Night Shift Page 4

  Devo mounts the steps and shines his flashlight through the glass to the interior of the house. He reaches down and tries the doorknob, but it doesn’t turn. With a sigh, he turns his flashlight around and uses the butt end of it to break the lower left pane of the glass window in the door. Then he carefully clears away enough shards so that he can reach his hand inside and undo the lock without cutting himself.

  “You should wait out here,” he says to me, opening the door.

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “Wait out here until I see what’s inside.”

  “I’m fairly certain you have a dead body inside,” I say.

  Devo shoots me a look that is part curiosity, part perturbation. “How—”

  “I smell old blood—lots of it—and excreta. That’s not a smell one easily forgets or confuses with anything else. So, the only real question at this point is whether the death is by natural causes, suicide, or suspicious circumstances.”

  “Right,” Devo says, drawing the word out and continuing to look at me with wary curiosity. “And until I determine which it is, you need to stay out here. If this turns out to be a crime scene, I don’t need you traipsing about contaminating evidence.”

  “I have never traipsed once in my entire life,” I assure him. “And I was required to go through those police procedure classes before starting this job, remember? I know how to handle myself at a scene.”

  Devo glares at me, but apparently my look of determination convinces him. “Fine. Just don’t touch anything. And stay behind me.”

  I walk up the steps and follow Devo inside. The smell of death and old blood grows stronger and as soon as we pass through a mudroom, Devo reaches along the wall and finds a light switch. When he flips it, the scene it reveals is a stark one, the kind most people only see in their nightmares.

  We are at the threshold of a kitchen and there is a large, oval wooden table in the center of the room. To my right is a big, double porcelain sink and cabinetry that looks like it was built in place about a half century ago. The countertops are blue tile, several of them broken or missing in spots. Dirty dishes are stacked in the sink and there is a dishrack on the counter with a red and white striped kitchen towel beneath it. To my immediate left are more cabinets going to the corner, and against the next wall is an old-fashioned wooden hutch with several drawers and doors in the bottom, a flat work area in the middle, and two cabinet storage areas at the top.

  I take all of this in in a split second and then focus my attention on the elephant in the room: the dead man seated at the table. His head is lolled back, and I can see a dark hole in the soft spot under his chin. Tufts of dark hair protrude from his head around his ears, and the top of his head is a bloody mess that appears oddly misshapen, too flat. He looks like the old Dick Tracy villain Flat-top. Both of his arms are hanging at his sides and beneath the hand of the right one, the one closest to me, I see a handgun resting on the floor. He is dressed in pajamas. The only sounds I can hear are that of Devo’s heavy breathing and the low buzz of flies, several of which are darting in and around the man’s gaping mouth and bloodied scalp.

  Devo mutters, “Aw crap,” and then grabs for his radio to call for backup. Except he doesn’t. He hesitates, and when I look over at him, I see that his eyes are focused on the ceiling. He grimaces, swallowing so hard that his Adam’s apple bounces spastically for a second. I follow his gaze and see something dark on the ceiling. At first, I can’t figure out what it is because despite what appears to be a solid center a couple of inches wide, the sides are very irregular and thready looking. It resembles a paramecium I remember seeing through a microscope in a biology class once. Was it in high school? Or college? Like it matters. The mind takes some weird side trips at times like these.

  I let my eyes drift back to the dead man, to the odd shape of his head. And then, with a sickening start, I realize what’s on the ceiling. It’s the top of his head.

  I look over at Devo, worried. Rumors run through the police department like rats in a catacomb and one of the ones I’ve heard repeated several times is that Devo has a weak stomach. It’s said to be even odds whether he’ll toss his cookies at a grim crime scene and this one certainly qualifies as grim. I feel my own stomach lurch a bit and try to distract myself.

  “Think it’s a suicide?” I say, hoping to maybe distract Devo some, too.

  He doesn’t answer.

