Grabbing Maude with both arms, Lilly Ann cried on her shoulder, holding her tightly, afraid to let go. She wasn’t injured in any way. She had no cuts, bruises, or wounds of any kind, except those in her mind. It would be hours before they could question her, hours before the fear subsided and she felt safe. Maude wondered if Lilly Ann would ever truly feel safe from the night mares and madmen of the world.
“Thank you, God, for keeping her safe.” Maude whispered.
She kept her arms around Lilly Ann hoping to keep the fear at bay, grateful to have her back. Her discerning eyes looked over the closet, the abandoned clothing on the floor, the empty shelves coated with dust and mouse droppings. Some old metal, clothes hangers hung off the broken clothes poles. Others were piled on the floor. A white envelope lay incongruously against the backdrop of the dirty closet shelf, waiting for its intended correspondent. Maude motioned to Joe to protect the envelope, to remove it from the shelf, and avoid any fingers on its pristine surface.
Three words across the envelope got everyone’s attention. Detective Maude Rogers, it read, but nothing more was written to indicate the nature of its contents.
“Lilly Ann,” Maude said, “I need for you to get control of yourself for a few minutes while we try and find some hard evidence against the jackal that brought you here. Stand beside me, but let me get out of this closet. Joe, please remove whatever is in that envelope and read it to me. I want to hear it before I see it.”
“There’s nothing inside, Maude, its empty; looks like someone is playing games with us, with you.”
“Then let’s get out of here. Sheriff Jack’s men can take care of the forensics of the room. You can bet they won’t find anything incriminating, but we have to try.”
Leading a calmer Lilly Ann outside, Maude opened the pickup door and helped her onto the back seat and buckled the seat belt.
“Lilly Ann,” she said, “I won’t tell you to get over this, to quit being afraid. It isn’t in me to be unfeeling with you, but please hear me. This man who took you has no hold over you now unless you give it to him. Fear is his weapon, he can gloat to the devil himself that he controls you if you let him live in your mind. It is only when you stand up, spit in his face, and then walk away from him that he will lose his hold on you. Think about that some while we’re driving.”
The young woman sat huddled in the back seat, a soft quilt from Maude’s traveling items thrown over her shoulders. She whimpered for a long time and then grew silent. Maude thought she was sleeping under the quilt. Joe was driving once again, heading the truck back to Lilly Ann’s neighborhood.
“Aunt Maude, do you want to ask me any questions? I want you to find the man who took me from my home. I want to help.” Lilly Ann was not only awake, she had been thinking, deciding that whatever she had to do, her abductor had to be caught.
“Whatever you want to tell,” Maude replied. “Go ahead, I’ll take some notes. The questions will come later if I need to clarify something.”
“This morning, I was getting ready for work, and I knew you were coming. I was happy, running around the house singing.” At that point, Lilly Ann blushed and looked at Joe. “Just silly stuff, with Mom gone, I wasn’t thinking about safety even though you’ve told me all my life to be alert to my surroundings. There was a knock on the door, and I thought it was Mom coming in early. She’d been gone to Houston for two days. Anyway, I opened the door real wide, and the next thing I knew someone had my arms behind my back, my nose was burning, and I had a gag in my mouth. I think I fought really hard. It’s like I was in a movie or somewhere other than right there at my own door.
“I had my robe on, just being straight from the shower, and the man told me to get dressed. He chose my dress from the closet. Then he forced me into the back seat. I…did what he told me to do. He told me if I didn’t do what he said, he would hurt me, but if I was quiet, he would be nice to me. He covered me with his coat because I didn’t have mine, and my dress was thin with only a sweater over it.” Once again she flushed and sneaked a look at Joe who kept his eyes on the road, never blinking.
“The next thing I knew, we were at that house and I was in the closet. He said that if I tried to get out he would hurt me. The ropes were on my arms and legs and I stayed on the floor so many hours, crying and feeling alone, afraid he was lying and would come back and kill me. I knew you would find me, but I thought it would be too late.” At that point she began sobbing, the memory of her fears stark and current.
Finally the crying stopped and Maude felt it was safe to ask a few questions. “Can you describe this man?”
“He wasn’t very tall, just about my height. He had blonde hair with a kind of military cut. He wore Ben Franklin glasses, sounded like he was from the south. Does that help?”
“Helps a lot, remember anything else? No matter how insignificant it sounds, we might use it. Anything about the car?”
“I don’t think so. Unless...I seem to remember he talked to someone on the phone. I think it was after he put me in the closet. It’s kind of foggy, but I’m sure I heard a phone ring.”
“So he was talking to someone on the phone, which probably means he was following orders.”
Lilly Ann was quiet again and unresponsive.
“Joe, I have to call her mother, my sister-in-law, Jean. She should be home by now. I could also use my evening cigarette. Think we could pull in that store up there and get a cup of coffee?”
Joe stopped the truck and went inside while Maude opened the door of the truck and sat sideways on the seat, lighting her third cigarette of the day. The pain in her hips and knees was strong from the activities of the day. Creeping low and ducking for cover were the culprits that had helped cause the joint problems, along with wrestling perps throughout her career. The bottle of ibuprofen was on the seat, near her, and she popped two of them in her mouth, dry swallowing as she had learned to do in the field.
