Wrong Turn (2 page)

‘Oh, stop, captain, you know that isn’t true. Stop patronizing me.’

‘OK, Pierce, there were times when you made me doubt the wisdom of my decision. You caused me to question it from time to time; but in the end, you always came out on top. Not for one moment did I ever regret offering you the job.’

‘OK, I’ll take your word on that, sir,’ she said, not really certain whether she should believe him or not. ‘But why are you telling me all of this now?’

‘The body of Emily Sherman has been found.’

‘That’s wonderful – I thought we’d never find her.’

‘Actually, the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the body are a bit problematic for all of us.’

Lucinda tilted her head to the side. Why would he be conflicted by this? Andrew Sherman would finally be able to bury his daughter. Isn’t that what we always wanted – to bring a missing victim home? ‘I don’t understand, sir.’

‘Emily Sherman is now part of the Mack Rogers case.’

‘What? That is ridiculous. Why would anyone come to that conclusion?’

‘Last night, the forensic anthropologist identified one of the skeletonized bodies you found in the basement.’

‘No! That can’t be true.’ Lucinda jumped to her feet and rested her hands on Holland’s desk. ‘It couldn’t be her. It just couldn’t.’

‘It was, Lucinda. The forensic odontologist suspected it when he compared the dental X-rays, but couldn’t be positive about his identification because of the rodent damage to the skull that dislocated some of her teeth. But the DNA results are in now. There’s absolutely no doubt that one of the bodies in that basement belonged to Emily Sherman. And very, very little doubt that Martha Sherman was wrongfully convicted.’

T
he basement. How she hated basements. In fact, if the negative subterranean experiences continued much longer, she feared she’d develop the same phobia of the space that little Charley Spencer had. She had found the body of Charley’s mother in a basement; the little boy she accidentally killed had been held in the range of fire, unseen, behind a dirty basement window; the serial killer who sliced her Achilles tendon was in a basement.

And now this basement. She had first arrived at the house on DeWitt Street, filled with the same solemn, optimistic enthusiasm she possessed at the inception of every homicide investigation. Sergeant Robin Coulter, the newest addition to the homicide squad and the only other woman, briefed Lucinda in the front yard. The horror she prepared to face chipped away at her positive attitude. Actually entering the basement destroyed it.

The landlady, whose cleaning of the house for a new occupant prompted the discovery, sat on the front porch of the small white bungalow with dark green trim. A home that looked much like any of the others on the block – nicely painted, unassuming with a freshly mowed front yard. Before the patrol cars swarmed around it, there had been no indication that it bore any difference to its neighbors. The landlady’s minister sat on one side of her, the police psychiatrist on the other. She was as close as anyone could get to hysteria without running stark, raving mad into the street.

The pest control company employee, who actually discovered the first body, sat stunned on a bench beside the drive. A patrolman sat beside him trying to get something more than yes or no answers to the questions posed, but requests for elaboration seemed to generate nothing more than a faraway stare.

She walked through the front door choking with dread. She could smell the faint whiff of the basement’s contents the second she stepped inside. An officer handed her a jar of mentholated gel to smear in her nostrils before she descended the steps. Usually she didn’t bother, but this time was an exception. The smell by the door to the lower floor was so intense, so nausea inducing, she could not resist. It diminished the odor but could not eliminate it.

At the foot of the stairs, the semi-finished section appeared perfectly normal. Along one wall, a washer, a dryer and a large utility sink looked ordinary. The rough concrete floor was typical. The air felt damp and she imagined, without the odor of decomposing bodies overwhelming all else, it would smell a bit musty and dank.

She walked toward the entrance to a peculiar kind of hell. The door was three-quarters of normal height. A broken hasp canted crookedly from the frame. A busted padlock lay on the floor.

She bent down and eased her way onto the dirt floor on the other side. She couldn’t stand upright and didn’t want to brush her head against the dust, cobwebs and grime on the rafters, making her duck lower than necessary. The floor rose gradually in front of her, narrowing the gap down to cat height before reaching the foundation on the other side.

To the left of Lucinda, and about four feet from where she stood, the toes of a pair of shoes broke through the ground. The pest control employee had brushed away the dirt over the legs to make sure that what he thought he saw was really what was there.

