The Silent Boy (Emma McPherson Book 1)

by A. J. Flynn

  He’d fooled himself into thinking the new furniture and clothing they’d been able to buy had put an end to her homesickness, but here it was once again, rearing its unwanted head. He could sort of understand where she was coming from, but he was human enough to hope she might at least just once turn to him in time of trouble, instead of her mother.

  “You heard what the lieutenant said. There’s no reason for us to panic or expect anything else to happen.”

  “Well, I know what to expect.” Her voice was harsh. “There’s a killer out on the loose. A sex fiend who preys on children, and the police are saying Charlie must have known him. If Charlie knew him, then we know him too, and a person like that will just keep on killing, again and again. A man like that can’t help himself.” Her voice rose higher, until it seemed like she was deliberately trying to work herself into hysterics.

  “Now, Marla,” Karl said soothingly, “don’t get yourself all worked up, you’re going to wake the children. The police said there was no evidence the killer was a sex fiend or pedophile. You’re letting your imagination run away with you.”

  “Do you really think the police would tell us?” she said sarcastically. Pulling away from him, she carried on, “Of course they wouldn’t! Little Charlie was lured away by someone he thought was his friend, then mistreated and killed, and nobody can tell me any different. What you don’t seem to get is that very same person might be waiting for the perfect chance to get Jade or Teddy, and it’s my job to take them away until they catch him. I have to.”

  Karl tipped his head back to rest on the back of the couch and closed his eyes wearily. “Let’s think about it. Don’t let yourself get so worked up.”

  Marla tugged absently at a stray lock of hair. “It’s not the knowing part that makes it so frightening. If they could just tell us who. Not that things could ever be the same, but not knowing which of our friends killed him is driving me crazy. I mean, I think of someone like Harry Valentine, and I remember we still don’t know where he came from, or what he did before he got here. Then I think back to the time he brought me to the hospital when Jade was sick, and waited with me until they could get ahold of you, and then I wonder what the real Harry is like. Or what about Robb Johnson? I mean, he’s always drunk and running around with strange women. What says it can’t be him?”

  “Marla! Do you realize you just practically accused these men of murder?”

  “I don’t care. Someone around here did it, and it could be any one of them. Our children are in danger and you’ve got to let me take them away.”

  Karl put his cup down on the table and rose wearily. “I told you that I’d think about it; now why don’t you go and try to get some sleep?”

  She didn’t answer, just rose to her feet and started for the bedroom. Karl could tell by the way she walked away from him that she was angry, and he knew from years of experience he would be getting the silent treatment until she finally got her way.

  VIII

  The mind of most taxpaying voters was hard to fathom. Parents were willing to vote for anything in the way of an assessment for schools or parks, so that their children might have the best, but the only time they ever thought of adding to the police force, or increasing the salaries of the men who were already on it, was when those men were in trouble or needed help. Unfortunately, the taxpayer took group protection for granted, and the few who found the need for police protection of their rights made little to no difference at the polls. That was the reason police headquarters was shabby and undersized.

  It had been fine enough in the days before the war, back when the population still hovered around seventy-five thousand, but postwar growth had boosted the count to nearly two hundred thousand. With this increased number of people came the inevitable increase in accidents and crime.

  The force had been somewhat supplemented, but the jailhouse and the office spaces remained the same. It was a joke around the department that the taxpayer could be persuaded to vote for more officers, but were never willing to pay for the shoehorn he’d need to find a place to sit down.

  Every department, except traffic, was located in two rooms, one large, and one small. The cells were located on the second floor, and if you were thrown in jail, whether it was for spitting on the sidewalk or multiple homicides, there you went.

  To the left of the entrance there were stairs that led down to the basement. They were made of cement and were far too steep to be safe. In the basement one found the garage, filled to the brim with overflowing files from upstairs and what sometimes passed for a laboratory.

  The procuring man hired to run the lab in Evergreen had been just plain lucky. Dr. Hemlock was a nationally recognized criminologist before poor health had forced him to give up the busy life.

  Hemlock was an MD, among other things. In fact, someone had once said that the only reason he didn’t have a degree in archeology was that the people involved had been dead far too long to interest him.

  He was a man of considerable personal fortune and had come to Evergreen to live closer to his daughter once he was ostensibly retired. His retirement hadn’t lasted long, though, and he soon found the boredom to be unbearable, eventually offering his services as an assistant and advisor, on a part-time basis, around six years ago. The work was sporadic, without the daily strain of his former job, and he seemed to be thriving on it.

  McPherson made her way down the steep stairs and through the partitions that separated the laboratory. Dr. Hemlock was stooped over his microscope, with his ubiquitous envelopes, each one carefully marked and spread out in front of him.

  Sitting atop a waist-high cupboard along the far wall, McPherson noticed the cast that had been taken at the scene of the crime. She was careful not to disturb the doctor, but walked over and picked up one of the footprints.

  “Find the shoe yet, McPherson?”

  “Don’t rush me, Doc. I wasn’t sure you’d be ready to verify it, and I don’t want to embarrass you, so I’ve been taking my time.”

