Two Parts Bloody Murder

by Jen J. Danna

  “Vigilante justice? For what?”

  Suddenly, the hold on her wrist loosened. The intensity went out of the old man’s eyes, all animation draining from his face as his lax hand fell limply back to the bed. His eyelids slipped closed over eyes rolling up into his head.

  Matt stepped in, slipping two fingers along his neck, expertly finding the pulse. “Pulse is thready and tachycardic. Better get a nurse. This might have been too much of a shock to his system.”

  Barb bolted from the room with a lightness of foot unexpected in a woman of her size.

  Leigh looked down at the old man, sure that while she had some of her answers, she was left with more questions than when she’d entered the room only minutes before.

  Tuesday, 7:57 p.m.

  Saint Joseph’s Nursing Home

  Lynn, Massachusetts

  “Sorry if it seemed like I was pushing you in there,” Matt said. “I didn’t like the look of him. His fingernails were blue, even with the supplemental oxygen, and his respiration was too shallow. Then when he went under, I was worried he might go into cardiac arrest.”

  They were heading toward Leigh’s car, along a walkway lined with neatly trimmed boxwoods and studded with solar lights, illuminated parallel lines guiding their way to the parking lot.

  Leigh glanced sideways. Matt’s face was mostly in shadow, but relaxed, absent of the strain memories of his time as a medic often conveyed. Relief loosened her shoulders. “I knew you could hold him until the cavalry arrived, but I’m all for not making use of those skills if we don’t need to.”

  “I’m with you there. They’re right; he’s not in good shape. I thought the low oxygen alone guaranteed he wouldn’t be lucid.”

  “For a very brief window, he was more lucid than I expected. For just a few seconds, he was right there with me.” Leigh sighed. “And then he was gone.”

  “Can anything he said be used as evidence?”

  “I could try, but a decent lawyer would rip it to shreds on the grounds of diminished mental capacity. I couldn’t swear for most of the conversation that he even knew what I was saying. Except for that one moment.”

  “You realize that what he said tonight cements our theory of a revenge killing … if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  She gave him a flat stare. “That joke wasn’t even worthy of Paul. But you’re right. It supports the revenge killing theory, but doesn’t absolutely mean he’s responsible for it. He still might only have knowledge of the event.”

  “What does your gut say?”

  Leigh considered for a moment, aimlessly jingling her car keys in her hand as she worked it through again in her head. “My brain says I can’t logically be sure. But my gut recognized the bone-deep hatred in his eyes during that moment of lucidity. He remembered the act, remembered why he did it, and reveled in it. He’s not ashamed of it; he’s proud. But I’m never going to be able to prove it. No witnesses, no DNA to corroborate or tie him to the crime, and a probable killer who won’t even survive to the time of a trial.”

  “A killer who sounds like justice was served as far as he’s concerned.”

  “But I have no idea why. I may never be able to charge Kain, but I’m more and more convinced the death of the man behind the wall is what set this whole chain of events in motion. We need to know why, because the gap in time between the two deaths makes no sense right now. Only then can we build the rest of the case. By the way, do you have any idea what ‘blue ruin’ is? That’s what he whispered to me when I bent down.”

  “Never heard of it before. Are you sure that’s what he said?”

  “I think that’s what he said. Rowe seems to be up on his history. If it’s something to do with those times, he might know. I’ll ask him tomorrow.” They stepped off the walkway into the well-lit parking lot, heading for her car at the far end. “Are you going to stay tonight, or do you have to go back?”

  “I need to head home tonight. I have a departmental meeting tomorrow at seven-thirty, so I’ll get a faster start from there. Besides, this way I can go remind my father to be nice to me because I’m going to pick his nursing home. Maybe I can talk him into making filet mignon to butter me up.”

  She couldn’t help the chuckle. “You’re the worst.”

  “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Apparently it’s also the way to ensure your kids treat you right once they’re in charge. Oh, speaking of nice dinners, I meant to tell you. Do you remember me telling you about Father Colin Reid, the unit chaplain when we were overseas?”

