“Damn.”
“What is it, Lucinda?”
“Ted, I think I just found Kathleen Spencer’s ring.”
“Nancy Grace was wearing it?”
“Funny, Ted. I’m serious. I think her ring was found on the finger of another murdered woman.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know. River-something. I just caught the tail end of the story.”
Lucinda filled Ted in on the details. When they hung up, both wished they could sleep the hours away until the media relations office re-opened in the morning. But both knew they were destined for a night of chasing oblivion but never catching up with it. If Lucinda was right, Kathleen Spencer’s murder wasn’t a case of robbery gone bad or a marriage turned rotten – it entered into a dimension where investigators fear to tread.
Thirteen
Stretched out on the sofa with a cut curtain cord in his hand, he heard the determined click of her high heels on the sidewalk. He leaped to his feet with a smile of anticipation and hurried behind the front door.
The sound of her footsteps changed as she stepped up on the first wooden step and walked up to the porch. Just in time, he noticed he’d left the lock open on the door. He reached over and clicked it shut as the screen door squealed.
He heard the metal against metal sound as her key missed the slot then slid all the way in the lock. He heard the quiet twist of the key and the dull clunk of the latch as it released.
The door opened and he held his breath. She stepped across the threshold and he threw the cord around her neck. He pulled it taut and dragged her kicking body out of the doorway. Holding both ends of the cord with his right hand, he slipped his left around the edge of the door and slid the ring of keys out of the lock. They clattered as he dropped them to the wooden floor. He used both hands on the ligature and pulled it even tighter as he kicked the door shut with his foot.
“Ack. Ack. Ack,” his victim choked out as she squirmed.
“Don’t fight it, girl, it will only hurt more,” he whispered into her ear.
She clawed backwards at his hands, digging with her nails but she could not pierce his gloves. Two pink nail tips broke off in the attempt and plinked as they hit the floor. She reached up for his eyes but her fingers hit the plastic protection of his goggles.
“See, girl, no use fighting. Just let it go now,” he said in a voice as smooth as cream.
She grabbed at his mouth. He bit down hard and tasted blood. He ran his tongue over his lips as her fingers retreated. Her arms fell limp to her sides.
“That a girl. Let it go,” he murmured.
Her body slumped. Still he hung onto the cord. “Five minutes,” he whispered and looked at the clock. “Just three minutes more,” he said.
Her body showed no signs of life but he pulled the cord tighter compressing her neck. Her tongue lolled out of the side of her mouth. “Two minutes,” he said.
He dragged her by the neck to the center of the room. “Ninety seconds,” he whispered. His hands cramped. He took both ends of the cord in one hand and flexed the other. “One minute,” he said. He shifted the ligature to the other hand and repeated the stretching.
“Thirty seconds. Just half a minute more, girl,” he said. He looked down and saw the wetness spread in the crotch of her pants. He smiled.
“Time!” he announced as he let go of the cord and watched her body tumble in a heap to the floor. A sigh of satisfaction blew past his lips. “All done,” he said as he whipped off his goggles and closed his eyes to savor the moment.
He retrieved the cord and stuffed it into the front pocket of his pants. He stretched out her body. Legs together in a straight line. Arms stretched out at angles from her side. He looked around the room and saw nothing to suit his needs.
He moved into the kitchen. “Ahhh, perfect,” he said as he spotted a black heavy iron skillet on a stove top. The cooking utensil resurrected pleasant memories of his grandmother and made him smile for a brief moment until he remembered his anger – his grandmother was dead and he could not forgive her for leaving him.
He hefted the skillet in one hand and returned to the front room. He knelt by the woman’s body and raised the skillet over his head with both hands. He slammed it down on her face again and again. When her features were flattened sufficiently to provide a secure surface for the skillet to rest, he stopped. He reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved a silver hoop earring. His clumsy fingers encased in thick gloves fumbled the piece of jewelry and it fell to the floor.
He pulled off the work gloves and reached into his back pant’s pocket for a pair of latex gloves. He slipped them on his hands. He plucked a gold and lapis earring off the dead woman’s earlobe and dropped it into his shirt pocket. He picked up the silver hoop and stabbed three times at the hole in her ear before hitting the right spot and slipping the wire through.
He stood and stared down at his handiwork. A feeling of warmth glowed in his chest and radiated through his body making his fingers, toes and scalp tingle.
“Goodbye,” he said as he walked to the front door.
He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head and drew the string tight. His eyes peered out of the small opening as he left the woman’s home. He pulled the door shut making sure the lock was engaged. Then he walked away wondering who would wear the pretty, blue earring in his shirt pocket.
Fourteen
Lucinda hit her desk at seven thirty the next morning after seeing the suspicious ring on the Nancy Grace show. For the next hour and a half, she called up to the Public Information Office every ten minutes before she finally got a person on the other end.
She got the phone number she needed from them and the information she needed from one of the producers of the show. “If something from our show plays a useful role in your investigation, Lieutenant,” the producer said, “we’d like to have you on as a guest.”
“The Public Information Officer handles the media,” Lucinda said.
