Cruel and Unusual - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 25

It was typed on a sheet of white paper smudged purple with Ninhydrin and enclosed in a plastic bag:

Jenny's kisses many

warmed the copper penny

wedded to her neck

with cotton string.

It was in the spring

when he had found it

on the dusty drive

beside the meadow

and given it to her.

No words of passion

spoken.

He loved her

with a token.

The meadow now is brown

and overgrown with brambles.

He is gone.

The coin asleep

is cold

down deep

in a woodland

wishing pond.

There was no date, no name of the author. The paper was creased from having been folded in quarters. I got up and went into the living room, where Lucy had set coffee and tea on the table and was stirring the fire.

“Aren't you hungry?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact, I am,” I, said, glancing over the poem again and wondering what it meant. Was “Jenny” Jennifer Deighton? “What would you like to eat?”

“Believe it or not, steak. But only if it's good and the cows haven't been fed a bunch of chemicals,” Lucy said. “Is it possible you could bring home a car from work so I could use yours this week?”

“I generally don't bring home the state car unless I'm on call.”

“You went to a scene last night when you supposedly weren't on call. You're always on call, Aunt Kay.”

“All right,” I said. “Why don't we do this. We'll go get the best steak in town. Afterward, we'll stop by the office and drive the wagon home and you can take my car. There's still a little ice on the roads in spots. You have to promise to be extra careful.”

“I've never seen your office.”

“I'll show it to you if you wish.”

“No way. Not at night.”

“The dead can't hurt you.”

“Yes, they can,” Lucy said. “Dad hurt me when he died. He left me to be raised by Mom.”

“Let's get our coats.”

“Why is it that every time I bring up anything germane to our dysfunctional family, you change the subject?”

I headed to my bedroom for my coat “Do you want to borrow my black leather jacket?”

“See, you're doing it again,” she screamed.

We argued all the way to Ruth's Chris Steak House, and by the time I parked the car I had a headache and was completely disgusted with myself. Lucy had provoked me into raising my voice, and the only other person who could routinely do that was my mother.

“Why are you being so difficult?” I said in her ear as we were shown to a table.

“I want to talk to you and you won't let me,” she said.

A waiter instantly appeared for drink orders.

“Dewar's and soda, “I said.

“Sparkling water with a twist,” Lucy said. “You shouldn't drink and drive.”

“I'm having only one. But you're right. I'd be better off not having any. And you're being critical again. How can you expect to have friends if you talk to people this way?”

“I don't expect to have friends.” She stared off. “It's others who expect me to have friends. Maybe I don't want any friends because most people bore me.”

Despair pressed against my heart. “I think you want friends more than anyone I know, Lucy.”

“I'm sure you think that. And you probably also think I should get married in a couple of years.”

“Not at all. In fact, I sincerely hope you won't.”

“While I was roaming around inside your computer today, I saw the file called 'flesh.'

Why do you have a file called that?” my niece asked.

“Because I'm in the middle of a very difficult case.”

“The little boy named Eddie Heath? I saw his record in the case file. He was found with no clothes on, next to a Dumpster. Someone had cut out parts of his skin.”

“Lucy, you shouldn't read case records,” I said as my pager went off. I unclipped it from the waistband of my abs and glanced at the number.

“Excuse me for a moment” I said, getting up from the table as our drinks arrived.

I found a pay phone. It was almost eight P.M…

“I need to talk to you,” said Neils Vander, who was still at the office. “You might want to come down here and bring by Ronnie Waddell's ten print cards.”

“Why?”

“We've got an unprecedented problem. I'm about to call Marino, too.”

“All right. Tell him to meet me at the morgue in a half hour.”

When I returned to the table, Lucy knew by the look on my face that I was about to ruin another evening.

“I'm so sorry,” I said.

“Where are we going?”

“To my office, then to the Seaboard Building.”

I got out my billfold.

“What's in the Seaboard Building?”

“It's where the serology, DNA, and fingerprint labs moved not so long ago. Marino's going to meet us,” I said. “Its been a long time since you've seen him.”

“Jerks like him don't change or get better with time.”

“Lucy, that's unkind. Marino is not a jerk.”

“He was last time I was here.”

“You weren't exactly nice to him, either.”

“I didn't call him a smartass brat.”

“You called him a number of other names, as I recall, and were continually correcting his grammar.”

A half hour later, I left Lucy inside the morgue office while I hurried upstairs. Unlocking the credenza, I retrieved Waddell's case file, and no sooner had I boarded the elevator when the buzzer sounded from the bay. Marino was dressed in jeans and a dark blue parka, his balding head warmed by a Richmond Braves baseball cap.

“You two remember each other, don't you?”

I said. “Lucy's visiting me for Christmas and is helping out with a computer problem,” I explained as we walked out into the cold night air.

The Seaboard Building was across the street from the parking lot behind the morgue and cater-cornered to the front of Main Street Station, where the Health Department's administrative offices had relocated while its former building was being stripped of asbestos. The cock in Main Street Station's tower floated high above us like a hunter's moon, and red lights atop high buildings blinked slow warnings to low-flying planes. Somewhere in the dark, a train lumbered along its tracks, the earth rumbling and creaking like a ship at sea.

Marino walked ahead of us, the tip of his cigarette glow glowing at intervals. He did not want Lucy here, and I knew she sensed it. When he reached the Seaboard Building, where supplies had been loaded onto boxcars around the tithe of the Civil War, I rang the bell outside the door. Vander appeared almost immediately to let us in He did not greet Marino or ask who Lucy was. If a creature from outer space were to accompany someone he trusted, Vander would not ask any questions or expect to be introduced. We followed him up a flight of stairs to the second floor, where old corridors and offices had been repainted in shades of gunmetal gray and refurnished with cherry-finished desks and bookcases and teal upholstered chairs.

“What are you working on so late?” I asked as we entered the room housing the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, known as AFIS.

“Jennifer Deighton's case,” he said.

“Then what do you want with Waddell's ten print cards?” I asked, perplexed.

“I want to be sure it was Waddell you autopsied last week,” Vander said bluntly.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Marino looked at him in astonishment.

“I'm getting ready to show you.”

Vander seated himself before the remote input terminal, which looked like an everyday PC. It was connected by modem to the State Police computer, on which resided a data base of more than six million fingerprints. He hit several keys, activating the laser printer.

“Perfect scores are few and far between, but we got one here.”

Vander began typing, and a bright white fingerprint filled the seen. “Right index finger, plain whorl.”

He pointed to the vortex of lines swirling behind glass. “A damn good partial recovered from Jennifer Deighton's house.”