by Roger Johns
But it had been a learning experience, as well. She had come across all sorts of features in older homes that were rare or nonexistent in newer ones. One thing that had been common back then was attic access panels in the ceilings of some closets. They were like trapdoors—usually a two-foot square of plywood resting in a frame crafted from quarter-round baseboard molding. All one had to do was push up on the panel and lay it to the side to gain access to the attic.
Craig’s lake house seemed about the right vintage to have such a thing. She should have thought to check for it the first time she went. She had seen the pulldown attic door in the hallway, but it was wired into the alarm system and the alarm system hadn’t shown that the attic door was opened during the weekend in question.
Once they arrived back at the lake house, Wallace put Dennis to work gathering evidence from the sink and tub drains and tape-rolling the floor for insulation fibers, while she went in search of ceiling panels in the closets.
She moved down the hallway into the first of the three bedrooms. There was no panel in the ceiling of the closet. There were no panels in the closets of the second or third bedrooms, either. She was beginning to feel stupid for the second time in one day.
“Detective Hartman?”
Dennis was calling to her from the utility room, just off the carport. He was on his knees by a large utility sink, using a crescent wrench to disassemble the grease trap.
“Is that what you’re looking for?” With his wrench, he pointed toward a pantry in the opposite corner. “If I hadn’t been down here on the floor, looking up at such a sharp angle, I don’t think I would have seen it.”
Wallace stepped over to the pantry. The top shelf was stacked high with ratty old boxes and a collection of cleaning products. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she could see the corner of a frame above some of the boxes.
The shelves were half-inch plywood squares, resting on one-by-two wooden rails screwed to the pantry walls.
“Dennis?” Wallace said. “Leave the sink for now. We need to—”
“I’m on it.” He set his wrench aside and pulled a tape roller from his kit and tape rolled the floor in the bottom of the pantry and for a radius of several feet around the doorway. Wallace bagged the tape strips as he handed them to her.
“Now let’s take the stuff off the shelves,” she said.
They donned blue latex gloves and then, assembly line fashion, they removed the contents of the shelves. Once all but the top shelf had been emptied, they lifted out the shelves.
“I want that photographed, from above. It looks pretty dusty up there, so if any of those cleaning products have been moved we might be able to tell if they weren’t put back exactly on top of their original footprints. After that, I want the tops of the products and the shelf tape rolled. If that access panel was moved, it’s possible that stray insulation fibers could have come floating down out of the attic.”
Standing on a step stool, Dennis hovered his cell phone camera, with its light on, above and among the contents of the shelf, documenting the items and whatever lay on the surface of the shelf around them. When he was done, they removed the items and then the shelf itself.
Using the rails as footholds, Wallace climbed up to the panel. She pushed on the plywood, expecting it to resist, but it lifted smoothly. Wisps of insulation floated down around her. She pushed out her lower lip and blew the filaments away from her face and then laid the panel to one side of the opening and climbed higher. Once her hips were through, she sat on the edge of the opening and then handed the panel down to Dennis.
“Bag it. We’ll print it later.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” he said, holding it by the edges as he took it from her.
Wallace turned her head to look around the gloomy attic. An oval louvered sidelight in one of the gables let in enough light for her to see. A piece of heavy wire screen was U-nailed over the sidelight, and the screen itself was covered with dust-laden cobwebs. No one had entered or exited that way.
“See anything?” Dennis asked.
“Not so far.” Slowly, she turned, scanning the attic in the other direction. The spaces between the ceiling joists were filled with blown-in insulation. Behind her, about twenty feet away, she could see a collection of dusty cardboard boxes, household odds and ends, and old sporting equipment. It was clustered haphazardly on the small plywood apron surrounding the pulldown door in the hallway ceiling.
Pulling her feet under her, she stood and stepped gingerly from one ceiling joist to the next. Standpipes came up through the ceiling and disappeared into the roof, but the openings were too small for anyone to get through. She located the sidelight on the other side of the house. It too was covered with a heavy screen that looked as if it hadn’t been touched in forever.
She was about to admit defeat and climb down out of the stuffy space when she saw it in the part of the attic that would be above the rear of the carport. The insulation was piled higher there. It looked the way the ground did after you buried something, when there was too much dirt to fill the hole and it formed a mound.
Carefully, testing each joist with her weight before taking the next step, and using her hands to grab hold of the rafters above for balance, Wallace made her way over. The faint clink of metal on metal came up through the opening in the pantry ceiling as Dennis resumed his assault on the sink trap in the utility room below.
Using a finger-sized flashlight, she studied the piled-up insulation. It looked different from the expanse of insulation surrounding the mound, which was settled and had developed a uniform discoloration. The insulation in the mound itself had obviously been moved around. It was fluffier and parts of it had a fresher color. Carefully, probing with her gloved fingers, she scooped the insulation aside, revealing an access panel, like the one in the ceiling of the pantry.
“Dennis?”
“Right here.” His voice carried up through the trapdoor. “What did you find?”
“At the back of the carport, there’s a storeroom. See if you can open it. Dust the knob for prints before you touch it.”
