“I understand.”
“But I can pull it up and answer your questions. Where do we start?”
“How about March of last year?”
She went through each monthly page from that month to the present as Ted noted down the times Dr. Spencer traveled around the globe to hotspots of conflict, to places of abject poverty, and to bucolic countrysides infested with large deposits of landmines. Ted was more than impressed with Spencer’s outreach to the less fortunate. How could a man who spent so much time helping others be a killer? He heard the voice of Lucinda’s innate skepticism in his head. Maybe he’s atoning for his sins?
“Now, could we check out a few specific dates?”
“Sure.”
“How about the afternoon of March 27th?”
“This year or last?”
“Last year.”
Jen’s fingers clacked on the keyboard. “Can’t tell you much about that – it was a Sunday. He was in the country on that date, but beyond that I wouldn’t have a clue.”
They ran through the complete list of murder dates. Spencer was in the country for every single one except for Kathleen’s. The days that were booked solid with appointments coincided with the homicides that happened before or after his office hours. Ted still was not convinced that Evan Spencer was responsible for those crimes but could not find a single bit of evidence to merit scratching him off of Lucinda’s list.
Nineteen
Lucinda returned to the station house and found a message from Lieutenant Stan Kowalski, Baltimore Police Department, waiting for her. Her first assumption was that he’d called in connection with Kathleen’s murder. Would her perpetrator wander that far from home? She made a mental note to check and see if Evan Spencer ever went to Baltimore on business. She picked up the phone and returned the call. It was not what she expected.
Lieutenant Kowalski said, “We picked up Julie Wagner. We’re holding her on your APB. What do you want us to do now?”
It took Lucinda a few seconds to remember that Julie was the woman suspected of shooting her husband on the sofa and then calling her mother-in-law with a feeble apology. “Hold her,” she said.
“You coming up?”
“Yes,” Lucinda said. “I’d like to question her as soon as possible. I’ll head straight up there now. And if she waives her extradition hearing, I’ll bring her back down here with me.”
“She’s not saying much to us.”
“Has she lawyered up?”
“Not yet.”
“Think you can forestall that possibility till I get there?”
“What’ll it take you, four, five hours?”
“’Bout that,” Lucinda said. “Maybe less. Depends on how many troopers are on patrol today.”
“I hear you. We’ll do what we can. See you then.”
Lucinda headed up the interstate in an agitated frame of mind. She knew she needed to take care of the Julie Wagner problem but she hated leaving Kathleen’s murder investigation up in the air. There’s nothing I can do about that now, she thought.
She shifted gears on her musings and focused her mind on the photos she’d received from Julie’s mother. The camera captured a life of broken arms, broken noses, broken dreams.
It was her mother’s story but with a different outcome. As a child she’d watched her mother Rose accumulate one broken bone after another, one bruise piled on the fading yellow of a previous contusion, red marks of brutal fingers on her neck, black eyes and a broken heart. Throughout the years, Rose made excuses for her husband. She blamed herself. She tried not to aggravate him. She tolerated his abuse.
Then one day in a drunken fit of anger, he had hauled back his arm and backhanded Lucinda across her face, knocking her across the room and into a wall. Rose, Lucinda, her younger sister Maggie and her little brother Ricky moved out of the family home that very same day. Rose tried to put on a cheerful front about the change in their lives, but Lucinda witnessed her mother’s despair. She caught glimpses of Rose at times when her mother thought she was all alone. Her face stretched long. She stared into space and sighed. Her sighs were deep and long and full of sorrow. They ripped through Lucinda like an icy wind.
More than once, Lucinda stepped into the room and asked “Mom, are you okay?”
Rose always donned a cheery smile and said, “I’m fine honey, how about you?”
One night, after another meal of beans and franks, Lucinda sat at the makeshift desk in the room she shared with Maggie. The adjustable arm of the black lamp pointed the beam of light down on her homework but left the bed where Maggie slept draped in darkness. Ricky slept in a smaller bedroom on the other side of the upstairs bathroom. Sometimes, Lucinda wished she was the boy so that she could have her own bedroom, no matter how small it was.
