Ada Unraveled

by Barbara Sullivan

  I gently nudged open a small jewelry box. It contained a broken string of pearls and a handful of other metal and stone bits and pieces, mostly earrings and rings. The discoloration on the aged mirror, and stains and scars, drops of nail polish--on the top and edges of the dresser attested to age as well as a misbegotten life.

  The north wall possessed the man’s bureau, littered with small items as well--a plastic shoe horn, a green jar full of buttons and the usual pocket leavings. And a small chair with a circular table lamp much like the one downstairs filled that remaining corner of the room. Men’s worn clothes were piled on the chair. A small wooden box on the table contained scraps of paper with telephone numbers, a couple of match books and half-smoked cigar.

  I recognized one of the bars advertised on the match books as a local dive, Red’s Rebels, but the other one—The Devine Dog--I didn’t. Later I would tell Matt about these bars. Maybe people there who knew Luke and Ada could enlighten us further. I snapped a picture then opened both books. But nothing had been scribbled inside the covers. I needed a much better picture of this guy Luke than I was getting by snooping through his home and even his bedroom. I briefly wondered if Red, of Red’s Rebels, was a woman who might have visited Luke sometime recently.

  A smell began to fill my nostrils. It wasn’t pleasant. I wished the windows were open again, and then knew why Tom had closed them. So I’d notice the odor. I couldn’t identify it. Maybe blood. Maybe urine. Maybe death.

  The pale green or gray curtains hung partly torn from the rods. The stained quilted bedspread was in a state somewhere between tattered and shredded. My heart skipped a beat when I wondered if it had been hand sewn by Ada. The room was like an old woman approaching death.

  Tom drew the ancient curtains against the gray day, leaving us only the meager light from one small lamp. It was then I realized none of us were speaking, especially Tom. Not a word.

  My heart notched up a speed. Was Tom afraid we were being listened to? Or, recorded? We were done with our surface inspection. I knew what was to come next would be even worse. Tom Beardsley left the room and we waited, standing alone with our separate thoughts.

  On the farthest wall I saw a brown area I at first thought was a partial paint job. Drawn to it, I moved closer to take pictures. It was layered splatters of what could only be blood. But…not just brown. Shuddering, I snapped several more pictures.

  Some of the splatters were dark red going on lipstick red.

  “Chemiluminescence scan?” Hannah whispered.

  “What?” Gerry.

  I nodded and stepped closer to them, and into my teacher mode.

  I whispered, “Luminol is a chemical compound that reacts when it’s sprayed on blood or other bodily fluids, even if old. It interacts in different spectras, usually blues and greens.”

  Hannah said, “It’s the hemoglobin. It’s just like the female lampyris noctiluca, only that’s called bioluminescence.” She noticed our blank stares. “Fireflies. Electroluminescence is similar, but mechanically produced with electricity. LED’s.”

  Gerry added, “I know this one, a light emitting diode. You’ve been studying, Hannah. Did you get any sleep?”

  Hannah said, “Enough. Wouldn’t the ME’s have done this already?”

  I shrugged a response. You’d have thought they would, given the stains on the walls.

  Detective Tom returned, with a full spray bottle dangling at his side. He closed the door and turned out the solitary light.

  We had moved far away from the brown spot, assuming that was where he would spray.

  “Didn’t they do that already?” Hannah repeated in a whisper, her words muted by her steno pad which she’d pressed against her lips as a small shield.

  He shook his head no. I saw Gerry grasp Hannah’s arm.

  I was flabbergasted, began to speak.

  He stared at me hard, turned his back and stood very still.

  What was all this eye contact about?

  I checked my camera settings again.

  He stood, poised, waiting--for what?

  I thought I heard a car engine out front, and pulled a corner of the curtain back to peer out. No one was there. When I dropped the curtain back down Tom began spraying the chemical on the far wall by the bed. Instantly a blue glow began to form where I’d just seen the dark brown and red stains.

