Disturbing the Dead (14 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Rudy O’Dell had been missing for more than twenty-four hours and neither the State Police vehicle stops nor the county deputies’ rounds of his relatives had turned up a trace of him.

When the deputies gathered in the conference room in mid-afternoon, Tom told them, “I think O’Dell’s holed up somewhere in the county. He’s stayed close to home all these years, and I doubt he’ll strike out on his own now.”

“His mother’s real proud of her boy for what he did to you,” Dennis Murray said. The sergeant, on Tom’s left, nudged his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose with a fingertip. “But she’s worried about Troy Shackleford getting to Rudy. She said Rudy’ll be fine as long as he can steer clear of Troy.”

Sheriff Willingham, on Tom’s right, grunted and said, “Everybody seems to feel that way about Shackleford.”

“But Pauline’s sister Bonnie and her husband say they don’t think Shackleford had anything to do with Pauline’s death,” Tom said. “They want me to believe O’Dell did it. The whole family acts as if they’re scared O’Dell might come after one of them now.” He shook his head. “We’ll get answers when we find him. Start searching sheds, barns, abandoned houses. Ask permission before you go on anybody’s property. Quit at sundown, then start again in the morning. This guy’s likely to shoot at anybody he sees coming, and I don’t want y’all going into a dangerous situation in the dark.”

Willingham cleared his throat. “I got a call this morning from the guy that owns the Indian Mountain property. He wants his construction crew to get back to work clearing the land. He wants the foundation for the house in by March.”

“It’s a crime scene,” Tom said.

“Well, now, he’s got a point,” Willingham said. “It’s not like there was a murder up there yesterday and we’re finding a lot of fresh evidence.”

“The search team’s still finding human bones.” Tom made an effort to keep his voice level. “I’m not letting anybody destroy those women’s remains or bury them forever.”

“Tom—” Willingham broke off and heaved a loud sigh. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll let him know. He’s not gonna be happy.”

“He’ll survive.” Tom pushed his chair back and stood. Every movement intensified the ache in his arm, but the pain was losing its edge, which he took to mean healing had set in. “Sorry about the overtime, guys.”

“You’re working as hard as the rest of us,” Grady Duncan said. He grinned as he stood. “Anybody but a Bridger would be in bed with a gunshot wound. Go on home and change your Kotex and get some rest.”

Laughing, most of the deputies filed out. Brandon hung back.

Tom didn’t want anyone else to hear what he had to say to the sheriff. “Would you go call the lab for me?” he asked Brandon. “They promised this morning they’d put a rush on the bones, and I want to make sure they’re following through.”

“Yes, sir,” Brandon barked, the words sounding like a salute. “I’ll get right on it.” Tom could see him fighting to hold back an ear-to-ear grin. Giving orders to the crime lab was a responsibility that hadn’t come his way before.

“Don’t be too rough on them,” Tom said to his back. When Brandon was gone, Tom turned to Willingham. “Shackleford and O’Dell look pretty good as suspects, but I’m not going after them blindly and risk overlooking other people who had motives. Her own relatives, and the McClures—”

“The McClures? Good lord. I grant you they’re snobs and Pauline had her problems with them, but kill her? I doubt it.”

“I’m not ruling anybody out, and I don’t think my dad did either. He must have put together a lot of very personal information about all these people. But what’s happened to it? Why am I finding big gaps in the case file?”

Willingham drew back, his jaw forming a rigid line, his eyes wary. He’d snapped into fight or flight mode and seemed to be leaning toward flight. If he tried to walk out without answering, Tom was ready to block the way. The old man was hiding something Tom needed to know, and Tom wanted to find out
why
even more than
what
.

In the end, Willingham chose to stand his ground and bluster his way through. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What gaps? How can you tell something’s missing if you don’t know what it is?”

“I do know. Some of it, anyway. Why can’t I find a single word in the records about Robert McClure claiming Mary Lee isn’t Adam’s child?”

