Reasonable doubt, p.2
Reasonable Doubt, page 2
part #5 of Hazard and Somerset Series
“You’re upset because he’s coming here?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Somers fiddled with the stereo, and a moment later, a woman’s voice came across the speakers: raw, husky, with a slight twang. Hazard had listened to enough of Somers’s music to recognize Gillian Welch. He punched off the radio.
“Jesus,” was all Somers said, and they drove the rest of the way in silence.
Around them, the houses spread out, the postage-stamp lots growing larger, separated now by lines of willow and honeysuckle and lilac. Two patrol cars hugged the curb in front of a white, two-story farmhouse. A substantial fence had been raised around the property, and the wood looked new. Someone had also taken the time to replace the rotten siding on the front of the house and to slap on a fresh coat of paint. The place still looked like it might keel over, but if you took a picture from the front, with the right light, it might pass for decent.
Harold Lloyd, stockier than ever in his blue uniform, stood on the sidewalk, his hands resting on the small of his back like he’d just finished stretching. He nodded at Hazard and Somers as they stepped towards the house.
“Happy Sunday,” Lloyd said with his usual elfish smile. “You boys get off to a nice morning?”
Hazard ignored him; he spotted Lloyd’s partner, Hoffmeister, behind the wheel of the car, and Hazard ignored him too.
“Who’s inside?” Somers said.
“Norman and Gross. You know how they work; a couple of turtles.”
“Thanks.”
As they passed Lloyd, he called after them, “Sorry we had to interrupt your breakfast.”
Hazard turned, but Somers caught his sleeve and tugged him towards the house.
“He’s asking for it,” Hazard said.
“We’ve been through this. They’re assholes. You can’t change that.”
“If we sit back and take it—”
“When somebody says something straight out, we’ll do something. If we get prickly every time there’s a sideways comment, though, we start to look like the assholes.”
“I could break his teeth. Then he wouldn’t have anything clever to say. Not ever again.”
Somers sighed, and his fingers ran down into Hazard’s palm before he pulled away. “You’re a Neanderthal. You know that.”
Inside the front room of the house, they found the dead man still on the ground while Norman and Gross filmed the crime scene. The two beat cops weren’t much to look at—they might have been brothers, although they weren’t related, and they shared pot-bellies and bald heads. They looked like they hadn’t spent fifty cents between them on clothing since 1985.
“Oh no,” Norman said, lowering his camera and waving them back. “Not until we’re done. You two always want to squirm in here and mess the whole thing up.”
“What’ve you got?”
“A lot of work to do.”
“We’ll swing some coffee and donuts.”
Norman glanced at Gross, who gave a decisive nod. Ambling towards them, Norman cocked his head at the body. “John Oscar Walden. Fifty-three. That’s what’s on his driver’s license, anyway. He might not look like much now, but you’ve got the honor of being in the presence of the newborn Son of God, Jesus Christ himself, Brother Jeshua.”
“What the hell?” Hazard said.
“Some kind of crazy religious get up. The house is empty, but we found some fliers on the kitchen table. Picture of Mr. Walden front and center. The damn things look so bad I doubt they dropped as much as a dollar on them at Kinko’s. Probably don’t have a dollar between them. You know what they’re doing? They’re spreading the good word that Christ Himself has come again, and he’s living in Wahredua, Missouri. Did you know that?”
“I didn’t,” Somers said.
“Well, there’s your Lord and Savior. Somebody put a knife in his belly so many times he’s like a used kleenex down there. Dr. Kamp came by and took a quick look; he says Jesus has been dead at least twelve hours, probably more. Puts it around late afternoon yesterday. Between three and five; that’s what he said anyway. He’ll have a better time after he gets him open.”
“Who called it in?”
“Nobody. Lloyd and Hoffmeister were here; they had a bench warrant. Jesus Christ liked driving fast, but he didn’t like paying his tickets. The door was open, and there he was.”
