspects – along with dire warnings that the drugs we give our loved ones to treat high blood pressure and cholesterol were causing dementia; and other papers insisting that the increased incidence of dementia was the direct result of Aricept, Razadyne, Exelon and Memantine, the very pharmaceuticals doctors prescribed to help patients with Alzheimer’s.

  Lucinda moved to the bookcase while the document tech pulled open the file drawer. On the shelves, most of the space was occupied with older paperback science fiction by well-known authors like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Poul Anderson, as well as an assortment of books with cheesy covers depicting rocket ships or aliens or unknown planets. Some of them were “two-fer” books with double covers – read one story, flip it over and read the other. Interspersed irregularly were hard cover books with more relevance to the investigation: The Anti-Alzheimer’s Prescription; Dr.ugs, Dementia and the National Institute for Health: A Conspiracy to Control Your Mind; The Chemical Warfare Experiment: The Military’s Link to Dementia; Nutrition and Alzheimer’s: You Are What You Eat; Exercise and Sleep: The Key to Staying Sharp into Your Eighties and Beyond; and Brain Food for Your Golden Years.

  Wouldn’t it be nice, Lucinda thought, if dementia could be eliminated so easily? If eating right, exercising and getting enough sleep could protect you from all harm.

  Jumbo hollered down the stairwell, interrupting her thoughts. “Lieutenant. Spellman wants to luminal and wants to know if you want to see it.”

  “On my way,” she shouted back.

  Marguerite met her at the top of the stairs. “Maybe I’m getting a bit carried away, Lieutenant, but I won’t feel right if I don’t check it out.”

  “What’s got your radar blips sounding, Spellman?”

  “Well, there are three bedrooms up here. Only one is carpeted. The other two have hardwood floors with throw rugs. It’s been a long time since any of these rooms have been painted but the room with the carpet looks as if it’s a little bit of a newer paint job. Now, I know that could be explained easily – it was the only room redecorated.”

  “I’m not questioning your judgment, Spellman.”

  “Still, I want to tell you the clincher. Come in here,” she said, nodding her head toward one of the smaller bedrooms. She pulled open a closet door and shined a flashlight inside of it. “Look.”

  The silver bar had only a few hangars on it: one held a blouse, another had a dress, the rest were empty. On the floor, a small pile of two or three garments next to a beat-up pair of shoes.

  “Abandoned stuff from the looks of it, right?”

  “Sure – just things the owner didn’t want any longer,” Lucinda agreed.

  “Right. It’s the same thing in the other small bedroom except it has a few articles of clothing which are male.”

  “And you have something different in the larger bedroom?”

  “You betcha. In that bedroom, there are two closets,” Marguerite said as she walked across the hall. “One of them contains a couple of pieces of men’s stuff. But the other . . .” She pulled open the door of a packed closet. Clothes rammed tight on the rod, shoes piled high on the floor.

  Marguerite flipped through the garments with blue gloved hands. “Just look at this stuff: billowing maternity dresses, oversized shirts, stirrup pants, but these . . .” She bent down and picked up a pair of pink plastic shoes. “If these jellies don’t say Eighties, I don’t know what does.”

  Lucinda whispered, “Sadie.”

  Over her shoulder, Jumbo said, “That’s just what I thought, Lieutenant. And it looks like she didn’t pack a bag.”

  “Where do you want to spray, Spellman?” Lucinda asked.

  “I want to do the headboard of the bed and the wall around it.”

  “Do it.”

  “If I find anything, I’ll want to rip up the carpet and do the floor.”

  “Fine.”

  “I might even want to rip up the carpet if I don’t find anything.”

  “Go for it, Spellman. If the answer to what happened to Sadie Blankenship is here, I want to find it.”

  Jumbo helped Marguerite hang a blackout cloth over the sole window in the room to eliminate the light from a lamp post in the alley. With the door shut, the lights switched off, Lucinda and Jumbo stood close enough that they could hear the other person breathe but could not see each other at all.

  They heard the spray and smelled the salty tang of the chemical that always reminded Lucinda of the beach. The glow began. First, tiny specks twinkled on the headboard. Then the brightness spread on the wall, more evidence of high-speed splatter, then a huge, splotchy smear as if someone bleeding hit the wall and slid down to the floor.

  Marguerite kept spraying, up to the ceiling where the splatter grew finer and finer and then stopped. While they watched, they heard the slow whirr-click of the camera on the tripod taking long exposure shots.

  “Need help ripping up that carpet, Spellman?” Lucinda asked.

  “The more the merrier,” Marguerite said. “You both have gloves on, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lucinda and Jumbo said in unison.

  Marguerite flipped on the portable lights. With one person on each corner, the two forensic techs and the two detectives scooted the double bed to one side of the room. Marguerite pulled out a utility knife and made a two inch cut into
the edge of the carpet. Jumbo grabbed that and pulled. When he loosened a big enough chunk, Lucinda latched on to it and tugged, too.

  Marguerite and her assistant duplicated the effort on the other side of the room. Soon, they had a large rectangle of bare wood floor. Marguerite got down on her hands and knees and peered at the floor. “Holy crap! I can still see the blood in the cracks of the boards. No need for Luminal here. All I need are some swabs.”

  Lucinda joined her on the floor. “And there’s even some staining on the top of the flooring.”

  “There’s no way to date these bloodstains but they are nowhere near recent. Too much wear on the carpet, and there’s even some rust on the carpet tacks,” Marguerite said.

  “Maybe we can date the carpet. Jumbo, there’s a tech going through the papers in the desk. Would you ask her to keep her eye out for a receipt?”

  Jumbo nodded and left the room.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant,” Marguerite said.

  “Sorry? Sorry? You may have just solved a twenty-year-old homicide that no one even knew about.”

  “But that’s not why we’re here. We haven’t found anything to connect to your missing and dead old folks. We’ve found lots of hairs – but not one gray or white one in the bunch.”

  “My disappointment in that is more than compensated by what we’ve found. And the clothing – if it’s been worn since its last washing, you can pull DNA and knock out profiles of the whole family. If that’s Sadie’s blood and those are Sadie’s clothes, samples from her children and her husband will pull it all together.”

  “You want me to prioritize those profiles?”

  “Definitely. Can you get Beth Ann Coynes to run them?”

  “It will require sidestepping Doctor Ringo but that’s nothing new for me,” Marguerite grinned.

  “How’s Audrey doing?”