Murder Scene

by Richard Montanari

  ‘Julie was a twin, you see. We lost Janie when they were only three. She had a bad heart. Ever since, Julie has always insisted we buy two of everything. She always wears both sweaters, jeans, jackets. She alternates. I guess it makes her feel closer to Janie.’

  ‘And this is the sweater she was wearing? One exactly like this?’

  ‘Yes. She had it on when she left to go to her job.’

  ‘May I take this with me?’ Ivy asked. ‘I promise to return it soon.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Ivy asked about the follow-up visits or calls from the Auburn Valley Police Department. There had been a few contacts made. Ivy knew everyone in the small department. They were competent, if not aggressive in their investigations.

  Ivy left the woman her card, and sensed that Meredith Hansen had a little more confidence in her than she did in her local department.

  Ivy hoped the woman’s trust was warranted.

  65

  Detta had seen Billy three times in the past three weeks. Not one of their encounters had been planned because, apparently, Billy didn’t make plans. Every time Detta wanted to bring it up, she’d stopped herself. She didn’t want to seem needy or grabby. Their time together had been so easy and natural that she didn’t want to spoil it.

  She’d only fallen for a boy twice before, and those had been little-girl playground crushes. She knew that now. There had been nothing mature about the boys or the feelings she’d had.

  This was different.

  She never knew when she was going to see him. He seemed to just appear out of nowhere, then vanish after they’d spent some time together.

  She’d taken a picture of herself in the peach ball gown she found in the steamer trunk in the basement and printed it off. Like an idiot, she gave the picture to Billy before she could stop herself. She’d thought he might reciprocate, but so far he hadn’t offered.

  The best part of knowing Billy was that he had, completely unbeknownst to him, inspired her. It was because of him she had begun to draw again.

  She’d fallen for the work of Pieter Bruegel. Bruegel the Elder, as he was known. He lived in the Netherlands in the late sixteenth century. There was something earthy in Bruegel’s work, she thought, the way he rendered peasant life without irony or judgment. There was even quite a bit of it that was rather risqué.

  She often found herself up late at night, the coffee table book propped under a light on the desk in her room, her charcoal pencil in hand, sketch pad on her lap.

  She didn’t kid herself that she had much natural artistic ability, not really, but she was a good mimic on the page, and a few of the renderings she had done were not bad.

  At least she wasn’t moved to instantly throw them away.

  When Detta got home she saw a note from her father on the refrigerator. He had another meeting with the department at KSU.

  On the dining room table was an old book, a stack of photographs, and a leather-bound journal. She’d never seen any of it before. She wondered where her father had gotten them, if maybe they were one of the auctions he’d been to.

  Detta slipped off her shoulder bag, went into the kitchen, put the kettle on. When she returned to the dining room she picked up the journal. It was very light, very dry to the touch. The leather was cracked and creased.

  Inside the front cover of the journal was a single photograph. It, too, was dry and brittle. The picture was a portrait of sorts, of a young woman standing in the parlor of Godwin Hall. The top of the image was worn away, as if someone had touched the girl’s face so much that it had all but disappeared.

  While the picture itself was interesting, it was what the young woman was wearing that took Detta’s breath away.

  She was wearing the dress that Detta found downstairs. The ball gown that was now on a hanger in her closet.

  She was also wearing the gold locket, the very one Detta had around her neck at this moment.

  Eva Claire Larssen.

  Detta took the journal, and ran up the stairs.

  66

  In the late afternoon Jakob walked the girl into the clearing. As they stepped into the glade the girl looked up, toward the sun. Jakob could see the tears collecting in her eyes. He knew that these were tears of wonder, not sadness. She had taken a cup of strong tea before they left Veldhoeve.

  Jakob had taken a cup as well.

  As she sat motionless beneath the tree, Jakob took a step back. He glanced at all the objects, items that he’d begun placing in the clearing years earlier.

  It was perfect.

  He knelt beside the girl, watched her eyes as the thorn pierced her pale skin. She had already grown so pallid over the last few weeks, barely tasting the meals he had prepared for her. It was not uncommon near the end, but still he worried about her.

