“I think so,” Rachel said. “How about we flip him over?”
Morgan nodded.
Even though five men surrounded the body and another three were inside vehicles, Rachel said to Morgan, “Give me a hand, will you?”
Morgan took the rubber gloves that Rachel held out, snapped them on, and knelt next to the deceased. He rolled easily.
Rachel said, “Looks like this is the entrance wound. He was shot in the left shoulder. From the position of the exit, I’d say the bullet came at a downward angle. I’ll know more when we get him in the lab.”
Morgan said, “A downward angle? Are you sure?” If this was Curry and his apartment was the crime scene, the shooter would have been in or on another nearby building, like Tia Johnson’s killer.
“It’s the same high caliber we’ve seen before. The bullet went right through him. You find the crime scene and we might recover the casing.”
“If this is the same perp, we won’t find the shell.” Morgan stood and looked around. The only lighted area was in front of her. The rolling surface of the landfill was covered in a thick layer of snow. Wind blew the white powder like dry sand in a desert.
Remembering the cold apartment from several hours before, she tried to conjure the image of the broken window with blood spatter and shards of glass, but all she could recall was the face of the little girl when she opened the closet door. She doubted that child could have covered the window with cardboard. Someone else had been in the apartment, maybe the killer. She’d been so concerned with the child that she’d left Redick alone to process the crime scene. She needed to go back there and look around again.
Redick approached her. “They don’t know anything useful. The body probably was put in the trash two weeks ago. This truck has been out of commission. Since it was sitting inside, the contents got a little ripe. The owner insisted that they make a trip to the dump before these guys left for the day.”
“Probably should talk to the owner.”
“Right.”
She lifted her chin toward the body and said, “You think this might be Ben Curry?”
Redick said, “We can hope so.”
“Hope so?”
“If it’s Curry, he won’t hurt any more children. Someone’s done our work for us.”
“We’re not supposed to think like that,” Morgan said, looking down at the garbage-crusted corpse. “This cocksucker is innocent until proven guilty.”
Redick shrugged. “Like I said…”
“Let’s get this guy out of here.” She walked back to one of the squad cars and tapped on the window. “We need to seize the truck. Have one of their guys drive it to the garage.”
“Right,” the uniform said.
A gurney appeared and the corpse was lifted into it and carried to the back of the ambulance. The cadaver would go directly to the morgue. They’d probably have to clean the back of the ambulance once the job was done. Decomp odors settled on anything near.
Morgan joined Rachel, who was kneeling and sifting through the trash that hadn’t been covered with snow.
“Be careful,” Rachel said. “There’s broken shards of glass in this mess.”
Morgan knelt and reached inside her coat, to the pocket of her blazer, pulled out an ink pen, and started moving items around with it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The kids were in bed and Celia Morning was wrapping presents. She had Christmas paper and bows scattered across the dining-room table, and, for the fourth time, she’d lost the pair of scissors that she’d just used. Across the room, on the TV, the late show was A Christmas Carol, the Alistair Sim version. Each time Scrooge moved backward or forward in time an hourglass rotated on the screen.
Celia stopped to watch the image. It seemed like only yesterday that she and Jack had worked together on this task. He was the one who always knew where the scissors and tape were. He’d caution her to put them in the same place each time, but she was never really aware of putting them down. They turned up in the strangest spots. One year, on Christmas Day, she’d found a roll of tape in the freezer. Now the spiraling hourglass had taken on a new meaning. She watched it, mesmerized.
She became aware of a light tapping at the front door. As she stood, a roll of tape fell from her lap—still no scissors. She stepped over the tape and crossed the room. Through the small window she could see a girl: Kitty. Celia unlocked the deadbolt and swung the door open. “Come in,” she said. “Come in.”
Inside with the door closed, Kitty apologized. “I hope I didn’t wake you. The lights were on.”
“No. I was up. Can I get you anything? You want a soda?”
