Chapter Five

 

Radhauser stood at the living room window for a moment, thinking about the victim’s son. Had his own son lived, he would be entering high school this fall.

As the paramedic backed the ambulance out of the driveway, a white Ford Escort screeched to a halt on the road in front of the house. The driver’s door opened and a tall, lanky boy wearing a white dinner jacket dodged the ambulance and raced across the landscaping stones to the front walk. His hard-soled shoes clicked against the paved walkway like manic drumsticks.

The front door was flung open. The boy ran into the room. He had blond curly hair and pale skin with a scattering of blemishes spread across his forehead like freckles. “What’s going on?” There was more than a trace of fear in his voice. “Has something happened to my mother?”

Radhauser’s blood turned to ice water in his veins. How does a kid recover from something like this? He removed a leather case from the inside pocket of his jacket, flipped it open and flashed his badge. “I’m Detective Winston Radhauser from the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.” He slipped the case back into his pocket and took out a small black notebook with a ballpoint pen clipped to the cover. “What’s your name, son?”

“Travis Reynolds. I live here with my mother. Was she in that ambulance?”

“No,” Radhauser said, jotting down the boy’s name and the time he’d arrived on the scene, realizing he’d probably given the poor kid a seed of hope his mother wasn’t hurt badly enough for an ambulance.

“I need you to wait outside until my partner arrives and we finish up in here.”

“Finish up what?” Travis ran into the kitchen, as if looking for his mother, then returned a second later and tried to push past Radhauser and into the hallway.

Radhauser grabbed Travis from behind and pinned his arms to his sides. “You need to stay out of there.” Radhauser knew the house had been compromised by the paramedics, but intended to treat the bathroom like a crime scene until he’d had time to investigate. He led Travis back into the kitchen.

“How bad is it?” Travis asked.

“I’m sorry, son. But it’s about as bad as it gets.” Radhauser saw something pass over Travis’s face that told him he knew the truth, but wasn’t ready to face it yet. He’d give the boy some time—let him ask questions for which he already knew the answers.

“Why did the ambulance leave? If she’s hurt so bad, why aren’t you taking her to the hospital?” Travis’s pulse thumped in and out of his neck like a frog’s throat. The ceiling light threw a dark shadow across his face. “Where is she? Where’s my mom?”

Radhauser gently pushed Travis into a chair at the kitchen table.

For a moment Travis sat, unmoving, his mouth open like a fighter who’d just taken a wicked blow to his head. And then he asked the question his blue eyes had been holding. “Is my mother dead?” His gaze lingered on Radhauser. Travis’s eyes were bloodshot and full of pain, but Radhauser could see them reaching for a negative answer.

“No,” Travis said. “She can’t be dead.”

Dead. The word echoed back at Radhauser, separate and hard as a stone. Dead. He shook his head to clear the old memory of the emergency room the night his family had died, and tried to focus on Travis. “I’m so sorry, son.”

With no warning, Travis leaped from his chair and grabbed Radhauser by the shoulders. “What happened to her?”

“We don’t know yet,” Radhauser said, though he was about ninety-five percent sure she’d been murdered. “The first officers on the scene thought it presented like a suicide.”

The boy’s eyes grew wide and uncomprehending. “She wouldn’t do that. Please,” he said, his hands tightening on Radhauser’s shoulders. “Can’t you just tell me where she is?”

“Come outside with me.”

Travis didn’t budge. “Why can’t I see my mom?”

Radhauser understood the need.

He’d been out on a domestic violence call and had gotten to the hospital too late. In the basement morgue, he’d sat with his wife and son for hours, trying to understand how they could be present in the world one minute and gone the next.

“I know I can’t say anything to dissuade you,” he said. “But until we’re certain a crime didn’t happen here, we have to protect the scene.”

“I’m not going to do anything to your scene. I just want to see my mom.”

The kid’s eyes held so much pain Radhauser had to look away. Knowing he’d behave the same way in Travis’s position, Radhauser kept his voice calm. “It’s procedure. You understand that, don’t you, Travis?”

Travis reseated himself at the kitchen table. “Yes, sir,” he said, and dropped both arms onto the tabletop, rested his head on his folded hands and closed his eyes.

