“Good God, how much do think she weighs?” Detective Brian Slater asks. “Gotta be three fifty, easy.”
“Still counts as one victim,” his new partner, Detective Emily Draper, says.
They’re staring down at Dee Dee Blancharde’s body while a CSI team moves through the house behind them. Slater counts four distinct stab wounds. He pulls at the cuff of one of his latex gloves and lets go, like snapping a rubber band against his wrist.
“Any sign of the knife?” he asks a passing crime tech.
“Nothing yet, boss,” the man says.
“All right,” Slater tells Draper. “Let’s take a little tour.”
They start with the pill bottles and syringes on the dining room table. Draper reads the labels out loud: “Eteplirsen, Mexitil, Prednisone, Sprycel, Clafen, Zolpidem, Klonopin…”
“All for the daughter?” Slater asks.
“Looks that way.”
“You’d think the meds alone would kill her,” Slater says. “Let’s get the names of her docs.”
Draper takes out her phone, starts snapping pictures of the bottles. Slater turns his attention to the wheelchairs. There’s a column of folded manuals stacked five high. There’s a forest-green motorized recliner with a joystick for steering, a bright-red scooter with a wire basket in front that makes Slater think of The Wizard of Oz.
“That’s a hell of a collection,” he says. “I can’t see how a person would need more than one.”
“Girls like to accessorize,” Draper says.
“Those are some pricey accessories.”
“Depends who paid for them. Maybe they had some kind of mega insurance.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Slater says.
They move on to Dee Dee’s room. Slater begins rifling through the dresser drawers, hoping to turn up a diary. Draper digs through the closet, beginning with the jam-packed clothes rack. Among the colorful striped shirts, smocks, and overalls, she finds a stash of costumes: a purple fleece bathrobe with a Star Trek delta shield sewn onto the left breast pocket; a pair of moss-green fairy wings dangling from a wooden hanger; a plus-size silver jumpsuit with a thick black belt and what looks like a computer screen painted across the chest.
“A little old for trick or treating,” Draper says under her breath.
She kneels, pushes aside a heap of shoes and boots, finds a knee-high safe with an electronic lock. The door is wide open.
“Hey, Brian,” she calls. “I’ve got something here.”
Slater crouches behind her, whistles.
“Nice find for a rookie,” he says.
“Or do you mean for a woman?”
“Do me a favor,” Slater grins. “Wait till I say something offensive before you get offended.”
Draper reaches into the safe, pulls out a small spiral pad, flips through the pages.
“It’s a ledger,” she says.
Slater reads over her shoulder. The most recent page lists, in bright red block letters, payments from a half-dozen charitable foundations, among them the Springfield Leukemia Society, the Knights of Columbus, and the First Methodist Church of Springfield. The total comes to just over $4,000.
Draper runs her hand across the floor of the safe, comes away with a single rubber band.
“This is what’s left of the money,” she says.
Slater stands, smooths out a crease in his pants.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” he says. “Whoever killed her knew the combination.”
“Or forced it out of her.”
Slater gives a skeptical shrug.
“Could be,” he says. “But there are no signs of torture. No signs of any struggle outside the kitchen.”
They get a crime scene tech to dust the safe and bag the ledger, then move on to Gypsy’s dollhouse bedroom.
“Not sure I’ve seen a canopy hospital bed before,” Draper says. “Is it possible to be crippled and spoiled?”
Slater points to the desk: “We’ll need to get forensics on that computer.”
Draper goes through the gold-handled drawers while Slater studies Gypsy’s drawings. He is taken by the exaggerated yet controlled lines, the way a wolf with wings looks like it might fly off the page, the way a gargoyle’s fangs blossom into thorny roses. The girl has talent, he thinks. Even if fantasy is so much bunk.
He spots a drawing that isn’t like the others: a simple headstone, rounded at the edges, with nothing but clouds in the background. There’s an engraving at the top of the stone: RIP GYPSY ROSE BLANCHARDE.
“What do you make of this?” he asks Draper.
She moves closer, stands on tiptoes.
“Maybe those are the two things she wants most,” Draper says.
“Which two things?”
“Rest and peace.”
* * *
Draper and Slater stand outside the Blancharde home, Slater smoking an unfiltered cigarette, Draper sipping cold coffee from a paper cup.
“Hell of a duo,” Slater says, “for such a quiet street.”
“These little suburban houses pack a lot of drama,” Draper says. “Nobody really knows what goes on inside them.”
Slater grins.
“That’s deep,” he says, blowing out a long stream of smoke. Draper punches his arm.
“So what do you think?” Slater asks. “Someone stabs the mother and makes off with the girl?”
“Looks like it.”
“The father, maybe?”
“I had one of the uniforms check on him. He’s down in Louisiana with an airtight alibi. Seems he’s been out of the picture for years.”
“Maybe Dee Dee Blancharde had a beau,” Slater says. “No forced entry. The code to the safe. Had to be someone they knew.”
“But why take the girl?”
Slater shrugs.
“People have every kind of fetish,” he says.
“OK, but why take the girl and not her meds? Anyone who knew them had to know how sick she was.”
Slater looks up and down street as though he expects to see Gypsy Rose turn a corner on one of her motorized wheelchairs.
“Maybe that’s the fetish,” he says. “Maybe whoever took her wants to watch her die.”