Consider the Crows (25 page)

Parkhurst moved closer. Susan positioned the notebook so he could see better. She kept skimming. His breath brushed her ear. On September 9, Lynnelle packed up her clothes and her sleeping bag and her dog and moved to Boulder where she poked into the life of Gerald Egersund.

Parkhurst tapped the page. “Here we come to Egersund's kid.”

September 13

I have a brother! Neat! Neat! Neat! His name is Michael.

Susan nodded, and ran her gaze down the page. Lynnelle found another secretarial job and started hanging around campus, frequenting the student union and the library, chatting with students, deliberately placing herself in Michael's path.

September 24

Today I met my brother. I like him! I like him! I didn't tell him. It's fun knowing things nobody else knows.

“Indeed she liked him,” Susan said. “Wrote down every word he said, where they were at the time, and what he was wearing.”

At the end of November, Lynnelle loaded up her VW again and came to Hampstead. Having finally found her mother, she was suddenly hesitant and afraid, and couldn't bring herself to confront Carena Egersund. She looked for a place to live and ran across the Creighton place.

Found a house to live in. All by itself out here. Been abandoned. Looks lonely. Just like me. I figure I fit right in. Ha ha. Plenty of room for Alexa. There's a creek and the woods are great.

She settled in, explored the woods with the dog and spent long periods of time by the creek. On the tenth of December she got the job at Emerson.

Clerk-typist. Not very grand. But I can be near My Mother.

She began to watch Carena Egersund, follow her, drive by her house periodically.

Parkhurst raised an eyebrow. “Maybe the good teacher was up to something she didn't want known.”

“Like what?” Susan asked skeptically and read aloud of Lynnelle's friendship with Edie Vogel.

She's nice. I like her. We talk. She told me about her little girl. Kidnapped by her ex-husband! How could anybody do that! She's really worried all the time. I wish there was some way I could help her. She says I help just by being her friend. She's hired this private detective. It costs a lot of money, but she says it doesn't matter how much it costs. All she wants is her little girl back. I kind of told her about Herbert.

“Kind of,” Parkhurst muttered.

And she told me about the house, the man who killed himself. I can sort of understand. I've felt that way. You just think you can't go on.

Scanning again, Susan quickly ran past general thoughts about people Lynnelle knew, pep talks with underlined sentences berating herself for not having the courage to approach My Mother. She mused about her friendship with Julie and letting Julie use the house to be with Nick.

What would Julie's mother do if she knew!

“Motive of sorts for young Julie,” Parkhurst said.

“Maybe.” Susan shook her head dubiously. “Nice polite child. Well brought up. Life very much regulated by her mother. Doesn't feel right.”

Parkhurst snorted. “Feelings yet.”

Jan. 14

Today Lexi chased a fox. Good thing she didn't catch it. It probably would have beaten her up. I saw Julie's father down by the creek. With a woman. He seemed like such a nice man. I was wishing I had a father like him. I don't think I'll tell Julie.

Susan tapped the page with a fingernail. “This a pattern with Keith?”

“Surprises the hell out of me. I'd think he'd need to ask permission.”

Herbert found me. He won't leave me alone. Shelley promised.

“Good old Herbert,” Parkhurst said. “Doesn't give up easily, does he?”

I'm afraid Nick is keeping drugs here somewhere. I won't allow it!

“What about Nick?” Susan asked.

Parkhurst took in a long breath. “Hard to say. I can see him mad at the girl and offing her, but how did Audrey get mixed up in it?”

“Good question. She must have known something about Lynnelle's murder. What it could be or how she could know it is another good question.”

“Easily answered if Keith did the killings. Get rid of Lynnelle and his wife and live happily ever after with girlfriend Terry Bryant. Works the same way for Terry. Fits even better.”

Susan nodded reluctantly. She hoped it wasn't that way. Not Terry, not Jen's mom, but wanting didn't make it so. Turning the page, she read,

I found a secret hiding place! It had this note in it.

The note was a sheet of typing paper, yellowed with age that had one sentence printed neatly in the center.

I wish it could have been different.

