Brink of Death

by Brandilyn Collins

  I put a hand over my eyes, then hoisted myself from bed to pad to the bathroom, where the clothes I’d taken off mere hours ago lay. Just before slipping out of the bedroom, I remembered the burglar alarm. I glanced at the keypad on the wall by the bed. The red light was on. Jenna must still be asleep. Once in her room last night, she’d set the alarm to its highest level so no one could walk through the house without setting off one of the many sensors. When I arrived home, I’d turned off the alarm, using the main keypad in the kitchen, then turned it on again in my bedroom.

  A bedroom complete with burglar alarm pad but no telephone. I would really have to fix that.

  At the keypad I punched in the code. The red light flicked to green.

  Eight-thirty.

  Jenna and I slumped at the kitchen table over mugs of coffee. Even after such a night, my sister managed to look beautiful. Life just isn’t fair. Jenna’s face is heart-shaped; mine is more like round. Her eyes are large, a stunning velvet brown with long lashes. Mine are…I’m not quite sure. Half hazel, half muddy gray. At thirty-three and with perfect skin, Jenna can do without the makeup she usually wears. Unlike yours truly, who needs the full works to appear half attractive.

  Well. I have seven years of life on Jenna and much more hard experience.

  Through the large front windows I could see cars coming and going from the Willits’. Detective Chetterling had promised not to bother us until Dave Willit returned. We would know when he and Wesley Darrel arrived through their radioed approach. Jenna’s scanner sat on the table, tuned to the 122.8 frequency used by Grove Landing flyers.

  “Awful quiet out there.” I aimed a look at the scanner. The sound of airplane engines was common in our neighborhood.

  “Everyone’s still in shock.” Jenna pushed her thick auburn hair behind her ears. “Besides, the detectives were spreading the word last night for people to stay put as much as possible. They want to question everyone.”

  “So you’re not leaving today?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll call work. Tell them I may not be in tomorrow either.”

  “Grove Landing traffic,” a muffled voice came over the scanner. Jenna turned it up. “Baron three-nine-two-Hotel-Uniform, five miles to the southeast of runway three-zero.

  We’ll be entering the pattern for full stop. Grove Landing.”

  “Baron. That’s got to be Wesley and Dave.” Jenna pushed back her chair.

  A flash of movement through the window caught my eye. Another car was stopping at the Willits’ house. The door pushed open and Ralph Chetterling got out. His head tipped upward; he must have heard the plane. Such timing the man had.

  The detective’s final question still rang in my ears. It occurred to me that he probably wished Trent Gerralon’s daughters lived anywhere but in his jurisdiction—as if the very blood in our veins could somehow curse his bringing Lisa’s killer to justice.

  I did not share my thought with Jenna, who would have called it stupid. But then, she wasn’t the daughter who’d frequented courtroom halls, trying to melt into nothingness when overhearing diatribes of our father’s defense tactics. I’d been forced to cover his trials—ironically for me, the most media-watched and therefore the highest in demand for courtroom sketches. I’d drawn my father’s face more times than I could count—the Roman nose, square jaw, his trademark salt-and-pepper curls. The flaring nostrils of his indignation, the raised right brow of his cynical disbelief. Few people knew who I was; the members of the media who bought my drawings certainly did not. Vic had given me one lingering gift: his last name. I avoided my father in the courtroom, in the halls, and he avoided me. All for the good of my career, of course. I was glad for the excuse and, although he would claim otherwise, I think my father was, too. I knew too many of his secrets, his betrayals of my mother as Jenna and I were growing up, for him to like me.

  Chetterling glanced again at the sky, then headed up the Willits’ front steps. Before long he’d be at our door.

  I sighed. “Guess I’d better wake Erin up.”

  Chapter 7

  Tick-tock.

  Eight fifty-five.

  I stood on my front walk, watching a very different Dave Willit climb out of Wesley Darrel’s car. Dave looked like he’d aged a decade overnight. His back was rounded, clothes rumpled, his blond hair matted. Grief creased his attractive face, his eyes red-rimmed and worn. One look at him and all words of solace melted from my tongue. What could I possibly say to comfort this man?

