Authors: Jean Lorrah
Brandy went to the closet, Church to the kitchen, searching the refrigerator as Brandy finished the nearly-empty closet and began on kitchen cupboards.
“Aw, no,” said Church in a voice of grave disappointment. He tossed an ice cube tray into the sink and turned on the hot water. Brandy glanced to see that the tray had no dividers, just a solid block of ice with what looked like money frozen into it.
It could be only a few dollars, the young man's “mad money” tucked away from a prying landlord or anyone he might let into the apartment.
While the ice melted, Church tried the bathroom. Brandy heard the clunk and slide of the toilet tank lid, and Church's curse before he called, “Brandy, come and witness."
Taped to the inside of the porcelain lid were three plastic freezer bags, well stuffed with something green.
The tiny bathroom became claustrophobic as Rory Sanford filled the doorway, his face going white as he saw what they had found. “That's not mine!” he exclaimed. “I never use that stuff!"
“Smart pushers never do,” Church said grimly.
“Pushers? No!” the young man said, backing into the main room. “Oh, no, no, no—not again!” and he slumped onto the couch.
Church said, “See what else you can find."
Brandy returned to the kitchen drawers. The top one held cheap flatware, some utensils, and a pair of potholders. She shoved it closed and went to the second, more unwilling than Church to perform the arrest. Rory Sanford wasn't going anywhere.
The large bottom drawer held dishtowels, but there was something under them. Lifting the towels, Brandy beheld four items: a small camcorder, a videotape, a long-handled cooking or barbecue fork with two sharp curved tines, and a butcher knife.
Brandy gasped. “Church! Oh, my God, come here!"
“What is it?” Church asked as Brandy carefully held up the recorder with a gloved hand.
Rory Sanford looked up. “That's not mine,” he said. “How did that get here?"
Brandy carefully upended the videotape in the drawer, so she could read the label without smudging any prints on it. It was neatly typed: Wedding Day—Harry Davis and Melody Mather.
* * * *
They arrested Rory Sanford for possession of a controlled substance. Murder charges could come later; neither Brandy nor Church was about to risk having the arrest declared invalid, so they stuck to what it said in the warrant, and let him call his attorney.
Sanford was now in police custody. If he were the psychopath who had murdered Carrie Wyman at the last full moon, he would have no chance to strike again. Sanford was perfectly cooperative, simply denying every criminal charge in a monotone.
He admitted that he had not been able to get in to see Middle School Principal Alfred Trenton on the day of the assembly. When the secretary turned him away, he claimed that he left the school and walked to his apartment. There he ate lunch, then walked to the morgue. He knew of no one who could alibi him from the time he had left the principal's office until he arrived at the morgue.
He insisted he did not know where the pot or the money had come from, or the camcorder either. Someone was trying to make him look like a thief and a drug pusher.
By the end of an hour of grilling, both Brandy and Church had noticed something very peculiar. They adjourned to the corridor. Rory sat slumped, the weight of the world on his shoulders. “The camcorder means nothing to him,” said Church. “He doesn't connect it to murder, only to theft."
“He's only concerned about the drug charges. But Church, there was a knife in that drawer, too, and—a fork with the kind of prongs to make puncture wounds. Either this is a frame good enough for the Mona Lisa, or he's blacked out the murder. If he did kill Carrie, I don't think he knows it.” Brandy tried to ease the tension in her shoulders. “I need a cup of coffee. How ‘bout you?"
They went into the squad room, and Brandy ducked into the ladies’ room for a moment. When she returned, headed for the coffee maker, she found Church confronting a livid Dr. Troy Sanford.
“What's this about you arresting my grandson?” the coroner demanded. “Drug pushing? Murder? Are you crazy?"
“Doc, we're just doing our jobs,” Church said in his most reasonable voice. “And he hasn't been charged with murder yet. When we see what the evidence tells us—"
Just then Dan Martin entered the squad room, and Brandy remembered that they were supposed to go out to dinner. Was it that late? She looked up at the clock: 4:52pm.
Dan waved to her and took a chair by the water cooler, indicating that he would wait. Torn between disappointment at having a pleasant evening spoiled again, and the excitement of today's arrest, Brandy was about to go explain to him when Doc Sanford burst out, “You know Rory didn't murder Carrie Wyman! Did you ask him about the puncture wounds? We held back that evidence to catch the real killer, remember? You can bet my grandson don't know about saliva traces in puncture wounds!"
