Denny's Law

by Elizabeth Gunn

  ‘Unless they become cold cases,’ Leo said.

  Jason walked into the group just then, very late back from lunch. Delaney raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Nice of you to join us.’

  His sarcasm didn’t put a dent in Jason’s good humor. ‘Hey, I had a string of phone calls, all related to this case. And the last call I took was the best.’ He turned his cheery smile toward Sarah and said, above the thunder just then rolling across mid-town, ‘Remember when we told that Martina lady she should call us if she thought of anything else she wanted to tell us? Well, she called me just now and she thinks she’s got something we ought to see, so’ – he turned his optimistic smile on Delaney – ‘can we go see her now?’

  ‘Maybe later.’ Delaney looked cross. ‘We only have Banjo here for a few more minutes. I’d like to concentrate on—’

  ‘We pretty much promised her we’d come if she called,’ Jason said. ‘She was really spooked about having a dead body next door. Can’t blame her with all those kids in the house.’

  ‘OK.’ Delaney sighed. ‘You can go see what she needs. But you don’t need Sarah along for this, do you?’ Seeing Sarah making the time-out signal, he turned to her and said, ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t think Jason should go to that house by himself, boss.’ Her face pleaded with him not to make her say why.

  Delaney opened his mouth, saw Sarah’s expression, paused for two beats and said, ‘OK, both of you go, but hurry.’ He called after them as they headed for the stairs: ‘Let me know right away if you got problems at that house.’

  They ran downstairs together, checking phones, Glocks and recorders. In the car, Jason driving, Sarah said, ‘Did she sound scared?’

  ‘No. Excited, though. Said she’d found something.’ As a few big drops of water hit the windshield, he said, ‘You think Mother Nature just passed some new rule that we can only talk to this woman in a rainstorm?’

  But the storm fizzled quickly, becoming statistically one of this monsoon’s many ‘trace amounts.’

  From Martina’s sunlit front doorway, Sarah saw she had more children in the house today. The floor inside was a hazardous waste dump of toys and small bodies and the air was filled with little piping cries. Sofia sent Jason some blazing eye signals but Martina said quickly, ‘It’s outside in the trash.’

  She turned at the doorway and told Sofia, ‘Don’t let Timothy get his hands on this doorknob.’ She explained as they walked into the yard, ‘He just got tall enough to open the door and he’s determined to do it.’

  The city dumpster stood next to the street, on the property line between her lot and the house to her right.

  ‘I heard something that day,’ she said, ‘while I was dialing nine-one-one. But there was so much going on … I never thought of it again till this afternoon when we started carrying out bags for tomorrow’s pickup. So many kids, you know – we have a lot of trash. We take it out a few bags at a time so we don’t get sore backs. I threw a couple of bags in here and let the lid fall, and I remembered that noise. So I came back out here and took a look. Careful, now, don’t let this hit you.’ She let the big lid fall back and they all peered into the smelly interior.

  ‘See that red and white dotted thing just peeking out of the brown paper bag? Under the plastic sacks on your side?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jason said, putting on gloves. ‘Almost looks like …’ He reached as far as he could, stood on tiptoe and started to tilt inward. Sarah grabbed his arm and he tilted back. Martina pulled a pair of kitchen tongs out of her apron pocket and said, ‘Try these.’

  Jason snagged a corner, tugged carefully and teased out a brightly polka-dotted, very dirty garment. It had a stiff frilled collar, speckled with dried blood and bits of garbage, a big red shoe and a grotesque … mask? Yes, a grinning face with a big red nose rolled up inside the costume.

  His expression as he held the filthy thing aloft would have been appropriate for a precious art object. Turning his dazzling grin on Martina, he said, ‘Do you have any idea how much easier our jobs would be if all the homeowners were as smart and helpful as you are?’

  ‘Oh, homeowners, don’t I wish,’ Martina said. ‘I just rent.’ But she was blushing, looking young and pretty and pleased.

  The rest of that afternoon was a blur of work. Sarah made many phone calls, beginning with the support crew to ask them to impound the trash container and the crime lab to tell them they were about to get the mother of all searching and testing jobs. She insisted Jason should have the pleasure of calling Delaney to tell him they had just found the answer to how their murderer got away without being noticed.