  “I remember him. From your tarot reading—he was your Golem, your loyal friend in times of trouble.”

  “That’s the one. I took your advice. I contacted the V.A. and asked if they had any contact info for him. They did, so I gave them my information and asked them to pass it on to Colin. I got an email from him this morning. He’s coming into town this weekend and asked if he could stop by to see me on Saturday.”

  Leigh stopped dead in surprise, instinctively reaching out to grasp his forearm. “Did you answer him?”

  Matt shuffled his feet awkwardly, his gaze falling to the pavement. “Not yet. I’m not sure what to say.”

  “Say ‘yes.’ ” Leigh shook his arm for emphasis. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see him again after all this time, to catch up with him?”

  “Probably.” His head came up, his conflicted hazel gaze meeting hers. “But I haven’t seen any of the guys since I left the Corps. It just feels a bit … awkward.”

  “Forget awkward. This is a friend you’re talking about. Okay, so you’ve lost touch. This is your chance to fix it.”

  “I was thinking about asking him to the house for dinner, assuming it doesn’t interfere with the case.”

  “I’ll do my best to make sure it doesn’t.”

  “If you’re free, would you come? If I’m going to do this, I’d like you to meet him.” Naked entreaty shone in his hopeful expression.

  Her hand dropped down to his, intertwining their fingers to grip tightly. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: BRAND NAME

  * * *

  Brand name: a proprietary name. The term originated, in part, from the practice among American distillers of burning (“branding”) their names and emblems onto their wooden kegs before shipment.

  Wednesday, 11:10 a.m.

  Boston University, School of Medicine

  Boston, Massachusetts

  “Thanks. I’ll make sure Leigh gets this.” Matt took the file folder from Rowe. “You didn’t need to run this over. I could have sent one of the students.” He opened the file and flipped through the autopsy report before his narrowed gaze returned to Rowe. “Or you could have emailed it.”

  Rowe threw up both hands in surrender. “Okay, I confess. I needed an excuse to get out of there. The bureaucracy is going to kill me. If I have to attend one more meeting …” His gaze found the ceiling as if begging for strength from above. “I went into pathology to help people find answers. Now most of the time all I do is drown in paperwork.”

  “Tell me about it. After all those years in the lab and out in the field, it feels like I spend most of my time on the mind-numbing bureaucracy of grant applications, peer panels, grad student committee meetings, lecture schedules, and university regulations.”

  “But you have this.” Rowe turned and crossed the lab to stand at the gurney, the remains laid out on cold steel before him. “This is fascinating. History and intrigue all wrapped up in a single package.” His gaze flicked to Matt. “May I?”

  Matt set the folder down on his desk. “Of course. Pay special attention to the inferior surface of the left clavicle, the superior surface of the first left rib, and both T-12 and L-1.”

  Matt stood back while Rowe donned gloves and started to examine the remains. He had to admit that Rowe had a point. It was too easy to lose the joy of pure science under the administrative demands of being a university professor, and the thrill Matt experienced from real scientific
research threatened to painfully fizzle and die.

  The woman who put that thrill back into his life chose just that moment to appear in the lab doorway.

  Leigh crossed the room toward them. “And once again, I didn’t expect to see you. You’re like a bad penny—you keep turning up,” she said to Rowe, returning his grin as he set the clavicle back into place.

  “I’m playing hooky.” Rowe raised a gloved finger to his lips. “Don’t tell.” He waggled bushy eyebrows at her and turned back to the remains.

  “Wild horses couldn’t drag it from me.” Leigh turned to Matt, her amused expression sliding toward quizzical at the look on his face. “What?”

  “Remind me to thank you later.”

  “For what?”

  “I’ll explain it to you then.”

  Leigh’s gaze darted from Matt to Rowe and back again, and she shook her head, clearly baffled at the oddity that was the male species. “Actually, Rowe, I’m glad you’re here so we can pick your brain. Does the term ‘blue ruin’ mean anything to you?”

