Twisted Reason (A Lucinda Pierce Mystery)

by Fanning, Diane

“Don’t blind yourself to the possibility, Lucinda. Some of the nicest seeming people are hiding a lot of narcissistic darkness inside. But you don’t need me to tell you that. I get the feeling, though, that something else is bothering you about this case. What is it?”

  “It’s me.”

  “You?”

  “Yes. My reaction to it – it’s not as professional as it should be.”

  “Not professional? Lucinda, you’re always professional. What are you talking about?”

  “I can’t get my parents out of my mind. They keep creeping into my thoughts.”

  “You probably never will get them out of your mind. That was a traumatic event and you were only a teenager.”

  “Exactly. It was a long time ago. Ancient history, Jake. I should be able to let it go. It shouldn’t be bothering me now – at least not in the middle of a case.”

  “Ease up. You saw your mother shot to death. You heard the gun fire when your father committed suicide. And now you’re talking to people about their parents. What do you expect?”

  “I expect myself to be professional at all times – just like you expect the same of yourself.”

  “Lucinda, I’ve worked with you on more than one case. I’ve never seen you be anything but a professional. This last year has brought your past to the surface – two deaths in the family, the problems with your sister. Thinking of your parents now just means you’re human – it doesn’t mean you are any less professional.”

  “If you say so, Jake.”

  “Oh, blow me off one time. Jeez! I don’t hear an ounce of conviction in your voice.”

  “You’re too easy on me, Jake.”

  “And you’re too hard on yourself.”

  “I have to be.”

  Jake signed. “Listen, I’ll see if I can get some information together for you tomorrow about the elderly, dementia and disappearances. But while I got you on the phone, when are we going to get together again?”

  “I don’t know, Jake.”

  “It’s almost apple blossom time. The Blue Ridge beckons.”

  “Let me get a little further along with this investigation and we’ll see.”

  “Hey, wait too long and you won’t see – apple blossoms wait for no one.”

  “Call me this weekend, okay? And thanks, Jake.”

  Lucinda set the phone in the receiver. She was still disappointed in herself but nonetheless, just talking to Jake made her relax about it a bit. She fell asleep on the sofa, running her fingers down Chester’s back.

  Twelve

  Sherry woke up before dawn and her thoughts felt clearer than she could remember in a long time. With the clarity came the knowledge that she was not supposed to be there. She wasn’t sure where she was but she was positive that it wasn’t right. She was certain she should be at her daughter’s house. But where was it? And how could she get there?

  She closed her eyes and tried to remember her daughter’s address. She could see the house but not the number and not the street. She squeezed her lids tight. Still, the address didn’t come. She had to find it. She had to try anyway.

  Something was wrong with her brain. She accepted that, but still, it sometimes made her angry – horribly angry. She often wanted to beat her head against the wall. But she had to make sure she never did that. That old guy did. He had blood running down his face when they stopped him and took him out of the rec room. She hadn’t seen him since. Or had she and just couldn’t remember? “Oh, damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

  Stop. Stop now! Anger doesn’t help. Anger makes it harder to think. Deep breaths. Calm down. I need to think. Think.

  My purse. I need my purse. It has my drivers’ license and that has my address. Where is my purse? She stumbled around in the dark room, reaching into drawers, feeling for her bag. She went to the closet and felt along the floor. Only shoes. She looked in the bathroom cabinet but it wasn’t buried in the stack of towels. Then, she remembered. She had asked Don for her purse. He said she didn’t need one here. That everything was free so she didn’t need money or credit cards.

  Don said he was her good friend. But if he was, wouldn’t he have given her the purse back? She did need it. She needed her license and her address book. And why don’t any of the phones work? Don told her not to worry about it. It was like that in the country a lot, he’d said. But that’s during storms. There aren’t storms every day. Was Don lying to her? Hiding something from her? Or was that just crazy talk?