  Somewhere in that busy afternoon Sarah remembered to ask Martina, ‘Have you seen anybody prowling around your neighbor’s house since the day we found the body there?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, people come by all the time and take pictures,’ Martina said. ‘They think it’s fun to tell their friends they know where a murder happened. Like it makes them glamorous to know where the house is that was on TV.’

  ‘Any of them ever try to get in?’

  ‘No. Well, there’s one car with the blackened windows that came a couple of times with a key.’

  ‘Oh?’ Sarah said. And then casually, ‘You notice a license plate on that one?’

  ‘No. But he had a key so I knew it must be one of yours.’

  ‘Sure,’ Sarah said, careful to keep her voice matter-of-fact. ‘I don’t always know what everybody’s driving.’

  They were getting back in their car to leave when Sarah, standing by the driver’s-side door, said, ‘Wait.’ She stood for twenty seconds with four fingertips pressed to her forehead then sprinted back to Martina’s door and stuck her head in. Scanning the confusing roomful of moving bodies, she said, ‘Sofia?’

  The girl’s pretty face appeared at the far side of the dinette table, above the whimpering child she had just picked up. ‘What?’

  ‘The day of the parade – did you say the clown was lame?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Lame in what way? Did he walk funny? Was he limping?’

  ‘He didn’t exactly limp. He just had a funny, um, gait.’ Looking thoughtful, Sofia laid the squirming child across her shoulder and patted its back absent-mindedly. ‘And he was leaning on a cane.’

  ‘A cane. Ah.’ Sarah smiled at the attractive girl, so like her mother, who seemed destined for a future very much like Martina’s. And why do I think that’s such a bad thing? she thought. Maybe because she does. ‘Did you get a look at it? Can you describe it?’

  ‘What, the cane? It was wood, I think. Looked kind of, like, carved? Had a big knot on the top for a handle.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Sofia,’ Sarah said. ‘You and your mother would both make very good detectives.’

  As she turned to go she got her first friendly look from Sofia.

  Back at the car, she asked Jason to drive and started a phoning fit of her own – to the crime lab, first, to tell them that besides another red clown shoe, size thirty or so, they should be on the lookout for a bloody wooden cane. ‘I think it’s uneven and has a big knot for a handle. Like a, what’s that Irish word? Shillelagh. You know, a carved wooden thing with knots. Fine.’

  When she got off the phone, she told Jason, ‘I’m making a note but help me remember to tell Delaney about the car with tinted windows, will you?’

  ‘Yeah. Sounds like a cartel guy has a key that’ll get him through a crime-scene lock.’

  ‘Sure does.’

  ‘You think he got anything?’

  ‘Not where I was looking. That one must be a better shooter than searcher. He didn’t get the stuff in the vent pipes or above the soffit.’

  ‘That one? You think there’s more than one lurker?’

  ‘Well, she said a lot of people were hanging around taking pictures. Could be one or two of those were bad guys acting like tourists. But – hell, I don’t know. One more puzzle.’

  She called Will to make sure he could pick up Denny after swim
practice, then rang her house to tell Aggie they had made an important find and she would no doubt be late getting home. ‘So tell everybody to go ahead and eat; don’t wait for me.’

  When she pulled in her driveway a little after nine she found all her family members reading in a favorite chair in an otherwise dark and silent house. They gathered at the round table to watch her eat warmed-over stew and listen to her story of the find.

  ‘Looks like he just stripped off his bloody clown costume and mask, stuffed them in a grocery bag, dropped the bag and the cane in the trash and boogied on out of there,’ she said. ‘Probably on that streetcar that leaves the Mercado every ten minutes now. One of the merchants told me he saw the mariachis piling onto that train after the parade, and I bet the shooter blended in with that group, or one like it, and rode back to campus, waving a little US flag like the rest of the patriots.’

  ‘Makes quite a picture, doesn’t it?’ Aggie said. ‘There’s a little more stew; would you like to have it?’

  ‘Uh … sure. With another piece of bread? This all tastes good beyond belief, you know.’