The coffee was steaming when Joe brought it, along with two others and some fried pies, a single man’s meal on the road. Lilly Ann woke and sat up.
“Do I smell coffee? Can I have some?”
Joe handed one of the cups over, shaking his head sorrowfully. “I put cream and sugar in it. Hope you like it. How about a fried pie? Apple or cherry?”
“Perfect. Cherry,” she said, her hands reaching. “I’m starved.”
“Yes, that is just perfect.” Maude said, thinking of the gratitude she felt for her niece’s apparent good health. It could have been so much worse.
“Lilly Ann, I’m about to call your mother, after I finish my cigarette. You’ll want to talk to her, reassure her that you are unhurt.”
The phone call went just as she thought it would with Jean trying to keep from losing control, but having a hard time with it. She also called Jack, and informed him of the most recent news, that the man who abducted Lilly Ann was also the man who had been stalking Maude back at the motel.
Jack told her that the house was on the county auction rolls for taxes unpaid, and no one had officially lived there in about five years. He said the doors were supposed to be boarded up, at least the tax folks told him it was their practice to keep unauthorized squatters out of the house and off the land.
“All public information,” Maude said, shaking her head. “No way to track him.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be too sure. They always slip up, you know. Ernest is on top of things, he might dig something up. Maybe some of the people out there saw the car that carried your niece to that house.”
“It’s been my experience, Jack, that neighbors in those kind of housing areas turn a blind eye to what goes on out of their own yard.”
“We might still get lucky.” Jack said, his good nature having finally returned after being shot. “Some folks think about something and want to do the right thing.”
“We can hope, Jack. We can hope. Meanwhile I am grateful to have Lilly Ann safe and sound. You and your men have my gratitude.”
“We seem t
o be in each other’s debt, Maude. Let’s leave it at that. I get to go home tomorrow, then go back to work in a week. Seems like a long time. My wife is bound and determined to keep me from doing a blessed thing. But I am grateful to be alive.”
“Jack, you aren’t going to start crying, are you?” Maude asked him.
Jack laughed, the mood broken just as she had hoped. “No tears. I’ll get busy on this end, giving orders. Seems I can still do that. We’ll see what we can find out about that fellow Spillar, see if he was the one with the gun. Oh yeah,” he added, “I called the sheriff down there. He said he would wait for your report when you returned. I imagine his folks will want to do some follow-up with your niece. Just so you know.”
“Thanks Jack, I was hoping they had some foreknowledge of what was going on. Joe called them in the beginning, but I haven’t had any communication myself.”
Chapter 12
The transition went smoothly, with the local law enforcement agency picking up the trail at Lilly Ann’s house. The deputy assigned to the abduction was an older man, an investigator with some years of experience. He told Maude that the car at the scene, the one that had been driven by Lilly Ann’s abductor, had been identified as a vehicle that was stolen off a used car lot two days earlier. It had not been found yet, but they were working on it. Maude thanked him and told him she would be available at her cell number if he had some more questions.
The hospital’s resident doctor checked Lilly Ann and found nothing out of the ordinary; however, he suggested keeping her overnight. She refused, saying she was fine, and didn’t want to be away from home that night.
Maude and Joe were given the two spare rooms in Jean’s house and slept for a few hours. The next morning, they all gathered at the dining table to discuss the goings on of the day before. Jean made breakfast for them all, a real treat for Maude. She wasn’t much of a cook, herself, but she loved a good breakfast.
Over pancakes, syrup, bacon and hash browns, the story was filled in for Jean and Lilly Ann. Some of the information had to be kept private as police business, but for the most part, the story could be told. The abduction of Lilly Ann didn’t seem connected to the other case-the murders of the campus doctor and a fourth year student- but in the end, it might play out that the tentacles of the murder had reached into Maude’s family.
As for Maude, she kept her concerns to herself, but when the quiet settled later, the inconsistencies nagged at her, the things that didn’t match up. The legs of the case didn’t fit with the body, making it too unwieldy to be true. Maude had that sixth sense given especially to cops. When it smelled bad, she knew it. She couldn’t always prove it, but she knew it in her gut.
They stayed in the house, spending some time with Jean and Lilly Ann over the weekend before returning to the university on Monday. It was necessary to get back to work, to eliminate the innocent from the potentially guilty parties. There was someone who had personal reasons to rid the community of the two victims. Even though it was a professional job, Maude knew that some person or persons had hired the killing team.
After spending another day on campus, the two detectives found few incriminating answers to their questions about Aaron and Jenny. They were tired, and Maude could feel the ache in her joints as the anticipated Arctic air blew through, bringing icy winds and very cold temperatures. The night chill was predicted to be below freezing, a condition that Maude was hoping to avoid.
The laboratory was the last place on the list. The research professors and graduate students who had worked with Doctor Dennis were busy at their jobs, deep into microscopes and computerized machinery when Maude entered the laboratory. She was directed to the office, a small room with files piled all across the desk, and a research assistant who was entering data as fast as her fingers could move over the keys.
