Ray looked Dunn in the eye. “I’m saying it’s possible, that’s all.” He held his hands up, palms out. “Let’s move on. I meant to ask earlier… Did you notice anything unusual… anything out of place at Elena’s house since you filed the abduction report?”
“I haven’t been there since then.”
“Not even to pick up some clothes or toys for your son?”
“I have no reason to do that. I’ve got duplicates of everything Nathan needs at my place. Why do you ask?”
“I thought if you’d been there, you might’ve seen some evidence of a break-in or something.”
“Evidence of a break-in?”
“Just another theory we’re working on,” Ray said.
“You could check with Jeanette. No, forget that.” A grin that could have passed for a smirk crossed his face. “Even if she went over there, she wouldn’t have been able to get in. She doesn’t have a key.”
Ray arched an eyebrow. “She doesn’t have a key to her daughter’s house?”
“Ellie doesn’t want Jeanette there when she’s not around. She’d be checking out her bills, her correspondence, anything and everything she could get her hands on. Ellie won’t back down on that. It’s just one more thing Jeanette resents.”
“It’s got to be tough taking that kind of stand against her own mother,” Ray mused.
“It is, but it’s either push back or be a pushover.” Dunn paused. “I left Ellie’s keys at my house, but she used to keep a magnetic key box hidden under a bird feeder in the backyard—a thistle feeder, if you know what those look like.”
“I have a couple in my own yard,” Ray said. “Thanks, but without a search warrant or just cause, we need the owner’s permission to enter the house, and with your ex-wife in a coma…” Ray nodded to him and walked to the door. “I’ll be in touch.”
As Ray got in the car, Waverly said, “I was getting ready to come in after you.
“Some interesting things came up.”
As they drove, Ray and Waverly batted around the new information he’d gathered on his second trip into the dealership. Jeanette Seeger was the topic as they neared Elena Dunn’s address.
“She’s got a nice set-up where she is,” Waverly said. “She’s living in a nice neighborhood—tree-lined streets, a house with all the amenities. I think Dunn got it right when he said she had something more ‘posh’ in mind. She prob’ly expected them to take her in and wait on her like her personal servants.”
Ray jerked his chin toward an old but elegant, two-story house on the corner. “I think that’s it.” He flipped his turn signal on and just as quickly turned it off. “It’s a one-way street. I’ll go around the block and park in front.”
When they left the car, they walked to the front door under a canopy of yellowing leaves still clinging to the limbs of several old trees. Ray rang the bell, waited, then knocked.
“It was worth a try, buddy, but give it up. No one’s home but the mice.”
Out of curiosity, Ray tried the door. “Locked.” He checked the area around the latch. “No signs of damage.” He pointed to the right. “I’ll go check around this side.”
“All right, I’ll take the left, but I think we’re wasting our time, buddy. Chances are Elena Dunn was drunk, hot-to-trot, and got a big dose of karma after dumping her kid in that theater.”
Ray didn’t bother to answer. He struggled past the border of shrubs lining the house, cupped his hands around his eyes and looked through the front window while Waverly went in the other direction, doing the same.
“The TV’s on,” Ray called to him.
“If she was loaded,” Waverly called back, “she prob’ly forgot to turn it off on her way out.”
They gradually disappeared from each other’s view as they reached the opposite sides of the residence. Ray was peering through a bedroom window when he heard Waverly call, “Ray!”
Going back the way he’d come, he found Waverly near the rear of the house. “What’ve you got, Dick?”
“She could’ve knocked it over as she was stumbling out of the house, but I think we’ve got an overturned chair in the kitchen doorway.”
Hands cupped around his eyes once more, Ray got his face within an inch of the glass. “Let’s see what else we can make out from out here.”
They went from window to window. Back at the spot he’d abandoned when Waverly had called him away, Ray stared through the glass, narrowed his eyes and took a longer, harder look. “Damn.” It came out in a hoarse whisper. He forced a breath into his lungs and called, “Dick, we’ve got a body.”