  I hung back as Chetterling introduced himself, Dave’s focus wandering like some shocked soul along the crime-scene tape around his house. Erin burst through our door and ran, crying, into her father’s arms. Chetterling and I turned away, affording them what privacy we could.

  The morning marched on, full of logistical details and people going and coming. Dave and Erin needed to go to the Sheriff Department’s North Substation—Dave for questioning and Erin for another try with the Identi-KIT. Gerri Carson arrived as promised to offer help, her chaplain vest looking crisp over a green blouse. The Willits’ family members would be arriving—grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts.

  All but Dave’s sister, who wouldn’t be able to leave the hospital. There would be people to pick up at the Redding Airport, all needing places to stay. I offered one guest bedroom for a couple who would be here the next day. Stephen was sleeping in the other guest room, and I could hardly suggest that someone stay downstairs in his regular room when I considered it too dangerous for my own son.

  Meanwhile countless people from New Life, the Willits’

  church in Redding, began showing up. All the food they brought went into my kitchen until the Willits’ house could be reopened in a few hours—restored from a crime scene to masquerade as a home. Funeral arrangements had to be made, a casket chosen. Neighbors sought me for details. Hadn’t I gone with Erin to the hospital the night before? It seemed I was needed on every side, and my head spun. In the midst of this, Kelly proved clingy and fearful, not wanting me out of her sight. Stephen was no help at all. One look at all the commotion, and he retreated to the lower level to lose himself in computer games.

  Tick-tock, tick-tock, nagged the grandfather clock as it ate away at the seventy-two hours. Please, please, I prayed to nothing as Chetterling drove Dave and Erin away, let Dave remember something that will help.

  Obvious frustration slacked the detective’s face when the three of them returned a few hours later. As I headed out the front door to greet them, I spotted Gerri Carson coming from the Edinbergers’ house. She reached Dave and Erin, speaking to them quietly.

  “Do you need a drink?” I offered Chetterling as he climbed out of the car. He flicked a look at the Dave-Gerri-Erin trio and nodded, no doubt seeing through my ploy to pull him aside.

  Jenna joined us in the kitchen as I fetched the detective a glass of ice water. “What can you tell us?”

  Chetterling placed the thumb and index finger of one hand against his cheeks and pressed. It occurred to me that he probably hadn’t slept at all since the murder. “Erin couldn’t do the Identi-KIT. She still seems just…shut off from it.

  We’re not going to get very far without a composite.”

  “Do you think she’ll be able to do it later?” Jenna asked.

  He shrugged. “I’ve seen people unable to do anything but stare at the wall when they’re first questioned. Then in an hour or two they’re able to talk. With kids it’s different. They can’t be pushed, and it becomes a real balancing act, putting their needs first while trying to proceed with the investigation.”

  “Remember that young girl, Mary Katherine, in Salt Lake City?” Jenna stood at the table, a hand on her hip. “Elizabeth Smart’s little sister. Wasn’t it some four months after Elizabeth was kidnapped that she finally remembered the face of the man and identified him to police?”

  Chetterling gazed into his glass. “That’s true. You can’t push kids to remember. The detectives in that case told Elizabeth’s paren
ts just that.” He looked up with a sigh. “But we don’t have four months. By that time the killer’s trail will be so cold…”

  “Did Dave have any idea who could have done this?” I asked.

  “Not one.”

  My sister put a finger to her lips. “What evidence did you find in the house?”

  I searched Chetterling’s face, sensing his hesitation to answer. For the first time I noticed a tiny scar on his left temple. He focused again on his glass.

  “Not much. No fingerprints. As your sister may have told you, he had gloves on. We did find some black fibers under Mrs. Willit’s fingernails, most likely from his shirt or the gloves. We’ve sent them to be analyzed. And we cast a shoe print in the dirt off the back deck. Looked like he was moving pretty fast when he came off the last stair and hit the ground, so that one’s not real clear. We also lifted a shoe print on the deck stair, going up—a better one. That’s about all I can tell you.”

