by Mark Nykanen
If he’d meant to shock Mommsa, he’d misjudged his suspect. Gwyn read this first in Delagopolis’ face, the way he appeared to force down another smile. She knew why, too. Any pain her stepfather had suffered had come only as comfort and joy to his widow, and her lawyer knew this as well as anyone.
In the photograph, rigor had contorted John Appleton’s face, frozen his mouth in a scream. His eyes bulged grotesquely, like they were exploding from his skull. The kind of picture more familiar from horror films, where ghouls rise from graves to ravage the living, than from the appearance of real bodies at gruesome crime scenes.
It was clear he’d suffered a slow, agonizing death. A man who’d had time enough to scream and scream, and then screamed some more while being bitten, struck over and over by venomous snakes.
“You look at him, you just know he was hurting something bad at the end. And nobody heard him. Nobody. I never could figure that out. The medical examiner said he’d been bitten twenty-two times by those snakes. But do you know what the ME said that really made my skin crawl?”
“No, we don’t,” Delagopolis said, “and we don’t care what makes your skin crawl.”
“He said your husband,” Hastings placed his fingers on the print, “probably felt every one of those bites.
“Is that so?” Delagopolis sat back, letting the sheriff go on, perhaps sensing for the first time in twenty-three years that the case could be resolved in a matter of minutes.
When Gwyn studied the picture, she saw brutal red wounds on John Appleton’s neck, ears, arms, and hands. Lots of bites, like he’d been trying to fight off the snakes to the very end. She’d never looked this closely at the photograph, and she had to turn from it. She tried to push it back across the table to Hastings, but Mommsa grabbed her arm and pulled it back so she could keep staring at the disturbing image.
“It’s really hard to look away, isn’t it, Mrs. Appleton? To see a body after it’s dead. A body you’ve known so well, like this one. It’s really hard.”
But Gwyn didn’t believe it was John Appleton’s body her mother was staring at any longer, or those hideous bites that had savaged his skin, or even the snake trails in the dust, none of which lay near a number of mysterious little clumps in the lower right hand corner of the photo. She figured Mommsa was studying the picture to see herself, because she’d been there, too, only she’d been a lot smarter than the man who’d always treated her as an imbecile.
“Seeing the way you look at that picture, Mrs. Appleton, makes it hard for me to believe you never saw a thing. Never heard a thing. All that stuff about piddling around in your kitchen the whole time your husband was getting eaten alive by snakes, screaming his lungs out not a hundred feet away? I have to tell you, that was hard to believe then and it’s hard to believe now. And your daughter’s story’s no better.” His eyes took a slow tour to Gwyn. “Saying she was on her way down to the stable when she ‘happened’ to look over and see her stepfather walking into that root cellar. Like a man would put a bunch of poisonous snakes in there just so he could waltz in and die a hellish death. That’s what you both said back then, right? That he must have put them in there ’cause neither one of you did.”
“Need I remind you that it was Mr. Appleton who got the snakes from Mr. Ventriel, not my clients?”
Hastings didn’t respond to Delagopolis. He kept his eyes on Gwyn, who forced herself to stare back. He could rehash their statements all he wanted. He’d never been able to poke any holes in them at the time, and nothing he’d brought up today was a concern, either. Long as they both kept their mouths shut.
“So you’ve reopened the case officially based on a death bed conversation,” Delagopolis said. “Not a confession, nothing of the sort, but a conversation you had with the doped-up owner of a reptile farm with early Alzheimer’s who used to advertise ‘Killer Vipers From Hell!’ on billboards coming up to town. I’m glad he’s your witness, Sheriff, and not mine. I don’t think there’s a judge in a thousand miles who’d find this the least compelling, or a jury that would ever take that kind of bait.”
“I expect you’re right, counselor. Absolutely, and if that’s all I had I wouldn’t even bother you or Mrs. Appleton there. Or Miss Sanders,” he added with a glance at Gwyn. “But there’s something that came to my attention recently, and it throws a whole new light on this case. You see, Mr. Ventriel’s son was going through his effects and found this.” He held up a small white envelope. “It’s a letter he wrote, but never mailed.”