  No. It’s not crazy talk. I am not crazy. At least, not right now. She knew something was wrong. This place was wrong. They called it her cottage, her bungalow, her home. But it was just an old motel room in an arcing string of temporary shelters. The exterior was designed to imitate the outside of a brick house but it was all show. Inside, it was just a shabby room with a bed, a nightstand, a lamp and a dresser – there wasn’t even a television. Just this space with a small bathroom attached. No kitchen like a real home. No living room. What am I doing here?

  She didn’t have an answer and she didn’t know where she would go. But she knew she had to leave. She got prepared: brushing her teeth, combing her hair and putting on a pair of khaki slacks, a blouse and a heavy cardigan. She sat on the end of the bed to tie her walking shoes.

  She was ready. No. I need my purse. She got down on all fours and looked under the bed. It wasn’t there but she spotted it under the night stand. She laid flat stretching her arm long to pull it out.

  She sat on her bed, her purse clutched to her lap. She waited for first light, praying her mind didn’t fade with the rising of the sun. She wasn’t sure if she had any control over her mind at all but she would try to focus it – she would do everything she could to hold on to this gift of awareness and not let it go.

  But when the first signs of dawn crept through the blinds, Sherry was gone where she sat. She didn’t move. She simply stared. She did nothing at all until she heard the knock at the door and the cheery voice calling, “Rise and Shine, it’s breakfast time.”

  She stood up, walked out the door and followed the others to the dining room.

  Thirteen

  Chief Deputy Larry Hirschhorn tried to be optimistic about this morning’s search for five-year-old Hannah Singley. The temperature had stayed well above freezing the previous night, making him confident she would have survived the weather even though she was last seen wearing lightweight pajamas and bunny slippers.

  Still, there were a lot of other dangers out there. She could have fallen down a hill, into a stream, or tripped over a branch and struck her head on a rock. She could have been attacked by a wild animal – or even by someone’s dog overzealous to protect his territory.

  Then there were the two-legged predators. Even out here in the peaceful countryside, they seemed to be everywhere, watching, waiting, seeking the opportunity to pounce. They recognized their prey in a heartbeat and reacted to it faster than you could turn your head.

  He was worried about the parents, too. They were acting like normal parents: concerned, helpful, distraught. But so had the infamousSusan Smith who, it turned out, had falsely claimed her two young sons had been abducted by a black man after she killed them both herself. . It was always possible that it was just an act: two people mimicking the behavior of concerned parents. Their actions the evening before had been lackadaisical and troubling before they noticed the disappearance. They had sat Hannah in front of the TV with a bowl of macaroni and cheese and then didn’t check on her for more than three hours. What kind of parenting is that? He bristled at the thought of it.

  The searchers gathered before him in the road that ran past little Hannah’s house. Every single deputy had reported – even the ones who had got off duty just minutes earlier. The volunteer fire department was there in force, too, as well as a troop of trained Explorer Scouts. Daylight had clawed its way through the curtain of the night. It was time to go.

  They stretched out, arms’ length apart and trudged into the woods across the road from
the Singley home. When searchers spotted anything the least bit suspicious, they called out and Hirschhorn ran over and stuck in an orange flag. For a while, nothing merited more than marking for later gathering. Then, a cry edged with panic echoed from the far end of the line. Hirschhorn followed the sound to an Explorer Scout.

  “Whatcha got?”

  Speechless, the young man pointed. Hirschhorn followed the length of his finger down to the ground where he spotted a splash of pink. He moved closer and saw the rabbit ears flopped over in the weeds: one pink bunny slipper.

  Hirschhorn cursed himself for leaving the camera in the truck. The scout pulled out an iPhone and offered it to the deputy. “I don’t need to call. I just need to go back to the truck and fetch the camera.”

  “Why bother? You can take a picture with this. I can show you how to work it.”

  “Better yet, why don’t you take the pictures? It’ll save some time.”