Susan's throat tightened as she read the calm desolation in the single sentence.

“By damn, a suicide note,” Parkhurst said.

“Did you know him? Lowell Creighton.”

“Before my time. Poor bastard.”

I feel so sorry for him. I know about when things are so awful and you can't stand it and there's no way out.

The last entry was dated February 13.

Herbert was here again, all sloppy and crying and promising and pretending to love me. I hate him! I hate him! If he doesn't leave me alone I'm going to ask Mr. McKinnon to get him arrested.

“Let's make it Herbert,” Parkhurst said. “I'd like that slime-bag locked up.”

“There's the little matter of Audrey.”

“We'll think of something.”

Closing the notebook, she brought her knees up and rested her shoulders against the hearth. Parkhurst did the same. The silence grew heavy. She was aware of his quiet breathing and noticed she had adjusted her own breathing to match his. The clock on the mantel ponderously struck twice.

He looked at it, jumped up and shrugged on his jacket. “I think I better split.” He left abruptly. A second or two later there was a soft tap on the door. She opened it.

“Sorry to bother you, ma'am,” he said with a dry smile, “but I don't seem to have a car.”

19

T
HE FIRST TIME
the mayor called on Friday morning, Susan was in the shower and she dripped on the carpet while she listened.

“What the hell is going on? Audrey Kalazar is an important person in this community. How could this happen? Is this the kind of image we want to send out to the world? The vice-chancellor of Emerson College! Murdered and stuffed in a well. It'll be on the news. In the papers. What are you doing about it? I want it taken care of immediately. You understand? Immediately.” He faded away muttering threats and regrets and the possibility of her quick dismissal.

Not if I can help it, she thought grimly. I might not want to spend forever here, but you won't give me the axe. I'll leave when I'm damn good and ready.

The second time he called, she was munching toast and she listened to it all over again while she watched the kitten dip a paw in her coffee. The awful part was, she halfway agreed with him, felt a sense of responsibility.

“Don't forget the fair opens this afternoon,” he said with an abrupt change in subject. “At least make sure that comes off without a hitch.”

“I'm sure there won't be any problems.” George was taking care of all that; he had everything under control.

When the mayor hung up, she dumped the coffee in the sink and headed for the hospital.

The snow had stopped, but the streets were full of ice and slush and that meant on top of everything else, the day would be full of fender benders the officers would have to sort out.

*   *   *

Owen Fisher, in surgical greens, was just completing the external exam of Audrey Kalazar's body, and dictating his findings into a cassette recorder, when Susan entered the autopsy room. He switched it off and looked at her.

“The settling of the blood along the right side of the body indicates she'd been dead for some hours before she was dropped in the well,” he said. “Primary cause of death appears to be blunt trauma, the mechanism most likely subcranial hemorrhage.”

Susan tried to take shallow breaths through her mouth to avoid the full impact of the odors, but it didn't help a whole lot.

“Notice the dilation of the right pupil,” he said. “She was alive when she was hit.”

“Was death immediate?”

He nodded. “Nearly instantaneous. Not much clotting. No vomiting or bite marks in her mouth. Nothing that suggests seizures.”

He made an incision from ear to ear across the scalp and peeled it away, front and back, to expose the skull. The high-pitched shriek of the saw tearing through bone made Susan's teeth ache. When he turned the saw off, the sound still buzzed through her head. Neatly, he removed the top of the skull and thoughtfully studied the surface of the brain before he switched on the recorder. “Skull fracture with associated subdural hematoma.”

With both hands he lifted out the brain and weighed it, then made thin slices, examined them under a strong light and put samples in bottles. He made a Y-shaped incision and opened the chest and abdominal areas, then removed each organ, described it and weighed it, sliced each one and put samples in bottles. Except for the very beginnings of arterial sclerosis, Audrey had been in good health. He scooped out the stomach contents and bagged them for the lab.

Susan was very interested in what the lab might find in its analysis of stomach contents. She knew from talking with Keith—assuming he wasn't lying—when Audrey had last eaten. The lab results would tell approximately how many hours had passed before she was killed; that might be the closest Susan would get to time of death.