Radhauser watched him from the doorway for a moment, then walked into the living room to look out the window for O’Donnell.

When he heard the sound of a chair falling over in the kitchen, Radhauser turned back, just as Travis raced down the hallway. Shit. He should have seen that coming.

Before he could stop him, Travis burst through the crime scene tape. One long yellow ribbon dangled against the doorframe when Radhauser caught up.

Travis stepped into the bathroom and froze.

Radhauser grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him around. Travis had a wide panicked look in his eyes. His skin, even more pale than before, mottled with color as bright as welts. A tear dropped from the corner of his right eye and ran the length of his cheek, dropping straight and fast, like sweat on a summer glass.

Jesus Christ. Maybe he should have kept those two deputies on the scene. What the hell was taking O’Donnell so long?

He pulled Travis into the hallway and wrapped his arms around him. As he held tight to the sobbing boy, Radhauser stroked his back, real gentle, the way he’d want his own son treated.

A siren pealed in the distance. Thank God.

Travis pulled away and reeled down the hallway toward the kitchen.

Radhauser replaced the tape over the bathroom entrance.

The siren grew closer. A loud thumping sound came from the kitchen. Radhauser hurried toward it.

Travis stood in front of the refrigerator, leaning into it with both hands as if he were holding it up. Between his two palms, an indented spot marred the smooth, avocado-green surface where he’d smashed it with his head so hard the force of it rattled the stack of trays and cookie sheets stored on top. When he turned to face Radhauser, Travis’s forehead dripped blood.

For one long moment, Radhauser stared at the boy, understanding exactly why he’d done it. Anger came first. Then grief rolled in and settled over you like a thick and unrelenting fog. He pulled Travis away from the refrigerator, shoved him into a chair, then grabbed a dishtowel from the drawer, wet it under the faucet and pressed it against the boy’s head. The cut was in the hairline.

“Her hair,” Travis said. “Why would someone cut off her hair like that?”

Radhauser cleaned the wound, applied pressure and kept checking the bleeding. “She may have cut it herself.” As head wounds often do, it bled for what seemed like a long time. When it finally stopped, he wrapped ice cubes in another towel and handed it to Travis.

“She wouldn’t do that. She cared about how she looked.”

After a few moments, Radhauser checked the cut. It was a one-inch gash, didn’t appear to be deep, but he’d better watch for signs of concussion.

“At the dance, I was talking to Jennifer about Mom,” Travis said, his voice soft and choked with sobs. “About how excited she was and how she’d probably ask me a zillion questions about the dance and…”

The more Travis talked, the more sympathy Radhauser had for him. Radhauser was a grown man and still had nightmares about the mangled Ford station wagon. He still wished he’d taken the night off, as Laura had begged him to do, and been behind the wheel. Maybe he could have prevented the accident, driven fast enough to be long past the ramp where the Dodge pickup driver, drunk and confused, had headed south into the northbound lanes.

Unlike this poor kid, Radhauser had coped with grief for a year—long enough to know the memory of his wife and son was a weight he’d always carry. He scratched his cheek, felt the beginning of his nightly stubble. “Do you have a first aid kit?”

“Mom keeps it in the top drawer of her dresser.”

“Are you okay to go get it?”

Travis nodded.

“Then I want you to sit and hold the ice on your head for a few more minutes.”

Travis headed down the hallway toward his mother’s bedroom. When he returned with the first-aid kit, Radhauser put some Neosporin on the wound, used the butterfly strips to close it, and then sat quietly with Travis in the kitchen for a few minutes, hoping the boy would calm down enough to answer a few questions. Radhauser tried to assess what he saw and heard with the unbiased eyes and ears of a cop, but it wasn’t easy to do when the grief in the room was so thick it made it hard to breathe.

With the screech of a patrol car coming to a halt outside, the siren ceased. After what he’d seen, there was no way Travis would return to that bathroom. No longer worried about protecting the boy, Radhauser met O’Donnell at the front door. “It’s about time you got here.”