  I was right—the killer had come through the Willits’ back sliding glass door. “No DNA anywhere? No hair left or a piece of skin?”

  He surveyed me for a moment. “We’ve still got the autopsy.”

  I felt a chill down my spine. Yes, they still had the autopsy.

  But they should have had so much more. All night at the Willits’ house and the detectives had come up with so little.

  I could hear the defense’s argument against one piece of evidence: “The shoe prints match a brand worn by half the county!”

  Unless the bottom was worn enough to have its own distinctive markings…

  Chetterling placed his glass in the sink and turned to go.

  The autopsy was scheduled for one o’clock, he said, and he needed to be there.

  Before long two large groups of the Willits’ friends arrived, bringing more food. They milled in the street, gift bearers barred from their destination, until I coaxed them all to unburden themselves in our kitchen. “Please stay and eat,” I encouraged them, seeing how Dave took comfort in their company. “It’s time for lunch and everyone’s brought so much.”

  Gerri Carson assumed efficient control of our kitchen, laying out the casseroles and pouring everyone drinks. She seemed to sense that I was overwhelmed, and I felt grateful for her help.

  An older woman with a wrinkled face and fingers twisted from arthritis told me the crowd was from Dave’s church in Redding. A slim man in his fifties with a jutting chin introduced himself as Pastor Jim Storrel. As they all talked in the kitchen, spilling into the great room, strange comments about God and his grace, and his strength in our weakness, filtered through the air, as foreign to me as fairy dust. How could they believe half of what they said? Where had God’s “grace” been when Lisa needed it most?

  Dave did not eat. How could he, while ten miles away his wife’s body was being cut open, her organs lifted out and weighed? My mind flashed a scene of the coroner bending over the body, the intermingling smells of blood, steel, and chemicals tainting the air. Instruments clink. The coroner’s white-gloved hand scribbles notes…

  I turned away from the array of casseroles on the counter.

  Folks picked at their food, talking in low tones. Erin and Kelly had disappeared upstairs, saying they weren’t hungry.

  Dave sat at the kitchen table, eyes roaming the wood as if clues to this nightmare were imbedded within its grains.

  In time a detective came over, pulling him aside. He wanted to escort Dave through the house, he explained.

  Maybe Dave would see something, perhaps certain papers disturbed in his office, that would trigger a thought of who may have done this.

  Dave nodded, his expression patterned with pain. Conversation in the room lulled as all eyes fastened upon him.

  The pastor walked over to rest a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You need someone with you?”

  Dave looked not at the man but through him. “I can’t go over there.”

  Storrel watched his face. “Want us to pray with you?”

  He nodded.

  Folks pulled to Dave’s side, surrounding him, every one reaching out to touch him. Jenna and I exchanged a nonplused glance, then sidled well out of the way. Gerri stuck with us, as if she realized our discomfort. The pastor prayed aloud, asking God to strengthen Dave as he completed his task. When the pastor’s voice fell, others’ rose, beseeching God in a way that made my chest both compress in doubt and swell with yearning. Not that I believed a word of the prayers would help. If God existed, he didn’t seem to pay us wretched mortals much heed. But those people seemed to think so. And most important, the prayers seemed to matter to Dave. When all petitions ceased, he thanked everyone, tears in his green eyes, then turned to the detective.

  “Okay. I’m ready.”

  The church folk began leaving soon after that, each one taking my hand or Jenna’s, hugging us, spilling thank-yous for what we were doing for the Willits. Gerri remained till all had gone, then set about cleaning the kitchen.

  “Please don’t.” I took a plate from her hands. “You’ve done so much already.”

  She shrugged. “Glad to do it. I know all this is a lot for you. Oh, before I forget.” She pulled a card from her pocket and handed it to Jenna. “Please call anytime if you need me.

  You’ve got my cell phone number, but here’s my church office number, too.”

  “You work at this church?” Jenna gazed at the information. “Covenant Chapel?”

