Sweet After Death

by Valentina Giambanco

  Had they taken prescription pads? Madison instinctively reached for the desk drawer and pulled it open. It should have been locked, as doctors’ drawers often are, and yet it was not. And just inside it there was a small pile of brand-new prescription pads. Next to them lay a folded piece of cloth, too grubby to be a handkerchief, and Madison’s hand reached for it and was about to pick it up when she froze: she had not photographed the interior of the drawer.

  Swearing under her breath, she took a few quick pictures and, with her tweezers, lifted the cloth and placed it on the desk. There was something about the fabric, something rough and unwashed, that had no place in the spotless, well-organized doctor’s office.

  Madison picked up one corner and gently unfolded the frayed square of white cotton. Inside, written with charcoal in uneven capital letters, were only two words:

  HELP US

  It was a young child’s handwriting. A memory flickered, and Madison went cold. Who was us? Who had reached out to the doctor? What would it take for someone to grab the first thing they could lay their hands on and scribble out that kind of plea? Madison knew exactly what it would take.

  She was turning in the swivel chair to get up when her eyes caught the dark blur on the glass, which had been invisible up to that point. She looked at the blur; she looked at the desk and at what was on the desk. She thought of Dr. Robert Dennen, found somewhere far from where he should have been, and she thought of his neat office, where the burglar had not disturbed a single Post-it and had not been interested in the precious prescription pads. The map in the senior center had been detailed, but Madison remembered the lines of intersecting roads and the colored pins stuck in them. She reached for her cell.

  “What if Robert Dennen himself was the burglar?” she asked Brown when he picked up.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if someone intercepted Dennen on his way back home from the Jacobsens? What if this person forced Dennen to come here, to his office, in the middle of the night, because it was the only way to get access to his computer and the files in it?”

  “The patients’ files?”

  “Yes. That’s why the door wasn’t forced and nothing was touched in the room. They came in with Dennen’s key. The only thing the killer was interested in was in the hard drive. And there’s blood on the window just behind the chair, the kind of blood spatter pattern you would see if someone was sitting at the desk and someone else hit him with enough force.”

  “And you think the only thing of any value on the desk is the computer.”

  “Sarge, I think I’ve found what pushed the doctor to call Child Protection Services. There’s a note . . . someone was pretty serious about asking the doctor for help. Someone who could barely write. Looks like a young kid.”

  Brown was quiet for a moment. “The killer didn’t take the note?”

  “No.” Madison’s eyes searched the fabric for any clue of its provenance. “He didn’t, maybe he didn’t even know about it. I found it tucked away next to the prescription pads, but in plain sight if anyone opened the drawer. Dennen wasn’t trying to hide it, and the killer wasn’t trying to find it.”

  “We need to get the note and the blood DNA tested ASAP.”

  “I know, I’m about to take samples.”

  “You’re doubling everything?”

  “As per my instructions.”

  “Madison . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “You need a drink tonight, I’m buying.”

  Madison smiled. “I’m okay. I need to be sober in case the sonofabitch tries to go three-for-three with me.”

  “You think it’s the same guy?”

  “Do you? I don’t know what to think. Where are you now?”

  “Still talking to Lee Edwards.”

  “How is she holding up?”

  “As you would expect. Never thought anything like this could happen in Ludlow.”

  “Sounds familiar.” Madison felt black humor seep into her voice—the only shield cops ever have against tragedy.

  “Sure does.”

  The blood had dried on the glass and Madison’s immediate task was to get it to Sorensen. Taking the photograph of the blood spatter in situ was difficult because of the dark background; once she had a few clear views and perspectives relating to the chair, Madison used a stainless-steel spatula to scrape the stain into a square of folded paper, and then placed it into an envelope. She did it twice to make sure of a clean sample for the Seattle lab.

  Her eyes kept glancing at the cryptic appeal. Help us. An appeal, maybe even a warning of danger. Madison focused on the task at hand, but her heart beat faster.

  When she turned around, Eric Lynch was standing by the door. “The medical examiner has just taken the body,” he said.

  “Good.” Madison sealed the second envelope. “Dr. Lynch, do you have the password for this computer?”

  “We already talked about—”

  “We have the warrants.”

  “I know, but—”

  “There’s a possibility the killer was in this room and forced Dr. Dennen to access patients’ files. Do you have the password for this computer?”

  Lynch blinked and looked around the room as if the revelation would lead to the killer materializing in front of them, right there and then.

  “The password,” Madison repeated, not unkindly.

  “I do . . . it’s just that there’s nothing personal on the computers. We all work out of the same server and our appointment calendars are shared.”

  “I need to see what’s there, and I need to know what files the killer looked at.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I don’t need to read the files.” Madison already knew that Dr. Lynch had an alibi—and in any case, he wouldn’t have needed Dennen to get inside the server. “You’ll be my eyes. You can look at the files for me and tell me what you see. Okay? Okay. Now please, Doctor.”