  He worried about the blood.

  After he collected what he needed, he held her as she took her final breaths. When her body was calmed, he took out his camera, and began to take his photographs.

  He would soon take the flask to the girl’s grove, and consecrate her orchard.

  Minutes later, as Jakob prepared to leave, he heard stirring behind him. Heavy footfalls running through the forest.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  It was a man’s voice. It was not a voice belonging to any of his fathers. It was of this time and this place.

  As Jakob turned to face the intruder, he slipped the razor sharp paardenmes into his right hand.

  Jakob knew the voice, but it seemed so out of place here, at this moment, in this time, that he hesitated. For a fleeting instant he could not separate that which was present with that which was past.

  In that instant he had considered that the voice was in his head.

  It was not.

  You must stop this.

  ‘I’m talking to you!’ the voice demanded. ‘What did you do to her?’

  Jakob did not know what the intruder had seen. It might have been the small, delicate hands of Rinus van Laar, the dexterous and skilled hands of a physician. Perhaps it was Mads van Laar and his massive arms; Mads who once cleared a grove in a single afternoon, carrying the great logs to the river.

  It mattered little.

  There was only one task.

  Stop this.

  67

  Ivy parked down the street from the Hansen house. She called Walt Barnstable, who had met the other family, with similar results. There had been no contact from the missing girl.

  Ivy drove the two miles to Dahlausen’s, interviewed the store manager and some of the employees. None of them had anything to add.

  When Ivy left the store she retraced the route between the store and the Hansen house. She made the drive three times. It was all country road, with a series of wide, soft bends. Julie Hansen could easily have been taken at any point without anyone seeing the abduction. Ivy figured it might have taken the girl ten to fifteen minutes to cover this amount of territory on her bicycle. She checked on the weather that day. It was clear and balmy.

  What happened in those ten minutes?

  Ivy returned to the Dahlausen’s parking lot. With Frankie looking over her shoulder, Ivy took out her iPad, opened Google Maps. She studied the area. In satellite view it was almost all green.

  Using the store as ground zero, she started to drive the area, looking for pathways that cut into the woods. There were not many cross streets in this area, and the turnoffs were few and far between.

  For more than two hours Ivy drove with her light bar flashing, stopping every time she saw something that might have been an access road or path to a clearing she’d pinned on Google Maps.

  It was all starting to look the same.

  She returned to the parking lot at Dahlausen’s, picked up a sandwich at the Subway next door. Frankie ate most of it.

  Ivy looked at her watch. It was about an hour until sunset. She decided to pack it in. It had been the longest of long shots anyway. There were thousands of acres of forest in this part of the c
ounty. Not every clearing was visible from the air.

  Still, Ivy put a pin in her mental map, deciding to take it up in the next few days. She pointed the SUV toward Abbeville. It was then that her dog sent her a clear message.

  Frankie had to go. Bad. She’d been cooped up in the SUV all afternoon. Ivy had of course made sure she had water, which was probably the problem.

  ‘Can it wait, baby girl? We’re almost home.’

  Frankie barked.

  ‘All right, then.’

  Ivy pulled over on the berm, checked her mirrors. Frankie was pawing the hatch door at the back.

  ‘Relief is on the way, Francesca, mi amor.’

  With leash in hand, Ivy had barely gotten the hatch open when Frankie was off like a shot. The dog was across the road and hightailing it for the tree line before Ivy could open her mouth.

  ‘Frankie!’

  The dog didn’t break stride.

  Ten minutes later, with no sign of Frankie, Ivy locked the SUV, trundled into the woods. It was thick forest, and getting darker by the minute, even though the sun was bright and hanging low in the western sky.

  ‘Frankie!’ she yelled.

  Nothing. Just the whirs and clicks and chirps of the forest.

  She continued on, ever deeper into the woods. Ahead she saw shards of late afternoon sunlight. She knew she was not deep enough to be emerging onto Warner Road.