“Actually, Lieutenant, we’d much rather have the person who did the work than another talking head spokesperson on the air.”
“Not in this case, you wouldn’t. Not me. Call the PIO,” Lucinda said as she ended the call.
She dialed the police department in Riverton, North Carolina, where the homicide case with the intriguing ring had occurred. She arranged a meeting with those investigators for the following day.
She called the Spencer household and Evan answered the phone. “Dr. Spencer, this is Lieutenant Pierce. Glad I caught you at home.”
“Yes,” was all he said.
“We have a lead on your wife’s ring. It might have shown up at another homicide scene.”
“That seems unlikely.”
What an odd answer, Lucinda thought. “Do you have a snapshot of your wife’s ring?”
“No, of course not,” he snapped, bristling for reasons Lucinda could not understand.
“You didn’t take pictures for insurance purposes?”
“Kate may have but I’ve never seen them.”
“You do take photos of your family, don’t you?”
“Yes – pictures of the family. Not the jewelry.”
“Start looking through those for any shot that might show the ring on your wife’s finger. I’ll be over right away.”
“I’m on my way out, Lieutenant.”
“Doctor, I need to have those pictures before I head out of town to check out this other case.”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. But as soon as the sitter gets here for Ruby, I am going to the office to review charts. I have a full schedule of appointments next week and I need to be prepared.”
“Surely that can wait for another hour, Doctor.”
There was no response on the other end of the line. Lucinda waited, her impatience and exasperation building with each passing second. She broke the silence. “Listen, Doctor. You start looking at the photos now. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I expect you to be there when I arrive.”
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“Do I need an attorney, Lieutenant?”
“That’s your call, Doctor. I imagine you can get one before I can get to your house if that’s what you want.” She hung up the phone and wondered why such a simple request for family photos would trigger a defensive response like that. Why would he feel he needed a lawyer? What am I missing?
Her ringing phone broke off her reverie. “Pierce,” she said.
“I’ve got your forensic report. Come and get it,” the voice said.
“Audrey?” Lucinda asked. The receiver slammed down in her ear. Into the empty line she said, “Audrey Ringo, you sure need to work on those social skills.” No sooner had the words left her mouth than she realized the criticism could just as easily be leveled at her. This whole place is full of misfits.
She pushed away from her desk and headed down to the lab to meet with the chief of the forensic evidence department. She found Audrey in her austere office in the basement, the three walls of painted concrete block blank except for a round wall clock and a hook that now held Audrey’s full-length lab coat. The fourth wall of glass overlooked Audrey’s kingdom: a long room filled with microscopes, centrifuges, mass spectrometers and other stainless steel and glass monuments to science.
Audrey stood behind her desk next to the hook where her long white lab coat hung. In a bright yellow suit with her red hair pulled tight away from her face and her rail thin body held at rigid attention, Audrey bore a striking resemblance to a number two pencil. Her arched eyebrows with their over-the-top pluck job and her parsimonious mouth signaled her disapproval of Lucinda and anyone else who entered her inner sanctum without a single-minded devotion to science.
“Good morning, Audrey. What did you find?” Lucinda asked.
“You know I prefer to be addressed as Dr Ringo.”
“Yes, Audrey, I do.”
Audrey’s nostrils flared but her eyes did not blink. “I see you’re still wearing that morbid black patch over your eye.”
“It suits me.”
“Yes, I suppose it does. I can understand why someone like you would not – could not – be bothered with matching patches to your wardrobe but why haven’t you gotten a prosthetic eye yet?”
“It would take a long series of surgeries to repair the socket, Audrey.”
“So?”
“Can I see the forensic report, please?”
“Could I get an answer please? Why have you done nothing about your face?”
Lucinda folded her arms across her chest and stared.
“Plastic surgeons can do wonders with face reconstruction, Lieutenant. So why do you insist on inflicting your grotesque visage on the rest of us?”
“The cost is too high, Audrey. Let it be. May I have the report?”
“The cost? Good Lord, Lieutenant, you were injured in the line of duty. The department will pick up every penny of the expense. It will cost you nothing.”
“It will cost me time, Audrey. Time I can’t afford. I have a job to do and I need to do it. You understand the importance of one’s work, don’t you, Dr Ringo?
“Of my work, yes. Yours? Cops are a dime a dozen and you know it. The world won’t stand still if you take some time off.”
“Thanks for that, Audrey. I’ll send someone down to pick up the report when you’re in a better mood,” Lucinda said and turned to walk away. Damn that woman. If I prefer working Homicide to the role of a perpetual patient, it was none of her damned business.
“Here, Lieutenant,” Audrey said with a sigh. “Here is your report.”
Lucinda took another step toward the door. She wanted to walk away but then again she was impatient to read the contents of the report as soon as possible. She spun around and grabbed it out of Audrey’s hand.
“We’ve got two DNA profiles, Lieutenant.”
“Two?”
“One known. One unknown – sort of.”
“What do you mean ‘sort of’?”
“One profile is definitely that of the victim.”
“The other?”
“I believe it belongs to a biological daughter of the victim. Does she have more than one?”
“Yes. She has two.”