  After looking over the photos and deeming them satisfactory, Hirschhorn pulled a pair of gloves and a bag out of the satchel carrying the orange flags and secured the slipper. Before they moved on, he marked the spot. He and the scout lagged only slightly behind the rest of the search line. He took care not to hurry the boy along to catch up. Every inch needed a careful look. With each outcry from someone in the group, Hirschhorn rushed forward, hoping and dreading the find of another slipper – or the body of a young girl.

  He’d planted another half dozen flags before the pond came into view. He exhaled noisily. He certainly didn’t want to find a drowned child but he knew from the start that it was a possibility. He walked a few yards forward when he saw it – a flash of fabric among the reeds on the edge of the water. He broke into a run.

  He saw the tendrils of hair floating on the surface and shouted out, “Hannah!” before realizing that the body was too long for a child. He knelt in the mud and pulled the head out of the water, flipping an elderly woman – obviously deceased – on her back.

  Hirschhorn knew it was time to call in the state boys. The pond would have to be searched, both for evidence in the case of the dead woman and the possibility of locating Hannah. Drained, dredged or dived, that was the state’s purview. He placed the call.

  He selected a few deputies to stay with him to conduct a perimeter survey of the pond and secure the crime scene. He sent the rest of the group on to continue the search for the little girl. He hoped they would find her far away from the pond; if she was here, the news would not be good.

  He divided up the men with him into two groups of three and headed them off in opposite directions around the body of water. They poked poles into the reeds that ringed most of the pond and jabbed them into the muck a few inches into the water. He was grateful it was early in the year – a few months from now and they’d all be welted from mosquito bites. The searchers were about two-thirds up each side when someone opposite Hirschhorn called out, “Found another one!”

  “Hannah?” Hirschhorn asked.

  “Nope. This is a man. Gray hair. But not much of a face left. ID ain’t gonna be easy.”

  Hirschhorn clumped around the far end of the pond, scanning the water’s edge as he went. He looked down at the body and its animal-ravaged face. He couldn’t recall any open cases of missing elderly in the county – not any that would have been gone long enough for that much damage. He’d have to call back to the office. For that matter, he’d have to check with the city, too. It wasn’t too far a drive from there to dump a body here.

  They finished up the perimeter search and strung the tape, tree to tree, around the whole area. He’d called his administrative assistant. She was checking their files, would call the city missing persons department and report back.

  There was nothing to do now but wait for the state folks to arrive. And hope when they got here, they didn’t find a third body. And if they did, to pray that it wasn’t Hannah.

  Fourteen

  Lucinda pushed her arms through the turquoise, knee-length lab coat and tied it behind her. She secured her hair at the back of her neck and put on a surgical cap. She slipped into booties, slid on rubber gloves and donned a pair of goggles. A mask hung around her neck, ready to be raised when the cutting started.

  She pushed through the stainless steel swinging doors into the autopsy suite. The room smelled funky but not nasty – they worked on the really bad cases in an isolated room with its own separate ventilation system for which Lucinda was eternally grateful. Poor Edgar Humphries’ nude body lay on the stainless steel, buttocks up, as Dr. Sam performed his external examination. He raised his eyes as he saw her approach. “Pierce.”

  “Doctor,” she responded.

  “This is a sorry thing for a man to endure at the end of a decent life,” Dr. Sam said. “Hope the good Lord lets me die of natural causes in front of a busload of doctors and a barrelful of nurses. Anything to spare me this final indignity. Autopsies are dreadful things.”

  “But Dr. Sam, I’ve always appreciated the way you’ve insisted on respect for the deceased. There’s never been anything out of order in your morgue.”

  “Respect is all well and good, Pierce. But look at what I do every day. It’s nothing but desecration of a corpse. Sanctified, legal and necessary, of course. But desecration it is.”

  “I never knew you felt that way, Doc.”

  “Well, you should have. And after I die, I want to be cremated – don’t want some mortician combing what’s left of my hair or piling make-up on my lifeless face making me look like a kewpie doll from hell, either. How do you think he died, Pierce?”