  Dr. Hemlock snorted. “I’ve got to say—you have more alibis than your suspects.”

  McPherson smiled. She, just as much as anyone else, could appreciate the work being done by this man and the mind that made it possible.

  “Nice looking casts,” she remarked. “The details are good and clear. What kind of person do you think wore the shoes?”

  “Looks to be male. Somewhere around five ten or eleven. Not too heavy—probably around one fifty, one sixty.”

  “What color hair do you think he had?” McPherson asked solemnly.

  “Not too sure he even had any,” Hemlock assured her.

  Though Dr. Hemlock had many virtues, a sense of humor was not one of them. As far as he was concerned there may as well be no such thing as a snappy comeback.

  “He picked up some good shoes. Probably had to, since his feet were so narrow. He seems to have a tendency to walk heavily on the inside of his heel. The shoes, or at least one of them, appear to have been repaired recently.”

  “Looks like we’ll be paying the local shoe repair shops a visit. Did you happen to sit in on the autopsy?”

  “Of course. The boy was thin, but perfectly healthy on the day he was killed. There were a few scars on his lungs, though. Looks like he had a mild case of TB somewhere along the way. Could have had a breakdown any time.”

  “Yeah,” McPherson interrupted. She had sat through vivid descriptions of the patients’ interiors before, and they had a tendency to get elaborate.

  “What about the method of killing? We didn’t find any marks, except on his face and throat. Did you find anything else?”

  “No. All I can conclude is the boy died from lack of air. Whether it was cut off at his nose or throat is hard to say. Other than that, there wasn’t anything to indicate any injury.”

  “Do you think it might have been an accident? I mean someone who just wanted him to keep quiet for a while, then took it too far?”

  “I suppose it’s all in how you
look at it. To my way of thinking, it’s just as egregious to cut off someone’s air as it is to shoot him.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, but in court they’ll need to prove that it was premeditated, or else they won’t be able to get a verdict for murder. I would just like to hear your opinion on our chances.”

  “Hard to say. I quit psychology as soon as it became fashionable. Got tired of watching people pamper nasty dispositions, then try to blame it on the way their mother folded their diapers when they were babies. Now I just deal in concrete criminal mistakes, and this one has the market cornered. Either he’s a complete fool or he doesn’t read detective novels.”

  “What do you have for us?”

  “The tests still aren’t complete. I’ll send you a typed-up report once I’m finished.”

  McPherson knew there wasn’t any use in trying to obtain any more information. She only spoke when he was ready, and tried to keep quiet when he wasn’t.

  “All right, Doc. I’ll be seeing you.”

  “Get those tires and that shoe and I’ll help you hang him.”

  McPherson smiled. “I’ll try.” And with a wave, she made her way back up the stairs.

  Garrett and Fichte had arrived back while she had been talking to Dr. Hemlock.

  “We don’t have anything on those tires yet,” Fichte said as she approached him, “but with the spin the morning papers gave them, the murderer is bound to try to get rid of them.”

  “Yeah, and by the time we finally find them, we’ll have gotten a phobia for tires,” Garrett said. “Then we’ll have to go through life saying, ‘How do you do, may I inspect your tires?’”

  “You asked for work when you showed up,” McPherson remarked as he joined them.

  She thoroughly detested the handsome Detective Garrett. For McPherson’s money he was no more than a conceited jackass, and she did everything in her power to avoid him whenever possible.

  “What gripes me is we’re not even sure they belonged to the murderer,” Garrett continued, willfully ignoring McPherson’s statement. “They could have belonged to some couple necking nearby, and if that’s the case, they won’t be apt to come and tell us about it.”

  “What did Doc say about the footprints?” Fichte said.

  “Medium-height, slender-footed, with a tendency to wear his heel down toward the inside.”

  “Does he wear a fedora?” Garrett asked with a sneer. He had little appreciation for scientific practice. The clumsy old-fashioned methods and procedures suited him just fine.

  McPherson surveyed him with ill-concealed disgust. “Garrett, why don’t you hop on over to Hollywood and take up the stage. I can’t help but think police work is a waste of your talents.”

  Garrett laughed heartily. Baiting his superior was one of his favorite pastimes.

  “Lieutenant, I gotta say it sounds to me like something crawled up your crack and died.”

  “To hell with that. What are you paying Fichte to act as your straight man?” she snapped, regretting her words the moment they came out. She knew Garrett liked nothing more than getting a rise out of her, and she hated giving him the satisfaction.

  Garrett sighed in mock despair. “It’s the cross I have to bear, I guess. Lack of appreciation from my superiors.”

  “Mr. Garrett,” McPherson said sarcastically, “your superiors are interested in solving a murder. Do you have any ideas?”

  Fichte glanced up from the reports he’d been scanning. He was an inordinately tall man and thin to the point of being skeletal. His long sharply-defined face was saved from being absolutely hideous by the kindly expression in his rich hazel eyes.

  “Hell, Lieutenant,” Fichte said, in his low voice, “we haven’t even found the reason why anyone would want him dead. You need a place to start and all we have is a couple prints and the fact that the boy sneaked out his window for the first time in his life.”