“Hello,” Maude said in her nicest voice, “I’m Maude Rogers, homicide detective, working with Sheriff Jack Fuller of Rhodes County on the murders of Aaron Dennis and Jenny Marx.”
Silence, the kind she had dealt with too many times-the projected disdain of data hunters and gatherers who ignored the human voice at regular levels-was the greeting she received from the name-tag-labeled person at the computer desk. The newer and gentler Maude Rogers tried again to get the typist to acknowledge her. Finally, she pulled her shield and lay it down on the keys in front of the woman, the bright gold star winking in the overhead light.
“You have my identification. Please nod your head if you hear me. Don’t speak, just nod.” The girl nodded her head, not moving any other part of her body.
“Now, do you suppose you could tell me where I will find Professor Frank Carmody? Don’t speak, just nod or shake your head.” The girl nodded, her eyes darting back and forth between Maude and the chance of escape through the back door.
“Will you point the way, please?” The girl lifted her right arm, pointing her shaking fingers toward the rear of the building.
“Now you can get back to your machine. Thank you very much,” Maude said quietly.
Professor Carmody was an older man, tall, with a straight back. The thinness of his stature spoke of missed meals and disregard for his body. A true idealist, Frank Carmody was engrossed in dictating some of his recent findings into a machine that transcribed his words onto a screen. He saw Maude and waved her into the office, a ten by eight cubicle, with myriads of file-stacks reaching almost to the ceiling.
The professor was intent on his delivery to the machine, yet unlike the girl in the other office, he did look at Maude with a ‘give me a minute’ hand movement waving her to a chair. Finally done, he turned to her with his full attention and asked what he could do for her.
“I would like to ask you a few questions about one of your researchers, Doctor Aaron Dennis. As you probably know by now, he was killed on Monday, along with his friend Jenny Marx, a fourth year student here.”
“Yes, tragic, so tragic,” Carmody said. “Aaron had so much to give to the field of medical research. His interest lay in the suppression of biological warfare, for all sides, and he couldn’t tolerate the thought of any of the super-germs that were popping up in different places on the globe. Aaron’s response was to immediately begin searching for cures for any of the man-made diseases that were killing people.”
“I can imagine that he sometimes crossed the line with government officials. Were you aware of any situation that might have caused someone to want him dead?”
“I know Aaron was murdered, but I don’t know of anyone who would want him dead, or might profit from his death.” Carmody was very forthcoming, a quality that endeared him to Maude, but as usual she looked a gift horse in the mouth, wondering if it was going to bite her later.
“How did you feel about Doctor Dennis?”
“I loved that dear boy. He really didn’t report to me or anyone else here on campus, but he did pay me the courtesy of keeping a schedule that I could depend on. I knew there was a problem when he didn’t come in to work on Tuesday. You see, he told me he would be back then, from his vacation.”
“What about Jenny Marx? Was she in any of your research classes?”
Carmody thought about that for a minute before saying, “Jenny Marx was a fourth year student. She was a chemistry major, and very intelligent. There were a few times I saw her here working out a formula, but she didn’t have classes with me. You see, the chemistry students are not part of this program, and I seldom get near the lab.”
“But she came here sometimes?”
“Yes, and I finally determined she was here to see Aaron. It took a while for me to understand her interest, but it became clear later when the two of them started being an item. They were never officially seeing each other, because we don’t encourage that sort of thing, but those who knew them saw their attraction to one another.”
“Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Jenny?” Maude asked quietly.
Carmody considered his answer, “She wasn’t really well-liked.
Too smart, I heard someone say once. It was just in passing, but I did hear it. Just that.”
“Any idea who might have said that?”
“No, I’m sorry, but it was in passing, in a crowd of people.”
“Is there anything you can think of that might help me find their killers?” Maude asked at the end of an interview.
“No, but if I think of anything, may I call you?”
“Of course. Here’s my card. Call me anytime.”
The interview over, Maude went to find Joe, and discovered he was three-deep in a conversation with two pretty women. She gave him time while she lit her second unfiltered of the day at the smoking table. Four of the same people were there as the day before, the ashtray full of burned butts, confirming that smokers came out often to light up. She exchanged pleasantries with them, but they avoided eye contact with her afterwards. A suspicion began forming in her mind that someone had put the kibosh on employee free speech with the homicide detectives. It wasn’t the first time she had encountered it. Usually the one who put out the order was a public relations person trying to stop bad press for the business.
“I don’t expect you folks to say anything that would get you fired, but if you don’t cooperate with the police, there are warrants that can be filed for the information, causing personal distress and inconvenience. The sooner my job is done here, the sooner I’m gone from your business, but see here, the murder business, no matter how unpleasant, takes precedent over any of your personal objections.” She hoped they didn’t call her bluff, but in for a penny, in for a pound.
Heads nodded around the table in understanding, their reluctance to accept Maude now gone. All four starting talking at the same time about the professor who had been killed, what he had been like, who had fallen for him, but more to the point, who hated him and wanted him gone. The general consensus was that Aaron Dennis had few enemies, but he had some scorned women in his age category who had been more than upset when the doctor began pursuing a student.
The Maude Rogers Murder Collection Page 39