  Blood. No surprise there. I was expecting that.

  But as he widened the arch of his spraying we stared in shock as the blue glow covered a much higher and wider space on the wall. He kept spraying, moving toward the small closet. The blueness continued across the room like some spreading alien infection. Gerry, Hannah and I backed away unconsciously, pressing up against the entryway door.

  Even the curtains. Even the top of the man’s bureau. The woman’s bureau. Geode blue.

  Disbelief turned slowly to fear and disgust.

  “It’s everywhere,” Hannah whispered from behind her book-shield.

  “Bleach?” Hannah whispered hopefully.

  Tom threw us another look.

  He was thinking the room was bugged. Earlier I’d been thinking he was concerned that people in the house, or maybe in the yard, might somehow hear us. But we seemed to be alone now.

  If he was thinking electronic bugging then he might be in trouble thanks to our little talk while he’d been downstairs. I tried to remember just what we’d said. But then the color beginning to fill the room drew my attention.

  The glowing-blue would have been beautiful if you didn’t know what the sprays and splatters were.

  He didn’t stop. He sprayed above the headboard, and on the floor at the foot of the bed, and then moved to the other walls.

  I finally remembered myself, and furiously snapped my flash-free shots of the walls, floors and ceiling before it began to fade.

  Moving closer to the violence with every picture, I found myself standing in the narrow space on the far side of the bed near the bloodiest wall. I snapped more pictures, bending at the waist to do close-ups of the lower half. The camera focused and refocused and slowly something began to form in the iridescent blue sea. A pattern. A shape. Low down by the floor wedged between the bed and wall.

  I stood abruptly and turned to look at the others.

  Tom’s eyebrows asked me “what?”

  I crooked a finger and he approached. I pointed. I lowered myself to my knees, and he squeezed in next to me. I felt his warmth pressing against me and was briefly embarrassed. He mouthed the question, what?

  He couldn’t see it.

  I scrunched down further and he leaned closer, and a sudden terror filled my heart as I imagined Ada’s distress at being trapped in this narrow confine, being beaten and beaten. I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I spoke softly.

  “L.”

  He frowned disapproval then peered more closely at the wall, turning his head from side to side. His face finally registered comprehension.

  “And U.”

  It was Gerry. She had leaned across the blued bedspread to see what we were looking at, one hand directly in the Luminol spray. I cringed. She’d leave a hand print, and maybe a knee, but at least no detail thanks to the glove.

  Before either of us could finish spelling the name that had been written onto the wall in blood over the many old layers, Tom grabbed us and pulled us away.

  The final letters had been “K” and “E”. Luke.

  Numbed, I wondered which of his victims had lived long enough to identify her murderer.

  I glanced over at Hannah. She had her back pressed against the door and was reaching for the knob. She was going to bolt. I snapped more pictures of the spot before she could let the light in.

  Tom noticed my concern, and placed the squeeze bottle on Ada’s bureau and joined her by the door, his hand resting calmly atop Hannah’s. But the worried scowl on his forehead betrayed the act of calm.

  I moved up next to him and whispered, “Wasn’t this standard crime scene procedure done earlier
today?” I emphasized standard.

  “Yeah.”

  “Was there just as much of a reaction?”

  He shrugged.

  Why was he worried? Why the need for silence? I couldn’t figure out his attitude. If the Sheriff himself had authorized this action, why be so secretive?

  “Wasn’t the writing noticed before?”

  “Not that I know of. We were kept out of the loop.”

  “The Sheriff’s Department?”

  “Everyone. A couple of people I’ve never seen before were here when we arrived, around five. Said they were from the Mayor’s office. Said we didn’t need to go upstairs at all. That there wasn’t anything up there. It was like an order. They’d taped the stairs. Those men just left.”

  Hannah sniffled, and I realized she was crying. Gerry wrapped her in her arms.

  I half expected Hannah’s phone to ring—Ruth warning her daughter.