“Sounds good.”
When Celia returned to the living room, Kitty had shed her coat and was watching TV. Celia handed her a can of Diet Pepsi. “Are you hungry?”
Kitty looked up. “This is my favorite part. I want to watch it.”
Celia perched on the arm of the sofa and turned her attention to the TV.
“What day is it, boy?”
“Why, it’s Christmas Day, sir.”
Kitty said softly, “I like the part where the maid thinks he’s nuts for doubling her salary.”
“A happy ending to a grim story,” Celia said. “It always makes me cry.” Her eyes watering up, she reached for a tissue.
“Me too,” Kitty said. A moment later Scrooge was carrying Tiny Tim on his shoulder, and she turned to Celia, and said, “My dad is gone.”
“Really?”
“I went to his place when I thought he wouldn’t be there. I saw blood and a broken window. I don’t know what happened, but he’s gone. I think he’s dead.”
“Why do you think that?”
Kitty shrugged. “The place looks like something terrible happened. I remember what it was like with your neighbor, Woods. Plus, he hasn’t been looking for me. At least, I don’t think he has.”
“If you wanted to avoid him, why go back there?”
“Because someone else had been living there with him. I left some food for her, and I tried to cover the broken window with cardboard so the place wouldn’t be so cold. I’ve been watching. I figured he’d show up if he was alive. I saw the police come around a couple of times. Then this morning they went in.”
“They did? But how do you know?”
“I told you, I’ve been watching. The super’s apartment is in the basement. Sometimes I’d hide out there. He’s a nice man, and he’s a policeman wannabe—complete with a scanner. Just a while ago, he told me the landlord had opened the apartment for the police. Then a little later we heard the call, a body was found at the landfill. I think it’s my dad. It’s got to be.”
“Why would your father go to the landfill?”
Kitty shrugged.
Celia stood and walked to the rocking chair next to the couch. Her head hurt so she sat with her index fingers on either side of the bridge of her nose. At length she said, “What do you think happened to him?”
“My father?” Kitty met her eyes. “The same thing that happened to your neighbor.”
Celia hesitated. She wanted to stay off the topic of Smallwood. “You said someone else was living there with your father. Who?”
Kitty shrugged. “Just a kid.”
“You have a younger sister or brother?”
“No. She’s the granddaughter of one of my aunts. She was just staying for a while. A sweet kid, really. It’s not unusual for Dad to take kids in.”
Celia shivered at what that implied. “Do you think we should go to the apartment and get her?”
“She’s not there. I crawled under the crime-scene tape and checked before I came here. Then the woman down the hall told me the police took her.”
“Do you think you should at least phone your aunt?”
Kitty looked downward. “We both know there ain’t no aunt.”
Celia nodded and stared at the TV, lost in thought. Kitty startled her when she asked, “If the police have her, she’ll be all right.”
“I’m sure she will.”
“So, you got any peanut butter?”
*
Morgan watched a janitor vacuum with a benign interest. He seemed to go back and forth over the same area repeatedly. The sniper-investigation files were spread across her desk. Redick had gone home hours ago, and she had intended to follow him. But she didn’t want to. Even though she’d been living alone for close to five years, the ghosts, or memories, of her parents haunted her. She was living in the home they bought together and lived in most of their married life.
Moreover, since the incident with Vic, she was positive she was a lesbian. Vic had opened the floodgates of a long-suppressed desire. Looking back at her life, she wondered if the other girls in high-school gym class felt the same way she did about the shower—firm young breasts defying gravity, soft curves of the waist and buttocks, and the dark, or sometimes pink, triangle.
She remembered Nancy Hodge in the second grade, a girl with a platinum ponytail and fair skin. She’d stolen pennies from her mother’s purse and treated Nancy to gum and peppermints. Was this thing alive in second grade? She didn’t even know the desire was possible until Chelsea Payne and Texas. Even in her neighbor’s arms, she’d questioned it.