25
Ray stepped aside and let Waverly look for himself.
“Where are you talking about?” Waverly asked. “I don’t see anything.”
“A leg. It’s behind the easy chair near the front door. See it?”
Waverly put his face closer to the glass and squinted. “Damn,” he said a few seconds later. “You wanna call it in? I’ll force a door open or bust a window to get us inside.”
“Hold off on that,” Ray told him. “Go ahead and phone it in. Give me a minute and I’ll be right back.”
Ray rushed to the backyard to one of two thistle feeders. Seeds spilled to the ground as he tipped it on its side. Bingo! First try. He pulled the hidden spare key from the magnetized key case Dave Dunn had told him about and raced back as Waverly was completing the call.
“They’re on their way,” Waverly told him
Ray turned the key in the lock and shoved the door open. Like a sucker punch, the overwhelming smell of decay hit them.
“Oh, crap,” Waverly dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and clamped it over his nose.
Ray followed suit before approaching the body lying face-up just inside the door. Blond hair was splayed around the female victim’s head. The face and body were distended and beginning to discolor—dead for days.
Guns drawn, he and Waverly began clearing the house—a room-to-room check for anyone, who might still be inside—living or dead. They found no one upstairs or down.
Returning to the living room, Ray crouched over the victim’s remains, grimacing. “Two gunshot wounds,” he announced. “Both in the upper body.”
Waverly made notes in his notepad, then taking care where he stepped, he changed locations. “I see three shell casings on the floor, Ray. One must’ve missed its mark. There could be more lying around. Georgia Schwartz, you think?”
“Probably.”
With the back of his hand, Waverly brushed away the perspiration forming on his brow. “No wonder nobody has seen or talked to her in days. Whatever went on must’ve happened while she was watching the boy.”
Without taking a step, Ray looked around the room. He pointed to a coat draped over a small table at the hinged side of the front door. A purse poked out from beneath it. “There’s a coat and purse. It could be hers or maybe Elena Dunn’s.”
“They’ve gotta be Dunn’s,” Waverly said. “That coat’s way too dressy to go with the victim’s jeans and sweater outfit.”
“You’re probably right.” Ray went to the table and found the purse was open. Using his pen, he pried it open still wider. Eyes narrowed, he peered inside and saw a portion of a driver’s license under a travel pack of tissues. Without disturbing anything, he could make out a portion of the name on a driver’s license. “Good call, Dick. It’s Elena Dunn’s.” He tried to keep his breaths shallow. “At least we know Severson was telling the truth about not seeing a purse in the alley.”
“Yeah. Robbery couldn’t have been the motive in the shootings.”
“Right,” Ray said. “What happened on Sixth Street was out-and-out murder.”
“Give me your keys, Ray. I’ll go get the latex gloves and stuff outta the trunk for us.”
Ray tossed the keys to him. The shallow breaths he took to lessen the impact of the foul odor didn’t help. He started moving around the room for a better look while he waited for Waverly to return.
Distur
bed by what he saw on the couch, he muttered, “Oh, crap.”
“What’s wrong?” Waverly asked as he came through the door.
“I think the boy saw the whole thing go down.”
“How do you figure?”
Ray stepped aside and pointed to the pillow and blanket lying on the cushions.
Waverly went silent for a moment, then simply said, “Spiderman.”
“Yeah, a Spiderman pillow and blanket. Odds are he was lying right here when Georgia Schwartz was murdered.”
“Maybe so, buddy, but technically, we can’t say for sure yet that it’s Georgia Schwartz over there.”
“It’s her all right.”
“How do you know?”
“Remember Nathan’s behavior in the interview room?”
“Sure. He was so well-behaved you could’ve knocked me over with a cotton ball.”
“You’re right, he was. But wetting himself, the little outburst with the Matchbox car, the way he clung to Lynda Morton… Those are the things I’m talking about.”