  ‘Better have another glass of wine to go with it,’ Will said. ‘It’s been a long day and you’re off tomorrow.’

  ‘Great idea. Spoil me some more,’ she said, stretching.

  ‘You should sleep in a little in the morning, too,’ Aggie said. ‘I told Denny that you and I would like to come and watch her practice tomorrow and she said the best time would be early afternoon. They do most of their lap timing early in the class.’

  After a pause, Aggie added, ‘She got kind of anxious, though, about why we wanted to watch.’

  ‘I know I look pretty dragged out after practice,’ Denny said. ‘But really, Aunt Sarah, nobody’s beating on me with ropes or anything. It is hard work but it’s all voluntary.’

  ‘I would never think of interfering,’ Sarah said. ‘Is that what you’re worried about?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘We just want to enjoy watching your progress,’ Sarah said. ‘You know how parents are. Always looking for something to brag about.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, it’s very nice of you to take some of your precious time off just to watch us flounder in the pool. But—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, Jill’s mom came to watch a lot and now Jill quit the team.’

  ‘Oh, and she was kind of your buddy, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah. Her and Mickey, they’re the ones I like.’

  ‘Did she say why she was quitting?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘Just got sick of working so hard, maybe,’ Denny said.

  ‘But you suspect her mother saw something she didn’t like and talked to the coach about it?’

  ‘Yeah. Or Mickey says maybe she didn’t talk to the coach, maybe she just told Jill it was OK to quit.’

  ‘And Jill was ready to quit?’

  ‘Mickey says so.’

  ‘Why?’

  Denny shrugged.

  ‘Too much work?’

  ‘I guess.’ Denny was looking at the ceiling light as anxiously as if she thought it might explode. Aggie was shaking her head at Sarah. Damn, she thought, I’m blowing this, getting too nosy.

  She leaned toward her niece and said, ‘Trust me, Denny, I will not say anything to your coach but hello, and you can pretend we’re not there, OK? I just … I thought it would be fun for Ma to get out of the kitchen for a change. And it would be a great rest for my brain to spend a couple of hours not thinking about this crazy case I’m working on. But if it will bother you too much we’ll stay away.’

  ‘It won’t bother me a bit unless you make me quit the team.’

  ‘Of course I won’t do that. It’s your summer and you can do whatever you like with it. Well, as long as it’s legal.’

  Denny giggled. ‘What could I do in a pool that wasn’t?’

  Aggie said, ‘She’s got a point. I can’t think of any stories you’ve ever told me about crimes in a swimming pool. But then I’m getting old; maybe I’ve forgotten some.’

  ‘Well, I did have one a few years ago,’ Sarah said, ‘but it was so sordid I think I spared you the details.’

  Denny said, ‘Ooh, sordid. Am I old enough to hear about it now?’

  ‘Probably, but I’m never going to talk about that one again if I can help it.’

  ‘Well,’ Will said, ‘I can certainly see why your brain would need a rest from that murder in Menlo Park. That story’s way too neat to be true, isn’t it?’ He had finished pouring her wine and stood by her chair, listening to them while he replaced the cork.

  ‘I guess it is. When we came back with the dumpster story today, Leo Tobin said, “Tell the truth, Sarah – you guys are just making stuff up now to entertain the old boy in his last month on the job, right?”’

  ‘I feel the same way,’ Will said. ‘Like you must be testing my gullibility.’

  ‘Why, because the parade came just in time?’

  ‘Yeah. Such a masterpiece of timing – the parade that covered the noise of the fight and distracted everybody so the attacker could leave. But how could a would-be murderer possibly have known there’d be a parade there when he needed it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sarah said. ‘But who else would put a bloody clown costume in that dumpster? Somebody knew about the parade or he wouldn’t have been dressed that way. Somehow he got word and joined the march.’

  ‘It just sounds way too convenient.’

  ‘I know. But I’ve heard you say it yourself, Will; sometimes it seems like murderers have all the luck.’

  ‘When did I say that?’ He looked thoughtful, putting the bottle back on the sideboard. ‘Must have been back in the olden days when I was still working in Homicide.’

