Midnight Rain: A Detective Jack Dunning Novel (8 page)

CHAPTER 12

SAGUARO CORRECTIONAL

In the chilly dawn, Hedy Greiss shows Head Administrator, Horace Churchwell, the key ring Penelope Hanover left in the record’s room. Together they walk down the path to Bungalow 5. The door is locked and scattered coins lie among shattered pieces of glass from the petty cash jar. Very incriminating. Just the way Hedy planned it.

“She must have panicked when she realized she didn’t have her key,” says Horace.

“And her car is gone from the parking area,” adds Hedy.

“But look, her car key is on the ring,” he says.

“She keeps a spare in the glove compartment because she’s always misplacing things. She’s very sweet, but you know how scatterbrained she can be.”

“Well, let’s hope she returns. She may have a reasonable explanation for her behavior.” Hedy smiles. There is one, but Horace Churchwell is never going to hear it. “She’s an excellent teacher. I’d hate to lose her before the semester is over. If you’d woken me during the night, Miss Greiss, she might have had an opportunity to explain herself.”

“I realize that now. Penny thought she could handle the isolation of the desert, but with no movie theater, no place to shop and no marital prospects she’d become disillusioned.”

“She told you that?”

“Oh yes, on more than one occasion. She talked often of returning to the city.”

“Well, let’s give it a day or two and see what happens. “I’ll have Jesus clean up the glass. By the way, with all the midnight oil you’re burning, I hope you’re ready for the state audit.”

“You needn’t worry, Mr. Churchwell. I’m on top of it.”

CHAPTER 13

Angel and I listen to the morning news. Her fever has dropped to 100 degrees, her bad ear resting on a heating pad. “Feeling any better?” I ask.

“Better than yesterday. So, Cantor Nemschoff was right. It was the synagogue that burned. Do you think he was right about things starting over?”

“You mean Nazis? I know they’re spreading their poison in a lot of places, but why target a speck on the map like Santa Paulina?

“Think Jack. It’s our central location that attracts them. We’re a hub with spokes reaching out to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Stockton and Sacramento, seats of money and influence. We’re easily reached by train, Greyhound or a day’s drive.”

“That makes sense, but the first thing the fire inspector is going to look at is the frayed wiring in that old fire trap, not arson.”

The phone rings and I pick up. By the time I hang up, Angel knows we won’t be spending Sunday in bed.

“I know that look, Jack.”

“You’re right. Homer wants me down at the mortuary.”

“Oh no, not Lulu.”

“It’s about the boy we found on the road.”

“Poor little fellow.”

“I might be late, so have Albie pick something up for you at the Memory Lights. Are you going to be okay?”

“Sure. Don’t worry about me.”

She goes silent, just looks at me, all blue-eyed and thoughtful. I think she’s about to tell me about Leland Dietrich, but I’m wrong.

“I’ve been thinking about the dining room off the lobby,” she says.

“The dining room? What about it?”

“When Hank bought the place, the dining room had been closed off for years, but there are still tables and chairs and a full kitchen in the back. It would be nice if it were up and going again, no more running back and forth to the café in bad weather.”

“It would be nice.”

“I’m going to talk to Hank about it.”

“I like the idea, but it would take a lot of work. He’d need a license, a cook, a dishwasher…”

“You’re not following me, Jack. I’d manage the dining room myself. One meal a day at dinnertime. I could set it up buffet style, make it really nice with flowers on the tables, chili and hotdogs one night, chicken or meatloaf the next. A lot of our older residents don’t eat right because it’s either hard for them to get out or the cost is too high. I think some of them miss meals more often than we know.”

“You manage the dining room?”

“Don’t look so surprised. I’ve given it a lot of thought.” She tries to rise on an elbow, then dizzy and weak, sinks back on the bed.

“Are you sure this isn’t the fever talking?”

“I’m capable of clear thinking, Jack? I can’t continue living off of you and being your…whatever it is I am…without doing something constructive with my life. Otherwise, I’m just taking up space on the planet. You’ve got your job. Hank has his hotel. Even Albie has his newspapers. I’m like everybody else. I need to do something useful in this world.”

* * * *

I have an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach as I drive toward the mortuary. Angel’s message had as much to do with our relationship as with flowers and meatloaf. I had no idea she felt the way she did.

Whatever it is I am.

