An Altar by the River

by Christine Husom

  “Before I call for a deputy, I’m going to take a run, then get in the shower. Another hour won’t make any difference, and the deputy might be here for a while.”

  “Want me to hang around?”

  “No, I’ll be fine.”

  “We’ll dust it when I come back to do the computer. Anybody from the party could have touched it, but it may give us a lead.”

  “You never know. I went through the car wash day before yesterday and drove straight home. It was in the garage until I backed it out for the party. Whoever did it might have left their prints.”

  “Good thinkin’. See you later.”

  Deputy Holman, a fairly new deputy with the department, pulled up in his squad car ten minutes after I called Communications to report the felony-level criminal damage to property of my vehicle. Smoke heard the deputy announce his arrival at my address on his police radio and arrived a few minutes after that.

  “What a bummer way to end your party,” Holman said as he inspected the damage.

  “For sure.”

  Holman took the information and snapped pictures. He squatted and stared at the long mar. “Started at the front panel and moved to the back. And the guy was either left handed or was strong and coordinated with his left hand.”

  Smoke and I both took a closer look.

  “You’re right, Holman. Would’ve been too awkward to do this with the right hand. Would have to do it backhanded.” Smoke gripped his hand over the pen. “This wouldn’t work. He’d have to bend over like this and move backward.” He demonstrated pulling the pen, leading with the pinkie finger. “Not likely.” He switched the pen to his left hand and guided it near the GTO, leading with his thumb that time. “Yup.”

  Smoke touched the scratch with his index finger. “Looks like it was done with a small knife more than with a key. It has a more pointed indentation in the center.”

  Holman nodded. “Detective, you’re about six feet—”

  “Yep.”

  “So the guy that did this?”

  “I don’t think you could say with complete accuracy. Depends on height, arm length, and if he squatted a little to give him more force,” Smoke said.

  I held my hand next to the car at the level I’d be comfortable. “Most likely taller than five five.”

  “Yeah. I’m six two.” Holman ran his hand near the scrape. “I’d guess five ten to six two, or three. That’d be with shoes on.”

  We all knew the chance of finding out who had done it was slim to none.

  I assured Holman I would get a list together of everyone who had been at the party, after I enlisted help from Sara, the county attorneys, and public defenders in case I forgot anyone. I didn’t have an exact number count of the people at the party, so it would be easy to miss one or two.

  “I can think of a lot of ’em, too. Did you do anything to piss anyone off?” Holman smiled when he asked.

  “On a regular basis, Holman. Just like every other police officer. It goes with the territory.”

  He nodded. “I’ll write this up and add the supplemental report when you get the list done.”

  “Thanks.”

  Smoke and I spent an hour dusting and lifting prints from the GTO. It was tedious work. There were a surprising number on the hood, but only a couple on the side panels.

  Smoke chose to use black powder. It showed up well against the red. The hood surface was large, and instead of using the fine dusting brush, he poured a conservative amount of powder onto the hood and blew away the excess. As prints became evident, I lifted them with tape, applied them to glass slides, and marked them using a numbering system.

  Smoke pointed at my growing line of slides. “To keep this simple, and so we don’t run out of slides, just take the index finger when you’ve got a hand print that’s obviously from the same person.”

  “Okay.”

  Twenty minutes later, Smoke said, “Well, that wraps up the hood work.” He picked up the dusting brush, with its incredibly fine bristles, and set to work on the driver’s side of the car. I assisted, lifting, taping, and marking. It was time consuming, but a task I enjoyed. I loved seeing the prints come into focus when the dust adhered to them, pulling them off the surface, and collecting them as evidence.

  “Guess people can’t resist touching this old classic, huh?” Smoke said.

  “I had no idea.”

  “The good news is, every county employee has been fingerprinted, so that part of the identification will be easy. The first prints we’ll compare them to are the ones from your computer cabinet. If we have a match to any here, it’ll be a good starting point.”

  26

  My mother phoned when Smoke and I were in my den office checking the computer and armoire for prints. “Hi, dear. I drove by on my way home and noticed Elton’s car was there. Is everything okay? I mean, you were kidding last night when you said that, well, you know, when you made that sex comment.”

  “Mother. Yes, it was meant as sarcasm. He slept here on the couch in my den office—” I left out the part about me being there with him, “—and went home this morning, but came back, as part of an investigation.”

  “Investigation? What happened?”

  She was alarmed when I told her about the GTO.

  “Of all things! Who would do something like that?”

  Sadly, the sheriff’s department got countless complaints of similar incidents on a regular basis.

  “I can still see the expression on your father’s face when he drove up in that fancy car, fresh off the lot.” She was silent a while. “And then you worked so hard to get it back on the road, replacing all those belts and whatever else you did.”

  “I know, I know. Smoke helped me dust it for prints, and a deputy took the report. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and find out who did it. There were lots of people at the party, some I don’t really know. And like Smoke pointed out, it could have been somebody driving by that is into vandalism.”