She heard a knock on the front door echo in the hallway. She listened as her mother shuffled out of her bedroom at the foot of the stairs and into the entrance hallway. Lucinda crept into the hall and peered through the railing.
She saw her mother in the gap of the half-opened door, one hand clutching it, the other resting on the door frame. “How did you find us?” she heard her mother ask.
Lucinda heard the mumbles of a response but could not discern the words. Then she saw a large hand push in from the outside and shove her mother’s chest. Rose staggered back. A man entered the hallway. It was Lucinda’s father.
“We need to talk, Rose,” he said.
Rose straightened her posture, pulled her robe tight and said, “I’ve nothing to say to you.”
“Well, if you won’t talk to me, fine. But you can’t stop me from seeing my kids.”
“It’s late. They’re all in bed.”
“I can look in on ’em, can’t I?” he said as he moved toward the foot of the stairs.
Rose moved faster, bracing herself three steps from the bottom with one hand on the banister and the other on the wall blocking his way to the second floor. “No. No, you can’t,” she said.
Lucinda’s father put his foot on the bottom step and Lucinda ducked into the shadows where she couldn’t see or be seen.
“They’re my kids, too, Rose,” Lucinda heard her father say and then she heard the clap of a gun shot.
She jumped up and looked down. Her mother was sprawled on the stairs. Her father stood just feet away with a gun dangling in his hand. Lucinda gasped.
Her father turned his head in her direction and said, “Lucy.”
Lucinda flew into Ricky’s room where she found her brother awake but sleep befuddled. She grabbed his hand and pulled him across the hall and into her room. Maggie was awake, too. She stood wide-eyed and trembling halfway between her bed and the doorway.
Lucinda slammed the door shut. As she engaged the lock, she heard another gun shot. Did he shoot her again? He killed Mom. Is he going to kill us, too? What if Mom isn’t dead? I need to call an ambulance. But there was no telephone on the second floor. And Maggie and Ricky were whimpering, sobbing and clinging to her like frightened kittens up a tree.
“Sssssh. Sssssh,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around them. She coaxed them over to the closet. She settled them in the back corner and shifted the clothes on the hangers to best hide them from view. “Don’t move. Don’t say a word,” she urged. As they cried for her to stay, she shut the closet door.
She tiptoed down the hallway to the top of the stairs, wincing and freezing in place as the top step creaked beneath her weight. She continued down and kneeled by her mother’s side. The bloody hole in the middle of her mother’s forehead made her think of the pictures of Indian women she’d seen in Social Studies class but she couldn’t remember what the red smears on their foreheads meant. Something like Ash Wednesday? she wondered, then shook her head forcing herself back to the reality at her side. She laid her head on her mother’s chest but could not feel her heartbeat. Maybe it’s me. Maybe they can still save her.
She rose on trembling knees and went the rest of the way down the stairs, fe
arful with every step she’d hear another shot and feel the bullet tear through her flesh. I don’t want to die. She said a silent prayer for her brother and sister. Whatever happens, keep them safe. When she turned the corner into the hallway, she saw her father’s body sprawled on the wooden floor. Relief flashed through her chased by a surge of guilt for her thoughts.
She stepped over his legs and walked into the kitchen. She grabbed the telephone off the wall and called for help.
The blare of a car horn pulled Lucinda out of the past. She realized she had drifted ever so slightly into the neighboring lane of traffic. She took the next exit ramp and left the highway to take a break.
Lost in thought, she sat at the counter of a diner sipping from a thick white ceramic mug. Julie Wagner is not your mother. Your mother did not kill your father. She did the logical thing, she extricated herself from the situation. Not because of the beatings she suffered, but only because her husband had struck her child. She did it for me, Lucinda thought.