  I divert my eyes away from the ceiling and look back at the hutch. Doing my best to focus on something, anything other than the dead man and that paramecium on the ceiling, I zero in on a whimsical cookie jar sitting at the back of the hutch’s middle work area. My gut does another flip-flop, but for a different reason this time.

  “Uh, we have a problem, Devo,” I say, and I hear the tremor in my voice.

  He glances over at me and makes a face. He licks his lips and exhales through pursed lips.

  “You okay?” I say. “You’re not going to barf, are you?”

  “No, of course not,” he shoots back irritably. “Are you? If that’s the problem, go back outside.”

  “That’s not the problem.” I take a few careful steps toward the hutch, making sure I don’t step on any blood or other material, and point to the cookie jar. “This is.”

  Devo looks at the cookie jar, then at me, his expression suggesting that he thinks I’ve lost my mind. “I’m not following you, Hildy.”

  “Remember what Danny kept saying at the house when we first got there?”

  “Yeah, he was babbling some nonsense about seeing ghosts. The guy’s a nutter. So what?”

  “So, when I was talking with Allie some more about it later, she told me about the stuff Danny was saying before we got there, stuff that made no sense and led us to believe that in addition to his usual auditory hallucinations, he might be having visual ones, too. One of the things he said was that he saw a man get killed and a spotted purple and pink dinosaur watched the whole thing.”

  Devo snorts a quick laugh, but the humor quickly fades from his expression as he looks again at the cookie jar. I’d bet it’s an antique, probably dating back to the forties or fifties. The main body of the jar is purple with little pink spots on it, and it has four feet at the bottom. Attached to one end is a green plate and protruding from that plate are three pink horns. Two eyes are painted on the green plate below and between two of the horns. It looks like a cartoonish triceratops.

  “I think our gentleman here might have been murdered,” I tell Devo. “And what’s more, I think Danny Hildebrand saw it happen.”

  Chapter 4

  The little dinosaur cookie jar distracts Devo enough to get him back on track. He radios dispatch and asks to have the sheriff’s department send someone out to the site. He also requests the medical examiner’s office, at least one more uniformed police officer, and an evidence technician.

  When he’s done with that, Devo tells me to stay put so he can do a quick check of the rest of the house to make sure it’s empty. I do as I’m told, resisting an urge to go back outside where the air is fresh. After Devo returns and declares the house secure, the two of us stand there at the entry to the kitchen, staring at the scene.

  “I’m not convinced it’s a homicide,” Devo says after a moment. “It looks like a suicide.”

  “It does,” I agree.

  “Maybe Danny saw the guy shoot himself,” Devo suggests. “With as twisted as his thought processes are, he could segue that into a murder in his mind, couldn’t he?”

  I shrug. It’s possible, except I don’t think that’s what happened here, though I can’t support my theory. Yet.

  “I suppose that could be the case,” I admit reluctantly. “I’ll have to talk to his sister and see if Danny had anything to do with this man, or this farm. Why would he even be here?”

  “Maybe he’s the one who killed him,” Devo tosses out in a slightly mocking tone that tells me he doesn’t favor this theory. He looks at the victim for a moment and his
color pales. Wanting to distract him, I glance around the room.

  “What’s that?” I say, pointing toward the counter on the far right.

  Devo dutifully looks where I’ve pointed and then the two of us venture slowly around the perimeter of the room, taking care not to step in any blood spatter. The thing I pointed to is on the counter between the stove and the sink. It’s a torn square of paper towel with a spoon on top of it, and there is a carton of milk and a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels behind it. There is a microwave mounted above the stove, and when I stand on tiptoe, I see through the glass that there is something inside.

  “Hey, Devo,” I say. “There’s a mug in this microwave and judging from the spoon and paper towel, it looks like our victim was preparing himself a hot toddy. Maybe some warm milk to help him sleep? He is in his pajamas. That seems like odd behavior for someone who’s about to kill themselves, doesn’t it?”

