Authors: Donna Andrews
His face was impassive. More than impassive—grim. I didn’t expect him to leap up, grinning, to announce that he’d found some bit of evidence that would exonerate Mr. Throckmorton. But I was watching for some small expression of triumph or interest.
After the photography he began swabbing things, and apparently examining every speck of dirt through his magnifying glass.
And then he stood up and stared at the plywood for several minutes, frowning.
Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Put us out of our misery,” I said. “What have you found?”
Chapter 14
“Not much,” Horace said. “Which isn’t the worst possible outcome. I haven’t found anything good, but I haven’t found anything bad either. Just a big lot of nothing. No visible bloodstains on the floor—which isn’t surprising; since she was shot from the direction of the barricade, the heavy blood spatter went the other way. No sign that the barricade has been removed any time lately, but also nothing to prove or disprove that anyone opened the plywood.”
He went back to his satchel, removed a spray canister, and began spraying the floor just inside the barrier. Then he pulled out his digital camera and held it at the ready.
“Luminal,” he said. “Shows bloodstains. Can somebody get the lights?”
Mr. Throckmorton raced down the stairs and hurried to a bank of switches along one of the side walls. He flipped all the switches and the basement suddenly became profoundly dark. We all stared in silence for a few moments. Horace clicked away with his digital camera.
“On TV, the bloodstains give off this weird blue glow,” Rob said.
“In real life, too,” Horace said. “You can turn the lights back on, Phinny.”
“No glow,” Rob said.
“This is good?” Mr. Throckmorton asked.
“It’s not bad,” Horace said. “If there had been blood and you’d washed it off, there’d still be enough to fluoresce when it combined with the luminal. Unless you used bleach, in which case the whole area would glow blue. No signs of any blood spatter on this side of your barricade and no signs of a recent hasty cleanup. But as I said, I wasn’t really expecting any. The area just outside the barricade was clean, and so was the outside of the plywood, as far as I could tell through the barricade.”
Mr. Throckmorton sighed.
Horace reached up to unfasten the latch and pulled open the plywood doors.
“That you, Horace?” Aida Morris loomed up on the other side of the barricade.
“Yes,” Horace said. “I’m going to test outside of the plywood barrier for blood spatter.”
“Test it how?” Aida said. “You can see with your own eyes that there isn’t any.”
“Trace blood spatter,” Horace added.
“Hmph.” Clearly Aida didn’t share Horace’s enthusiasm for forensics. But she did watch with close attention as he repeated his luminal routine.
Rob and Mr. Throckmorton had been hanging back. But on hearing that there was no visible blood spatter on the door, they crowded forward. I stepped back so they could watch Horace’s luminal routine at close range.
“No blood on the outside of the plywood either.” His tone was glum.
“Of course not,” Aida said. “It all went the other way.”
She stood back and gestured at where Colleen Brown had fallen. I couldn’t help looking, and realized with surprise how very much blood there was on that part of the floor and even on the wall. Perhaps Brown’s scarlet-clad form had distracted me from realizing this before. And—
I heard a small thud. Mr. Throckmorton was lying in a crumpled heap on the floor to my left.
“Oh, dear,” I said. “Mr. Throckmorton has fainted.”
“I’ll take care of it!” Rob said. “Hang in there, Phinny!”
He dashed down the steps and over to Mr. Throckmorton, threw the small, limp form over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and threaded his way through the file cabinets and boxes back to the other end of the room. I followed to make sure both of them were all right. Rob probably would be, now that Mr. Throckmorton had given him an excuse to flee the area near the blood spatters.
He shouldered aside a curtain hanging between two high sets of shelves to reveal what must be Mr. Throckmorton’s sleeping quarters. A twin-sized air mattress, neatly made up with clean white sheets, rested on some kind of platform—probably more boxes of files—while the shelves that surrounded it on three sides were filled to overflowing with books—mostly American history, at least from what I could see from my vantage point just outside the alcove.
“Here you go!” Rob exclaimed in a cheerful tone as he deposited Mr. Throckmorton on the air mattress. “Do you think I should throw some cold water over him?”
“No, I think you should fetch a glass of cold water and offer it to him when he comes to,” I said. “And keep him down at this end of the basement.”