  Dr. Lynch stumbled slightly as he came in, and his cheeks were flushed. He sat down at the desk as if he were being strapped to a bomb. Madison gave him a pair of gloves. He turned on the computer.

  “I need you to check which files or documents were the last to be accessed.”

  Lynch looked at the screen for a full minute, his eyes zigzagging on the clinic’s home page.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How many patients are registered with the clinic?”

  “Eight hundred and thirty-two,” he replied automatically.

  “Eight hun—But you only have six hundred-odd residents. How . . . ?”

  “The clinic covers a larger area than just the town.” Dr. Lynch worked the keyboard, moving the cursor, and opening and closing windows in rapid succession.

  Madison wanted to speak, but she bit her tongue; she wanted Lynch to concentrate on what he was doing, because there was no one else who could look at the entire contents of that computer without getting whipped by the Bill of Rights.

  Lynch’s mouth opened and closed and opened again. He turned to Madison with a mortified look. “I can’t do it.”

  “What do you mean you can’t do it?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. It was a dumb question. “I meant,” she said “why can you not do it?”

  “This system is quite old, it’s not built for that kind of thing. It’s not—how can I put it?—it’s not one of the search criteria. I need a name first.”

  “We don’t have a name.”

  “We can look for patients’ ages, addresses, their last appointment. We can look for who has been classified at risk from flu or which new babies need vaccinations. But I can’t ask the system to look for the last files Robert accessed and . . . see . . . the last document he opened was a letter to a pharmaceutical rep last Monday, nothing on Wednesday night. Nothing.” He looked back at the screen and again at Madison. “Nothing.”

  “Can you check if Jeb Tanner is registered?”

  Lynch tapped on the keyboard, waited, tapped again. �
�No, he’s not.”

  No surprise there. If Tanner didn’t like mixing with the townsfolk, he was hardly going to get himself—or his family—registered. Dennen must have gone out there on his own initiative.

  “What we need is in there, sir, and we’ll get it out one way or the other—even if it will take a crowbar to do it,” Madison said, and after a moment she added, “Dr. Lynch, when was the last time Ty Edwards’s file was accessed?”

  Chapter 24

  Lee and Ty Edwards’s home bore the marks of the family life of a couple who had been together for a long time. Brown busied himself looking at the photographs on the mantel and let Chief Sangster take the woman’s statement. They already had Madison’s statement on record and there was, of course, the issue of a police officer discharging her weapon—which, in Seattle, would mean a review of the situation leading to said discharge, and for the officer to be on administrative leave. In Ludlow, it meant that a cop had been shot at by a sniper and now she just needed to get on with her job, thank you very much.

  Brown was ready to jump in, if necessary; however, for the moment he preferred listening to Sangster, who, in spite of his lack of experience interviewing victims’ family members, seemed to be doing well enough. It came from knowing the person, Brown considered, and treating them like an individual and not like a form to be filled in.

  Lee Edwards sat on her sofa with her poodle curled up next to her. The dog’s head was in her lap and her hand rested against it, as if to make sure it was there.

  A friend had come to stay with the widow and had made coffee for the police officers and lemon tea for Mrs. Edwards before retiring to the kitchen to give them privacy.

  Brown had stood over the body of Lee Edwards’s husband and had drawn the same conclusions as Madison: the man had been targeted. And whether the reason was personal, entirely random, or because the sniper had believed Ty Edwards was the reincarnation of a demon who was about to destroy humanity and civilization as they knew it—and Kevin Brown had had a few of those, courtesy of the cuts in mental health provision—the key was how the target had been chosen.

  You understand the victim, you understand the killer.

  Chief Sangster shifted on the chair and it creaked under his weight. “Lee,” he said, “tell me a little about Ty’s work at the store. It seems weird, I know, but I’m trying to get a picture of how things stand, to make sense of something that doesn’t seem to make sense.”

  The woman wiped her eyes and nodded. “The store is doing all right,” she said, and to Brown she added, “We own the hardware store on Main Street.”

  Brown met her shiny, red-rimmed eyes.

  “We’re never going to be millionaires,” she continued. “But that was never the point. A town needs a hardware store, and we kept on with it. It wasn’t going too badly, you know. We even had the March specials out already, made a promo for the radio only last week, and it went out county-wide on Monday.”

  Brown thought of the radio commercial from the tiny town like a pebble thrown into a huge black lake.

  “I know I’ve never had a problem with anything Ty sold me,” Sangster said. “I know you sell quality, not dime-store, but did Ty have words with anybody? An unhappy customer perhaps? Someone who wanted to make trouble?”

  What a world it would be if the right to bear arms meant the opportunity to address customer service matters with such finality, Brown thought—and immediately realized that, yes, that was exactly the world he seemed to be living in from time to time.

  Lee Edwards had not replied. She was frowning and thinking in a manner that seemed almost painful, as if the question had produced an answer too distressing to conceive.