“To whom?”
“That’s just it, counselor, it doesn’t say. Maybe to himself. It’s the kind of thing a man with a strong sense of right and wrong might do,” said as if the idea of a conscience might sound as foreign as soul-cleansing to his visitors.
“You’ve been playing a lot of games this afternoon, Sheriff, and we’re about to walk.”
“No games, not at all. Just getting everyone up to speed. That’s my job.”
He opened the envelope, which had been opened before, and fished out a single sheet of folded up paper that had been torn from a spiral notepad. The perforated edges had yellowed, turned brittle, and several fell like flakes to the desk.
“The date on this was just one month after your husband died, Mrs. Appleton. The handwriting’s been verified.”
As if cued, his glowering assistant handed a copy to each of them.
“Back when he was completely lucid, many years before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or lung cancer and had to take all those painkillers that can mess up your mind. Back before a sheriff,” said in a self-deprecating tone, “interrupted his dying to ask a bunch of questions about an old case. He says right there that when Mrs. Appleton gave him the thousand dollars, she told him it wasn’t about her, it was about her daughter. ‘Protecting her.’ See that? I’ve got it highlighted on your copies. He said that you told him you were protecting her. Why were you protecting her, Mrs. Appleton? What did your husband do to Gwyn that you had to protect her?”
Delagopolis said they’d have no further comment, not that any appeared forthcoming from Mommsa. Tears spilled down her cheeks. Gwyn put her arms around her mother, who buried her face in her daughter’s neck.
“Did John Appleton do something to her, Mrs. Appleton. Did he hurt your girl in some way?”
“He never touched me,” Gwyn said. “Never.” Now she was crying, too. Tears of fury. Tears of rage.
“I find that hard to believe. You’re making it sound like a riddle, Miss Sanders. She was protecting you from him, but he never touched you. See what I mean?”
“This is over,” Delagopolis announced, but Gwyn leaned over the desk, furious as she had been after last night’s viciousness.
“It is a riddle, but you’re so far from figuring it out that you can’t see the answer staring you in the face.”
“Gwyn!” Delagopolis shouted.
Hastings, despite himself, looked at the photo again. Looked up, down. Nothing dawned, or appeared to. He reached across the desk, took Mommsa’s hand in what had to be his most daring move of the day.
Delagopolis tried to push it away, but Mommsa held the sheriff’s fingers tightly. “You were protecting her, weren’t you? In the end. Maybe not all along, but in the end you were doing what a mother does, right? Even if it took you a long time and a lot of courage.”
Hastings was good; even in the midst of her own anguish, Gwyn realized this.
“Forget it,” Delagopolis said, dragging Mommsa to her feet. She held fast to Hastings.
“And you’re protecting her now, Mrs. Appleton? Aren’t you?”
“From what?” Gwyn cried. “It’s over. Don’t you get it? It’s over.”
“From the men in your group,” Hastings said with bullet eyes aimed only at Gwyn.
“From what?” Gwyn staggered under the weight of his accusation, caught herself on the back of her chair.
“From killers like Croce. Men who would murder their wives. Violent men. Men you have to w
ork with. Men who are close to you. Men who might hurt you. Men just like John Appleton.”
“You’re out of line, Hastings.” Delagopolis pried Mommsa’s hand from the sheriff, but not her eyes.
“You’re protecting her from dangerous men. Isn’t that what you’re doing, Mrs. Appleton? You and whoever’s helping you. Isn’t that what you’ve been doing for a long time?”
Delagopolis led Mommsa out the door saying, “Not a word, Joanna. Not a word.”
Gwyn squared off with Hastings. “You leave her alone. You hear me. You leave my mother alone.”
“And you’re protecting her, aren’t you, Miss Sanders. Just like you have for a long time.” He paused, as if struck, and closed his eyes for a beat longer than a blink. When he opened them he pointed to her and said, “I know the answer to your riddle. It wasn’t what John Appleton did to you, it’s what you did to him. That’s how she’s protecting you. She’s covering for you, for what you did to him. That’s why she’s always protected you, since the day he died.”