When her mother sat her down and told her the facts of life, she didn’t tell Morgan about loving women. What would have been the point? A woman’s biology was connected to reproduction and that was connected with men.
So here she found herself at midlife, wanting a woman she hardly knew, a woman she’d screwed up with already. Even if she could get past that, every lesbian in town had heard about her disgraceful behavior with Vic. She saw nowhere to turn for help. The only gays she knew were at the bar or in the consignment shop.
Morgan tried to focus on her work. She halfheartedly paged through the sniper file and the information they’d collected so far. CSI wouldn’t have a match on the latest victim’s fingerprints for several hours. But the surface evidence said that the guy was Ben Curry—another sex offender. The little girl they’d pulled out of the crime scene earlier was resting in the hospital, and in the morning the Cicero Police Department would contact her mother (if this woman was her mother).
The coffee at this hour was vile, even with a lot of sweetener and Coffee-mate. She’d raided the snack machine earlier, and she popped the last little powdered sugar doughnut in her mouth, then pulled a small notebook from her top drawer. She wrote the names of all the victims in sequential order. They were all men except for one, the drug-using prostitute, Tia Johnson.
Morgan stared at the name, then rummaged through the paperwork and pulled out the file on Johnson. The MO was nearly the same as the guy at the dump. She’d been shot in her apartment from a building across the street. The bullet was from a high-powered rifle. Neither body had been found immediately, which made the evidence more difficult to locate. They needed to find the place the shooter fired from. There probably wouldn’t be any casings, but they might locate something to help them identify the sniper.
Morgan flipped through the pages, looked at some pictures of the crime scene and a handwritten report that Redick had added. She didn’t remember seeing it before. Attached was a transcript of the interview with Ruby Burnett. At the bottom of the page, almost as an afterthought, he’d written: “Detective Holiday knows Miss Burnett. Babysat.”
She stared at the word “babysat” thoughtfully. Did Redick think she was too close to see something? What was there to see? Her own typed reports were in a separate folder. She spread the pages out on her desk. What did they really have? Even the most organized killer made mistakes. Those mistakes were clues—like the security light on the first killing. She skimmed the Joby Pratt interview notes. He’d seen the killer from his bedroom window, thanks to a security light. She studied the description the boy had given her. This guy was elderly with white hair. Had Ruby Burnett’s connection been another clue? Had her own proximity to the Burnett woman caused her to miss something?
The room was quiet, the janitor gone. Morgan checked her watch. Nearly midnight. She wanted to be at the hospital early in the morning. It seemed silly to go home, but she wasn’t getting anywhere. Tomorrow CSI would have more on the latest victim. She also wanted to be in the room with the woman who might be Lori’s mother when she got her first look at the child. She stacked the reports in order, closed the files. Then she pulled the phone book from beneath the telephone, found, then dialed a number.
“Tallulah’s.”
“Is Sandy there?”
“Which Sandy, the boy or the girl?”
“Ah…”
“I mean biologically, sweetie.”
“He’s a performer.”
“Hey, Sandy, telephone.”
Morgan could hear music and laughter and felt even more alone. After what seemed like forever, Sandy came on the line.
“I don’t know if you remember me,” she said. “My name is Morgan Holiday.”
In a jovial tone, he said, “I remember you. What’s up?”
“I need to talk to you about something.”
“About Chelsea Brown?”
“Uh, yeah. Can we meet sometime soon?”
“I don’t know how much help I can be. Plus, I’m onstage in about five minutes.”
Morgan rushed to say, “I didn’t mean tonight.”
She heard a heavy sigh. “Come by the shop any evening this week.”
“Will she be there?”
“She’s on days. Goes home about three.”
“I’ll be there.”
Sandy laughed. “You lesbians. And you call us drama queens.”
Morgan grabbed her coat from the rack near the door and turned out the lights, then remembered him saying, “You lesbians…” It felt nice to be included in something besides her work.