“Oh, God almighty.” Willingham sighed. “It’s got nothing to do with the case—”

“The hell it doesn’t,” Tom said. “It gives more than one person a motive. And I don’t see anything in the file about Pauline’s relationships with other men. Ed McClure, for example.” He couldn’t bring himself to mention his father, and that made him feel as weak as the sheriff.

“Nothing but nasty gossip,” Willingham protested.

“No,” Tom said. “It’s what we call a lead in a homicide investigation.”

Willingham’s face darkened to a dangerous shade of red. “You’d better let me hear a little more respect in your voice. I’m your superior officer, and don’t you forget it.”

Tom choked back an angry reply. This wasn’t the way to get what he wanted. “If I’m going to solve Pauline’s murder, if I’m going to find out who the second woman was, I need to know everything. How much is missing from the file and what happened to it?”

Willingham turned away, rubbing a hand across his mouth and jaw. From experience Tom knew the sheriff wanted to pull his thoughts together, formulate an answer. It drove Tom crazy, but all he could do was wait out the process and hope he’d get the truth.

At last Willingham spoke, without looking at Tom. “I did it myself. After your dad died.”

“What?” Tom stepped around to face the sheriff. “Why?”

Willingham wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I didn’t want sensitive stuff laying around.”

“It’s a criminal case file. It’s supposed to contain sensitive information. Why would you—” Tom searched for a word. “—
cull
it? You can’t erase what happened, what people said, by destroying a few pieces of paper.”

“I’m not going to argue with you about it.” Willingham made for the door.

In three quick strides Tom got between the sheriff and the doorway. “What did you take out?”

Willingham threw up his hands in surrender. “You already guessed it. Robert McClure thinking Mary Lee wasn’t Adam’s daughter.”

“A lot of people already know Robert believes that. What harm does it do to have it in the case file?”

The sheriff looked back at him in stubborn silence.

“Tell me, for God’s sake! Don’t you want those murders solved? What the hell are you holding back?”

Willingham took a long moment to answer. “Robert’s right. She’s not Adam’s daughter.”

“Then who— How did— What—” The words fell over each other as they tumbled out of Tom’s mouth.

Willingham raised a hand to stop him. “I don’t know who her real father is—or was. All I know is what your dad wrote in his notes, and I didn’t read them till after he died.”

“What else was in his notes that I haven’t seen?”
Do I really want to know?
Yes. He had to know.

“He said Robert was right but didn’t have the proof.” Willingham’s eyes held a weary sadness. “Your dad always wanted to protect the girl from Robert, but I didn’t understand till I read the file how much damage the s.o.b. could do to her. I’m not handing him any ammunition. That’s all I can tell you, I swear.”

Tom stepped away, turned his back on the sheriff. Through the window he saw starlings swoop across the pewter sky, the massive flock expanding and contracting like an airborne school of fish. Why had his father cared so much about Mary Lee? Was she more to him than simply the daughter of a woman he…Tom stopped short of forming the words for what Pauline had been to his father. Mrs. Barker had said John Bridger visited Pauline during the last two or three years of her life. But had their relationship actually begun a long time before?

***

Tom drove through the close-in neighborhoods south of Mountainview and into a landscape of pure country, fields and woods and occasional farmhouses set far back from the road. Ravens picked at the remains of a cornfield that would soon be buried under snow. He drove this route every day, from home to work and back, and he’d let Sheriff Willingham and Brandon believe he was headed home now. But he planned a detour to see Ed McClure. According to the maid he’d spoken to on the phone, “the missus” was at a Junior League committee meeting, but “the doctor” was at home, working with his plants.

Ed and Natalie McClure’s property wasn’t far from Tom’s, but he lived on a ten-acre sheep farm and they owned a hundred acres of riverside land. Most of it was planted with the apple trees Ed used in his hybridizing projects. Pauline’s house was about five miles from Ed and Natalie’s place. Her body had ended up on a mountaintop at the opposite end of the county.