Gwyn felt cold—streams of sweat suddenly turning to rivers of ice—and for the first time noticed the hot wash of her own tears. She turned and stormed out into the mountain sunlight, caught the glare off a windshield and closed her eyes, squeezed them hard enough to buckle her brow, as if to murder the memory of all the madness that haunted her.
When she opened them she saw Trenton and Warren standing by their unmarked car not thirty feet from the Benz. They might have been through with her in Los Angeles, but they were far from through with her mother. And they’d just had the sheriff doing their bidding as well as his own, trying to wrest a confession from her—or eke out new evidence that would solve an old homicide and a new series of horrific murders.
She stared at the detectives, shaking visibly, oblivious of the cameras, the reporters and crews held at bay by two deputies on the other side of the lot. And then her shoulders sagged and she gripped her stomach, closed her eyes again, and felt the vast emptiness of grief and fear. She couldn’t move. It was as if she’d been pinned down by the burning sun and the eyes of everyone in that parking lot.
A pair of strong arms wrapped around her shoulders. She thought it was Delagopolis until she heard the voice close to her ear. “You come with your mama. She’s waitin’ for you. Come on, let’s get outa here.” Pants guided her toward Delagopolis’ car and away from the hate and horror that had always been Big Bear.
Chapter 10
Gwyn stared vacantly out the passenger window as Delagopolis drove the Benz back down Big Bear’s commercial strip. With tears still drying on her cheeks, she tried to make sense of the sheriff’s appalling accusation. Could Mommsa really have killed the guys in the group? Gwyn didn’t believe it, but that might be where Pants fit in. Look at his background. When Detective Warren had confronted him in Santa Barbara, he’d read off a whole list of charges, including assault and battery, with a baseball bat, no less; murder, which had been dismissed after the chief witness “disappeared;” arson for hire; and running numbers for the mob. The portrait of a hard-core hood.
But he was also Mommsa’s lover. This wasn’t some big routine they were pulling. Mommsa was smitten. Gwyn had seen all the signs before—many times before—and had no doubt the attraction was real. And it wasn’t the first time she’d taken up with a total loser, either. Witness the late John Appleton.
Still, Gwyn asked herself, could Mommsa be tweaked enough to think she could protect me by having those guys killed? Or was it some weird payback for all her pain, making these batterers die at her command? The very fact Gwyn couldn’t ignore the questions made her acutely uncomfortable. It wasn’t as if love and murder were mutually exclusive in their family. Maybe Albert Croce’s widely televised shooting of his wife had set off a string of grisly connections in Mommsa’s twisted mind.
They left the town behind when Delagopolis drove over the concrete bridge that spanned Big Bear Lake. Gwyn hoped to never set her sorry eyes on that miserable collection of memories again.
“I know what you’re thinking, and I didn’t do it.” Mommsa spoke from the back seat where she and Pants had maintained a welcome silence.
“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” Gwyn replied.
“You’re wondering if that sheriff’s right, and I’m telling you he’s wrong. I love you dearly, but I wouldn’t kill for you.”
Gwyn found nothing she could say aloud and wondered what Delagopolis thought of Mommsa’s denial. He wore his defense table face, the one so blank it said to a jury that nothing of note had occurred in the courtroom, even after a smoking gun had left everyone, including the judge, stunned.
“I wouldn’t kill for you,” gnawed at Gwyn as her teeth tortured her bottom lip. She’d finally broken this nervous habit in her early twenties, and here she was munching again. She had probably been chewing it on their last trip down from Big Bear, and for reasons not unlike the ones that gripped her today.
Delagopolis patted her shoulder. “They’re going to run some DNA tests.”
“He tell you that?”
“The DA did. It’s part of the protocol these days when you open up an old case. Either the defense or the prosecution wants them run. We don’t, and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you why. But it’s going to happen.”