It was painful to hear those words and it’s my fault she had to say them. I’ve been given a second chance for happiness and I’m afraid to own it, not because I don’t love Angel, but because I screwed up so badly in my first marriage. I’d turned Sandra from a trusting young woman into a shrike who hated me almost as much as I hated myself. I didn’t want to risk doing the same thing to Angel.

Now, I’m in control of my drinking, or at least I think I am, but it’s a daily struggle to keep it from getting out of hand. In fact, I could go for a shot right now. When Angel said she needed
something
of her own, I think she really meant
someone
of her own, someone ready to get off the fence and make the kind of commitment that requires a Justice of the Peace and a ring.

Whatever it is I am.
Those words haunt me.

Today, if I get killed on the job, Angel has no legal standing. In the eyes of the law, we’re simply “shacked up.” Everyone at the Rexford loves her, but it’s a wide world and Angel has to live in it, hopefully with a modicum of dignity.

Then there’s Tom, a good young man who doesn’t lug around the baggage I do. If I were noble, I’d step aside, but I’m not that selfless. On the other hand, if I don’t make a decision, someone will make it for me and I probably won’t like it.”

* * * *

“Murder? You mean hit and run, don’t you? Negligent homicide?”

“No, the old fashioned, premeditated kind,” says Homer.

I shiver and rub my arms. It’s freezing in the basement morgue of the old Victorian house on Cedar Street. The air smells sharply of formaldehyde, which conjures up a lot of unpleasant images, starting with dissecting frogs in high school biology.

“What about the paint on the jacket?” I say, still thinking about Roland’s green sedan.

“Poster paint. The kind kids use in school.”

“Hmm.” There are two autopsy tables in the room. The boy is under a sheet nearest the entrance. An elderly man is on the one against the back wall.

“Who’s his neighbor?” I ask.

“Wexler Culken. A couple nights ago Wex was coming home from his 80th birthday party when he was broadsided by a drunk. Happened over on Cork and St. Ambrose. The man who hit him was treated for a broken thumb. I’d rather have the other guy on the table, but you take ’em as they come.” Homer walks over and covers the dead man’s face with a sheet. “Wex gets his send-off tomorrow. You look a little pale, Jack. You sure you’re up to this?”

“I’d rather be home reading the funny papers if that’s what’s you mean.”

Homer laughs and snaps on his rubber gloves. “Okay, let’s get it done. I’ll show you what I found.”

We step up to the table and he pulls back the sheet. The boy has a freckled face and elfin ears. He would have been a cute kid before he ended up on a slab. His stomach is sunken and I can count his ribs. I see no blood. No bullet holes. No stab wounds.

“He’s about seven years old and pitifully undernourished,” says Homer.

“I see a few bruises like kids get on the playground and an abrasion on the bridge of his nose, but it doesn’t strike me as significant. I don’t see an obvious cause of death. If he wasn’t hit by a car my second guess would be hypothermia due to lack of body fat and exposure to the elements. What am I missing?”

“I found something I should have looked for when the other boy came to me back in September. I put the first case down as blunt force trauma due to hit and run, because internal injuries aren’t always apparent on external examination and opening the body was against his parent’s beliefs. Now, I’m having second thoughts.” He lifts the boy’s eyelids with gloved fingers, first one then the other. His once blue eyes are bulged and frosted over in death, the whites webbed with burst capillaries, something I’d seen dozens of times as a Homicide Detective in Boston.

“Okay, I’m on board,” I say. “Petechial hemorrhaging.”

“Yes, check this out,” he says. “Homer raises the boy’s upper lip. Like so many poor children, his teeth are decayed at the gum line. There are swollen lacerations where the teeth cut the underside of both upper and lower lips.

“He was suffocated.”

“Yes,” says Homer. “Something was held with force over his face, a hand, a pillow, something of that nature. He was too fragile to put up much of a fight.”

“Now the abrasion on his nose makes sense. Do you know his identity yet?”

“Not a clue. I looked for a name in his book but it was too waterlogged. Whoever he is, he probably goes to the one room schoolhouse, but there won’t be anyone there until tomorrow.”

“If he was murdered elsewhere and dumped, it would likely be from a car,” I say. “That suggests adult involvement either in the crime, after the fact or both.”

“I agree. Schoolyard bullies would have taken his nickel. Could have been his parents. Wouldn’t be the first time we came across a throw-away kid.”