  “I suppose you’ve been too busy to think about visiting Gramps. And your grandparents said you were going over there for dinner. They invited me, but I made plans before they asked.”

  “Hot date?”

  “Minnesota Twins opener.”

  “Seriously? When have you ever been to a Twins game?”

  “There’s a first time for everything, and Denny’s got season tickets. I’ll stop by on the way and look at your car.”

  “If you want. Is Gramps going to Grandma and Grandpa’s, too?”

  “No. He said he was too tuckered out, that he’d have a sandwich later.”

  “I can make one for him when I stop by.”

  “That would be nice, dear. Oh, Corinne? Denny is right here and wants to talk to you.”

  “Corky.”

  “Hi, Sheriff.”

  “I got the gist of what happened listening to your mother’s end of the conversation here. Your car was out all night?”

  “Yes. From yesterday afternoon about six. We discovered the damage this morning at nine.”

  “You know the names of everyone who was at your party last night?”

  “I’m getting a list together.”

  “Good. We’ll divide up the names and have a few deputies do a quick interview, see if anyone knows anything. It’s criminal damage to property. Felony level, with what body work costs nowadays. If it was done by a member of our department, I want to know about it, for godsakes.”

  I heard my mother say, “Denny,” and I knew from her tone she was asking him not to swear.

  We hung up after our goodbyes.

  Smoke narrowed his eyebrows. “Your mother wondering about possible hanky panky between us?”

  I slowly nodded my head. “A mother is a mother is a mother.”

  “You didn’t tell her. Does that mean my secret’s safe with you?”

  “Your secret?”

  “Yeah. That I had a dream that scared me so much I needed you to sleep by me.”

  I smiled. “Your secret
’s safe with me.”

  Smoke worked away with white powder, for that job, and the dusting brush. “I’m surprised. There are only a few prints on the armoire and the computer keys. More on the mouse.”

  “I cleaned yesterday.”

  “You did a good job. The armoire has four fingerprints, which must be yours. Small hand. Probably when you pushed the door closed.”

  I held my hand in front of the prints. The length of my fingers matched the way the prints lined up. “Yeah, that’d be me. No reason to lift those.”

  “I’m not a fingerprint expert, but looking at the mouse and the few keys that have prints on them, I’d say they’re yours, also. Give me your hands once.”

  I turned my hands palms up, and Smoke examined them. “The thin scar on your right index shows up on the door, mouse, and several keys. The few keys you touched. And that’s kind of a cute little whorl next to it. Gives you away. It appears you are the owner of the prints.”

  “Which means whoever was snooping around here was wearing gloves.”

  “Do you carry latex gloves around with you, on your person?”

  “Only when I’m working.”

  “Same here. So the snoop came prepared.”

  Sara stopped by in the early afternoon to see if I needed help cleaning up after the party. I dragged her into the garage to see my damaged car.

  She ran over, stopped short, and stared. “Oh no. What happened? Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I was going to. Smoke just left a few minutes ago, so I haven’t had a chance.”

  I gave Sara all the details, from someone accessing my computer to seeing Edberg leaving my den office to finding the keyed car to dusting for latent prints. Everything except the detail about sleeping next to Smoke on the couch all night. That would come out eventually.

  “I am so sorry, Corky. I made you have this party.”

  “You didn’t make me, and stop being silly. I thought about pulling the car into the garage before I went to bed, but I didn’t.”

  “Unless it happened when the party was going on.”

  “I know. I’m hoping it was a random act, and as much as that irritates the heck out of me, I’d hate to think someone I work with—and actually trust with my life, if it comes to that—would do this. For what? I can’t think of a single good reason.”

  “There is no good reason.”

  My cell phone rang. It was my brother, John Carl. “Hi Corky. Mother called. Sorry about Carl’s GTO.”

  It would always be our father’s car, no matter how many years I owned it. When we were kids, we’d sneak into the shed where Mother stored it. We’d climb in, one of us behind the wheel and the other in the passenger seat, and sit there feeling grown up and a bit smug. When Mother had agreed to let me restore it and put it back on the road, I was thrilled. John Carl had never said so, but I figured he harbored some jealousy that Mother had given it to me.

  “Thanks. So where were you in the early morning hours of, say, midnight to nine o’clock today?”

  “Does sleeping alone in the guest room of my house count as an adequate alibi?”

  That was not what I wanted to hear.

  “Yes. Actually, living in Colorado, eight hundred miles from here, is convincing in and of itself, unless you took the red eye, of course.”

  John Carl rarely gave me private information, so I knew he needed to talk about his marriage. I took a quick breath. “Sounds like things aren’t going the way you hoped with Emily.”

  “No, they aren’t. At all. She doesn’t want to be married anymore, but she doesn’t want to lose the house either. It’s not the best arrangement in the world, stuck in this limbo. Trouble is, it takes both of our incomes to maintain this place.”

  “John Carl, the way she’s using you drives me nuts.”

  Sara’s eyes widened, and I lifted my shoulders in a resigned shrug.