  When Ivy stepped into the clearing she saw Frankie on the other side, maybe thirty yards away. She again called her name. The dog took a few steps toward her, then turned around twice and barked.

  ‘Come on, Frankie,’ she said. ‘I’m beat. No time to play.’

  Another two barks. She was going to make Ivy work for this.

  ‘I can still take you to the pound, you know.’

  When she was halfway across the field she saw it. It was an unnatural color to be out here in the middle of the woods, a glossy royal blue reflecting the sun in an iridescent shimmer. She might have walked right by it, but it caught her eye in a way that something you’ve been hunting for in your house all day seems to do, stepping front and center in your world, daring you to not see it.

  But there it was. In the middle of a field about a mile from any road.

  A blue vase.

  A yay-high, yay-wide blue vase with a gold rim.

  Peggy Martin’s vase. The only thing stolen in that break-in.

  When it registered, Ivy realized what it meant. One hundred fifty years of history coalesced into that single instant. The random junk dumped in all these fields. It had never been random at all. She looked back across the clearing, where Frankie sat in place, on full alert, and knew.

  The smear of white skin against the deep green of grass. The shock of blond hair. The red sweater with the white trim.

  When Ivy saw this everything seemed to stop. The clouds overhead calmed, the gentle sway of branches came to a halt. Ivy could only hear the sound of her own breathing.

  Because Frankie wasn’t playing. Frankie was working. She’d picked up the scent from the identical red sweater in the SUV and now she was alerting.

  ‘No, no, no, no,’ Ivy said as she quickened her pace. She began to run. ‘Please, God, no.’

  When Ivy reached the spot where Frankie was sitting, her fears were realized.

  The body was that of Julie Hansen. Her pale hands were streaked with blood. Ivy leaned over, felt the girl’s neck for a pulse. She found none.

  ‘God damn it!’

  Frankie jumped at the sound of her shouting, took a few steps away, her tail between her legs, her head lowered. Ivy knew what she should do at this moment, that she should comfort the dog, utter some soothing words. It was important for duty dogs to know that they had done a good job. Ivy knew this but she was being selfish.

  Why? Because she’d had the chance to save Julie Hansen and she’d failed.

  Frankie cautiously walked back, sniffing the air around the girl. She sat down, again alerting to the presence of her quarry.

  ‘Good girl, Frankie. Good girl.’

  A few wags of the tail, but Frankie wasn’t convinced. Still, she did not move; she had not been released.

  Ivy reached for her shoulder microphone. It wasn’t there. She had come without her radio. She fished her cell phone out of her pocket, fumbled with it a few agonizing seconds, punched in 911. When Dispatch answered, the woman asked her location. Ivy was lost. She couldn’t remember where she was. She looked up, saw the top of the cell tower that she knew to be near the county line at the twenty-four-mile marker.

  She relayed it, and asked Dispatch to contact the Sheriff’s office and to call the main Abbeville PD number. She needed everyone and anyone with a pair of eyes and a gun. Before she signed off she told Dispatch that she would meet the EMS and officers at the road with her lights flashing.

  The next thing she remembered was her training. There was still a threat. She drew her weapon.

  ‘Frankie. Good girl. Come.’

  The dog got up, circled Ivy’s legs, sat near her feet. Ivy took a knee, one hand on the dog. She cocked her ears to the sounds of the forest. She heard nothing moving. No footfalls on leaves, no snapping of twigs.

  Ivy kept her voice soft and calm and even, her hand firmly on the dog’s collar.

  ‘Is someone out there, baby girl?’

  Frankie raised her ears. She put her nose in the air.

  ‘Bad guy, Frankie?’

  Frankie stood, strained against Ivy’s hand. She was interested in an area due north of the victim. She began to dig her back paws into the earth.

  ‘Frankie,’ she said. ‘Search.’

  Ivy let go. Frankie was off into the woods in a shot. In a few seconds she disappeared from view.

  It was then that Ivy heard the EMS siren rise in the distance, along with the siren of Walt Barnstable’s cruiser, echoing through the canopy of trees. She hated to leave the victim’s body, but she had no choice.