A full minute passes while I mull things over and Homer makes a few notes in the chart. “His parents don’t know he’s missing,” I say.

“How do you figure?”

“He died on Friday. I don’t think he was going home after school, maybe to a friends or relatives. That’s why we haven’t heard anything.”

“Who’d want to kill a kid? Where’s the motive?”

“Was he molested?”

“There’s no indication of that.”

“What’s the other boy’s name, the one back in September?”

“Danny Battle. Eight years old. Third grade. Found on the same stretch of road under similar circumstances.”

“Homer, I’d like to review everything you have on both boys, including post mortem photos.”

“Okay, but I’ll need the records back in a day or two.” The phone rings and Platt answers. He listens, shakes his head and hangs up.

“Looks like they’ve found your Chevy, Jack. A rancher discovered it a hundred feet down a ravine about seven miles outside town. A tow truck is on the way to pull it out.”

“And Mrs. Barker?”

“I’m sorry, Jack. Her body’s in the car. You want to follow me out?”

I give it a moment’s consideration.

“I think I’d like to focus on the boy right now. I’m going to have a look around the schoolhouse. I’ll call you later.”

“Okay, let me get those records.”

CHAPTER 14

The empty schoolhouse with its peeling paint sits in the center of a soggy, weed-choked lot. To the right of the building is a teeter-totter, a tire swing and a sandbox filled with water and dead leaves. Beyond the playground an apple orchard rolls toward the horizon. I drive over a short bridge on the left and park on Schoolhouse Road, an unpaved one lane that runs back to a cluster of wood frame houses at the dead end. Behind a row of collapsing sunflowers at the back of the lot stands an outhouse, its door sagging on rusty hinges.

I walk up the steps to the locked door, unfold a blade from my pocket knife and slide it between the door and the frame. The metal tongue moves, the door squeaks open and I step inside. The room would be cozy on school days, the potbellied stove snapping with kindling and fluttering with flames. Today it’s colder than a meat locker. Behind the teacher’s desk is a blackboard where she’s written her name in the upper left hand corner: Miss Hanover. Below, is a list of spelling words… the word ‘misspell,’ misspelled with a single s… a common enough mistake, but not one made by a parochial school graduate like myself, who can spell excommunication, purgatory and fornication with scholastic ease.

There’s a draft as the door opens and closes behind me, admitting a girl with long brown braids, wide hazel eyes and a Band-Aid on one knee.

“Who are you?” she says.

“Jack Dunning. And you?”

“Rebecca Smallwood. I get in the same way you do.”

“Whatever works, right?” Her bare arms are covered with goose bumps. “You look cold.”

“I know. My parents make me go outside when they fight. I didn’t have time to grab my coat.”

“Sounds like they’re the ones who need the cooling off.” That gets a smile. “You go to school here?”

“Yes. I’m in sixth. I’m the smartest kid in school, even smarter than the eighth graders. My grandfather donated the land the school sits on.”

“Consider me duly impressed.”

“Just don’t eat the candy bar in Miss Hanover’s desk or she’ll think it was me.”

“Why is that?”

“Why do you think?”

“I see. You know where I can find her?”

“Not until tomorrow. She’ll be here around seven thirty. You’re that cop from Boston. I’ve seen you with Jim Tunney. What are you doing here?”

“Maybe, I’m here to steal candy bars.”

“You don’t need one.”

“Thanks Rebecca. Just call ’em as you see ’em. Do you know where your teacher lives?”

“In town somewhere. Miss Brown boarded with my family. She was our teacher since I was in first grade, but she retired. Most teachers are too poor to rent a place of their own.”

“Who’s your favorite, Miss Brown or Miss Hanover?”

“Miss Brown was nice. She got too old to remember our names, but she’d never misspell, misspell.”

“You noticed that too. Did you point it out?”

“To Miss Hanover? Are you kidding? I’m stuck with her until June.”

“Do you know her address in town?”

“No. My parents say I’m not allowed to ask grownups personal questions. If I could I’d ask her why she’s twenty-three and doesn’t have a husband yet. My mom says if you’re not married by twenty-five, you’ll be an old maid for life.”

“What’s Miss Hanover’s first name? I’ll look her up in the book.”

“It’s Penelope, like the weaver in the Odyssey, but I already looked and she’s not listed.”