*
The whole hospital was decked out for Christmas, with a tree in the lobby and a smaller version at the nurses’ station. The moment Morgan walked into Lori’s hospital room, the child held out her arms and said, “Where did you go?”
Morgan moved to the side of the hospital bed. “I had to go to work. But I’m here now. I told you I’d come back.” She noticed a tray with a half-eaten breakfast that was turning cold. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“I was, but I can’t eat it all.”
A woman in mauve scrubs appeared in the room and said, “This is her second tray. She’s eating well. Doesn’t like her pills though. Are you the social worker?”
Morgan noted that the nurse was holding a little white cup with more pills. She extended her hand. “Detective Holiday.”
“Eloise La Veck,” the woman said as she shook hands. “I’m the RN. The ward clerk told me our little girl had a visitor.” She dropped Morgan’s hand and said, “Can I see some identification?”
“Of course.” Morgan pulled out her badge and ID and laid them on the adjustable table next to the breakfast tray.
Nurse La Veck studied the ID, then said, “Good. We want to be careful.”
“I’ll be taking Lori downstairs in a couple of hours,” Morgan said. “Until then I’ll be sitting with her.”
The nurse turned her attention to Lori. “I have another pill for you.” She stepped to the opposite bed side and poured some water.
“Do I have to?” Lori whined.
“It’s a little one,” Nurse La Veck said, handing her the small cup with a single pill and then the glass of water.
The kid put the pill in her mouth, then the straw to her lips. She gagged once, swallowed, then coughed.
The nurse said, “There now. It’s over. You can go on with your visit.” She looked at Morgan and said, “I’ll be around the corner after I finish the med pass. Find me if you or Lori need anything.”
“Where am I going?”
“What?”
“You said I was going downstairs,” Lori said. “What’s down there?”
“Oh,” Morgan said. “It’s a big playroom with lots of great toys.”
“Will other kids be there?”
“No. You’ll have everything to yourself.”
“Will you be there?”
“Yes,” Morgan said. “I’ll be there.”
They watched television together. All the programs and all the commercials were about Christmas. The original Miracle on 34th Street began, Morgan pulled the most comfortable chair close to the bed, and she and the child watched it. Lori was asleep almost immediately.
Morgan saw the end of the film, then started flipping channels. She stopped at a documentary about the Asian girl who designed the Vietnam memorial. Ruby Burnett returned to Morgan’s thoughts. As a teenager, when she’d babysat for Ruby’s son Matt, she’d liked it there. The place had always seemed warm and homey. Matt’s grandmothers were nice. On Friday nights they played cards, and they usually left money for Morgan to order delivery pizza. One evening Matt had rented Apocalypse Now and pleaded with her to watch it with him. Vietnam was important to him.
“You’ve seen it several times. At least three of them with me.”
Matt grew serious for a moment. Then he said, “I know it was shot in the Philippines. But it must look like Vietnam. I’ll probably never see the country where my mother was born, but I imagine the jungle and helicopters. You know, Grandma Lois fought in Vietnam and brought my mother to America when she was shipped home.”
Morgan was surprised. “Fought? I thought she was a medic.”
“Yeah, that’s how she found my mother—in a hospital near Saigon.” Then Matt had told her the story. She’d heard it before, but Matt loved to tell it. Afterward he added something new. “I’m the only kid I know whose grandma had sniper training. She’s a skilled military sniper.”
Morgan cocked her head doubtfully.
“No. I mean it. Come with me.” He stood and beckoned to her. At the end of the hall, he opened the women’s bedroom door.
“Matt. You shouldn’t go in there.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, really, don’t.”
But he disappeared into the bedroom and a moment later returned awkwardly carrying a rifle. “It’s an M-16,” he’d said, holding it out for her inspection. “She’s going to teach me how to use it when I’m older.”
Retirement Plan Page 26