Tim O’Donnell was a short, solid, and shaved-bald man in his forties. He wore the navy blue uniform of the Tucson Police Department—his badge pinned above his breast pocket. Each time he saw Tim, Radhauser imagined a dark chocolate-colored fire hydrant. Tim had a sprinkling of even darker freckles across his nose and cheeks. He carried a long-handled police-issue Maglite that looked big enough to light up a movie screen.

He looked over Radhauser’s attire, pausing for a moment at the hand-tooled boots, custom-made in Nogales. “What’s with the cowboy suit? You used to dress like a professional. Did you get called while two-stepping at the Get Up and Dance Saloon?”

“Save your wardrobe critique for another time,” he said, then brought O’Donnell up to date on the scene and the teenage boy in the kitchen who’d tried to bash his head in with a refrigerator.

O’Donnell raised his eyebrows. “Guilt?”

“More like grief,” Radhauser said.

Tim held up his flashlight. “I’ll start outside.”

“If your siren got any neighbors out of the sack, go talk to them. See if they saw or heard anything. The 911 call was made by a female. See if one of the neighbor women will admit to calling.”

Radhauser asked Travis to join him in the living room. When the boy was settled on the sofa, Radhauser asked generic questions at first to put him at ease. He got Travis’s age, information on where he went to school, and what he’d been doing that night. He asked for Jennifer’s last name, address and phone number. Travis’s mother’s full name and where she worked. He wrote everything down in his notebook. “How old was your mother?”

“Thirty-four,” he said. “She had me when she was seventeen.”

“What’s your father’s name?”

“Mitchell Travis Reynolds.”

“Is he in the picture?”

Travis stared at the floor for a moment, then looked back up at Radhauser. “He was a helicopter pilot shot down in Vietnam a month before I was born,” he said so wistfully Radhauser could almost see the wish he’d known his father fall out of the boy’s mouth. Poor kid. He was pretty young to be an orphan.

A moment later, as if someone had just lit a match under him, Travis shot up from the sofa. “Something is wrong here. My mother.” He stopped. Started again. “I know this sounds weird, man, but my mom doesn’t do a lot of cleaning. She doesn’t even make her bed. I mean like never. She’s hardcore about it. I’m the one who empties the ashtrays. I take out the trash and beer bottles. Everything is way too clean tonight.”

A single drop of blood oozed from the cut and dripped down his forehead and onto his nose. Travis didn’t seem to notice. “You need to listen to me. Somebody cleaned up around here. And it wasn’t me.”

“I am listening. And believe me, I’ll check out every lead.” Radhauser examined the cut again. “It looks pretty superficial, but you might stop by the emergency room and see if you need a stitch or two.”

“It’s no big deal. I’m not dying.” With the word dying, another spasm of grief passed over Travis’s face.

Radhauser’s pity was almost palpable. He’d only realized after the death of his family how shameful it feels to be pitied. He hammered a box of unopened cigarettes against his wrist and then removed the wrapping. He’d stopped smoking six months ago, but still carried a pack in his pocket, still felt the occasional need to stick one in his mouth.

“You can smoke,” Travis said. “My mom does.” He dropped his gaze to the empty ashtray. “I mean, she did.”

Radhauser took out a cigarette. “I know this is hard, and there’s no good time to do it, but I have a few more questions. Are you up to it?”

“I guess.”

With the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, Radhauser looked at Travis for a moment. He sat on the edge of the coffee table, close enough to Travis that their knees were nearly touching. “Does your mother make a habit of leaving the doors unlocked?”

“Only when she’s home. We’ve lived here almost my whole life. No one ever bothered anything.”

“When did you last see her?”

“I dropped her off at The Silver Spur Steak House at five forty-five pm. She had a six to two am. shift, but Gracie planned to cover her last hour. The bar closes at one, then the waitresses clean up and reset the tables.”

“Do you have any idea how your mother got home?”

He told Radhauser about his plans to go home with Matt, and what Gracie had said about Crystal getting into a car right after he’d dropped her off. “Knowing Crystal, she might have thumbed it.”

Radhauser made a note in his book to interview Gracie and the other waitresses at The Silver Spur.

“Why do you call your mother by her first name?”