“You
are
smart. Did you learn that in school?”

“In the library.”

Through the window I see a woman coming down Schoolhouse Road, her eyes swollen, her hair in a tangle.

“You know a lady with dark brown hair and yellow rain boots?”

“That’s my mom. I’d better go so I don’t get in trouble.”

“Which house is yours?”

“The grey one at the end of the road with the goat shed in back.”

I fish a card from my wallet and hand it to her.

“Here, keep this. Call me if you get in trouble and I’ll put in the fix.”

She puts it in her pocket. “Thanks, I will.” I smile to myself as she heads out the door.

Now that I’m alone, I go straight for the teacher’s top desk drawer, hoping to find a class photo or a list of student’s names and addresses. It’s locked. I’d crack it open, except I’ve already blown my cover. The other drawers contain office supplies and test papers. I drive back to the location where the boy’s body was found. I look into the ditch from the berm and out across the orchard behind it. I don’t know what I’m looking for and I don’t find it.

* * * *

I’m having a hamburger and fries at Sparkey’s Roadhouse when the phone rings. Sparkey Bohannon is a big man, an okay guy, who serves a simple menu of satisfying food and runs hookers out of trailers behind the restaurant. The Chief says to turn a blind eye as long as the ladies are of age and don’t get rowdy and who doesn’t need a good poke every now and again? Who am I to argue with that?

“It’s Jim,” says Sparkey, handing me the phone.

“The dead boy’s parents just left Platt’s and they’re on their way to the station. Their son is Georgie Allen. They know where and when he was found, but none of the details. How fast can you get here?”

I finish my beer in one breath, grab my keys and head out the door.

* * * *

Hayden and Priscilla Allen are first cousins with identical powder blue eyes and hair that resembles dandelion fluff. They’re young and undernourished, their clothes threadbare from seasons of wear and endless laundering. I express my condolences, ask questions and answer questions, take notes and let them talk. Jim sits quietly off to the side taking notes.

They were married at fourteen in the isolated mountain community in West Virginia where they were born. Georgie…not George…age seven, was born a year later. They came to California to get Hayden out of the coal mines. They wanted a better life and didn’t find it. They live in an army tent behind Amos Duncan’s peach orchard where they picked at harvest time. Their car is broken down and they’ve been unable to find steady work. Today, they’re driving Dunk’s pickup.

“When was the last time you saw Georgie?” I ask.

“Friday morning when he left for school,” says Hayden. “He should be in second grade, but Miss Hanover put him back a year. After school he was going to his friend Kenny Geiger’s house, but when he didn’t come home this morning, we went looking for him. The Geiger’s say he never arrived.

“But, they knew he was coming.”

“Yes.”

“What did they think when he didn’t show?”

“They thought he was with us,” says Priscilla.

“When did Kenny last see Georgie?”

“They were running down the highway toward Kenny’s. Kenny turned around and Georgie was gone, just vanished, he said.”

Hayden, who’d been staring at his hands looks up and gives me a riveting stare. “All this talk is a waste of time. Shouldn’t you be out looking for the person what run down my son?”

“We’re already working the case, sir. We’re waiting for the official Cause of Death and that can only come from the coroner’s office.”

“Official Cause of Death! It seems pretty damn obvious, don’t it? He was found in a ditch by the road. It ain’t like he fell from an airplane.”

“Please try to be patient and let us do our job the right way.”

“Hayden shoots a glance at his wife, who sits with her hands folded in her lap. He turns back to me. “I know how these things work. You’re protecting some local big shot who’s probably never had a sober day in his life. You think we’re just a bunch of hillbillies you can push around?”

“No, I don’t think that.”

Priscilla puts a hand over her mouth, one tear rolling down her cheek. With her other hand she touches Hayden’s elbow in a cautionary gesture. He takes a deep breath. His face is pale, his hands trembling.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I was out of line.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know how we’re going to tell his grandparents back home.” He chokes out a sob. “They warned us about moving away from our kin. Now we got nothing, not even our son. I don’t even know how we’re going to get him buried.”

“I can’t say I know the depth of your grief, Mr. Allen, but, we’re here to help you. We’re on the same team,” I say. “No one wants to resolve this case more than we do. I know this isn’t easy, but I need to ask you a difficult question. Do you or your son have any enemies?”