  Devo looks down at me with a hint of annoyance. “You probably shouldn’t be in here,” he says, avoiding my question. “You could be contaminating evidence.”

  “No more than you are,” I counter. “I didn’t touch anything and even if I had, I’m wearing gloves. I’m thinking we should probably be wearing booties though, too, don’t you?”

  Devo glances at his feet, then mine, clearly annoyed now. He gifts me with an eye roll, and says, “Let’s both get out of here until the others show up.” One arm raises and he points toward the back door wearing a stern expression. “Go.”

  I go. When I get outside, I take a moment to study the star-studded sky above us. Out here in the country, without any light pollution to speak of, there are hundreds, maybe thousands more stars visible than I typically can see in town. It’s beautiful, and a stark contrast to the ugliness inside. There is a light breeze and the mid-May temperature is in the mid-fifties—jacket weather, though many Wisconsinites find these temps more in the range of sweatshirt or sweater weather. Or even just a long-sleeved shirt. Cold tends to be a relative term around here.

  “Did you see a suicide note in there anywhere?” I ask Devo after a minute or two of silence goes by.

  He shoots me a look and shakes his head. “Didn’t look hard for one, though.”

  I give half a nod, letting him have the point for now, but also making it clear that I don’t think he’ll find one. Danny’s words had been very explicit. He didn’t just say he saw the man die, he said he saw them kill him. Thoughts of Danny make me want to see how he’s doing. “I’m going to check in with the hospital,” I tell Devo.

  He nods, and I step off the stoop and walk a few feet away as I take out my cell phone and dial the hospital ER. It takes a minute or so to get Dr. Finnegan on the phone, and when I finally ask her how Danny is doing, she informs me that he’s still sleeping off the medication she gave him earlier.

  “Is his sister there by any chance?” I ask.

  “No, she hasn’t come back yet,” Dr. Finnegan says.

  “When she does come back, would you have her call me?”

  “Sure.” I give the doctor my number even though I’m certain Allie has it.

  By the time I hang up, there are headlights coming up the drive. The first people to arrive, one right behind the other, are a county sheriff—a fireplug of a man with a name badge that says P. Carson—and Christopher Malone, the medicolegal death investigator for the ME’s office.

  Sheriff Pete Carson doesn’t look happy to be here and he has a deep scowl on his face as he climbs out of his police cruiser and marches over to Devo.

  “What the heck,” he says, looking accusingly at Devo, as if he thinks he’s the one who killed the man in the house. “I for sure could have done without something like this. Our department is stretched thinner than a tanning deer skin right now.”

  “Sorry,” Devo says. “We’ll help as much as we can.”

  Christopher Malone stands by holding a giant tackle box and listening to this exchange before he says, “Exactly what is this?”

  Devo sets about explaining why we’re here, what we found, and what we’ve surmised so far. As he’s doing so, two more vehicles come up the drive, a car containing Dr. Otto Morton, the medical examiner on duty, and a white evidence van driven by Laura Kingston, a part-time evidence technician who splits her hours between the police department and the ME’s office. I realize things could get interesting if the rumors I’ve heard can be believed, because I heard one that has Laura Kingston dating Devo.

  A minute later, a cop car from Sorenson arrives with not one but two uniformed officers: Brenda Joiner and Al Whitman, a twelve-year veteran of the Sorenson PD and, if the PD rumor mill can be believed, something of an enigma. Al has been a uniformed officer since his first day on the job and has never shown any interest in advancing his career. He seems content doing what he does, and he is well known in town as a reasonable, kind, and friendly officer. He and his wife, Karen, who is a stay-at-home mom, have five kids ranging in age from eleven to two. This makes it even more puzzling that Al has never tried to advance his career and, presumably, his paycheck, but their income is augmented by Karen operating a day care out of their home—five kids apparently isn’t enough to have underfoot. Between the two of them they seem to manage nicely. It helps that they live in a house they own free and clear, a huge old Victorian that Karen inherited from her grandmother.