“What am I going to have to give him? Hair? A skin sample?”
Delagopolis let the Benz gobble up a curve. “He seems to think he’s got that.”
“My skin?”
A nod as Delagopolis started to pass an elephantine RV.
“That’s crazy,” Gwyn said, “Where would he have gotten it?”
“From under Appleton’s fingernails.”
“He never touched me.”
“So you said.”
Great, so even Delagopolis sounded doubtful now. “Look, just tell me, do I have anything to worry about?”
Delagopolis had always told her no, you’re fine. But he offered no consoling words today. “I would say now’s a good time to be concerned.”
Gwyn thought she’d traveled the entire emotional circuit in the past nine days, and then her lawyer put her stomach in a steel vice. “I was sixteen.”
“They could still prosecute you.”
“He was a beast.”
“They’d call that ‘mitigating circumstances,’ and it would come up in the penalty phase.”
“You mean when they decide if they’re going to put me on death row?”
“They’re not going to do that. At the time of his death they weren’t executing kids. Besides, you’re white and you really do have mitigating circumstances.”
“Hearing you say that does not come as a relief.”
“I understand.”
“It’s like they set me up for a huge fall. Here I was this morning no longer a suspect in a whole series of murders, and this afternoon I’m talking about mitigating circumstances.” She would have cried again but her eyes felt empty, dry as the sun-baked boulders that crowded the highway.
Delagopolis adjusted the thermostat and a refreshing rush of cooler air passed over Gwyn. He glanced at her as he talked.
“All I can tell you is it’s getting really sticky. For starters, I’m now convinced that Hastings is working hand-in-glove with L.A.P.D. At first I thought L.A. might be pressuring him to re-open the Appleton case, but I think he has his own agenda. For both of these departments, these killings are a hell of an opportunity. They’ve already got huge headlines. Prove a case against the two of you and they’ll have mother and daughter murderers, and it’ll be 24/7 on TV. Careers are made on a whole lot less.”
“So I should be worried too?” Mommsa leaned her head between the front seats.
“It all depends, Joanna.”
“On what, precisely?”
“On whether you’re killing those guys down there”—Delagopolis eyed her in the rear view—or having them killed.”
Gwyn fell blessedly asleep before the two-lane snaked down through the mountains,
and didn’t wake until Delagopolis pulled into the parking garage across from the Beverly Hills Plaza Hotel.
Drearily, she dragged herself out of the car, offered Mommsa a perfunctory hug, Delagopolis a thanks and a wave, and Pants a “see-ya,” which was more than she thought she ever could have mustered for the Chicago import. She wandered over to her car and drove home in a near daze, napping till Hark called about eight to ask if he could come over.
“Sure. I’d love to see you.”
He said he had to make a stop but could probably get to her place in forty-five minutes.
After hanging up she realized she felt lucid for the first time in thirty-six hours. She inventoried the fridge to see what she could cobble together for dinner, and noticed she wasn’t very hungry, making do with red pepper humus and smoked turkey. Her appetite wasn’t helped by the faint smell of rotting fish and burning rubber that had taken over the Southland. She found the odors no stronger out on the balcony, so she settled on a deck chair with her plate and looked out at the beach, all but empty at this hour. Dusk looked darker than usual, almost linty, probably because that first-stage smog alert had been in effect all day. Bad air had plagued L.A. throughout the summer, and even out here on the coast the air quality index hadn’t risen above “poor” since the beginning of June.
As her eyes fixed on the darkening shoreline, and her nose grew inured to the odors, she realized she could plant herself out here in the smog for weeks and live off the dead bastard’s money. Or she could start answering some questions of her own about the murder of the men in her group. Like the one that had been nagging her for days. Who the hell was Barr Onstott? Of all the obvious suspects, Onstott topped the list.
Hard to believe that only twenty-four hours had passed since the group had imploded in Pomona, and Barr had jumped in front of Lupe to protect her. He’d said something to her. Gwyn had seen his lips moving. What was it? If Lupe had heard him in the middle of that mess, she’d remember.
