It was close to nine when the law decided they’d spent enough time with me for one evening. Before I could get out of the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, Sergeant Everard and his superior, a Lieutenant Lowdham, had scooped me up to ask the same questions as Gisborne. I guess cops don’t feel they’ve earned their pay if they can’t drag a simple inquiry out for most of a shift.
Although the cops, like the sheriff, wanted to accuse Ferring and Veriden of murdering McKinnon, they were more willing to answer my questions about the dead person and the crime scene.
The lieutenant explained that violent crime wasn’t significant enough in Douglas County for them to have their own crime lab or medical examiner, although they had a team of crime-scene techs—EMT crews trained in how to gather evidence. They’d sent the body to the state lab in Topeka, which would perform the autopsy.
“Everyone’s stretched to the limit here with budget cuts, so they can’t give us an autopsy date, and the state can’t help local forces with crime-scene techs, which means we don’t have DNA or prints to make an ID. The guess is it’s Doris McKinnon, but . . . well, you were there, you saw. There was a fair amount of damage to the face and tissues.”
Yes, I’d seen. Every time I shut my eyes, roaches ran underneath my lids.
“Right now your friends are the people of interest here, and the sooner you can produce them, the sooner we can get all this cleared up,” the lieutenant said.
I spoke slowly and clearly to the recording device. “Lieutenant, once a lie becomes an accepted truth, it’s almost impossible to refute, so let’s not allow that to happen here.” I repeated the same message I’d just given the sheriff, about not knowing Ferring or Veriden nor whether they’d been at McKinnon’s house.
Both men shifted uneasily in their chairs, but neither spoke.
“I’m going to give you the phone numbers of Lieutenant Terry Finchley, Captain Bobby Mallory, and Lieutenant Conrad Rawlings with the Chicago Police Department. You can call them to discuss my reputation.”
I helped myself to a piece of paper from a pad on the table—one put there so that suspects could write out their confessions—and copied the numbers from my cell phone.
This seemed like a good exit line, but as I was leaving, the lieutenant asked, “You being a trained investigator from the big city and all, what did you make of the crime scene?”
I spread my hands: ignorance. “I don’t have enough evidence to make an informed guess. Meth addicts surprising the owner?”
“And the people who’d been staying there?”
“Again, not enough information. I wondered—hoped—it was the woman I came down here to find—but if that’s the case, where is she now? People keep telling me what a small town this is and how you all know everything about one another, so I’d think if Ms. Ferring and Mr. Veriden were here, you’d know.”
I took Peppy’s leash and walked out without looking back, but I could hear Everard and his lieutenant murmuring to each other.
“This town is festering with secrets,” I explained to Peppy once we were alone: golden retrievers are so honest and trusting that you have to tell them when you’ve been ironic. “There’s the whole business of Sonia and Dr. Kiel’s dead or missing graduate student. Gertrude Perec’s dead daughter. The identity of Cady’s father. And no one on this side of the river knows anything about the lives of people on the other side.”
Peppy gave a little bark: she understood.
Even though I would not have found Doris McKinnon—or whoever the dead person turned out to be—without Peppy, I would have to find doggy day care for her tomorrow. It wasn’t fair to keep her in my car for such long stretches. As it was, I was going to tuck her back into the Mustang while I ate dinner: the Oregon Trail Hotel downtown, which advertised itself as a meeting place for the original Free State settlers, had a restaurant that was open late.
It wasn’t until I was leaning back in my booth, head against the padded upholstery, that I realized how tired I was. I’d been up a good chunk of the previous night. I’d spent the day with people ranging from Sonia Kiel’s raging parents to the sheriff of Douglas County. I’d interviewed an old woman who’d had to be rushed to the hospital, before driving out to the middle of nowhere to find vermin nibbling on a dead person.
I took off my muddy hiking boots and sat cross-legged, surreptitiously massaging my sore toes under cover of the tablecloth. A glass of zinfandel gave me an illusion of warmth and home. I couldn’t remember if you were supposed to load carbs or eat lean fish when you were too tired to function, so I compromised: pasta with squid, vodka-tomato sauce, extra mushrooms, romaine salad.
Nell Albritten’s anxiety when I left her had been nudging the back of my mind since I’d found the dead body. When she was semiconscious, she wanted to know what she’d said to me about Doris McKinnon. She’d been relieved to hear she’d said only that McKinnon was a white woman she didn’t often see.