  “Who ever said it was the first time? He could have been making a regular habit of it,” McPherson said.

  “Not this kid,” Fichte answered. “From all we’ve heard, he was a paradigm example of ‘Mommy’s boy.’”

  “Yeah well, that’s just it. No matter what his parents and the neighbors tell us, he must have had something going on they didn’t know about, even if it was just something he picked up off the wall of the little boy’s room at school, but judging from what they’ve told us, he sounds too good to be true. My God, the fact that his parents neglected him for his young brother; he didn’t have any friends, so far as we can tell. All we need to learn is that his father beat him and we would practically have our own little boy Cinderella,” Garrett said bitterly.

  McPherson thought for a moment. “Perhaps we’ll have better luck with his teachers. Sometimes they end up knowing more about a student than their family ever could.”

  “I still think it was his first time sneaking out,” Fichte insisted. “Otherwise his behavior is too out of character.”

  “Come on! The boy was still a human being in spite of his saintly reputation,” Garrett exploded. “He must have had some kind of interests, unless he was a moron.”

  “Everyone already said he was passionate about music,” McPherson said, as she dug her last cigarette out of the crumpled pack.

  “Well, I’ve never heard of anyone being hip-hopped to death, but judging by the looks of some of those weird-o rapper kids around town, I could see one of them strangling him just for kicks.”

  “Psh—“ McPherson said. “That wasn’t even Charlie’s kind of music. He was more into classical. Besides, a kid who lived the way he did wouldn’t have much chance to meet that type of person.”

  “I wish we knew why the hell he left,” Fichte reflected morosely. “That sure would help. But I still think he must have seen something somebody didn’t want seen. The only question in my mind is, what?”

  “All that seems possible,” McPherson agreed. “If I ever saw a spur-of-the-moment crime, it’s this one.”

  “Which means one of the squeaky clean citizens around there has something to hide,” Garrett said, poking his pencil at a cigarette burn on his desk.

  “When I talked to Valentine last night, he seemed frightened, but I can’t see why. His alibi checks out.”

  “Maybe he has a picture of the body on his computer.”

  McPherson scoffed with irritation, and rose to her feet. “I’m going to speak with the captain. Once I tell him what little we know and he starts raising hell, I’ll feel a bit better. The good humor around here is too much for me.”

  She tossed her coat up on the rack and crossed the room to the captain’s private office. Once at the door she knocked, then opened the door when she heard the call to come in.

  Captain Ford sat behind his desk, looking more like a fat cat businessman than a police captain. He was a heavyweight bald man, with a rim of white hair bordering his salmon-colored scalp. Far more than one criminal had been misled by his bland, trust-inspiring appearance, only to discover too late that it covered a shrewd and quick mind.

  “Take a seat, Lieutenant. You look discouraged.”

  Ford shuffled through his desk papers while McPherson took her seat.

  “The reports aren’t showing much progress,” Ford remarked mildly.

  “That’s because there isn’t very much to report. As of right now, all we can do is carry through with some minor legwork on the tire and shoe prints. As for Charlie, the people we’ve spoken to can’t even seem to remember what he looked like, much less been given the chance to work up any animosity towards him.”

  “You’ve spoken to everyone who could have been involved?”

  “Just around the neighborhood. I’m planning to take a trip out to his school next. Maybe his teachers will know more about him than his neighbors. With a few of them, we spent more time consoling them than gathering information. I swear, I damn near had to hold hands with one of them.”

  “Murder is a surprising and frightening thing in the lives of those s
ort of people. Try not to judge them too harshly,” Ford said calmly.

  “If it were just fear, then I could understand it, but some of them seem to be acting like the entire thing was happening on their account,” McPherson answered, with more than a faint trace of bitterness in her voice.

  Ford frowned. “Like who?”

  “Well, Mrs. Fitts for one. She seems to want to run off to her mother’s for a while, so she’s seeing murderers in every nook, cranny, and shadow. She says it’s because she wants to keep her children safe, but the more I think over her behavior, the phonier it all seems. She wants to get out of town, and the boy’s death is nothing more than a convenient excuse.”

  “She’s probably just childish. Who else?”

  “Mrs. Johnson. According to Garrett and Fichte, she gets to shuddering and saying how horrible it all is, then the next minute asks them to sit down to a nice cup of tea and tell her all the gory details.”

  “I see McGill checked out Johnson. The night man at the local car agency where Robb works said most nights he would take a trip out to Simp’s before going home. He’d been there and was shacking up with some chirpy stranger at the time of the murder. From what the boys are saying about his wife, I can’t say I blame him.”

  “I knew a man once who acted like Mrs. Johnson. He was so pure and untouched he would turn the light off every time he went to the bathroom, but he knew all there was to know about the actions of other people, and he could tell you about it for hours. They eventually discovered he was a child molester.”

  “Do you think this woman is off her rocker?” the captain said.

  “No, but I’m willing to bet she gets her kicks out of things she knows, or imagines knowing, about other people. Makes her feel like she’s better than everybody else.”

  “Who else is on the list?”