  ‘I guess it was, yes.’

  ‘Well, I’ve changed since then. Now I think murderers are mostly just losers with poor impulse control.’ He sat back down at the table and looked around at three generations of the same features, rearranged slightly on each face and marked differently by age. ‘The amazing fact I’ve discovered in recent years is that even old beat-up detectives with marks and scars can have plenty of luck.’

  Around the table, the three similar faces lit up with differing degrees of pleasure. Aggie shook her head and smiled ironically. Denny rolled her eyes up to the light again but then did a little humorous bounce. Sarah got up and fetched a fresh fork from the sideboard, touching the back of his neck as she passed him.

  ‘Denny said you’d probably be coming to watch this afternoon,’ the young coach said and touched her whistle. She did that frequently, Sarah had noticed – the whistle seemed to be her amulet. ‘I’m Joan.’ She had team lists on a clipboard, sharpies clipped to the lists. Her T-shirt carried the team logo – a barracuda with many sharp teeth – and said, ‘Go Cudas!’ They shook hands.

  ‘My mother, Aggie Decker.’

  ‘Oh, a grandmother, how lovely.’ Joan had a beautiful smile for grandmothers. ‘We’re so pleased when families take an interest.’

  ‘Denny’s been telling us how hard you’re working,’ Sarah said. ‘We thought we’d come and see the progress.’

  ‘You want to sit here on the end? You’ll get a good view of the take-off and the turn.’

  Eight girls were lined up on the far end of the pool. Denny was near the middle, wearing vest number ten. Was the lineup random or according to ability? Sarah watched, wondering if she’d be able to tell. She knew, from things Denny had told her about the team, that the girl next to her in the number sixteen vest was Mickey. Denny was the second smallest girl on the team. Mickey was half an inch shorter; all the other girls were bigger.

  ‘We’re going to do some warm-up laps and then we’ll time some of the different strokes,’ Joan said. She blew her whistle. All the girls jumped into the pool and swam two lengths each of freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly. Denny just about held her own on the freestyle but picked up a
small advantage on the turns. Mickey pulled even with her on the backstroke and the two of them were by then half a length ahead of the rest of the pack. She and Mickey matched each other almost stroke for stroke in the breaststroke section, then Denny pulled decisively ahead of Mickey in the butterfly but was almost caught by number three, the biggest girl in the class, who staged a brilliant streak of speed in that stroke. The other five trailed by one to two lengths.

  Joan blew her whistle when the series ended and called, ‘All over here.’ The whole team swam to her side of the pool and listened as she told them, ‘Most of you could improve your times by several seconds if you’d sharpen your turns. Mickey and Denny are doing it right, so, Denny, I want you to swim four widths from right here. The rest of you watch now …’ She described what was right about Denny’s slick little flip. ‘Now, Mickey, you.’ Then she praised the superior speed that Jean, number three, was getting with her butterfly and asked her to swim a length. ‘You see how much power she’s getting with her kick?’ She had Jean swim a length holding a board so they could all watch her feet. ‘I want you all to get in the pool now and do two lengths of butterfly, trying to match Jean’s kick.’

  Joan was scrupulously fair and praised every sign of progress, Sarah thought, including some so subtle that she herself, watching carefully, didn’t see. But it was clear that Denny was the best swimmer on the team, overall, and Sarah thought she’d improved her kick in the butterfly a little after watching Jean.

  The other thing Sarah noticed was that the poorest swimmer, a thin girl named Brady, was at the bottom of some kind of pecking order being established by the four-girl pack that ranged in skill below Jean but above Brady. As the practice went on the group of four found ways to mock her performance with little eye-rolls and snickers. They clustered during breaks and did a lot of giggling and whispering behind their hands. Brady stood by herself during breaks and Sarah saw a member of the brat pack stick out a foot and try to trip her. Brady noticed the hazard and dodged it without looking at the trickster behind the foot.

  Joan managed to appear oblivious of their sniping, which was probably the best way to be in a summer class with short-term goals. But Sarah longed to send Patty, the snarky leader of the mean-girl pack, to the locker room for a time-out.