If Rose had killed him that night, no one would have blamed her. If I had gone downstairs when he arrived maybe Mom would not have died. Logic could not cleanse the sense of responsibility from her soul. If only . . .
Twenty
In Baltimore, Lieutenant Kowalski escorted Lucinda to an observation room. Lucinda stepped in to watch in anonymity as Julie Wagner sat slumped in a chair in the neighboring room. Long, dark hair hung forward obscuring her face. Folded hands rested on the table in front of her. And she sighed. Long, deep, wrenching sighs that whispered through the speakers like the mournful howl of a distant wolf. She’s not your mother, Lucinda told herself.
Lucinda opened the door and entered the interrogation room. Julie did not demonstrate any awareness of her presence. Lucinda pulled up a wooden chair on the opposite side scraping the legs noisily across the floor.
Still no response from the forlorn suspect.
“Julie?” Lucinda said.
The suspect’s shoulders rose and fell as she issued another ponderous sigh.
“Julie, can you look at me?”
No response at all.
“Julie, can you talk to me?”
Another sigh.
Lucinda pulled out her identification and slid it across the table to the spot where she thought would be in the field of vision of Julie’s downcast eyes. “I’m Lieutenant Pierce. And I’d like to take you back home.”
Still nothing.
“Julie, I spoke to your mother.”
Julie’s head shot up. Her eyes scanned around Lucinda’s face with rapid movements.
“Your mother showed me the pictures, Julie.”
The young woman threw back her head and wailed. “I’m so sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry.” Her head bobbed forward as if the bones in her neck had melted and her whole body shook with sobs. The plaintiveness of her cries made Lucinda’s gut tense and ache.
Lucinda sat still for a few minutes allowing Julie full rein to express her anguish. When she seemed to weary – when her sobs turned into hiccups – Lucinda reached one hand across the table and stroked the young woman’s head. “Julie, talk to me. Tell me what happened.”
Julie raised her head and looked straight at Lucinda. She started as she noticed the damage to Lucinda’s face for the first time. “Did your husband do that?” she asked.
“No,” Lucinda said.
“Oh.” Julie’s head hung down again.
“Someone else’s husband did it, Julie. He was trying to shoot his wife and I got in the way.”
Julie brought her head up again. “You saved her life?”
Lucinda shrugged. “Maybe.”
“I bet you did.” Julie looked into Lucinda’s good eye and held her gaze for a moment. She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, “Ohmigod.”
“Tell me, Julie. Tell me what happened.”
Julie sucked in a deep breath, opened her eyes and pushed the hair away from her face revealing the yellowish remains of a once-blackened eye and a brutally bruised cheekbone. “He hit me a lot. He slapped me, punched me, shoved me and sometimes, he kicked me.”
Lucinda nodded. “I’ve seen the pictures, Julie.”
“Every time, he said he was sorry. He brought me flowers, books, CDs, sometimes a new pair of earrings or a necklace. He begged me not to make him so angry. And I tried. I swear to God, I tried.” Julie’s sobbing resumed.
Lucinda reached out and touched the back of Julie’s hand. “Was something different this time, Julie?”
“Yes,” she said. “This time he had a gun.” She shuddered.
“Then what happened, Julie?”
“He held it to my head. And marched me upstairs.”
“And what did he do then, Julie?”
“He ordered me to strip.” With stumbling words, in bits and pieces, she spewed out the tale of her last few weeks of life with her husband Terry Wagner.
In the bedroom, she removed her clothing as dictated by the point of Terry’s gun. “Now, that’s more like it,” Terry said looking her over from head to toe. He waved the barrel of his gun in the air. “Go to your nightstand and open the top drawer. Take out your birth control pills.”
She pulled them out and looked at him.
“Now, come here,” he said and shoved her when she complied. “Into the bathroom.”
There he made her push each pill through the foil and into the toilet. He flushed it with his foot. “Back to the bedroom,” he ordered. “Lie flat on the bed.”
She complied shaking with fear. She thought as soon as she stretched out, he would raise his gun and put a bullet in her head.