“You haven’t seen anybody?” Hazard asked.
“Not a soul. Not so much as an angel weeping holy tears.” Norman had a smile the same color as his mustard slacks. “Who pulled you two out of bed?”
“Fuck off,” Somers said.
Laughing, Norman headed back into the room to document the scene.
“What about the knife?” Hazard called.
“No sign of it.”
“Guess we owe them coffee,” Somers said. “Let’s get Lloyd and Hoffmeister on doors, and then we’ll see what we can find.”
Lloyd and Hoffmeister, it turned out, did not want to knock doors and canvass the neighbors.
“I’m on duty right here,” Hoffmeister complained. He was the color of old styrofoam, and he looked just about as strong. Right then, though, he was putting up one hell of a noise. “We’re making sure nobody bothers Norman and Gross.”
“Get walking,” Hazard said. “Right now. I want you done with this street in the next half hour.”
“Half hour?” That dampened Lloyd’s quirky smile.
“If you don’t move your asses, I’ll move them for you. Half an hour.”
“Who the hell can do this in a half hour?” Hoffmeister grumbled, but he turned and took one side of the street while Lloyd crossed to the other. Hoffmeister’s next words were delivered with venom—quiet but meant to carry. “It’s not as easy as cruising Shepherd Park.”
“All right,” Hazard said, rolling his shoulders as he took a step after Hoffmeister.
“Let him go,” Somers said, catching Hazard’s arm.
“Like hell.”
Hoffmeister squeaked just like styrofoam and scurried up the street.
“Check the rest of the lot?” Somers asked. “Or get coffee?”
Hazard started around the house, Somers at his side. The back of the house was in even worse repair than Hazard had expected: a screened porch clung to the building, ready to collapse at any moment, and the clapboard had rotted away to splinters. Past the porch, a plot of bare earth showed recent efforts at cultivation. Weeds were stacked in a wheelbarrow, and someone had begun to till the soil. At the back of the lot, a red barn met the split-rail fence.
Somers nodded at the garden. “What do you think?”
“Like most cults, they’re already aiming at self-sufficiency. Cutting themselves off from the outside world is an essential part of proclaiming their uniqueness. It makes them special. People like to feel special. Hence, their own food supply.”
“I meant, do you like gardening?”
“What does it matter?”
“Because I like learning things about you.” The grass was still dewy underfoot as they approached the barn. “Do you?”
“What?”
Somers sighed. “Like gardening.”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to live in a house or an apartment?”
“We already live in an apartment.”
“But where would you like to live?”
“Somewhere I can pay off the mortgage in less than fifteen years.”
“I’m talking about a family home. Not a house or an apartment. A place for your family. What do you want? What does it look like? Or what do you want it to feel like?”
“What’s going on with you?”
Another sigh. “Never mind.” A breeze carried in from the north, and it brought with it a fresh, green smell. “You think this is a cult?”
“They’re proselytizing,” Hazard said. “They’re claiming their leader is Jesus Christ reborn.”
“Norman said newborn.”
“Norman couldn’t tell his ass from a hole in the ground.”
“Maybe they’re right.”
“That dead guy was Jesus Christ reborn?”
“What do you think?”
“They say third time’s the charm.”
Somers laughed, reaching out to touch Hazard’s arm. That felt good. The sunshine, the breeze, the smell of green things, the dew shining like someone had captured the world in glass, and that touch. Hazard liked that touch.
The barn itself looked like old construction, its red paint peeling, the wood weathered and, in places, split with dry rot. A much newer staircase ran alongside the exterior wall, though, with a cherry-red door at the top.
“Loft apartment,” Somers said. “Sometimes they call it a carriage house. It’s an easy way to convert and rent out unused space, bring in a little cash.”
“Your parents do this?”
“God, no. They wouldn’t be caught dead. But it’s popular on all those home renovation shows.”
