Chapter 41

“This is personal now. You’re really gonna let them have it, aren’tcha?” said Biff. He was trying to pump up Bruno, who had come to Gardenfield early the next day to read Ginnie Doe’s clothing. “I mean, they were probably trying to kill you. Maybe they’d’ve done it, too, if we hadn’t been keeping you here, safe and sound, in our jail. And, by the way, sorry about your dog.”

Bruno wouldn’t have felt any worse if Biff had punched him in the stomach. He hadn’t considered the possibility that he may have been the intended target until now. “I’m no hero,” he told Biff, quite truthfully. “Whatever I find out, you guys are going to have to do the heavy lifting. If I start taking things personally, it just makes it tougher to concentrate. I have to stay focused.”

Nice speech, Bruno congratulated himself as he headed for the Chief’s office. Truth of the matter was he was still back on his heels from the attack on Maggie. And even more troubled by the threat against Mimi. He’d already discussed this with the Chief on the phone. Obviously, there was no way to warn McRae to be vigilant without sending him into a homicidal rage. Bruno suggested putting McRae on medical leave and sending the whole family down to Puerto Rico to recuperate. The Chief agreed it was a good idea, but doubted anybody had the budget for it. “Best I can do is assign Biff to keep an eye on them,” said the Chief.

The prospect did little to ease Bruno’s mind about Mimi’s safety. Once Maggie got better, maybe he’d be able to keep an eye on her himself.

The Chief was shuffling through a stack of reports when Bruno entered. “We got plenty of prints off the note card, but they don’t match up with anything in the FBI database,” the Chief announced. “And we didn’t have any luck with the tire tracks. The soil out there is so sandy and there was so much traffic that night between Mr. Terranova’s truck, the Tabernacle cop and your pathetic excuse for a car …”

“The Tabernacle cop destroyed evidence?” Bruno asked, brightening up.

“Yeah. The only really good cast we got turned out to be Randy’s Daytona. We gave it to him as a souvenir.”

The Chief held another report that he was not going to discuss with Bruno. The medical examiner had examined Maggie’s tail and determined that the instrument used was certainly not a samurai blade—at least not one that had been sharpened properly. It had taken several strokes to sever the tail. Maggie must have suffered terribly. But the poor quality of the blade may have helped to save her life. Clean cuts bleed more readily; the crushed tissues may have slowed the bleeding enough to enable her to make it as far as the Terranovas’ house.

Officer Nancy O’Keefe walked in holding the carefully folded pile of Ginnie Doe’s clothing. “Say, Bruno, can you get a reading directly from Maggie?” she asked spontaneously.

This took the Chief by surprise. He hadn’t thought of that. He looked questioningly at Bruno. So did Michelle. Bruno couldn’t believe it. All these people staring at him. “Are you kidding? Do you think I’m some kind of freak?”

The Chief sensed he might be getting ready to go off on one of his tirades. He dismissed Michelle and tried to get the psychic to calm down. “OK. Never mind. She didn’t know. Let’s do something constructive.” He sat Bruno in his chair and put the clothes in front of him on his desk. “Do you need anything else?”

Bruno didn’t reply. He was already working his way into the stack of clothes. He unfolded everything and laid it out, like someone planning the day’s wardrobe, on the Chief’s desk. None of it matched particularly well. There was a rust-colored cardigan, a cobalt blue long-sleeved T-shirt and green pants. Next to that lay a red wool overcoat with a hood lined with fake fur. A pair of red rubber rain boots, but no socks … and there weren’t any underclothes, either.

“Here’s a clue,” noted Nancy. “Either she was color-blind. Or her mother was.”

Bruno ignored her. He placed his hands on each article of clothing in turn. His eyes turned inward. His lips trembled. He was obviously deep in concentration. The room was silent. Nobody dared breathe.

At length Bruno interrupted his trance. He asked the Chief to take notes. “I’m finding all of this very confusing. Just write down whatever I say. It may not make sense. But don’t interrupt me. We’ll try to sort it out later.”