A long driveway wound toward the McClure house. In summer, the oaks lining the drive would create an oasis of shade, but today leafless branches arched against a deep gray sky. Tom pulled into a brick-paved parking area that circled a fountain, now drained for winter and collecting snow. The spacious house was a classic plantation manor, built of white brick with columns along a low porch.

At the front door the McClures’ maid, a middle-aged woman in a ridiculous blue uniform with frilly cuffs and collar, gave Tom directions to the orchard.

He retrieved his hat from the cruiser to keep the increasingly heavy snow off his head. Pulling up his jacket collar against the wind, he walked around the house, passed a patio and a covered swimming pool, and struck off down a flagstone path through a screen of evergreens. He skirted a tennis court and a stable. These people, he was beginning to think, had too much money and too much leisure time. Beyond the stable loomed a massive greenhouse. Snow coated the roof, and the walls were so steamed-up Tom couldn’t see the plants inside.

He found Ed McClure at the near end of the apple orchard, squinting at a thermometer mounted on a tree trunk. Beneath the tree sat a square, waist-high object swaddled in a blue blanket. More of these objects, all wrapped, were evenly spaced along the rows of trees. Bee hives? They looked the right shape and size. Tom had honeybees on his farm and he’d never noticed them needing blankets to survive winter.

“Dr. McClure,” he said as he approached.

Ed spun around. “My God,” he said, “I guess you really do have Indian blood. I didn’t even hear you.” He could have been mistaken for a local farmer, in his old wool coat, tweed cap, and scuffed boots.

Tom pulled off a glove and stuck out his hand. “How’re you doing?”

In response, he got a gloved hand and an indifferent grip.

“Your bees coming through okay?”

“I hope so. I depend on them.” Ed cast a distracted glance at the nearest hive.

“I’m hoping you can clear up a few things about your relationship with Pauline.”

He expected a pretense of ignorance about his meaning, but Ed said, “I’ve been wondering when you’d show up.”

Without altering his conversational tone, Tom asked, “Did you two have an affair?”

No surprise at the question. “Our relationship ended long before she…went missing.” Ed’s sigh caused an eddy in the downward stream of snow. “I still want to think of it that way—she simply disappeared. I can’t believe she was murdered. And in such a vicious way.”

If he was acting, he was good at it. “Murder’s always vicious,” Tom said. “No matter what the method is.”

Ed nodded and stared into the distance, where the river flowed dark and wide. “This has been the saddest week of my life.”

Cold numbed Tom’s cheeks and earlobes but he didn’t want to break Ed’s mournful, reminiscent mood by suggesting they take shelter. “Were you in love with her?”

“Yes.” The word carried a heavy burden of grief and loneliness.

“When did you fall in love with her?”

Ed didn’t answer for a long moment. The silence around them was complete. Snow fell on a darkening world without birdsong or the noises of human activity. At last Ed said, “I was in love with her the instant I first saw her. When she started working at the bank.”

“Were you married then?”

“Less than a year. Natalie was pregnant with our first son.”

“And Pauline married your brother,” Tom said. “But your feelings for her never changed?”

“No.”

“You were a married man with two children.”
And so was my father.

“You don’t have to remind me of my obligations,” Ed said.

“Was she in love with you?”

“At one time I thought so, but— No. In the end she made it very clear that she didn’t feel the same way I did.”

“You were hurt. Did you want to hurt her too?”

Ed’s face went hard with anger. “I didn’t kill Pauline.”

“If a person’s pushed far enough—”

“I would never have harmed her in any way,” Ed said, his voice rising. “I’m not capable of it.”

Tom stepped closer, hoping to see Ed’s face more clearly in the dusky light. “I know Mary Lee isn’t Adam’s daughter. Are you her father?”

Ed took a step back.

“A simple yes or no, Dr. McClure.”