  My own eyes welled with grief for the women who suffered here.

  We stayed in the room for close to an hour, silently searching the bureau drawers and shoeboxes high up on the closet shelf, even under the bed. We were looking for any helpful information about Luke, Ada and Eddie, but also giving the Luminol time to fade.

  There was nothing else.

  Finally the blue stain on the walls dulled, and we opened the drapes, turned on the overhead light, and with bated breath opened the door. No one was there.

  And the downstairs was still silent. Lunch was probably two hours.

  I headed for the bathroom. There was nothing inside worth noting, just the usual male and female toiletries, and as I stepped back out, Hannah shoved past me eagerly. I suppressed the worry that she might be sick and turned toward the second bedroom down the end of the short, transverse hall.

  Police tape had been placed across the door.

  Uh-oh. That hadn’t been there when we’d first climbed the stairs.

  I searched for and found Tom lingering back by the closed master bedroom door and our eyes held for a moment. Someone from his department, or perhaps from the City Police—Famine?—had come upstairs and taped the second room shut while we’d been doing our investigation.

  I worried for Tom. Our work here had been approved by the top guy, but that didn’t mean a junior detective wouldn’t suffer more because of his part in it. Especially with his sister involved.

  On the flip side of that coin was the possibility that her husband’s power and influence might scare these unknown people from the Pinto Springs Mayor’s office back in the hole they’d crawled out of.

  Well, if Tom could be brave, so could I. I scooted forward to the barricaded door, twisted the knob, and pushed the door open. I heard Tom begin to protest. Then he moved up close behind me, along with Hannah and Gerry.

  It was a quilted memorial. The walls, ceiling, and windows, were all draped with her quilts. I furiously snapped pictures. Her son’s childhood bed had been draped with a quilt made of satins and silks in whites and ivories.

  Wedding dresses. For the wedding he’d never have.

  We heard angry voices rising from the first floor. I stowed my slim camera in a secret place, and turned to face the music with my compadres.

  The contrast between the blood-stained horror at the other end of the house hit me once more as we made our way down the stairs.

  Chapter 29: Dungeon Room

  Three cops of senior rank and Pestilence and Famine were standing around the now empty table staring us down. Learner and Mosby were among them.

  Newly appointed Pinto Springs Chief of Police Howard Halloran wasn’t.

  As Tom slid around the corner and out the front door to await his fate in the yard, Gerry and Hannah began talking loudly behind me as if there were nothing unusual about our actions.

  I wondered why the seemingly angry authorities hadn’t just busted in on our little ice-blue picture show.

  My thoughts were interrupted when I spotted the little door leading off the kitchen. Was that the way down to the basement?

  Only one way to find out.

  I moved swiftly around the angry suits, opened the door and pulled it shut behind me. Quickly looking around, I found a shovel hanging on the wall, pulled it down, and wedged it under the door handle, across to the handrails on the basement staircase. Maybe that would slow them down.

  I flipped the wall switch, took five quick steps down while resetting my camera. Upstairs, the cops and sheriffs were doing some kind of near-yelling match with each other while my eyes adjusted to the dim overhead light. Finally Famine and Pestilence began screaming like banshees for me to halt, banging their fists against the door. The noise got me moving the rest of the way down.

  The commotion behind me increased as I got my bearings. I was certain gripping hands would yank me back up at any moment. The door banged open and I began taking pictures willy-nilly, just snapping away furiously.

  Gerry was forming a Dumb Blond Blockade with the two Pinto Springs detectives, carrying on as if her wild blond hair was on fire.

  “Excuse me! Sir, don’t push! I’m falling, I’m falling! Sir! How rude!”

  “Get out of my way, you stupid….”

  And then I heard Hannah--who must have entered the stairway immediately behind me--continue to impede all attempts to follow by shouting that she had every right to be there. That she was an official private investigator!

  Oops. Not yet.