  “Don’t have a clue, Doc.”

  The doctor grunted. “Well, that’s a first,” he said as he and the tech flipped the body on its back. He pulled out his scalpel and got to work.

  Lucinda hid a smirk by raising the mask over her mouth.

  It was noon before Lucinda finally left the morgue. Cause of death was a heart attack. They’d have to wait until toxicology came back to find out if a lack of medication was a factor. And where had he been for five months? Who had taken care of him? Who placed him on the porch? And does that person bear responsibility for his death? Am I wasting my time on a natural death? No, it may be a natural cause, but the means of death had a sinister cast to it – too many questions remain unanswered.

  Lucinda took the elevator to the fifth floor hoping to catch District Attorney Michael Reed before he went to lunch. She wanted to get Evan Spencer’s case closed or at least stalled for further investigation.

  She knocked on the sill of Reed’s open doorway. “Got a minute?”

  “Yeah. But just a minute. Make it quick. I’m meeting my wife for lunch.”

  “The assault charge against Evan Spencer?”

  “What about it?”

  “I think it’s groundless.”

  “And why is that, Pierce?”

  “Because he told me what happened. And he didn’t do it.”

  “Oh. And so now you believe him. A couple of years ago, you wanted me to arrest him and charge him with murder. You blocked his departure from the country on a mission of mercy. And now, you believe him.”

  “I came to believe him back then, if you recall, Mr. Reed. His cooperation led us to his brother.”

  “I can’t keep track of all your flip-flopping, Pierce. I run for office every six years and I flip and flop less than you. Forget about it. Charges are filed. The victim is pressing forward. We’ll let a jury decide.”

  “Sir, at least take the time to thoroughly investigate the woman’s claim before doing anything further.”

  “Right now, my staff is busy with more important things – like murder. You want to look into it, fine. But I can only give you one week.”

  “But, sir, I am in the middle of—”

  “That’s not my problem, Lieutenant. You want to look into it, look into it. But bring me something conclusive in seven days or leave me alone. Now if you’ll excuse me, my wife is waiting.”

  She watched his back a
s he walked down to the hall and stepped into the elevator. Turning around to face forward, he saw her looking at him and gave her a toodle-oo wave as the doors closed. She knew he was a good prosecutor but sometimes she wanted to kick him down all five floors of stairs and out the front door.

  She walked down the two flights to her office and in the center of her desk she found a note weighted down with a tape dispenser. “Come see me as soon as you can. Interesting developments. Jumbo.”

  The message light was blinking on her phone. She decided to play them back before going down the hall to Jumbo Butler’s office. One of them was from Vicki Humphries: “I have some information you wanted, Lieutenant Pierce. I’m at work now but feel free to call me here.”

  Lucinda flipped out her notebook and punched in the numbers to Vicki’s direct line.

  “Vicki Humphries.”

  “This is Lieutenant Pierce, Mrs. Humphries, returning your call.”

  “I overheard what Dr. Nelson said to you yesterday so I went by his office and got a copy of my father-in-law’s medical records for you. I thought it might save you some time and trouble.”

  “Thank you. I really appreciate that. I hadn’t gotten around to making a request yet for a subpoena – this is really a time saver. Can I come by and pick them up this evening? Will you be home?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant. That would be fine. I’ll see you then.”

  She hung up and walked down to the Missing Persons division. “Hey, Butler. What’s up?” she called out as she stepped through the door.

  “Back here, Lieutenant,” Jumbo shouted.

  Unlike the new cubicle layout in her work area, the city hadn’t gotten around to redesigning this department. New desks and file cabinets had just been set up in any space available making the path to anywhere full of more twists and turns than a rabbit warren.

  She maneuvered through the maze, reaching Jumbo’s office at last. He introduced her to Karla Dunbar, the administrative staff who’d assisted him with his file by file search. With her wire-rimmed glasses, short skirt and wide Afro, the young woman seemed as if she’d escaped from an earlier decade.