  I know all this about the Whitmans in part because of town and PD gossips, and in part because Karen’s kids have been in the ER lots of times with the usual litany of childhood illnesses and accidents. I got involved a couple of years ago when one of the nurses in the ER was worried that an injury incurred by one of the Whitman kids didn’t fit the story the kid told. The nurse was concerned about potential child abuse and called me after reporting the case to Child Protective Services.

  It turned out that the kid’s injury—a spiral fracture of the bones in his forearm, a classic abuse injury—really didn’t fit the story, but his parents weren’t the guilty parties. A neighborhood kid who was known to be a bully was the culprit and his victim made up a story about his arm injury out of fear that the bully in question would come after him again if he told the truth.

  The investigation conducted by both me and CPS was a thorough one, though it took a while to get to the truth. In the process, Karen nearly lost her childcare business, Al was put on probation and nearly lost his job, and I made friends with the family because I sensed all along that the injured kid was lying not out of fear of his parents, but of someone else. Thanks to my years in the foster system, I understand the dynamics of childhood better than most adults, particularly those who had privileged, protected upbringings. I’m also good at sniffing out lies.

  Both Al and Brenda acknowledge me as they join the group at the base of the back stairs, all of them gloving and suiting up in preparation for going inside. In a matter of minutes, the scene has gone from one of quiet isolation to one of controlled chaos. I want to go inside and watch, so I don one of the paper biohazard suits that Laura has in her van—suits designed to protect the investigators as well as the integrity of the crime scene—surprised that she has one that fits me reasonably well.

  “Your build is similar to that of Dr. Rybar-ceski’s,” she tells me as she hands me a packaged suit. “So, we have a lot of these in that size.”

  I take my jacket off and put my suit on, suspecting that I now resemble the Poppin’ Fresh Doughboy. No one pays me much attention as we all head inside the house, and I feel a little trill of excitement, knowing that I’m about to see my first official processing of a death scene. It’s not exactly what I was hired to do, but I’m sure it will be interesting and educational. One of these days, I’m hoping to be able to solve my mother’s murder, and this scenario should be good practice for honing my investigative skills.

  If there were family members here, someone grieving, or someone who perhaps might have been involved in the death, then my area of expertise would get called into action. But there doesn’t seem to be an
yone else living in the farmhouse other than the farmer who owns it and he is, presumably, the dead man. For the moment, I’m little more than an observer.

  There is a wallet in the man’s overalls that Devo pulls out and, when he opens it, he finds a driver’s license. The name on it is Arthur Fletcher, though it’s impossible at this point to tell if the picture matches the dead man at the table. However, there is one telling characteristic: a large mole on the right cheek just below the eye. It is present in both the license picture and on the man before us. Another distinguishing mark is a scar, a white gash that traces the arc of the eye socket on the left side of the man’s face. This, too, is present in the license picture.

  “I don’t suppose we can call it official until you guys do your thing and get fingerprints or dental records,” Devo says to Dr. Morton. Then he looks at the dead man and grimaces. “Though I don’t suppose dental records are going to be of much use here. It looks like he shot out half his teeth.”

  “You mean they shot out,” I say, and everyone in the room turns to look at me. “There’s no suicide note, and he had a toddy heating in the microwave,” I explain. I nod my head toward the appliance, and everyone looks there instead.

  After a moment, Otto looks at Devo. “Is she right? There’s no suicide note?”

  “Not that I found,” Devo admits. “But I haven’t done an extensive search. I think it’s too early to be jumping to conclusions.” He shoots me a warning look, but I shrug it off. “Maybe it would be best if you waited outside,” he says then. “We don’t want to risk contaminating the scene if you happen to be right.”

  I have to give the guy credit. He’s come up with a way to punish me while also acknowledging that my powers of observation might well be spot on. Not wanting to ruffle too many feathers this early in my job, I decide to let it go. I need to let Roscoe out for a walk and a pee anyway.