The man's words rang off the walls. Dan Martin could not help but hear, and Brandy saw his face twist in revulsion. He rose, clearly shaken.
“Dan, I'm sorry,” said Brandy. “We've finally made an arrest in Carrie's murder. I'll be tied up for hours."
“It's all right,” he said. “You—go on with your work.” He was backing toward the door. “I'll call you,” he added unconvincingly, turned, and hurried away.
Well, thought Brandy, that's the end of that. Dan had held out against her work longer than most men, but it always got to them in the end. Why did it still hurt?
She went back to where Church was trying to calm Dr. Sanford. “Doc,” she said, “we're just questioning Rory at this point. But I have to tell you it looks bad."
“It is bad,” Church added. “I'm sorry, Dr. Sanford, but—you always say blood will tell. That knife in Rory's kitchen drawer. It was wiped clean of prints, and had been washed, but not thoroughly enough. We found traces of blood—Carrie Wyman's blood type."
“It's a frame!” said Dr. Sanford. “Let me talk to Rory. Or you ask him about Carrie's wounds."
“Doc,” Brandy said, “Rory was at her autopsy. He does know about the puncture wounds. It was when you reported the saliva in the wounds that ... he ran out of the room."
* * * *
Rory Sanford was charged with the murder of Carrie Wyman and sent over to the jail. By that time it was 7:30pm, so he didn't have to be transferred until 7:30 the next morning. Church and Brandy sat down to study their preliminary findings before deciding whether to question Sanford further.
Dr. Sanford had calmed down, and used his authority as coroner to accompany his grandson to the jail. The two detectives were glad to see the man take hold of his emotions again. He was usually so sharp and spry that they forgot he was in his seventies.
Church studied the fingerprints they had taken. “Most are Sanford's, of course, with a few strays that could be guests, landlord, anybody who's been in there recently."
“Anything to show we may have the wrong suspect?” Brandy asked.
“Not much. By the time the money was thawed out of the ice cube tray, it was washed clean."
“$1200,” said Brandy. That certainly wasn't mad money.
“No prints on the marijuana bags, like they'd been handled by someone wearing gloves. Even if Sanford hadn't opened them yet,” Church mused, “you'd still expect his prints on the outside."
“Maybe he was super-cautious,” suggested Brandy. “What I find odd is the drawer where we found the video camera and the murder weapons. There were no fingerprints on any of the items, and none on the drawer handle, even on the inside."
“Gloves again, or else a thorough cleaning when the stuff was put away—but the murder was more than three weeks ago,” said Church. “Assuming Sanford did it, why would he put the evidence in a drawer and never open it again? He never needed a clean dishtowel? He never looked to see that the stuff was still there? Why didn't he go out to the lake and throw it off the bridge? What if he is telling the truth, and this is a frame?"
But then he added, “Sanford's the coroner's grandson. His granddaddy raised him after his parents died. He grew up around forensic reports. He might know to wipe prints off the inside of the drawer handle."
“To the contrary,” said Brandy, “he'd know his prints should have been on that handle if he was going about his daily business without knowing items were planted in that drawer. If he were the murderer, he'd get rid of the evidence. He had over three weeks."
“But,” said Church, “obsessive murderers keep things associated with their crimes, both souvenirs of the victims and the same murder weapons, to use again. And you're forgetting the kids, Brandy. How likely is a frame to include kids?"
Not very. But, “Rory didn't react to the tape or the camcorder."
“If he's a psychopath, he could have blanked the murder out of his mind,” said Church. He pushed his chair back, tilted it dangerously as he spoke. “We need a psychiatric examination. I saw a case in Chicago, serial murderer, all the evidence in the basement of his house, but he didn't remember a thing. Sanford's been under a helluva lot of stress. We don't know everything that happened to him in prison."
He let the chair legs down with a thud, and added, “Consider this: Sanford can't get anywhere in life no matter how he tries. His parents are killed in an auto accident when he's ten years old, leaving his grandparents to raise him. When he's fifteen his beloved grandmother dies. This kid is living stressed. But he goes to college, becomes a teacher, has his grandfather proud as punch—and he can't take it."