Hazard took the stairs two at a time; they were firm and held his weight without squeaking. At the top, he stopped. The door was a flimsy interior model to which someone had added a deadbolt.
“Someone doesn’t want them getting out. Or us getting in,” Hazard said, pointing to the deadbolt. The broken remains of a key were turned halfway in the lock. “We’ll need a locksmith. Or we’ll have to take the damn thing apart piece by piece.”
Then, from within came a piercing cry.
“What the hell was that?” Somers asked.
Hazard braced himself against the rail and kicked. His heel drove into the door, and the frame creaked. Wood popped and splintered. He kicked again, and again, and again. On the next kick, fragments of wood sprayed his shoe, and a chunk of the frame ripped free. The door swung inwards.
From inside came the sounds of grunting, shuffling movement, the slap of flesh on flesh. Drawing his .38, Hazard stepped through the door.
The woman, on hands and knees on the bed, was facing him, and she let out a shriek. She had to be in her late forties, maybe early fifties, and she probably hadn’t ever lacked for calories. The boy mounting her looked like he couldn’t be more than sixteen. Red-faced, his narrow body slick with sweat, he slammed into her twice more before her shrieks penetrated his hormone-infused thoughts. Then he looked like someone had slapped him, and he slid backward, ass-first onto the mattress. Old cuts and half-healed scratches covered his chest and arms, as though sometimes things got a little rough.
Hazard made room for Somers. The older woman was scuttling through the bedding, hands grasping at an antique bra with enormous cones, still screaming.
“Be quiet,” Hazard said.
She did, but she didn’t stop moving until she’d tugged the straps over her shoulders and dragged a blanket over her legs. The boy—definitely no older than eighteen, and Hazard guessed even that was a stretch—hugged his scrawny chest. His face was almost purple, and Hazard guessed some of that was fear and a lot of that was frustration.
“Who are you?” Hazard asked.
“L-l-lazarus.”
Hazard eyed the woman. Her stringy gray hair had fallen in front of her face, and she dashed it away from her eyes now. A little bit of courage had come back. Or maybe a little bit of pride. Something put an ounce of steel in her.
“Kelley Jane Walden. Who the hell are you?”
Hazard processed the last name, her age, and the compromising position, but Somers beat him to the punch.
“Ah. That must make you Mrs. Jesus Christ.”
THE FIRST THING, IN SOMERS'S OPINION, was to get the two love-birds dressed. The second thing was to find out what was going on. His plans, however, didn’t go as hoped; Kelley Jane wouldn’t move an inch until they told her why they were in the apartment, and Lazarus was looking around for a hole to crawl into.
Finally, Hazard said, “Your husband has been killed, Mrs. Walden.”
Kelley Jane Walden had done some good shrieking already, and only some of those noises, Somers remembered, had been driven by fear. When she heard about her husband, though, she screamed to bring down Jericho. Lazarus, for his part, just huddled up tighter and cried—silent, racking sobs. Hazard had to shake the boy to get him to put on his clothes.
With a lot of coaxing and sympathy, Somers managed to calm Kelley Jane enough to dress and leave the loft. They walked Kelley Jane and Lazarus to the front of the house, where Hoffmeister and Lloyd were now lounging against the patrol car, Hoffmeister with a mentholated cigarette between his lips.
“We’d like to talk to you down at the station,” Somers said. “These officers will take your statements, and we’ll join you as soon as we can.”
“I need to see him,” Kelley Jane said, turning her weight on Somers and trying to force her way past him. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying. You’re all lying.”
And just as suddenly she dissolved into tears.
“Officer Lloyd will drive you,” Somers said, guiding her into the patrol car. “Lazarus, Officer Hoffmeister will drive you.”
To their credit, Lloyd and Hoffmeister managed to act like cops for once, and Hoffmeister borrowed Norman’s car so they could keep Lazarus and Kelley Jane separated.
“Let’s see how Norman and Gross are doing,” Somers said.
