Cruel and Unusual - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 22

Susan took X rays and slipped them through the processor while I went over the front of the body with a lens. I collected a number of barely visible whitish fibers, quite possibly from the sheet or her bed covers, and found others similar to the ones on the bottoms of her socks. She wore no jewelry and was naked beneath her gown. I remembered the rumpled covers on her bed, the pillows propped against the headboard and glass of water on the table. The night of her death she had put curlers in her hair, gotten undressed, and at some point, perhaps, had been reading in bed.

Susan emerged from the developer room and leaned against the wall, supporting the small of her back with her hands.

“What's the story on this lady?” she asked. “Was she married?”

“It appears she lived alone.”

“Did she work?”

“She ran a business out of her home.”

Something caught my eye.

“What sort of business?”

“Possibly fortune-telling of sorts.”

The feather was very small and sooty, clinging to Jennifer Deighton's gown in the area of her left hip. Reaching for a small plastic bag, I tried to recall if I'd noticed any feathers around her house. Perhaps the pillows on herbed were filled with feathers.

“Did you find any evidence she was into the occult?”

“Some of her neighbors seemed to think she was a witch,” I said.

“Based on what?”

“There's a church near her house. Allegedly, the lights in the steeple starting going on and off after she moved in some months ago.”

“You're kidding.”

“I saw them go on myself when I was leaving the scene. The steeple was dark. Then suddenly it was lit up.”

“Weird.”

“It was weird.”

“Maybe it's on a timer.”

“Unlikely. Lights going on and off all night would not conserve electricity. If it's true they go on and off all night. I saw it happen only once.”

Susan did not say anything.

“Possibly there's a short in the wiring.”

In fact, I thought as I continued to work, I would call the church. They might be unaware of the problem.

“Any strange stuff inside her house?”

“Crystals. Some unusual books.”

Silence.

Then Susan said, “I wish you'd told me earlier.”

“Pardon?”

I glanced up. She was staring uneasily at the body. She looked pale.

“Are you sure you're feeling all right?”

I asked.

“I don't like stuff like this.”

“Stuff like what?”

“It's like someone having AIDS or something. It ought to be told up front. Especially now.”

“It's unlikely this woman has AIDS or -”

“I should have been told. Before I touched her.”

“Susan -”

“I went to school with a girl who was a witch.”

I stopped what I was doing. Susan was rigid against the wall, hands pressed against her belly.

“Her name was Doreen. She belonged to a coven and our senior year she put a curse on my twin sister, Judy. Judy was killed in a car wreck two weeks before graduation.”

Bewildered, I stared at her.

“You know how occult stuff creeps me out! Like that cow's tongue with needles stuck in it that the cops brought in a couple of months ago. The one wrapped up in a list of dead people's names. It was left on a grave.”

“It was a prank,” I reminded her calmly.”

The tongue came from a grocery store, and the names were meaningless, copied from headstones in the cemetery.”

“You shouldn't tamper with the satanic, prank or not.” Her voice trembled. “I take evil just as seriously as God.”

Susan was the daughter of a minister and had abandoned religion long ago. I'd never heard her so much as allude to Satan or mention God unless it was profanely. I'd never known her to be the least bit superstitious or unnerved by anything. She was about to cry.

“Tell you what,” I said quietly. “Since it appears I'm going to be short-staffed today, if you'll answer the phones upstairs, I'll take care of things down here.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and I immediately went to her.

“It's okay.”

Putting my arm around her, I walked her out of the room. “Come on,” I said gently as she leaned against me, sobbing. “You want Ben to take you home?”

She nodded, whispering, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

“All you need is a little rest.”

I sat her in a chair inside the morgue office and reached for the phone.

Jennifer Deighton had inhaled no carbon monoxide or soot because by the time she had been placed inside her car she was no longer breathing. Her death was a homicide, an obvious one, and throughout the afternoon I impatiently left messages for Marino to call me. Several times I tried to check on Susan but her phone just rang and rang.

“I'm concerned,” I said to Ben Stevens. “Susan's not answering her phone. When you drove her home, did she mention that she was planning to go somewhere?”

“She told me she was going to bed.”

He was sitting at his desk, going through reams of computer printouts. Rock and roll played quietly from the radio on a bookcase, and he was drinking tangerine flavored mineral water. Stevens was young, smart, and boyishly good looking. He worked hard, and played hard in singles bars, so I had been UK. I was quite certain his job as my administrator would prove to be a short step on his way to someplace better.

“Maybe she unplugged her phone so she could sleep,” he said, turning on his adding machine.

“Maybe that's it.”

He launched into an update on our budget woes.

Late afternoon when it was beginning to get dark out, Stevens buzzed my line.

“Susan called. She ill she won't be in tomorrow. And I've got a John Deighton on hold. Says he's Jennifer Deighton's brother.” Stevens transferred the call.

“Hello. They said you did my sister's autopsy,” a man mumbled. “Uh, Jennifer Deighton's my sister.”

“Your name, please?”

“John Deighton. I live in Columbia, South Carolina.”

I glanced up as Marino appeared in my office doorway, and motioned forhim to take a chair.

“They said she hooked up a hose to her car and killed herself.”

“Who said that” I asked. “And could you speak up, please?”

He hesitated. “I don't remember the name, should've wrote it down but I was too shocked.”

The man didn't sound shocked. His voice was so muffled I barely could hear what he was saying.

“Mr. Deighton, I'm very sorry,” I said. “But you will have to request any information regarding her death in writing. I will also need, included with your written request, some verification that you are next of kin.”

He did not respond.

“Hello?”

I asked. “Hello?”

I was answered by a dial tone.

“That's strange, “I said to Marino. “Are you familiar with a John Deighton who claims to be Jennifer Deighton's brother?”

“That's who that was? Shit. We're trying to reach him.

“He said someone's already notified him about her death.”

“You know where he was calling from?”

“Columbia, South Carolina, supposedly. He hung up on me.”

Marino didn't seem interested. “I just came from Vander's office,” he said, referring to Neils Vander, the chief fingerprints examiner. “He checked out Jennifer Deighton's car, plus the books that were beside her bed and a poem that was stuck inside one of 'em. As for the sheet of blank paper that was on her bed, he hasn't gotten to that yet.”

“Anything so far?”

“He lifted a few. Will run them through the computer if there's a need. Probably most of the prints are hers. Here.”

He placed a small paper bag on my desk. “Happy reading.”

“I think you're going to want those prints run without delay,” I said grimly.

A shadow passed over Marino's eyes. He massaged his temples.

“Jennifer Deighton definitely did not commit suicide,” I informed him. “Her CO was less than seven percent. She had no soot in her airway. The bright pink tint of her skin was due to exposure to cold, not CO poisoning.”