“Why not?” asked Brandy.
“Because all his life he's been told by the community that he's nobody, another worthless, shiftless Sanford. He doesn't deserve even modest success. Consciously, he feels good about himself. Subconsciously, unconsciously, he sabotages himself by embezzling and gets sent to prison. The good kid is stuck in there with all those hardened criminals for a crime he can't remember committing!"
“You think it's a case of multiple personalities?” asked Brandy.
“Possibility,” said Church. “If so, Rory is absolutely right that he's been framed. What he doesn't realize is that he did it himself."
Brandy sighed. “He'll have to be examined by a psychiatrist. Just in case your theory should prove true, I wouldn't want him out walking the streets again with the next full moon coming up—” she glanced at the calendar, “—Saturday night."
Once again, Brandy had missed dinner. Although she was ravenous by now, she stopped at the jail, where it was no surprise to find Dr. Sanford. The only comfort she had to offer was that there would be no more questioning tonight.
“Come on, Doc,” she said. “I'll bet you haven't eaten either. Let me buy you a hamburger. And you need to get some rest, ‘cause if I know you, you'll be here to see Rory off in the morning."
They went to McDonald's. There were few customers at 9:41pm on a Wednesday. Doc Sanford was quiet, looking very much his age tonight, but over a Big Mac he perked up enough to say in a conspiratorial tone, “It's Callahan. I know it is. The drugs are the connection—we all know he's getting drug money, even if the police can't prove it."
“Doc, there've been suspicions about Judge Callahan's drug connections before, but no one's ever proved a thing. As for murder—that's really not his style, is it?"
The coroner stared at her. “His father murdered my sister,” he said grimly. “They passed it off as suicide, but he killed her no matter which of ’em pulled that trigger. Blood will tell. All Callahans are alike, none of ’em any damn good! I won't let him kill my boy, Brandy."
Brandy could do nothing more than sit and listen to the old man's ramblings. She had never seen him like this before, not even when Rory had been convicted of embezzling. Age was catching up, making him tired, incoherent, obsessed.
“Murdered Cindy Lou,” muttered Sanford. “Now he's tryin’ t’ kill Rory, wipe all us Sanfords off the face of the Earth!"
“Doc,” Brandy said gently, “it was Judge Callahan's father who was married to your sister."
The old man frowned, then nodded. “Yeah. But L. J.'s the spittin’ image of his daddy. You'da thought he'd a turned out different, wouldn't you? He was like a whole different person when he was a kid. No one accepted him. His daddy hurt his mom, finally killed her. But he grew up into a Callahan anyway, didn't he? Blood will tell, Brandy. You mark my words. Callahan's gonna get his, ‘cause in the end, blood will always tell!"
Chapter Nine—Confession
When Brandy got home, she found a message from Dan on her answering machine. When she returned his call, he told her, “We need to talk, some time and place where we won't be interrupted. There are things I need to tell you—soon."
“I'm on duty tomorrow and Friday, but unless some case breaks late I'll have the evenings free."
“Will you be on call?"
“Dan, what's this about? If you want to break up—"
“No!” Then, more calmly, “No, Brandy, but if our relationship is to grow as I hope it will—there are things I must explain. It's—complicated. And it's important that you don't get called away in the middle."
“You gonna tell me your life story?"
“Yes. But not over the telephone."
“I have Saturday off,” she said. “Come for lunch."
There was a pause before he said, “All right, Brandy. I'll see you at noon on Saturday."
The next day Brandy told Church what Doc Sanford had said. “He claims Judge Callahan's father murdered Doc's sister. Have you ever heard about that?"
“No, but sometimes even if you're paranoid there are people out to get you. You remember the Meerschaum case?"
A chop shop operating out of the biggest auto body shop in town. “Yeah, I remember it."
“And the Dennis case?"
“Yeah.” An automobile dealership accused of odometer rollbacks on used cars.
“The Honeywell case?"
“That happened while I was in college—but that wasn't your case, either, Church."
“I know, but it has something in common with the others."
“A dean accused of running a student prostitution ring? What's that got to do with automobile scams?"
“Not the cars,” Church prompted.