  Between them my wonderful new helpers made it possible for me to reach the cage Eddie had spent years in.

  I stared in horror.

  Then someone switched off the lights. Using the flash of the camera I proceeded as if under strobe lights. It was all I could do to control my emotional response. The basement had been divided in half by an interior wall made of a steel mesh. In the middle of the wall was a door, standing open, and beyond this lay a small bed, table and television.

  I slipped through the room and flashed my way to a bathroom way at the back. There I got close-ups of everything, including several bottles of pills in a rusted out medicine cabinet.

  The basement radiated what the rest of the house oozed—sadness and torment. I felt I was standing at the nuclear heart of this corrosive house.

  No art adorned the walls, no personal items of any kind, just the barest of comforts and a fool television. A modern day dungeon meant to contain and control.

  But I had no time to contemplate what sort of mind would rise up out of this misery. The lights came back on, and a few seconds later a pair of bitingly angry hands forced me backwards toward the stairs and then spun me around.

  The wonderful thing about today’s cameras is how small they are. It’s absolutely amazing where you can hide them when you need to. And Mosby knew he’d been beaten when he could see no evidence of a camera in my hands or hanging around my neck. He knew better than to search me. Too many witnesses. Or so I thought he was reasoning.

  Instead, he yelled and railed at my “unlawful resistance” as he chased me back up the stairs to the kitchen.

  “Get them off the premises! Get them out of here! They’ve broken any agreement.”

  Both Mosby and Learner were yelling. I briefly wondered why they reminded me of Gerry and Hannah.

  Our coats were shoved into our hands and we were hustled through the kitchen toward the back door, and shoved outside into the miserable rain, and now I was clutching at my belly to keep the camera from getting wet. I heard a swoop sound and the rain stopped. Gerry’s giant umbrella to the rescue.

  Before us, in the backyard and beyond toward the cemetery, were a dozen soaked and dispirited deputies working their shovels.

  As I stepped down off the stoop, the years of bloody abuse that Ada and Eddie had suffered overwhelmed me. Whoever was running this sideshow was now trying to cover up the obviously criminal living conditions of Eddie. I was determined they wouldn’t get away with it.

  It was past my lunchtime so I was plotting which one of the three of us would make a run to a
fast food restaurant to get the vitals.

  Even sitting at the curb out front of the house, we could hear the chopping sounds coming from the old graveyard way out back.

  Gerry, who was sitting next to me, in the front, said the obvious, “They’re digging.”

  “In the graveyard. You think?”

  I have no idea why sometimes I pop out with sarcasm. Ninety-five percent of the time when others around me do this it flies ninety-five feet over my head. And I hate that it does.

  Then I added, “Looking for planted women?”

  Hannah groused, “Did you hear that chauvinist making sexist jokes about the missing women, suggesting they were ‘probably in Vegas replenishing their funds--working the streets.’ Not nice.” She was angry. She closed her window.

  Gerry said, “Are you worried?”

  I said, “About what?”

  “About the blowback from this. You know, when the departments involved learn about our activities upstairs?”

  “And down,” Hannah said. I looked back at her. She was cradling her cell phone in her lap, her long brown hair lying flat on her head. She’d been misted.

  Gerry said, “Maybe you should warn Matt before he gets the call.”

  Gerry’s hair still looked great. All bobble-headed curls.

  “Can’t. He’s in court again, testifying for another crazed divorcee who wants a revisit on her ex’s visitation rights with their two younger children. She’s trying to get him nailed on child neglect.”

  I wondered if Gerry’s hairspray was waterproofing.

  Hannah said, “No! Who is Matt representing?”

  “Well, technically neither. We just investigate. But we were hired by the husband’s lawyer. And no, we haven’t found anything incriminating.”

  Hannah’s body relaxed and she sat back, muttering, “Nothing worse than a child abuser.” She gazed out toward the cemetery. “Do you think we can be arrested?”