Liam was on his way from Reece Tibbits’s house to talk to Reece’s mother, Grace. And how was he going to tell her what he’d found at Reece’s place? The woman was dying! How could he tell her that something totally impossible had happened? She wouldn’t believe him, he didn’t think, and then he’d have to take her there and show her. He was not looking forward to that.
What was happening?
Of course, that was the essential question about everything in life these days. What was happening?
How could Reece Tibbits’s house have … have aged, turned into a dilapidated pile of rotting timber when yesterday it had been …
Where was Cissy? Reece’s wife was a quiet woman. Liam wouldn’t use the word mousey but everybody else did. And in truth it fit. She was small, unassuming, with her shoulders hunched most of the time and her eyes averted. He had never heard her say more than two or three words at a stretch, though he understood from Reece’s drinking buddies that he complained about her incessant whining, nagging him to do first one thing and then another until he retreated to his woodshop, the only place he could go to be free of her because she was allergic to sawdust.
Where was she?
And the girls? Reece had two daughters, teenagers, as quiet and unassuming as their mother. Where were Sue-Sue and Patty?
“Unit two, this is dispatch, come back,” came the words out of his radio. Seriously. Unit two? There were no units one or three or four or … he was the only unit, but Betty Greenleaf was … best described as the star of her own movie.
“This is Unit two.”
“Unit two … we have a reported code ten, eight, seven at 1235 Sugarloaf Lane in the Ridge.” Her voice was hushed. From the gravity of the situation, of course. Unless she’d gotten her codes wrong — which she hadn’t because they hung on a chart right in front of the radio unit and she’d pronounced each number separately like she’d been trained to — then she was dispatching him to a murder scene. The tingle of excitement he heard underlying her words convinced him she hadn’t screwed up the codes, didn’t think she was telling him about a dog off the leash instead of a dead body.
“A 10-87 on Sugarloaf Lane. Copy.”
Grace Tibbits would have to wait.
When he rolled into the driveway of Martha Whittiker’s house you’d have thought the circus had come to town. Must have been a dozen people, all excited, being held back behind a makeshift police line by Homer Pettigrew, a volunteer fireman.
“Boy, am I glad to see you, Liam.” Homer handed the end of the piece of extension cord he’d stretched from Mrs. Whittiker’s back porch railing to the little cottage in her backyard. “It’s all yours.”
With that, Homer turned his back and walked away.
Liam looked around frantically, trying to find somebody responsible.
Not in this crowd. Her neighbors, mostly. Elderly people who had congregated in her yard like vultures about to pick at roadkill.
Somebody had to … he spotted Holmes Fischer at the edge of the crowd.
“Fish!” he cried.
Fish looked for a moment like he wanted to turn tail and run. He didn’t, just nodded, tried to hang a half smile on his face that fell totally off one side.
“Yeah, Liam. What can I—?”
“Come over here and take the end of this line,” Liam said, motioning with his hand. “Come on, hurry up.” Fish didn’t move any faster. Liam handed him the end of the extension cord. “Hold this. We’re all pretending this is an official police line, like the ones with the little yellow flags with the words “police line” written on them. This is all we got. You hold this and don’t let anybody through.”
Fish looked like he wanted to throw up, but he took the piece of extension cord as it occurred to Liam that it was a sad state of affairs when the most reliable person in a crowd of a dozen people was a homeless drunk.
“Okay, listen up, everybody,” Liam called out to the crowd. “I want you all to stay back, don’t get any closer—”
“They said she got her head all bashed in,” Roberta McCreedy said. “Like smashed her face. Zat true, Liam?”
He ignored her but Wilbur Berg didn’t. “I seen her body. I was the one called, Liam. She got whacked on the head alright, but didn’t bash it in. But she’s dead. Not no doubt about that. I thought she might be unconscious, then I touched her. Cold as a popsicle.”
“Musta fell down, huh, Wilbur?” Ethel Porter said.
“She didn’t fall down. Somebody cracked her on the skull!”
“We got a killer on the loose?” Wilma Thacker had a voice like a rooster. “Is that what you’re sayin’? A murderer?”
“No, I ain’t saying—”
“I don’t even lock my doors and there’s a killer out there!” Ethel Porter squeaked out the words in a half-scream. “Preys on old ladies! Oh, dear Jesus.”
“Will you all be quiet!” Liam shouted. And he was proud of how stern and official he sounded. “We don’t know how Martha Whittiker died.” He shot Wilbur Berg a look. “If she is, indeed, deceased. Let’s show a little respect for Mrs. Whittiker and not be running off at the mouth about her when you have absolutely no information.”
That shut them up. It would until he was out of sight, but that was the best he could do. He walked down the little stone path to the door of the cottage where Martha Whittiker allowed her druggie grandson to live. Word had it Dylan wasn’t just an addict but a dealer. Liam didn’t know that to be fact, but most rumors had a least a kernel of truth in them and Liam figured this one had a whole ear of corn. All of which begged the question: what possible motive could the boy have to harm his grandmother — biting the hand that feeds you and all that?
Wilbur Berg had dipped under the extension cord Liam had given to Fish and followed Liam to the door, babbling as he came.
“… asked me three days ago did I want her chest freezer and of course I said yes. Seen her car in the driveway so I knew she was home but when I knocked on her door she didn’t answer and I found her laying right where she is now.”
Liam was about to ask how Wilbur’d seen the woman on the floor in the cottage when the curtains on the windows were drawn tight shut, but Wilbur answered before he had a chance.
“Oh, I went looking everywhere — her car being in the driveway and all. Searched her house but she wasn’t nowhere, so I come here next.”
“The door to the cottage was closed, but you opened it?”
“Sure I opened it. How else could I have got inside?”
Wilbur likely saw the disapproval on Liam’s face.
“But I didn’t touch nothing, didn’t ‘contaminate the crime scene.’ I watch Hill Street Blues.”
Well, at least he hadn’t—
“You ain’t supposed to move the body of somebody’s been murdered because you might mess up something.” Wilbur paused, then continued proudly. “So I didn’t do nothing.”
Liam had time for one breath.
“Except, you know, cover her up, of course. Couldn’t just leave her laying there like that! So I took the afghan off the couch, rolled her over and laid it down, then rolled her back and covered her. Got blood on my shoe but I wiped it off. Wasn’t hardly no blood at all but I’m squeamish so I came outside then and vomited.”
Liam felt like vomiting, too.
Still, Wilbur hadn’t dragged the team of Clydesdales and the Budweiser beer wagon through the place, so there was that.
“Looked to me like there was blood on the front door, but I knew better than to touch it. I watch all them cop shows.”
Liam glanced at the front door and saw smudges that could possibly have been blood.
On the outside of the door.
If she was murdered in the cottage, the killer might have gotten her blood on his hands and smeared it on the door when he left. But he would have smeared it on the inside of the door, not the outside. Only way there’d be blood on the outside of the door was if somebody had it on their hands going in.