  “Jeb Tanner,” she said after a moment. “Two weeks ago, Jeb Tanner came to the shop to exchange something—what was it?—and Ty told him he couldn’t, because he had broken the thing after he’d bought it and there had been nothing wrong with it in the store. And Tanner was very nice about it and he kind of smiled and told Ty he’d cancel his account with us if Ty didn’t.”

  “What did Ty say?”

  “Ty didn’t want to cancel the account. Tanner is a farmer—we know how hard life is for farmers around here. Tanner’s not like most people: he can be real charming one minute and he can be . . .” Lee couldn’t find a word that would work in polite company. “Well, the way it ended he told my husband that he should have known better than that. He was courteous, you know, and very civil. But he canceled the account and left. There was something about him . . . I don’t care how well mannered he is.”

  “He paid what he owed?”

  “No, and we didn’t expect him to. We thought he’d come back in a few weeks, pretend it had never happened, pay a little toward the account, and buy something else. He runs his farm like it’s the 1920s, you know. It’s his family we felt sorry for. You don’t think he could have . . . ?”

  Jeb Tanner. Brown turned the name around in his mind. A farmer certainly has the opportunity, sometimes even the reason, to become a very good shot. And Ty Edwards’s killer had been a very good shot indeed.

  The woman stroked the dog’s head. “I can’t even remember what it was that he wanted to exchange. I told you last night, didn’t I, Chief? This town is not what it used to be.”

  They sat in the cruiser with the heating on full blast, still parked in front of the Edwards residence. The chief’s hands rested on the steering wheel and his thoughts were elsewhere. Brown was jotting down some notes in his pad: he preferred doing it right after the interview, when the memories were fresh, without interrupting the flow of words at the time. They had a name, they had a potential suspect. He looked up after a couple of minutes and Sangster was staring into the middle distance; his eyes were on something only he could see, and his face was set hard.

  “Jeb Tanner . . . ,” Brown began to say, and he stopped when the chief turned toward him.

  “There’s something I need to tell you. I didn’t mention it before. I didn’t want to . . .”

  Brown sat back and shut up. He was good at that, good at letting people talk when they needed to, and he certainly had no idea where the conversation was heading, only that the chief looked stricken.

  “The day before Robert Dennen was killed he called me on my cell, he left a message on the voice mail. He said there was something important he needed to talk to me about. I never got back to him, because it was a busy day and I thought I’d catch him in the clinic on Thursday. Robert had never called my personal cell phone before. Never. I didn’t call him back, and he was dead by the morning.”

  Will Sangster looked Brown in the eye and waited for the cutting remark, for the jibe and the criticism that never came. His face was flushed in shame and regret and he was rigid on the seat, expecting a verbal blow of some kind, of any kind.

  “You couldn’t have known,” Brown said. “You could not possibly have known what was going to happen or the nature of what the doctor wanted to talk to you about. You still don’t. We still don’t. It means only that there was something on Robert Dennen’s mind, and he was serious enough about it to call you on your cell.”

  Sangster blinked and the big man sort of wilted against his seat.

  “You couldn’t have known,” Brown repeated.

  “What if it was something that could have saved his life?”

  “You can’t work on what-ifs,” Brown replied. “How many calls a day do you get about something-or-other that someone wants to talk to you about?”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “How many? Not just calls for assistance but anything from the state, the county, the sheriff’s department, locals, and anybody who’s passing by and needs something from the police department.”

  Sangster sighed. “A few dozen calls.”

  “Exactly. You couldn’t have known.” Brown gave him a second to absorb what he’d said, because he liked the chief and wanted—needed—to be able to work with him at his best. If he needed support about this, he’d g
ive it to him. In his heart, though, born out of the experience of years on the force and mistakes that had cost the lives of innocent people, Brown knew that sometimes what-ifs are all that fate has left us. In the myriad of possibilities, of alternative worlds, there might be a world where the chief had acted on Dennen’s call and the doctor was still alive, perhaps even Ty Edwards was still alive, but the moment where the right path could be taken had passed. And Brown ached for the man who would have to live with it.

  “Tell me about Tanner,” he said.

  Earlier in the day, as soon as Brown had confirmed that the patch of wood that had hidden the sniper was deserted, the ponderous machine of law enforcement on the county and state level had swung into action and roadblocks had been established on Highway 395. They didn’t know what the shooter looked like, or whether he would be inclined to leave the town at all; however—in moments where not much else could be done—a roadblock was always a good idea. At least, that was how the troopers waiting on the side of the road looked at it.

  They were cold, they had run out of coffee, and their shift was about to end. All they had to show for it were five stops, all very early in the day—all local residents who lived out of town and had not gone to the vigil because they had other engagements. All were driving to Sherman Falls without a clue that anything had happened.

  The troopers had been in position fifteen minutes after receiving the call from dispatch—in plenty of time to meet anyone who was coming from the other direction—and yet, after those early stops, too early for the driver to have shot the victim and then driven onto the Interstate, no one had been through. The residents of Ludlow had gone back to their homes, or wherever they had decided to hunker down, and no one had driven past the troopers.