“She was a kid when she had me. It was just the two of us and we were best friends.” He lowered his head.

Radhauser gave him a moment. “Does she have a history of taking rides from strangers or other dangerous behavior?” The unlit cigarette moved with his lips when he talked.

“Are you going to smoke that thing?”

“I’m trying to quit,” Radhauser said. He repeated his last question.

“Not when she’s sober,” Travis said.

“Do you have any idea who may have phoned 911?”

Travis looked dazed. “Someone called 911?”

“That’s how the paramedics knew to come out here. Is your mother close to any of the neighbors? Do any of them drop by?”

“She pretty much keeps to herself.”

“The caller was a female. Does she have a friend who might have been with her?”

“She’s pretty tight with Gracie, but she was at work.”

“I’m sorry to put you through this, son,” Radhauser said. “Do you want to call a relative? An aunt or uncle, your grandparents?”

“Call?” Travis repeated the detective’s word as if it were a foreign language. “It was mostly just Mom and me. I have a couple aunts in Mesa. But I haven’t seen them for years. I’m closer to my friend Matt and his parents.”

Radhauser took the unlit cigarette from his mouth and replaced it in the pack. “I’ll leave the calling up to you, son. Has your mother ever intentionally hurt herself?”

Travis hesitated. “I already told you she drinks too much. Sometimes she passes out. But something about this house isn’t right. Somebody cleaned it. My mom wouldn’t do that. She just wouldn’t. And who broke the bathroom mirror?”

“People can be unpredictable, especially in a crisis,” Radhauser said. “Sometimes they drink too much. Or dress up or down. Sometimes they’re angry enough at themselves to cut off their hair or strike out at their reflection.” He paused and stared at the coffee table. “Sometimes they light candles and clean house.”

“What if she took a ride with some sleazebag? What if he followed her into the house? What if he—” Travis winced, and something bitter and hopeless washed over his face.

Though Radhauser knew the sample would most likely be compromised, he made a note to request a rape kit.

When Radhauser glanced up from his notebook, Travis had gone pale and was breathing way too fast. The kid was having a panic attack. “Put your hands on your thighs. And take long, slow breaths.”

Travis did as he was told.

Radhauser placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I hate to keep you any longer. But I need forensics to fingerprint you. It’s routine. We want to eliminate the prints that belong to people who spend a lot of time in the house.”

“You should fingerprint my friend, Matt Garrison, then. He’s here almost as much as I am.”

“Anybody else, son? Think hard. It’s important.”

“Gracie. And Baxter. Maybe Millie, she’s another waitress, but I don’t think she and my mom hung out much.”

Radhauser jotted the names in his notebook. In order to preserve the already compromised scene, he walked Travis outside to the Bronco. “You can wait here where it’s warm,” he said. “Is there someone you’d like me to call to be with you now?” He opened the back door for Travis.

“Matt,” Travis said as he slipped into the backseat.

“Give me his number. My mobile phone doesn’t work out here. But I’ll radio dispatch to call him. While Matt is here, we’ll have forensics fingerprint you both.”

Travis gave him the number.

Radhauser was glad to know Travis had a friend. He wished he’d had someone, anyone, with him the night he got the news about his family.

He stood by the open car door for a moment, feeling bad about leaving Travis alone. He poked his head back inside. “I don’t give up easy, son. If someone killed your mother, I’ll figure it out and I won’t stop looking until I find him.” Radhauser closed the door and returned to the living room.

Tim O’Donnell rounded the corner of the house, shaking his head. “I think it’s a suicide.”

“How many suicides have you investigated where the victim used a razor blade on anything but their wrists?”

“None,” he said. “But that doesn’t make it impossible.”

“Tape off the entire area. I still need to photograph the bathroom and take one more look around. Make a list for forensics.”

“The forensic boys can handle the photographs.”

“You know I prefer to take my own,” Radhauser said.

A muscle along the side of O’Donnell’s jaw throbbed like a heartbeat. “You’re the boss.” He didn’t sound happy about it.

Radhauser didn’t have time to worry about anyone’s mood. This was his case, and he wouldn’t label it a suicide until he was absolutely sure.