  Keeping her weapon drawn, Ivy rose and began to make her way across the field. Before she had taken three steps, she heard Frankie return, heard the sound of the dog’s breathing.

  Ivy turned around. It wasn’t Frankie.

  It was the girl.

  Julie Hansen was alive.

  68

  The ambulance screamed toward the Geauga Medical Center, the nearest Trauma III facility. They were under a Highway Patrol escort.

  Every so often Ivy would glance at the paramedic and make eye contact. What she saw there was not good.

  When Julie Hansen was rolled into emergency ICU, Ivy called Walt Barnstable. Walt was on scene where Julie Hansen was found.

  ‘How is the girl?’ Walt asked.

  ‘Critical. She lost a lot of blood,’ Ivy said. ‘How’s Frankie doing?’

  ‘She’s okay,’ Walt said. ‘As you might expect, she’s pretty amped up with all the activity around here. She wants to get into the game, but I think she’s a bit scared.’

  ‘Anything from BCI?’

  ‘They dusted that blue vase. I think they pulled a half-dozen prints off it. The mobile unit is here. We should know any minute if there are any hits.’

  ‘Ask them to—’

  ‘Hang on,’ Walt said.

  Ivy heard some muffled conversation as Walt covered the phone. Before long, he returned to the line.

  ‘We’ve got a name.’

  ‘From the prints?’ Ivy asked.

  ‘Yeah. Dakota Rawlings. White male, seventeen.’

  ‘Where is he from?’

  ‘Lives at 2815 Mayfair Road.’

  ‘That’s not Abbeville,’ Ivy said. ‘That’s Ashdale. Why is he in the system?’

  ‘He’s got two breaking and entering, one misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance. Pled all three, did community service.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘All three were last year.’

  ‘What was the controlled?’

  ‘Hang on,’ Walt said. ‘I’m reading all this on an iPh
one. Here it is. It was MDMA. Five hits.’

  Ivy absorbed this. Kids broke into houses to get money to fuel their heroin or meth habits. Not so with ecstasy.

  ‘Do we have someone en route?’ Ivy asked.

  ‘A deputy should be arriving at the subject’s house right about now.’

  ‘Did Frankie alert on anything else?’

  ‘No,’ Walt said. ‘I’ve got her leashed right here.’

  Ivy thought for a moment. ‘When you get things under control see if you can get her to pick up a trail. Start where the vase was found.’

  ‘You got it.’

  At this Ivy saw the ER doctor standing outside the ICU. He was signing something on a clipboard. Ivy caught his eye.

  ‘How is she?’ Ivy asked.

  ‘We’ve got her on epinephrine, whole blood, as well as a ventilator. What she has in her favor, at this moment, is her youth. I wouldn’t have survived the ride here.’

  ‘Can you say how long it was after the trauma that I found her?’ Ivy asked.

  ‘It couldn’t have been too long. A few hours. Less.’

  Hours, Ivy thought. If she hadn’t been driving by. If Frankie had not keyed on that article of clothing.

  ‘Did she say anything?’

  ‘She did,’ the doctor said. ‘Just one word. It sounded like “Richard”. She said it more than once.’

  ‘Richard,’ Ivy said. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘That’s what it sounded like.’

  ‘Doctor?’

  They both turned to the voice. An ER nurse was calling him.

  Before the doctor turned to leave, he looked back at Ivy. ‘If you’re a praying person, now would be a good time.’

  Ivy found Meredith Hansen in the ICU waiting area. According to Meredith Hansen, there was no Richard in her daughter’s life that she knew of. No family member, either immediate or extended. No close friends, no school or volunteer acquaintances named Richard that she had mentioned.

  Of all proper male names, few had more nicknames and diminutives than Richard. Ivy walked Meredith Hansen through them all. Rick, Ricky, Dick, Dickey, Rich, Richie.

  Nothing.

  Within ten minutes Ivy dispatched Missy Kohl to the Hansen house to pick up Julie’s school yearbooks.