Wallace scooped away the remaining insulation and worked her fingers into the crevice around the edge of the panel. She pulled it from the frame and total darkness stared back at her. The smell of mildew wafted up into the air around her and somewhere down in the blackness a doorknob jiggled. She shone her light into the opening. Boxes and old bed frames cluttered the storeroom. The rattling sound got louder.
“Detective Hartman? Can you hear me?” His voice was muffled by the storeroom door.
“Yes. What do you see?” she shouted.
“The storeroom door is locked, but it’s just a knob lock.”
Wallace shone the beam of her flashlight around the interior doorframe. It was not wired to the security system.
She filled a small evidence bag with insulation, then retraced her steps to the opening in the ceiling of the pantry and lowered herself into the utility room. She called Burley and LeAnne to tell them what she had found, but her calls went straight to voicemail.
She found Dennis outside. He was hauling a couple of evidence containers toward the rear of Wallace’s vehicle. She reached into her pocket and pressed the trunk release on her key fob. The trunk lid popped open just as Dennis arrived at the car.
The sound of a passing vehicle drew her attention, and she watched as a mud-splattered SUV with a red plastic kayak fastened into a roof rack cruised past, slowing as it approached the house to the north. The right turn signal started blinking and Wallace took off at a fast stride.
As she drew near the other house, her phone buzzed. It was Glenn Marioneaux.
“This is Detective Hartman.”
“I know you’ve been looking for me,” he said.
“Where are you, Mr. Marioneaux?”
“On my way home. Sorry I had to skip out on you like that, but I wasn’t in the mood for a bunch of police procedure, under the circumstances. You claimed you knew what losing family that way c
an be like, so I took you at your word and withdrew for a bit, to gather myself together.”
“I hope you’re calling to tell me you’re in the mood right now?”
A loud, sustained car horn sounded through the phone. “Go, goddammit. It’s green.” A faint chorus of other horns joined Glenn’s. “I just got a talking-to from mommy dearest about stiff upper lips and doing the proper things and all that crap. Maybe she’ll shut the fuck up if I let you get your hooks into me for a while.”
It sounded to Wallace as if the mother-son relationship wasn’t as tender as their behavior at the crime scene seemed to indicate. “May I assume you’re in okay condition to be behind the wheel?”
“You may. Last night? Definitely not. Today? Just peachy.”
“Then let’s make a plan. Where would you like to meet?”
“Not at my office. Can you meet me at my home in, say, two hours?”
“That’s fine. I might be a few minutes late. Make sure you wait for me.” She ended the call just as she arrived in front of the vacant house.
The driver of the SUV had a phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear and he appeared to be rooting around in his glove compartment as Wallace came up to his window. When he raised his head and saw her, a look of panic flickered across his face and he pushed his gearshift into Reverse.
She held up her badge and shook her head. The driver seemed to dither for a few seconds. She drew her thumb across her throat, signaling for him to kill the engine, then motioned for him to lower his window.
He dropped his phone into the center console as his window came down.
“What can I do for you, Officer?” He was white, average build, midthirties. His face was covered with a few days of stubble.
She let her eyes roam freely over the driver and the interior of the cab before she spoke. “I’m Wallace Hartman, a detective with the Baton Rouge City Police. Is this your house?” The smell of pizza drifted out of the window of the SUV.
“Not exactly.” The man visibly relaxed. He checked his rearview mirror, then looked through the windshield toward the front door of the house, finally settling his gaze back on Wallace. “Is there some sort of problem here? You’re a little out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you, Detective?”
“I’m trying to pin down the whereabouts of an individual on a certain day at a certain time.”
“Would I be the individual you’re referring to?” He smiled. It was the kind of disarming smile she knew some guys practiced in the mirror.
“No. You’re not.” Out of habit, she continued to scan the interior of the vehicle. The pizza box on the passenger seat was from the same restaurant as the one she had bagged from the dumpster. She looked past the driver’s seat into the rear. The seat backs were folded down even though he carried no cargo. “Would you have a few minutes to talk? Right now?” Her gaze locked on to his. “Just pull the rest of the way into the carport. We can chat right here in the driveway.”
“Sure. Give me a second.”
As he moved forward, Wallace studied the rear of the vehicle. A Louisiana license plate was affixed to the rear bumper. She memorized the number. Someone had finger-traced a message into the film of dust below the rear windshield: “Test dirt. Do not wash off.”
“You have kids?” Wallace asked as the man strolled in her direction.
“No. Is that who you’re looking for? Kids?”
Wallace pointed toward the inscription on the back of his vehicle.
He snorted. “That was those smartass punks hanging around the service station down the road. They been trying to dog me out of a few bucks to let them wash this baby. That’s where I was coming back from, just now. Peter Ecclestone.” He extended his hand.
“Peter Ecclestone,” Wallace repeated. “Rock of the church, if my altar girl Latin is correct. That’s a heavy name.”
“I crumbled under the weight years ago.” The smile was back. “So, who are we looking for, and how can I help?”