  “It’s not just her. We’re using each other, and that’s not a totally bad thing. It wouldn’t be wise to walk away when we’ve got so much money tied up in the house. We can’t afford to lose it.

  “Emily will have to make a decision one of these days. If she wants to go through with a divorce, we’ll have to put the house up for sale, and then we’ll each have to find a cheaper place to live.”

  “Are you still thinking of possibly moving back home to Oak Lea?”

  “Yes. But it’s a tough decision to make.”

  “That would be the one good thing in all of this, as far as Mother and I are concerned.” I hesitated with the next question. “Is Emily seeing another man, or what is the deal?”

  “No, that isn’t it.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because she climbs into my bed from time to time.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t be like that, Corky.” John Carl was adept at hearing the minutest innuendos in my speech. Even over the phone when he couldn’t see the facial expression that went with it.

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “John Carl, your physical relationship is between the two of you. What concerns me is your emotional health.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Now that’s hitting below the belt. We both know there is no possible way I could ever worry as much as our mother does.”

  “You’re right. Hey, we got way off subject here. How is everything else?”

  “Okay.” I wanted to tell John Carl about the Trippen case, but the sheriff had ordered that it be kept quiet during the initial part of the investigation at least.

  I heard a woman’s voice in the background calling his name. Emily. “I better go, but I’ll catch you soon.”

  “I love you, big brother.”

  “You, too.”

  “I could shoot that woman,” I said after my phone was off.

  Sara dramatically covered her ears with her hands. “I did not hear that.” She dropped her hands to her elbows and rested crossed arms on her stomach. “You are talking about Emily, I presume? You and John Carl were having quite the conversation.”

  “She’s using John Carl for money and sex, and that really angers me because he loves her and is so invested in their marriage.”

  “Let it go, dear. There is nothing you can do about it. He’ll get tired of that arrangement before long. Or she will. She may be looking for a new boy toy as we speak.”

  “Sara, yuck!”

  “Yuck is right, but some women are like that.”

  “Let’s talk about something else. The party. People seemed to have a good time. The toasts were a little sad, but it made the colleagues feel better, I think.”

  I started walking toward the house, and Sara followed.

  “I think so, too. I talked to a lot of people I never get a chance to outside of work. Even chatted with the new guy, Eric Stueman.”

  We went into the kitchen, and I turned to face her. “Did you? I caught him staring at me a few times, but we didn’t say more than hi, thank you, goodbye. He’s kind of a weird dude.”

  “Who’s pretty cute. He reminds me of a young Harrison Ford, and I had a nice conversation with him.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I mean, I did most of the talking, but he was pleasant enough.”

  “That confirms it. He does not like me. Why would he even come to my house?”

  “He didn’t say. Maybe he came with the express intention of keying your car.”

  “What?”

  “I’m kidding.”

  I gave her a mild shove. “Your date, Casey, didn’t show up.”

  I opened the refrigerator, pulled out two bottles of water, and handed one to Sara.

  She took hers and twisted the cap off. “No. He ended up working late. He stopped by, but the lights were out, so he went home.”

  “And if he had seen someone lurking around my house or vehicle, he would have mentioned it.”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “A couple of years ago there was a rash of veh
icle vandalism in Little Mountain,” I said.

  “That’s right. What was it, two or three mornings in a row people got up and discovered their windows, or headlamps, or side mirrors, or whatever had been smashed.”

  “They wrecked over twenty vehicles before we caught the little darlings.”

  “I got one of them in my caseload. Jules Worth. At the rate he’s going, he’ll be one of my probationers until one of us dies, or until I retire.”

  “He’ll end up in prison the next time he offends.”

  Sara nodded. “That’ll be my recommendation.”

  I spent the rest of Saturday with my grandparents. First Gramps Brandt, then the Alecksons. I debated telling them about the car, but my intuitive grandmother, who knew me better than anyone else on earth, sensed something was troubling me, so I told them. The GTO was parked in their driveway, and we went outside to inspect the damage.

  Grandma brought her hand to her chest. “My, that is quite a scratch. I cannot abide vandalism. It has never made sense to me.”

  It was senseless to every victim.

  Grandpa examined the car, shaking his head.

  “I guess it doesn’t do much good to speculate about who damaged my car until the evidence is processed and the questions are asked.”

  Grandpa raised his arm and pointed his thumb backward, like he was hitchhiking. “You know that Stan Hemsley over at the garage there on County Thirty-five? He’s very talented with body work. I’d look him up.”

  Stan had a good reputation. I’d heard that from a number of people.

  Grandma tucked her finger under my chin. “You still keep that picture next to your bed? The one of your mom and dad on their wedding day, standing by this car?”

  I folded my hand over hers. “Still on my bed stand.”

  “That’s a sweet picture.” Her eyes misted over.

  My grandparents had struggled with the reality of my father’s death on and off for thirty years. He was their only son, the one who would have taken over the farm. A man who had left behind a young widow and two babies.

  Grandma moved her hand, sliding it between my arm and body in an escort position. “Well, dinner’s ready.”