  Rowe straightened, the T-12 vertebra cupped in his left hand. “Sure does, especially if you mean in reference to the speakeasy. It’s an old slang term for what was commonly known in the twenties and thirties as ‘bathtub gin.’ ”

  “Bathtub gin? Isn’t that a slang term in itself?”

  “Not as much as you’d think. Bathtub gin was basically homemade booze. In its simplest, non-distilled form, it only needed a day or two to age, so you could make it and drink it fairly quickly. It’s a method called ‘cold compounding’: mix grain spirits with something for flavor, like juniper berries—thus the reference to gin—and maybe something as exotic as citrus peel if you had it, and then dilute it out by adding tap water. But they made it in such large containers, they couldn’t fit the bottle under the kitchen faucet, so they’d use the bathtub instead. Thus, ‘bathtub gin.’ If you had the equipment, you could distill this same mixture, which was much safer. If there was any methanol contamination in the mix, it evaporated first during distillation.”

  “It sounds awful.” Leigh wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  “It was awful, but it could get worse. For many, if they couldn’t get their hands on grain spirits, they used denatured alcohol.”

  Now it was Matt’s turn to wince. “That could be a death sentence.”

  “For many it was. Or you could get off lightly and just go blind.”

  “People were that desperate for alcohol they’d drink poison?” Leigh asked.

  “A lot of them didn’t know they were drinking poison. But many of them knew they were taking their chances and did it anyway. It’s hard to describe the desperation of people back then, especially during the Depression. The chance to escape the misery of their daily lives, even if only for a little while, was simply too big a temptation. The worst of it was the Feds got involved in it too.”

  “How?”

  “They knew what was going on. Distilling alcohol was illegal under the Volstead Act but it happened anyway. But because alcohol was needed for scientific research and the production of dyes and fuels, the Feds knowingly poisoned some of that alcohol to discourage it from being used for human consumption. People drank it anyway and died by the tens of thousands. And then the Feds had the nerve to label them ‘deliberate suicides.’ ”

  “Unbelievable,” Matt muttered.

  “Believe it.” Rowe set down the vertebra and pulled off his gloves. “It was a different time back then and the Feds had the power to do whatever they pretty much wanted.”

  “My dad used to tell stories about those days,” Leigh said.

  “Whose stories?” Matt asked. “Your dad was too young to have been involved himself.”

  “Dad wasn’t born until well after Prohibition, but his grandfather was with the Boston Police back then and served on the Liquor Squad. I’ve seen a picture of him with four or five other guys, all dressed to the nines and ready for a night on the town on New Year’s Eve. In reality, it was the group getting ready to go out and start raiding parties.” She drummed her fingers over the edge of the gurney, a steady sequence of repetitive beats. “That picture was in a box of stuff that used to be in dad’s attic.”

  “A box of stuff from your great-grandfather’s days on the Liquor Squad?”

  “My memory says it was a mixture of things from his life. But where is that box?”

  “Could it have gotten tossed out?” Rowe asked. “When you sold Nate’s place?”

  Matt started at the familiarity of Leigh’s father’s name falling so easily from Rowe’s lips, before he remembered Rowe knew Nate Abbott from his days in the Essex Detective Unit.

  “That wasn’t a great time for me, but I wouldn’t have tossed out a box of family history like that. I couldn’t deal with a lot of stuff at the time, so I probably put it up in my attic. I haven’t seen it in years.”

  “Could be some interesting stuff in there,” Matt said, curiosity piquing his interest. “Real details from an officer back then. How far back do you Abbotts go in police work anyway?”

  “I’m the first woman, but fourth generation.”

  “No wonder your dad was so proud.”

  “You have no idea,” Rowe said.

  That got Leigh’s attention as her laser-sharp gaze focused on Rowe. “What do you mean?”