When Hazard and Somers had reached the house, the patrol officers had finished the initial video and photography work. Hazard and Somers pulled on booties and latex gloves and entered the scene.
“What was all that?” Norman said.
“And what about the coffee?” Gross said.
“I guess you two didn’t look very hard,” Hazard said, “because we found the vic’s wife out in the barn playing leapfrog with a teenager.”
“We weren’t talking about the barn,” Norman said. “We’re working the house.”
“And the coffee?” Gross said.
Hazard shook his head.
The main room of the house was about as bad as the outside, Somers decided. The shag carpeting looked old and dirty enough to be breeding some kind of supervirus, and the fireplace had honest-to-God mold growing between the bricks. It was a bad place to die; if ghosts were real—Somers thought the jury was out on this, more or less—then he hoped he didn’t get stuck haunting somewhere with 1970s porno decor and the smell of cat piss.
John Oscar Walden—Brother Jeshua—had dark, receding hair buzzed almost to the scalp, a face hard even in death, and the weight and proportions of an athlete gone to seed. Lots of muscle had turned to a bulky, heavy build. He wasn’t handsome, but a lot of women might have found him attractive in life—and he probably paid them back with bruises and maybe a broken nose.
“They weren’t kidding about the stab wounds,” Hazard said, settling onto his haunches and studying the bloody mess of Walden’s stomach. “Someone really went at him. They caught him by surprise, I think. They got in a few good ones, real quick, and it was over for him before he even knew it had started. Then, when he was down, they just kept going.”
“You’ve got to hate somebody a lot to do this kind of damage.”
Hazard glanced at Somers.
“What?”
Hazard shook his head. He traced the air above a cut on the inside of Walden’s hand. “Defensive wounds.”
“He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who would go down without a fight.”
“We’ve got blood going into the kitchen,” Gross called to them. He indicated a trail of red spatters that led down the hall.
“Whose blood?”
“We think the killer,” Norman said. “There’s a bloody handprint in the kitchen, and we found a bloody towel stuffed in the garbage. It goes out onto the porch and disappears.”
Hazard raised an eyebrow. “He got the knife away from the attacker and turned it on him?”
“Let’s see.”
The trail of spatters carried across the kitchen’s floral-print linoleum, swerving near the door—where a partial bloody handprint marked the frame—and then clustering near a trash can. A plastic evidence bag held the towel that Norman had recovered, and it was rust-colored all the way through.
“That’s a lot of blood,” Somers said.
“So either the attacker was seriously wounded too,” Hazard said, “or that’s Walden’s blood. Maybe he made it in here, tried to stop the bleeding, and went back to the living room.”
“But he stopped long enough to bury that towel in the trash can.” Somers softened the words with a smile.
“All right. So maybe the killer used that towel to clean himself up, wipe off Walden’s blood.”
“We’ll have to send all this to the Highway Patrol labs. They’ll be able to tell us if it’s all Walden’s. If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll even be able to match that bloody handprint.”
Hazard stepped out onto the porch, avoiding the occasional drop of blood that marked their trail. Somers came after him, and together they stripped off the booties and gloves and moved off the rickety porch. They stood facing the unplanted garden and the barn. A gravel drive hooked around the side of the house, and that was where the bloody path ended.
“Walden didn’t make it out here,” Hazard said.
Somers retraced the path in his mind. “So our killer goes into the kitchen. He stumbles—”
“Or she.”
“He or she stumbles, catches himself—I’m not going to keep saying he and she, Ree, I’m just saying he for convenience. He catches himself on the door. Cleans himself up with a towel, buries the towel, and comes out here.”
“Still dripping blood.”
“Which means he’s not cleaning himself up. He’s trying to stop the bleeding. He got hurt. God damn, Ree, that’s a lot of blood in there.”
“And so he gets into a car—Walden’s car, I’m guessing—and drives off.”
“Damn. I guess we’ll have to see what kind of car Walden had registered.”