Further back in the crawl space, a figure in a Tyvek suit, booties, gloves, head covering and a face mask with a breathing filter, raised a head and shouted out a muffled, ‘Lieutenant!’

‘Marguerite, is that you?’

‘Yes, lieutenant. Let’s talk outside.’ Forensic specialist Marguerite Spellman duck-walked across the dirt until she reached a spot where she could stand, albeit it in a crouched-over posture. ‘I’ve now found a fourth body. It’s nothing more than a skeleton. I think I should get out of there and let a forensic anthropology team take over.’

‘You sure we can’t manage without calling in the state guys?’

‘Hate to say it, lieutenant, but we might need the Feebs – and not just our local buddy Special Agent in Charge Lovett, but the experts on forensic excavation from headquarters in DC.’

Lucinda’s face twisted into an expression of extreme distaste. She sighed.

‘I’m sorry,’ Marguerite said, ‘but we really need an anthropologist here. These remains need to be meticulously extracted if we’re going to have any hope of preserving evidence in a manner that the defense can’t rip to shreds. They already have a little ammunition because the pest control guy touched the first body and some of us have entered the space – that probably was not wise.’

‘Let’s go topside and get away from this stench for a while and then I’ll make the calls. You’ll need to be here, though, while they work. You need to observe every little thing they do.’

‘I’d planned on that, lieutenant.’

Lucinda nodded, gave her a tight smile and led the way up the stairs. They removed their protective gear and stepped out into the front yard. The first inhalation of fresh, outdoor air was intoxicating. Any of the city pollutants churning through the atmosphere now smelled as clean and pure as snow compared to the cloying, sweet, sickening smell from the crawl space.

Marguerite leaned her head to one side and sniffed the sleeve of her shirt. ‘Eeew. I probably will never get the smell out of these clothes. I’ll have to toss them out when we’re through. Somebody needs to invent a body suit that blocks odors.’

‘Why don’t you handle that in all your spare time, Spellman?’ Lucinda asked with a chuckle.

‘Spare time? Could you define that alien phrase for me?’ she responded with a grin.

‘Tell me about it,’ Lucinda said and pulled out her iPhone and called the state lab. They delivered the bad news that Marguerite had warned her they would. A request would have to go to FBI headquarters but they assured her that the agency would scramble to get someone on the ground as quickly as possible.

‘I’m sure they will,’ Lucinda said. ‘They just love this sensational, banner headline producing stuff.’

‘Watch the attitude, lieutenant. You’re going to have to work with these guys.’

Lucinda disconnected the call without comment. Everyone knew how difficult and vainglorious the federal guys could be, but they all got so sensitive about it when anyone said it out loud.

She decided to tackle what was probably the easier of the two interviews first. With a toss of her head, the officer rose from the side of the pest control man and Lucinda slipped into his place. She put a hand on his lower arm. ‘How are you holding up?’

He shrugged but kept his head down, eyes focused on the ground. His shaggy brown hair blocked any view of his features. She noticed his company overalls were embroidered with ‘Russ’ over a pocket on the upper left side. ‘Your name’s Russ?’

He shifted his weight to one side and pulled the wallet out of a rear pocket. Without a word, he handed her a business card.

She read, ‘Russell Englewood, Pest Control Specialist. We Knock ’Em Dead.’ She turned to the man beside her, ‘Mr Englewood?’

He nodded and muttered, ‘Russ is fine.’

‘I really need you to talk to me about what you saw and what you did. Can you do that?’

Russ shrugged again.

‘I know this is difficult, Russ, but I need your help to catch this guy.’

Russ didn’t move or say a word.

Lucinda sighed. ‘I know you’ve had a traumatic experience, Mr Englewood, but I’d going to need you to man up here. After all, you’re an exterminator; you need to get a grip.’

For the first time, he lifted his head. A pair of bright blue eyes glared at her.

‘You can be angry with me for the rest of your life, Mr Englewood. You can hate my guts for eternity. But you are going to have to give me information – detailed information. I don’t want to start looking at you as a suspect but if you don’t open up, I won’t have any choice.’

‘Damn you,’ he shouted, rising to his feet. ‘Yes, I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies in my line of work – mice, rats, snakes, possums, cockroaches – but I ain’t never seen no dead woman before – no dead person of any sex. This ain’t right. It just ain’t right.’