“There’s no way we can know which one without blood samples to compare.”
“They’re not suspects, Audrey. They’re only three-and eight years old. Where did you find the DNA?”
“There was a small spot of smeared blood on the concrete block.”
“Charley. It must be Charley. She must’ve moved the block and cut herself in the process.”
“That sounds logical. But it would only be a small cut or scrape. There wasn’t much blood.”
“Anything else?” Lucinda asked.
“We found a few fibers on the block, too. They seemed to have originated from a pair of workman’s gloves. There’s a list of manufacturers and distributors attached to the report.”
A link to the perp. Not much but it’s something. “Thank you, Aud– Dr. Ringo.”
“Of course, Lieutenant. Now, about your face . . .”
“Not now. No time,” Lucinda said as she left the room. She drove over to the Spencer home.
Evan Spencer opened the front door and just stood there.
“Good morning, Dr. Spencer,” Lucinda said.
“Lieutenant.”
“May I come in?”
Evan opened the door wider and stepped aside. “I have the pictures on the kitchen table.”
On the way down the hall, Lucinda looked around and saw no signs of a lawyer to her great relief. Evan caught her curious glances and misinterpreted them. “Ruby’s not here, Lieutenant. I had the sitter take her to the park. Pictures of her mother make her cry.”
While Lucinda looked over the array of shots on the table, Evan stood in front of the kitchen window and stared out into the yard. His face remained blank and empty of emotion. None of the photos showed a full profile of the ring but a few of them together would give a good composite. She fanned three in her hand. “I’ll take these with me if that’s all right.”
He did not turn from the window. He simply nodded and said, “Fine.”
“Dr?”
“Yes.”
“Was there anything engraved inside the ring? Initials? Names?”
He barked a mirthless laugh. “Forever.”
“Forever?”
“Yes. Just that one word. Forever. Foolish sentiment. Stupid Lie. Forever. Last laugh’s on me, Lieutenant.”
Lucinda did not know how to respond to his cynicism. She could not tell if his was the pain of a victim or of a murderer who placed the blame for his crime on the victim he killed. It was a tightrope she walked with nearly every case, determining whether the loved one standing before her deserved her sympathy or her scorn. She walked toward the hallway, stopped and turned around. “Dr. Spencer,” she said to his rigid back.
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“Did Charley have a cut, a scratch or a scrape on either of her hands?”
“Charley?” he said as he made an abrupt turn to face her. “What in God’s name does Charley have to do with anything?”
“Doctor, please, did Charley have any abrasions to either of her hands?”
“No. Well, I don’t know. I didn’t notice. What is this all about?”
“There was a small spot of smeared blood found on the concrete block. The DNA profile indicates it might have been Charley’s blood.”
His mouth dropped, his brow furrowed, his hands formed fists. “You think Charley did this?”
“Of course not, Dr. Spencer. I just need an explanation for that blood.”
“You do suspect her. That’s just police talk like that mumbo-jumbo person-of-interest lingo you all use. You think Charley’s a suspect. This is outrageous.”
“No, Dr. Spencer. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We just need—”
“Oh no, Lieutenant. You’re not taking a blood sample from Charley, not from either of my daughters. There is a brutal kille
r walking the streets and you’re wasting time worrying about Charley. You are insane.”
“Dr. Spencer, I am worried about Charley. And about Ruby. But not as suspects – as victims. Please listen―”
“No, you listen. Get out of my house. Now. Go find my wife’s killer and leave my little girls alone.” He stretched out his arm and pointed the way to the front door.
Exasperated, Lucinda headed down the hall. When her hand touched the doorknob, Evan said, “Do you have any idea what my daughters have been through?”
“Actually, Dr Spencer, I do. I know too well.”
He looked at her in anger but as he stared into her eye, his features softened. “Maybe you do, Lieutenant. Still, I do not want you adding to their trauma. If you do understand, you’ll appreciate why I want you to stay away from my daughters – far away.”
Something is wrong here, Lucinda thought as she pulled away from the curb and headed for the interstate. What is he afraid I’ll learn from his girls? What would they do? What would they say? What secret would they reveal? Her suspicion that Evan was hiding something hardened into firm conviction. Something is wrong.
Fifteen
Riverton – home to less than 20,000 people – stretched beside the Roanoke River in North Carolina not far from the state line and less than a dozen miles from Interstate 95. Homicide was a rare occurrence – striking inside the city limits only once every three years or so. Usually, the arrest happened quickly with the murder the result of a bar fight, a wife beating or a jealous fit of rage.
The Riverton police force had only two detectives, Lieutenant Fred Covey and Sergeant Max Dawson. The two men came down the hall toward the lobby. They paused at a spot where they knew they could catch a glimpse of their visitor with little risk of being observed themselves.
They caught Lucinda in profile – only the undamaged side of her face was visible. They looked her over. A trim, tall body in a gray suit with a skirt just short enough to reveal a quarter inch of thigh above her knee. Below the hem, a shapely calf ended in open-toed black platform shoes. “Those legs don’t look like they ever quit,” Max said.
The Trophy Exchange (A Lucinda Pierce Mystery) Page 7