“What do you expect? His mother dumped him in that theater and abandoned him. I wouldn’t—”
“I know, but that’s not what I’m getting at. Each of those negative reactions only happened while you were talking to him.”
Waverly drew back, horrified. “Hey, I didn’t do anything. I love kids.”
“I know, but you called him Nate.”
“Caught red-handed,” Waverly said. “Child abuse of the worst kind.” He screwed up his face and said, “What you’re getting at?”
Ray put his handkerchief back over his nose briefly. “I didn’t mention it because I thought it might be nothing, but it bothered me. Before we drove over here, I asked Dunn if there was some reason Nathan would react badly to being called by his nickname. He couldn’t explain it, but he said the only person who ever called him Nate was Georgia Schwartz. Now it makes sense.”
“Oh, crap,” Waverly said. “He associates her with his nickname. Each time I used it, he prob’ly had flashbacks of what happened to her. That poor kid. I wish I’d have known.”
“You couldn’t have. Forget it,” Ray said. “When she was killed, Elena Dunn and Nathan both had to have been here.”
Waverly glanced around the room, then went to the kitchen.
Ray heard him opening cupboards. “What are you looking for?”
“Liquor.”
“You still think Elena Dunn was drunk?” Ray shouted in his direction.
“I don’t know what I think, but checking out the liquor supply might help me make up my mind.” Waverly stepped back into the living room. “None in there.” He looked around and went to a small cabinet in the corner of the room. Bottles clinked as he opened the doors and looked inside.
“Well?” Ray said.
“Three bottles. Two haven’t been opened, and the third’s almost full.”
“I don’t think she was drunk,” Ray said. “I think she was in a full-blown panic.”
“Are you falling back on the home invasion theory, buddy?”
Ray gave the handkerchief-over-the-nose technique another try. “Nothing’s been disturbed except for that toppled chair at the kitchen door, so that doesn’t fit with what we’re seeing.”
Waverly glanced at the body. “Maybe Elena Dunn shot Schwartz.”
Ray’s head jerked. “Where’d that come from?”
“Maybe they got into a shouting match and one thing led to another. Then Elena Dunn might’ve panicked, grabbed her kid and made a run for it, only along the way, she impaled her radiator. Once the car died on her, she might’ve realized she didn’t stand a chance of getting away dragging the boy along, so she left him inside the theater and took off running.”
It was a process Ray and Waverly went through often—like a ping pong or volleyball match—back and forth, back and forth until one of them spiked the ball and scored a point.
“No, I don’t think so, Dick. Georgia Schwartz died answering the door. Check this out.” Ray stepped outside and turned to face the doorway. “The gun was fired from out here. The bullets struck her and wound up in that wall,” he said, pointing to two bullet holes in the wall opposite the door. He swung the door closed again. It cleared the soles of the victim’s feet by only inches. “I think she opened the door and took two bullets to the chest. There was no argument. There’d have been no time for one.
“Besides,” Ray continued, “she wouldn’t have shot her friend at the door, then come inside and deposited her coat and purse on that table. That doesn’t make sense. She had to be inside already when Schwartz was shot at the door by someone else.”
Waverly crouched beside the body. “From the powder burns on the sweater, the muzzle was awfully close when the trigger was pulled. Whoever did it wasn’t fooling around.”
Waverly stood and blew his nose, but there was no getting rid of the odor. “Except for that one toppled chair, nothing suggests there was a struggle. Her nails are long, but intact.”
Ray looked around the room, visualizing what may have happened. “Considering it’s Elena Dunn’s house, the killer probably rang the bell, expecting her to come to the door. Georgia Schwartz answered instead. He’d have seen someone who generally matched Elena Dunn’s description and opened fire. He may not have realized his mistake until he saw Dunn in the kitchen doorway and went after her to correct it.”