Lucinda remained seated, placing a calming hand on his lower arm. ‘No. It isn’t right, Mr Englewood. Why don’t you sit back down and tell me about it.’

He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Russ is fine, ma’am. Please, Russ is fine,’ he said, sinking back down on the bench. ‘Where you want me to start?’

‘How about when you pulled up in the driveway?’

‘Miss Plum met me outside here. She pointed to the skiff over yonder,’ he said indicating the scarred, blue, tractor/trailer-sized container in the front yard. ‘She say, “I done moved all that furniture out thinking it was causing the stink but it just won’t go away. I think I gotta dead critter in the wall.” And I say that I’ll go see what I can find.’

Lucinda was certain that retired English teacher Veronica Plum didn’t put it quite that way, but she didn’t interrupt.

‘So I followed my nose down into that there basement. Sure enough, there was somethin’ dead down there. Didn’t take me much time to narrow it down to that crawl space. I figured I’d find me a dead possum or coon or maybe even somebody’s cat got trapped in there – that happens more times than I like to remember. I hate that. My old lady’s got a cat and it’s a pretty nice little thing.’

‘And then, Russ?’

‘Well, I ask Miss Plum for a key to the padlock and she told me she ain’t never put a padlock on that door. And if I needed to pry it open to go for it. So, I reckon I did. I used a tire iron from my truck, I started levering it. It didn’t wanna budge. So I found a sledgehammer in the corner and beat on the lock till it broke off. But then, I still couldn’t pull back that hasp so I went to levering it again. Finally, it popped.’

‘What did you see when you opened the door, Russ?’

‘Damn, that smell almost blinded me at first. Never smelt nothing like it. I figured I was fixin’ to find more than one dead critter down there. I shone my flashlight round the place and spotted somethin’ stickin’ up through the dirt. I brushed that off and it looked like a shoe. I’m thinking, I’m hoping, that someone just left a pair of old shoes down there. So I kept brushing away dirt until I touched skin. I didn’t want to believe it. So I brushed a little more. And I rushed out of there to upchuck in the sink.’ Russ gave a big smile.

The smile was more than unsettling. ‘You got some pleasure from that discovery, Russ?’

‘Pleasure? You crazy? Made me sick. I thought you might be right pleased with me. I watch some of them shows on the tee-vee. I know about contaminatin’ a crime scene. In nothing but a split second, I done realized what a dead body meant. I got out of there without puking out my guts all over the evidence.’

Lucinda repressed the bubble of laughter that rose in her throat and forced a serious expression on her face. ‘Yes, Russ. That was quick thinking. I am impressed that you reacted the way you did. Not everyone would think twice about contaminating the scene. I appreciate that very much.’ As she very well did: vomit near the body would have been another bone of contention in the courtroom –
if
they ever found the perpetrator.

‘What happened then, Russ?’

‘I got up those steps as quick as I could and called 9-1-1. Miss Plum was circlin’ me, askin’ one question after another. But I just talked to the dispatcher. When I told that 9-1-1 guy that I found a dead body in the crawl space, Miss Plum started squawkin’, throwin’ her hands up in the air and pacin’ round the room. She must’ve said, “Dear, sweet Jesus” a hundred time or more ’fore those officers got here.’

‘Is there anything else I need to know, Russ?’

‘Not from me, ma’am, I don’t rightly think. That’s ’bout all I know. Didn’t know nobody who lived here. Don’t know who them bodies belong to. Don’t know nobody’d do a thing like that – leastways, I sure hope I don’t.’

‘Thank you, Russ. You just sit right here. I’ll get the officer to come back over and make arrangements for your written statement, OK? You did very well. Thank you very much.’ Lucinda patted his forearm, rose, spoke to the officers and headed toward the landlady Veronica Plum on the front porch. Odds were whoever had lived in this house had given her a false name, but hopefully she’d have enough additional information to narrow down the field.

W
ith the support of a spiritual advisor on one side and a mental health professional on the other, Lucinda was pleased to see that Veronica Plum was far more composed than she’d been when the detective arrived on the scene. Nonetheless, Veronica did look a bit worse for wear. Lucinda suspected that the up-do at the back of the woman’s head was usually prim and proper with every hair in place. At the moment, strands – even clumps – of brown and gray hair stuck out in every direction as if someone had grabbed her by the bun and spun her around in circles.