“Will do!” Rob might be squeamish, but he was also resilient.
I wound my way back to the other end. Horace had moved on to taking pictures of the gun, which was still wedged inside the barrier.
“Mr. Throckmorton okay?” Aida asked.
I nodded.
“Aida, can you reach the gun from out there?” Horace asked.
Aida squatted down and tried. Several times.
“I could if I didn’t mind shredding my hand on that razor wire,” she said. “But not easily.”
“Whereas it’s very easy to reach from here,” Horace said. “The wire’s not as dense on this side.”
He stuck his gloved hand through a gap and snagged the gun on the first try.
“Is that important?” Aida asked.
“If you wanted to throw the gun through the barrier, and realized it had stuck there, why not pick it up and throw it again, if you could reach it?” Horace said. “That could help Phinny.”
“Of course, a really sneaky person might deliberately leave it there so we’d think just that,” I said. “I don’t think that proves anything.”
“Assuming the killer’s devious enough to have thought that through,” Aida said. “And besides, from what I hear, he had to make tracks if he didn’t want to get caught red-handed.”
Horace nodded, and put the gun in an evidence bag.
“So,” Horace asked, in a nonchalant voice. “Are we opening up the barricade soon?”
“Not that I know of,” Aida said. “Chief told me to keep everyone the heck away from it for now. And out of this room, so no one would see you if you needed to open the plywood. You finished? We should shut it up if you are.”
“Oh.” Horace’s face fell. “Well, I’m going to be here for a while, looking for any more evidence. You just let me know if he changes his mind.”
“Chief wants to get the gun and some of that stuff off to Richmond ASAP,” Aida pointed out.
“We could pass it through the barricade,” Horace suggested.
“Not with all that razor wire in there,” Aida said. “Unless you want to shred it to bits and yourself with it. Maybe we should get a couple of the Shiffleys in here to see if they can take the razor wire out.”
“Not yet,” Horace said. “It’s evidence. Possibly exculpatory evidence. We need every bit of that we can get.”
“I’ll bring the evidence over,” I said. “About time I got back to take care of the twins.”
“I shouldn’t let you,” Horace said. “Chain of custody. Sammy could take it.”
“I have to stay here with Phinny and Rob until the chief says otherwise,” Sammy said from farther back in the room.
Aida and I both glanced at Horace’s anxious face and exchanged a look.
“Meg, I hereby deputize you and instruct you to deliver this evidence to the chief,” Aida said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Though I refrained from saluting the way the Flying Monkeys did.
It was tricky fitting all of the evidence bags and me onto the little rolling cart, but we finally managed, and I began the slow, hand-over-hand trek back through the tunnels. Going back ought to have been less nerve-wracking, since I knew that at the other end of the tunnel I’d find fresh air and freedom, but the tunnel sloped slightly upward—enough to make pulling myself more challenging, even without baggage. And lying on top of the evidence raised me so high on the cart that my back occasionally scraped the ceiling of the tunnel, bringing down tiny avalanches of dirt and stones that set my heart beating faster. Around halfway through the second leg of the tunnel, my arms felt so heavy I wasn’t sure I could go on, and all I could think of was how ironic it would be if I stopped to take a rest there in the cart and got caught in a cave-in, a few short feet from freedom. That thought triggered my second wind, and I managed the last few feet and scrambled up to the surface, leaving the evidence bags in the cart. Someone else could haul them up the ladder.
Was my claustrophobia that much better than Horace’s? I thought so. Instead of popping out of the trapdoor like a jack-in-the-box I took a deep breath a few rungs from the top of the ladder and composed my face so I looked cool, calm, and collected when I stepped out into the crawl space under the bandstand.
Michael was waiting for me.
“Welcome back!” he stage whispered, giving me a hug. “How was it?”
“Interesting,” I said. “I suspect Horace was hoping to find some key piece of evidence to prove Mr. Throckmorton’s innocence, but so far, no dice.”
“Oh, dear,” he murmured.
“What’s more—”
Suddenly, gunfire broke out overhead. I started, and hit my head on the low ceiling of the crawl space.