“Yeah.” Waverly looked at the layout of the rooms and went through his own visualization process. “And with the boy on the couch, she could’ve grabbed him and run out the door in the kitchen. Or maybe he ran to her. Anyway, that has to be why she didn’t have her coat or purse.” He looked at the distance between the front entrance and the outside kitchen door. “But I don’t get it, buddy. The shooter must’ve been right on her heels. Even if he tripped over that chair, giving her time to get in her car and drive off, somewhere along the way, she did major damage to her engine. How’d she make it all the way downtown without him catching her? How could she have managed that?”
“Hmm,” Ray said. “You’re right. Even if he tripped on that chair in the doorway, that couldn’t have bought her more than a few seconds. To get as far as she did, Elena Dunn must’ve caught some kind of a huge break.” Ray stepped to a window and looked out at the street. “No garages—only on-street parking in this neighborhood. Maybe he had to park blocks away.”
“I don’t know. There should’ve been some spots available.”
“All right,” Ray said, trying again. “But not expecting to have a chase on his hands, he might’ve tried to be cagey and parked blocks away. Maybe it was far enough that she got a big lead. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but do you have a better idea?”
“Not at the moment.”
They heard vehicles pulling up outside.
“It’s about time somebody got here,” Ray said.
“Relax, buddy,” Waverly said. “When I went to the car, I called again to advise them to come in nice and quiet. A crowd’s gonna form soon enough without the sirens causing a feeding frenzy.” He pointed at the body. “It’s not like an ambulance is going to do her any good at this point. Damn. Sometimes I really hate this job.”
Ray stepped outside to meet the officers as they piled out of their cars and approached the house.
“You know the drill,” he told them. “Cordon off this whole area.” He pointed to the officer nearest him. “You take charge of the logbook—no undocumented comings or goings.” He turned and saw a familiar face. “Officer Fielding, good to see you again.”
“You, too. What’s going on?”
“That shooting on Sixth Street…” Ray said. “Apparently the preliminaries took place right here.”
Fielding’s expression changed. “The two are connected?”
“It definitely looks that way.” Ray glanced up and down the street at the cars parked on either side. One car stood out more than the others even in the widely diversified neighborhood. “Listen, Fielding, do me a favor. That
Audi parked over there… Run the plates. Get me the owner’s name.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
Crime scene techs got out of their mobile unit, grabbed their equipment and approached the house.
“One female victim,” Ray told them as they came up the front steps. “There’s no missing her—she’s right inside the door. Been there awhile.” He saw the revulsion the news brought to their faces and understood completely.
Waverly joined Ray outside as the techs went in. He jerked his chin in the direction of a few people crossing the street from their homes. “Here they come, Ray… the first of the neighborhood rubberneckers.”
As officers finished stringing up the yellow police tape, people began approaching almost cautiously. Ray knew the caution was often nothing more than the vestiges of self-restraint as observers tried to overcome their morbid curiosity. As more people arrived, the ‘monkey-see monkey-do’ syndrome usually kicked in. Folks tended to be less concerned over maintaining appearances once they gained anonymity as part of a crowd.
Minutes later, rather than signing the crime scene logbook, Officer Fielding bounded up the four steps to the front door and simply stuck his head around the doorjamb. “Detective Schiller.”
Ray stepped out. “You have the owner’s name?”
“Yeah. The Audi is registered to a Georgia Schwartz. Address—”
“The name is all I need. I’ve got the rest. Thanks. Listen,” Ray said, “get back out there and see what information you can get from those people. Somebody must’ve heard or seen something late Friday night or early Saturday morning. Let’s see if your questioning technique is as good as your observational skills. Get going.” Ray ducked back inside the house to update Waverly on Fielding’s information.
By the time the coroner arrived, he had to make his way past gawkers and reporters alike. “Detectives Schiller and Waverly,” he said, “hello again. This is getting to be a habit. At least we didn’t get dragged out of bed for this one.”
Waverly grinned. “You must be a glass-half-full kinda guy, Doc.”
“I try.” The coroner did a double take. “What the heck happened to your ‘cookie duster’?”
Web of Silence: A Ray Schiller Novel (The Ray Schiller Series Book 4) Page 16