When Albritten had started to say, “Someone would have told me if—” she’d fainted in midsentence. If McKinnon had died, was how I’d have completed the sentence. Albritten struck me as the kind of woman with a rigorous honesty: she’d fainted rather than tell a lie.
Albritten’s story of the flood, its massive devastation followed by the brutal indifference of the landlords, had made me acutely uncomfortable. I shut my eyes, trying to re-create not just what Albritten had said but her body language.
I was holding the cold glass of tea. Peppy was whimpering, aware of the tension in the room. I was feeling shame, but also impatience: I wanted to know what had happened to Lucinda and Emerald Ferring after the flood, and Albritten kept circling the question, giving more details about the flood and the town’s response.
And then she’d received a phone call. That’s what I’d forgotten. She’d made a phone call before she let me into the house. My guess—she’d been asking for advice. She’d told someone—Lisa Carmody?—I was there. After she talked to my Chicago client, she wanted to know how much information she could safely give me.
Albritten hadn’t mentioned Doris McKinnon until after she hung up. The person who phoned her had given her permission to tell me, which meant that Albritten and at least one other person in Lawrence already knew that McKinnon was dead. How did they know? From Ferring and Veriden? If Albritten was hiding them, they couldn’t be in her basement; the house didn’t have one. An attic crawl space? The little locked-up church?
I didn’t think I could stake out St. Silas without the police or the sheriff hearing about it, but maybe Nell Albritten would open up to me now that I’d looked after her, maybe saved her life. Maybe I’d threatened her life with my questions, though.
I drank wine and pushed that ugly thought away.
Albritten’s son, Jordan, had played with Emerald when they were toddlers: she would do what she could to protect Emerald, from the sheriff and the Lawrence police. As she should: Sergeant Everard had said Emerald and August were the persons of interest in the murder. Even if the Lawrence PD were more enlightened than Staten Island or Ferguson—or Chicago—forces, it would still be mighty convenient to have a young black man from Chicago around to take the rap.
I dismissed the possibility that August was guilty. I’d never met him, of course, but I didn’t believe that the quiet, methodical young man who brought flowers to his janitor’s sick wife could bash in the head of an old woman. He might strike someone in self-defense or even to defend Emerald, but not “Aunt Doris,” to whom Emerald “owed much.”
In the warm glow of food and wine, I had grandiose fantasies: Tomorrow morning I would imagine a way to get Nell Albritten to confide in me. I would similarly persuade the Perec women, Cady and her doughty grandmother, to tell me what secrets they were keeping.
My food came as I was reading e-mails and texts. I had highly punctuated messages from Bernie: what are you doing???? i’m taking a leave of absence so i can come down to kansas because you aren’t making progress!!!!
I wrote Troy a detailed message about Doris McKinnon’s relationship with Emerald and her mother, about going out to the farm and finding a dead body but discovering only a putative connection to Ferring and August. if she and august were here, they’ve disappeared. i’m wondering if they returned to chicago. if they’re hiding, do you know who they’d turn to?
I was curter with Bernie. do not come here. if you show up, your dad will be on the first flight out of montreal to collect you. no arguments. Not that anything short of a crowbar over the skull had much effect on Bernie.
Lotty called as I was signaling for the bill, to check on me and to tell me she’d talked to the doctors at the Lawrence hospital. Nell Albritten was doing well; she’d be released in the morning. The news was less promising for Sonia Kiel. The hospital had shared the toxicology report with Lotty.
“Your guess about flunitrazepam—roofies—was correct. Sonia still had Depakote in her bloodstream and a terrifying blood-alcohol level, point two-six. She didn’t seem to have other recreational drugs in her, but the alcohol with the roofies and her depleted immune system have left her seriously compromised. The only hopeful news is that they do have positive readings on the EEGs.”
It warmed me more than wine and food, hearing from Lotty and knowing she’d made these calls out of love for me. We chatted longer, on general topics. She tactfully avoided Jake’s name but hoped I would return home soon.
I signed my credit-card receipt and pushed my sore feet back into my boots. As I gathered up my belongings, I saw I’d dribbled vodka sauce onto my phone. If I was not a clever enough detective to eat and text at the same time, how could I possibly find Emerald Ferring before the law did?