“I take it you’ve been staying in this house? But don’t worry,” she said when she saw him flinch. “I’m not going to hand you over to MaryBeth at the rental office.”
“I sort of forgot to turn in the extra key, the last time I rented the place.”
“And they must not have changed the security codes.”
He gave her a sly shrug. “What can I say?”
“You can say if you were here, at the house, this past Friday, between four in the afternoon and ten in the evening?”
“As a matter of fact I was. I usually don’t come around here until after I know the rental office is closed for the night, but that day I went a little off my plan. I needed a quiet place to metabolize an extra-heavy dose of some pretty high-spirited vodka. So, I was here from late, late Thursday night until … oh, I don’t think I left again until just before lunchtime on Saturday.”
“While you were here, and conscious, did you happen to notice anyone at any of the adjacent houses, or on the docks behind those houses?”
Peter hesitated, nodding and pursing his lips. “There was a fella at the little place just south of here. That relic right over there.” He pointed toward Craig’s house.
“Can you describe him?”
“Sure.” Ecclestone looked toward the back of his SUV. “Can I get you something to drink? Would you care to sit? I can offer you some pizza. Plus, it’s cooler inside.”
“No, thank you, Mr. Ecclestone. This is not a social call. Just tell me about the man you saw next door.”
“I’m guessing he was in his mid-fifties. Black. Just kicked back on the dock casting a lure out into the water, over and over again. A brew sitting on top of the ice chest next to his chair. You know, just your basic day at the lake.”
“You’re very observant, Mr. Ecclestone.”
“I have to be. I’m an artist. Watercolors, pencil sketches, socially conscious nature and wildlife photography. Things like that.”
Wallace had no idea what socially conscious wildlife photography was.
“Is that what brought you out here in the first place?”
“Mm-hmm. You can always find something interesting around these old-time vacation spots. Animal and human.”
He tilted his head from one side to the other and eyed her, like he was sizing her up for a portrait. Wallace assumed this was a standard part of his pickup routine.
“I thought about trying to get something down on paper, with that old guy next door. Kind of iconic, you know. But he was too far away to get any detail. I walked partway over there to see if he’d let me sit on the dock and work, but then I decided I wasn’t really in the mood to talk to anybody, so I just let it go. Plus, I still wasn’t feeling super great.”
“Can you remember when you saw him out on the dock?”
“Actually, I saw him a bunch of times. He spent most of the day on Friday out there, and at least part of Saturday morning.”
“Can you say what times Friday?”
“Well, he was going in and out, but he was out at least part of the time until early evening. I wasn’t watching him the whole time, but I had my camera up on the tripod, so I’d see him out of the corner of my eye, so to speak.”
“Was he ever away from the dock for long periods?”
“Nah. A few minutes here and there, but mainly he was just lounging out there. Reading a book, throwing his line out, not catching a damn thing that I could see.”
“If I showed you pictures of the person I’m interested in, do you think you’d be able to say whether he was the man you saw on the dock?”
“I can try.”
Wallace pulled out her phone and stood next to Ecclestone as she scrolled through a series of pictures she had put together before her first trip to the lake today, in case she found someone who might have seen anybody. A few of the pictures were of Craig, some were of her next-door neighbor Albert Mills and his partner, and two were of Eddie. There were about eight shots, sequenced in random order.
“One mo
re time?”
Wallace swiped through the pictures again.
“Him and him,” he said, picking out both pictures of Eddie.
“You sure?” Wallace asked, intentionally putting a note of skepticism in her voice to test his conviction.
“It was a few days ago, but, yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
“He’s a bit of a celebrity. Maybe you recognize him from TV or the internet?”
“Nah. I don’t do TV. And if he ain’t on the sports page, I’m not gonna see him in the papers.” He shook his head. “He some kind of bygone entertainer or something?”
“Not exactly.” Wallace held the picture up for several more seconds to see if Peter would change his mind. “Do you think he saw you?”
“Not that I could tell. I would have been coming from behind and above him, and I only went about twenty or thirty yards in his direction when I decided to bail. He didn’t seem to notice me, but there’s no way to know for certain.”
“There’s a lot riding on this, Mr. Ecclestone. I’ll need you to drive into Baton Rouge to make a formal statement. At some point after that, you may be called upon to testify in open court. Would you be willing to do that?”
“You gonna be the one taking statements?” One eyebrow went up.
“Did you happen to take any photographs of the gentleman on the dock?” she asked, deflecting his question.
“No. I don’t think so.” He massaged his chin, looking thoughtfully into the distance. He brought his gaze back to Wallace. “No. Can’t help you there. See, before I could make any money—before I’d be able to sell a photograph of somebody—I’d have to get ’em to sign a release form.”
“You hesitated, just now,” she said, using her standard shake-the-tree technique.
“No, but like I said, I had my camera on a tripod, taking shots through the open window up in the back bedroom. I got some pretty decent images with my long lens. Things happening out and about out on the lake. Clouds, birds, boats cutting up the water.” He looked out over the lake. “Did you have a particular time in mind, to do this statement business?”