When Dr. Fisher had switched off the recorder, Susan asked about the weapon.

“Right-angle corner, heavy enough to cause the skull damage with one hit. Smooth. Hard enough that there was no fragmentation. She was struck one blow, from the front, probably by someone right-handed.”

When Susan left the hospital, she drew in great breaths of fresh cold air. Not a whole lot of help; that particular smell stuck with you. She lit a cigarette to try to cover it, but it was still there, way back in her throat.

At her office, she yanked the blinds all the way up to let in the watery sunshine, stacked the reports of the two murders on her desk, got herself a mug of coffee and started at the beginning. How did these murders fit together?

Nick Salvatierra and his drug peddling. Lynnelle suspected. Did Audrey also know?

Stepfather Herbert. Maybe had a reason to kill Lynnelle, but Susan didn't know what it might be and she could see no reason to off Audrey. Even if somehow Audrey knew about the sexual abuse—and that was unlikely unless Lynnelle told her; even more unlikely—no reason to kill Audrey. In Susan's experience, sex offenders simply denied, they didn't kill the accuser.

Keith Kalazar and Terry Bryant, Jen's mom. That made more sense than anything else, but for Jen's sake Susan hoped it wouldn't turn out that way.

Carena Egersund and all this business of the illegitimate child.

Susan shoved both hands through her hair. From what they had so far, she might as well put all these names in a hat and draw one. Bloody hell, what am I not seeing?

Shuffling through paper, she found her cigarettes and lit one, leaned back to blow smoke at the ceiling. A spider was working a web on the light fixture; most inept spider she'd ever seen. It clumsily examined the site, then fell three feet straight down, clung to the thread by one leg and flailed the others frantically in the air. Laboriously, it climbed back up the thread and fell again.

“I know just how you feel,” she said.

A tap sounded on the door. “Am I interrupting something?” Hazel, with a white carnation in her auburn hair, came in carrying a square plastic container.

“Not so's you'd notice,” Susan said.

“Here.” Hazel plopped the container on the desk. “You skipped lunch again.”

Susan looked at her watch; three-thirty. Eating wasn't something she felt much like doing after watching an autopsy.

“Eat it. It's good for you,” Hazel said with motherly firmness.

Susan moved a handful of reports and the budget stared blank-faced up at her. With two murders on her hands, it was way down on her list. Try to work on it at home this evening, she thought and removed the lid of the container; carrots, cauliflower pieces, two apples and a pear, a small dish of almonds. She picked up a carrot stick and crunched a bite. Right about now the mayor should be all set to give his speech for the opening of the fair. The one that started out, “We are a community, a fine community with caring in our hearts,” and ended with “helping those less fortunate among us.”

She decided to skip it and read reports while she munched through Hazel's offering. As the afternoon went on, the sun gave up its feeble attempts and let the clouds take over. She switched on the desk lamp.

The phone rang, startling her and she snatched the receiver. “Yes, Hazel.”

“The mayor's on the line. He sounds upset.”

He was not only upset, he was sputtering. “Get yourself over here! Now!”

“Mr. Bakover—”

“The community center.” He hung up with a bang.

She pushed a button to get Hazel. “Where's George?”

“We've had a slew of minor traffic incidents. He went to help.”

*   *   *

The parking lot at the side of the brick building was almost full; the Helping Hand Fair was one of those not-to-be-missed occasions. Some considerate volunteers had shoveled the lot clear of snow, leaving the mounds heaped along the curb.

Everything looked quiet and normal. Whatever the problem was, it hadn't spilled outside. For a moment, she hesitated between using the rear door, or trudging around to the front. The rear, she decided when she slid from the pickup and the wind hit her; the rear door was closer, and the temperature had dropped again. A solid blanket of clouds completely obscured the sun and the wind was fierce. People were going in and out the back door and none of them seemed concerned with anything more than getting out of the cold. She slipped and slid across the walk and reached the door just as two teenage girls, bundled up in parkas, were coming out. Each held a small shiny-decorated box and they were poking through them with fits of giggles.