“Relax,” Michael said. “It’s only the First Battle of Manassas. Do you think there’s any chance Horace will be coming out before World War II is over? The program gets a little quiet after that, and we’d like to close and cover up the trapdoor for a while.”
“No idea,” I said. “I think he’ll probably find things to putter around with over there until the chief gives him a direct order to come back. He sent back all the evidence he’s collected so far with me—any chance you could haul it up?”
Since I was probably not supposed to let the bags out of my custody, I peered down from the top while Michael scrambled up and down the ladder with the evidence.
“That it?” he asked.
“Rob should have some spare clothes in one of those bins,” I said. “Can you take some down and send them halfway over on the cart?”
“Can do,” he said.
“I’ll call Rob and tell him it’s coming.”
But first, I called the chief to tell him that I had the evidence.
He wasn’t as delighted as I thought he’d be.
“Horace really should have maintained possession of the evidence,” he said. “Chain of custody.”
“Aida deputized me to take it,” I said.
“Well, that’s better than nothing,” he said. “In fact, I was a bit worried about the possibility someone would see Horace coming out from under the bandstand with a bunch of evidence bags. Any chance you could find a discreet way to bring them over to the forensic tent?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Just one more thing.” His voice grew stern. “You’re not deputized for anything except transporting evidence. Got that?”
“Got it.”
Discreet. Not usually my forte, but I could manage. I emptied out a rolling box I used to haul around heavy blacksmithing tools, put a couple of gallon milk jugs of water in it, and then Michael and I stowed the evidence bags on top of them.
“I’ll just roll these over to the forensic tent,” I said.
“You look beat,” Michael said. “Want me to do it?”
“Chain of custody,” I said.
As I dragged the wheeled box along, I found myself pondering how strange it was that the nephew I could still so easily remember as a cheerful toddler had turned into someone I instinctively trusted to take care of my own toddlers.
I found the chief and Randall talking just outside the tent that served as the mayor’s office.
“Brought you some more water,” I said. “Shall I stow it in here?”
“Maybe in my tent for safekeeping,” Randall suggested.
Randall and the chief helped me unload the evidence bags.
“Now if I can just find someone to take them down to the crime lab in Richmond,” the chief said, frowning at the sizable stack of bags. “Having to put several deputies on guard duty at the courthouse is making me shorthanded.”
Maybe he was hoping I’d volunteer. Maybe if things were a little less crazy, I might have. But the arrival of Josh and Jamie in my life made me realize that I needed to do a lot less volunteering and a lot more asking for help.
Like maybe accepting Rose Noire’s offer to take over talent coordination for Caerphilly Days.
Speaking of which …
“Got to run,” I said. “By the way—”
“Can I help you, Mr. Pruitt?” Randall asked.
Chapter 15
I started and turned. I didn’t like anyone sneaking up behind me, particularly not a Pruitt. At least it was only Hamish, peering into the tent with a surly expression on his face.
“I need to talk to you!” Hamish said to Randall.
“Lord,” Randall muttered under his breath. “Be with you in a minute, then. Chief?”
“I’ll see you later.” The chief rose and made his exit.
“Was there anything else you needed?” Randall asked me. I could tell from the expression on his face that he was hoping there was.
Hamish didn’t wait for me to answer.
“I came to ask when you’re going to take action on my request,” he said.
“And which one was that, Mr. Pruitt?”
“My request that you finally do something about that man!” Hamish snapped. “Does he have to kill off the whole town before you do anything?”
“Look, Mr. Pruitt,” Randall said. “I appreciate your point of view on this. I’ve been going in every day to try to talk some sense into Mr. Throckmorton, without any success so far. And if you ask me, today’s unfortunate events are going to make it harder rather than easier to talk him into coming out.”
“He doesn’t need to come out,” Hamish said. “Well, of course he does, and I don’t mean you should stop trying to talk him into it. What I mean is—haven’t you ever tried to negotiate the surrender of the town archives?”
“Why would I try to do that?” Randall sounded genuinely puzzled.
“You have dozens of file cabinets and hundreds of boxes full of papers down there!” Hamish exclaimed. “Many of them are valuable historical documents, or official documents necessary for the governance of the town. And they’re all down there in the hands of a criminal! Possibly a lunatic!”