The Chief grabbed a notepad and Bruno re-entered his state of deep contemplation. He started with the cardigan. “This is strange,” he whispered. “I see an argument. With a woman. A gray-haired woman. I’m not sure who she is. But this is not about the murder. They are arguing about … the sweater.”

He moved on to the pants. They were green cotton corduroy. “She’s climbing, climbing. Working her way higher and higher. Now she’s frightened. She’s scared. She’s coming down. Uh-oh, one of the pockets is caught on a branch. It’s tearing. She’s frightened. She’s scared.”

Bruno put down the pants and moved to pick up the overcoat. At the same time Nancy reached for the pants; clearly, she wanted to check on the torn pocket. The Chief grabbed her wrist and gently forced it away. Nancy scowled, but obediently folded her hands and placed them on the table in front of her.

“… she’s in a car,” Bruno continued. “With a man. A dark man. They’re driving. Driving. She’s cold. She needs the coat. She’s scared. She lost it. She needs the coat. She’s scared.”

Nancy snickered. “Sorry. I can’t help it,” she whispered. “This girl sounds like an ordinary kid. Arguing with her mother about wearing a sweater. Tearing her pants while climbing a tree. And leaving her coat somewhere, probably the playground, and having to drive back with her father to get it.”

Bruno was out of his trance, listening attentively. “She’s right. I have no sense of connection between these clothes and the girl in the morgue. These clothes are attached to memories of a girl with a close-knit family. Where are they? Why haven’t they been trying to find her? I don’t believe Ginnie Doe was wearing these clothes when she was murdered.”

“That would be consistent with your theory that someone other than the killer moved the body into the meeting house,” observed the Chief. “Whoever moved the body also dressed her in these clothes. But why?”

“Obviously there was something about her clothes that would have helped identify her,” Nancy suggested. “Alternatively, they could be secondhand.”

“You mean, they belonged to some girl who’s totally unconnected to the case?” mused the Chief. “She outgrew them; the family donated them to Goodwill and then Ginnie Doe got them? So Bruno’s picking up on the emotions of the first girl and not the second?”

“Yeah. Something like that,” agreed Nancy. “Maybe she was a homeless kid …”

“Other than the neck, the body was in good shape,” the Chief reasoned. “She was well-nourished, had good teeth. Theoretically, homelessness can happen to anybody; maybe it was a recent thing for her.”

Bruno had been following the interchange intently. Now he asked, out of the blue, “Were these clothes laundered before you stored them as evidence?”

“Of course not,” growled the Chief. “They are evidence.”

“They seem surprisingly clean,” Bruno persisted. “I don’t believe she was a homeless child, in the usual sense. I don’t think she’d been living outdoors. Let me try again with the overcoat. Since she wasn’t wearing it next to her skin, I figured I’d get a stronger response from her other clothes.”

Bruno took the red wool jacket and hugged it to his breast. He shut his eyes and soon was back in his trance. Then his eyes shot open and he smiled broadly.

“What is it?” Nancy and the Chief demanded in unison.

“I recognized someone. The girl I just saw eating Chinese food with that kid with the funny name. The speed freak.”

“Icky …?”

“Yeah. This coat belonged to his girlfriend. I saw her trying it on and examining how she looked in the mirror; she hated it. She was sticking out her tongue and scowling. She was much younger. But there’s no question. It was the same person.”

“Alison Wales,” said Nancy. “We have to find her and talk to her right away.”

“She’s easy to find,” the Chief said. “We’ve been keeping an eye on Icky. Alison goes to school at Penn, but she comes here frequently to visit him. For all we know, she could be at the Lenape King with Icky right now …”

As the Chief finished speaking a tremendous explosion shook the entire building. Out in the main hallway, people were shouting and running for the exits. Police Chief Buddy Black recovered quickly. He picked up his phone and ordered the entire force to assemble. He wanted everyone in full riot gear in case the Borough of Gardenfield was under attack.