  “Your dad and I were pretty good friends for a long time. We got on well together, just like you and I do. Similar personalities and work ethic, that sort of thing.” Rowe smiled gently down at her. “He also had the same stomach for autopsies you have and the same backbone to stand through them no matter what. We were both working our way up the ranks, but we bumped into each other during investigations all the time. When I met him, you weren’t even in high school, but he was already talking about how smart you were and how he knew you’d make a great cop.”

  The color rose in Leigh’s cheeks and she swallowed hard, blinking several times.

  “It’s funny,” Rowe continued. “I don’t think he ever doubted you’d join the force. There was never a question in his mind. When I asked him if you’d expressed an interest in police work, he’d just say ‘not yet, but she will.’ And then, one day, there you were, graduating from the Academy to join him. He was so proud of you.” He chuckled. “You couldn’t get him to shut up about it.”

  Matt ran his fingertips over Leigh’s back, her ribs jumping under his touch on a jerky indrawn breath as she struggled to keep herself together. But Rowe’s levity seemed to buoy her and when she spoke her voice was even. “That was Dad. Family was everything to him.”

  “He was a good man.” As if sensing Leigh’s need to move away from this topic, Rowe turned back to the bones spread out on the examination table. “I see what you mean, Lowell. Definitely scoring at those specific locations. You have an idea about the weapon used?”

  “More a tool than weapon, but we think it was a bricklayer’s pointing trowel. The killer severed the spinal cord between T-12 and L-1 and also nicked the internal thoracic artery. The victim slowly bled to death, not able to move, as the wall went up in front of him.”

  “Nasty,” Rowe said. “And where are we on ID of this vic?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to update you,” Leigh said. “It turns out we agree with you that this is likely Charles Ward. We’ve seen more than one picture of Ward wearing the same ring we found on Sunday. Good call on that, by the way.”

  “You’re welcome.” Rowe regally tipped his head toward her in a small bow.

  “But what we didn’t expect was that our fresh victim, Peter Holt, is actually Ward’s grandson.”

  Rowe’s air of pride at having named Ward dissolved in apparent shock. “What?”

  “Yeah, that was our reaction too. We’ll be confirming that connection—that’s why Matt asked for that DNA sample from Holt—but we’re pretty confident already. We’ll be comparing Evelyn’s DNA to her son; we’ll also be comparing both to this gentleman here.”

  “It
’s being run now,” Matt said, “with the usual duplicate samples going to the state labs. We’ll have our answer soon, but in the meantime, we’re running with the theory this is Charles Ward.”

  Rowe circled the table, staring at the pale bones. “Grandfather and grandson both found in the same place? With the grandfather only discovered because we were specifically looking for a clandestine body? Clearly, someone took the time to set up this scenario. You think it’s the old man? The one whose story sent you to the Adytum in the first place?”

  “Yes and no. I think he’s responsible for this.” Leigh waved a hand over the skeletal remains. “My gut says he did it, even though I can’t prove it. But he’s not responsible for Peter Holt’s death. He’s dying of Alzheimer’s and doesn’t have the mental or physical capacity to murder anyone anymore.”

  “Leigh said you found evidence during the autopsy that the body was moved?” Matt asked.

  “Yes. He was killed in the two hours between ten p.m. on Thursday and midnight Friday, and then the body lay on its right side for up to approximately four hours. Tissue compression indicators within the areas of livor mortis suggest the body lay in a curled position during that time.”

  Matt’s gaze flicked to Leigh to see if she understood the technical term for blood settling by gravity into the lower tissues of dead bodies, indicating the postmortem position, but she was already nodding in understanding.

  “We found him on his back. The autopsy confirmed livor mortis over the back as well as on the right side, indicating the body was moved before the blood fully congealed,” Rowe continued.

  “So the body lay curled up for a few hours and was then moved to the Adytum where he was laid on his back.” Leigh’s gaze flicked up to Matt. “I bet the body was kept in the trunk of a car. Killed somewhere, maybe wrapped in plastic or some other covering to be moved, transported by car, and then the perp waited until the coast was clear to move the body inside. He was killed before midnight and moved during the middle of the night. Then I found him around noon that day.”