  Gerri’s smile bordered on impish. “Yup. I serve as a part-time assistant pastor for counseling.”

  “So how did you end up being a chaplain?” Jenna affixed the card to the refrigerator with a magnet in the shape of an airplane. Next to it, under a similar magnet, lay Detective Chetterling’s card.

  “I wanted to serve the whole community of Redding in some way. I joined the program four years ago.”

  We talked about the different services she’d provided to help crime victims as well as stressed law enforcement officials. Gerri even had us laughing as she related a story about turning in an illegal weapon at the request of a woman who’d discovered it in her elderly father’s apartment. “It folds up,”

  the woman told her. Gerri, knowing nothing about guns, planned to carry it to the police station in a tote bag, thinking it couldn’t be more than a foot long.

  “Well, the butt of the gun folded up against the barrel,”

  she said, “but the thing was still a good three feet. The gal wrapped it in a towel, but it stuck way too far out of my tote bag. I put it up under my arm, trying to hide it as I slunk out of that apartment building. Imagine if someone had seen me and called the police!”

  “Surely you just didn’t walk into the station like that.” I shook my head.

  “Oh, goodness no. I called ahead of time to warn them I’d be bringing the weapon. They told me to leave it in the trunk and fetch a police officer to get it.”

  “Were you scared?” I asked. “I’d be terrified. I hate guns.”

  Gerri pulled her mouth wide. “Well, there must be something weird in me, ‘cause I felt downright excited about carrying all that power. Later that day I got dressed up in my full police chaplain uniform and went back down to the station to have my picture taken with it.”

  She gave us an irresistible grin.

  “That’s quite a lady,” Jenna commented as Gerri drove away a few moments later.

  Tick-tock. The grandfather clock struck 3:45.

  “She sure is.” Gerri’s personality was a unique blend of humility, capability, and humor. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why her presence seemed so calming. She had…

  something.

  “Okay. Back to work.” I headed toward the kitchen to start putting away food, my mind imagining what Dave might discover during his escort through the crime scene.

  Chapter 8

  Despondency settled over me as I stacked plates and took them to the counter. Lisa had been dead less than sixteen hours, and already the investigation looked bleak. Somehow we w
ere going to have to live with this terror of the unknown.

  How I dreaded the night.

  “This isn’t going to end anytime soon, Jenna.”

  She clamped a sheet of foil around a casserole dish. “You need to help.”

  Uh-oh. Her tone held that low thrum, the one that signaled the pronouncement of some formidable action I must take. Something that would rock my world, push me into the slippery unknown like a fledgling skater on ice. She’d sounded like this the first time she warned me to watch my trusted husband a little more closely. And when she told me Stephen looked like he was doing drugs.

  My back stiffened. I made no reply.

  Jenna leaned against the tile counter. “You’re an artist, Annie. And Erin knows and trusts you. You should have a session with her, see if she can give you a description of the guy.

  You draw the composite.”

  I blinked. “Where on earth did this come from? I draw faces I can see, remember? I’m no forensic artist. I have no ability in that field whatsoever.”

  “Just because you haven’t done it doesn’t mean you can’t.”

  “Oh, yes it does.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  I tipped back my head and surveyed the ceiling.

  “Okay, fine.” Jenna was used to arguing with me. She knew all the moves. “Maybe you won’t be able to do it. But there’s no loss in trying.”

  “Jenna, Erin couldn’t come up with a description even when she had eyes and noses to choose from.”

  “Maybe the detectives just don’t know how to work with her. Maybe showing her face parts is not the way to go.”

  “That’s their job. I’d expect them to know what they’re doing.”

  “All right, they know what they’re doing. It still hasn’t worked.”

  “And it wouldn’t work with me either.”

  Jenna folded her arms. “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Annie, you sound like a three-year-old! Would you just listen? You’ve got an amazing talent. The media in the Bay Area always wanted to use your drawings over other artists’. Now your abilities could possibly help this investigation. And you’re refusing to even try.”