Instead, he said, “Spread your legs, baby.” He took off his pants, climbed on top of her and held the muzzle of the gun flat against the side of her head. As he raped her, she could not take her eyes off the barrel. His finger was on the trigger. An orgasm would make his muscles tense. That tension could make him pull the trigger and shoot her dead.
When he let out his moan of satisfaction and his body shuddered on top of hers, she heard the click of the trigger. She cringed in anticipation of the bullet going through her brain. He looked down at her and saw her face squeezed tight in fright. He laughed out loud and as he laughed, he rolled off her body and on to the floor. “Damn woman,” he said, rising to his feet. “I forgot to load the gun. Whaddya know about that?” He picked up his pants, reached into the pocket and pulled out a handful of bullets. He slid them one by one into the revolver’s barrel. “Loaded now, baby. So, don’t you leave that bed.”
He reached into his closet and pulled out an armload of hangers bearing his clothing and transferred them down to the guest bedroom. After four trips, his closet in the master bedroom was bare. He emptied his drawers in the dresser and moved all those items down the hall, too. Next, he went into the master bath and returned with his razor, toothbrush and assorted toiletries. He smiled at Julie as he walked by the bed. He put those items in the guest bathroom off the hall.
“Well, that’s done, baby,” he said. He put the muzzle of the gun against her temple. “I have to go downstairs, now. Don’t you move.”
She didn’t move – she barely even breathed – until she heard his footsteps fade away. She jumped to her feet, pulled on her robe and grabbed the doorknob. It was locked. She rushed to the window and unfastened the latch. Her face turned red with strain as she pushed up on the sash. No one had raised that window in a long time. At last, it yielded to the pressure of Julie’s tugs and started its slide upward.
The bedroom door flew open slamming into the wall. In seconds, Terry was on her. One hand grabbed a hank of her hair and jerked her back. The other hand pushed down the window and flipped the latch. “Who told you you could open that window?” He knocked her to the floor. “Stand up, bitch. Take off the robe.” As she did he jerked it from her hands and ripped it into pieces. He sneered as he scanned her body from head to toe. “I’m sick of looking at your scrawny body. Get in bed and get under the covers.”
With reli
ef she slid under the sheets. He dragged boxes from the hallway to the bedroom and filled three of them with the clothing from her closet. He emptied out her dresser drawers in two other boxes. He dumped her shoes in a sixth box. He pushed them all out to the hall. He came into the room and stood over her.
“What are you doing, Terry?”
“None of your business, baby.”
“What are you doing with my clothes?”
“You won’t be needing them for a while, girl.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“You want me to give you some to cry about?”
Before she could respond, he smashed the side of her face with the butt of his gun. “Look at you. You’re a mess. I don’t want to look at your ugly face anymore. Pull the covers over your head.”
She obeyed and listened to his movements, the shutting of the bedroom door, the turning of the lock, his descent down the stairs. She was afraid to leave the bed but she pulled back the covers to get a breath of fresh air. She looked longingly at the window but reminded herself that he would have to leave the house eventually. Another attempt could wait until then.
She heard loud noises coming up the stairs, something banged into the wall accompanied by muttered curses from Terry. She pulled the blankets back over her head just as the door opened. She puzzled over the significance of the sounds she heard. Terry grunted. What sounded like a hammer banged over and over again. Sinking nails into what? she wondered. She flinched with every blow.
When the noise stopped, he said, “Time to go to sleep now, baby. You need your rest. Don’t do anything stupid.”
For a long time she remained still. Then she eased the blankets off her face. The room was dark – too dark. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the absence of light. She rose and walked to the closest window where a piece of plywood was nailed over the top of it. Another sheet blocked the other pair of windows in the room. She went into the bathroom where the darkness was even more complete. She flipped the light switch. Nothing. She had to climb into the bathtub to confirm by touch that another piece of plywood covered that window as well.
The Trophy Exchange (A Lucinda Pierce Mystery) Page 10
