A Cold Christmas (6 page)

“Doc Fisher's on his way,” Osey said. “Riley's outside seeing what he can find.”

Riley had no experience in field investigations, but in these perilous times … “Pictures, Gunny,” she told the kid sitting in a curve, arms around bent legs, forehead resting on his knees.

A slight mention that she would do it if he'd hand her his camera had him pulling himself off the floor and snapping shots. He had to stop now and then to close his eyes and take a few deep breaths.

“The little girl found him,” Osey said. “Around seven this morning. Bonnie. She's six.”

Susan slipped on a pair of latex gloves so she wouldn't accidentally leave anything foreign at the scene. “Is she upset?”

“Doesn't seem to be. She says he was an evil prince. Apparently getting shoved face first in a furnace is rightful punishment for an evil prince. Her mother's pretty shook up, though. I couldn't get much out of her and I didn't want to push it. I was afraid she'd lose it.”

“Where is she?”

He pointed up. “First bedroom off the hallway. She's herded all the kids in there and has them scared half to death by the way she's acting.”

“Crying, hysterical, what?”

“No, ma'am. Calm, kind of like wood, and very very pale. More like ashen.”

Officer White stuck his head around the doorway at the top of the stairs. “Doc Fisher is here.”

Owen Fisher, a barrel-chested man with an abundance of white hair and startlingly dark eyebrows, lumbered down the steps.

“What took you so long?” she said.

“I was Christmas shopping with my wife. It's the season, in case it escaped your notice.” He stood still and looked long at the body. Most men she knew would be happy to be called away from shopping, but not many would be thrilled to be called away to view a body with its head in a furnace and the acrid smell of burnt flesh in the air. Bodies were Fisher's life. He was happy to be called from anything, even deep sleep, to see a body in any condition, the grislier the better. Simply a greater challenge, as far as he was concerned.

“How long has he been there?” Fisher asked.

“We're waiting for you to tell us,” Susan said. “He was found at seven.”

“Enough pictures?” Fisher asked.

Susan nodded.

“Let's get him back a ways and turn him.”

Owen Fisher and Osey pulled the body farther from the furnace and turned him face up. Fisher whistled softly. Osey turned slightly pale. Even Susan felt a little queasy. She could hear Gunny rapidly swallowing the excess saliva that collects just before vomiting.

“If you contaminate this scene,” she said, “you're fired.”

He put down the camera and fled.

The dead man's face had been burned to a grotesque blistered mass of something inhuman. Intense hatred or an attempt to keep his identity from being known?

She was horrified by the viciousness of the act and somewhat dismayed at her selfish thought that she couldn't leave town with a homicide on tap. Reardon's job offer would be pushed to the back of her mind.

“Somebody sure didn't like him.” Owen opened a black medical bag, got a thermometer, and sliced into the liver to take the body's temperature, peered at the face and pinched the skin on one arm.

“How long has he been dead?” Susan said.

“You always ask.”

“Right. Give me a guess. Then you can cart him away and do your chopping.”

“Twelve to eighteen hours, I'd say. The temperature down here will have to be factored in.”

“How did he die?”

“Well, that's a puzzlement, isn't it? I'd say gunshot right through the heart. Should be easy enough to verify once I get him on the table.”

“Gunny?” Susan called.

“Uh—yeah?” Gunner's voice came from the top of the stairs.

“Camcorder.”

Gunny clattered down the stairs and did a camcording of the basement. Osey gently eased the wallet from the victim's back pocket, got fingerprints, and then opened it.

“The driver's license says his name is Tim Holiday,” Osey said. “Fourteen dollars in bills, twenty-eight cents in change, and one credit card with the same name.”

Susan left them to it and went upstairs. In the bedroom, she found Caley leaning back against a stack of pillows, unmoving and, as Osey had said, extremely pale. Bonnie was crying. Adam was watching his mother, warily. Zach was sitting on the edge of the bed methodically kicking the heel of a black and silver western-style boot against the floor.

A jumble of stuffed animals was pushed to the foot of the bed. A cardboard box held a pile of toys with tanks and action figures prominent. Clothes covered the floor. Bookshelves spilled over with books. Pictures of soldiers and spacemen were tacked to the walls.

“I need to talk with you,” Susan said to Caley. “In the kitchen.”

“I can't leave them.”

“They'll be fine. We'll just be in the kitchen.”

“No, Mommy.” Bonnie threw herself on Caley's lap and wailed. “Don't go.”

Caley looked at Susan as though to say, You see.

“They'll be fine,” Susan repeated. “I'll make sure of it.”

Zach, the twelve-year-old, gave her an accusing look. “You're the police chief,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Aren't you supposed to see that this kind of stuff doesn't happen?”

While it wasn't exactly logical, she got his point. If a stranger could be killed and mutilated in their basement, how could he trust her to take care of his siblings? Susan didn't know enough about kids to come up with an answer. She went to the kitchen and told the paramedics they were free to move the body as soon as Dr. Fisher gave the word, then called the department.

“Hazel, I need somebody, anybody, over here. Could you find a female officer to stay with three kids while I question the mother?”

In ten minutes Luke Demarco marched—and
marched
was exactly the word—into the kitchen. Oh Lord, Hazel, wasn't there anyone else? Anyone? Demarco was ex-military, tall, dark hair cut short, thin face with a square jaw, broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. Lean, mean, and hard. What would he do to three already traumatized kids?

“Follow me,” she said, and led him to the bedroom. She told him to watch the children and told Caley to come with her. If Demarco was surprised or annoyed, it didn't appear in his wooden expression.

In the kitchen, Caley blinked like she was just coming out of a spell and looked around. She reached for the empty glass coffee carafe. “Would you like some coffee?”

“I'd like that very much,” Susan said as she sat at the table, not because she wanted more caffeine jangling through her bloodstream but to give Caley a familiar task to do. While her hands went through a routine that didn't need thinking about, her nerves could slow and she might loosen her tight control, maybe get her color back to normal.

After the coffee dripped through, Caley pushed a mug of very black liquid across the table and sat down with her hands wrapped around a second mug.

“Tell me about the man in your basement,” Susan said.

“Who is he?”

“You don't know?”

“How can I know? I couldn't see his— Is it Tim?”

“Tim?” Susan repeated.

“That's the only name I know. The furnace repairman. It was on his—” Caley vaguely waved her fingers across her chest.

“Tell me about him.”

“I don't know anything, except he is—was incompetent. Terrible. He had to come back a second time to get it right. He—” She seemed to remember the man was dead and she should be respectful. “When did he die?”

“We're waiting for Dr. Fisher to do an autopsy. He can tell us more after that. Probably sometime yesterday afternoon.”

Caley turned pale again. “You mean he was here, down there, all night?”

“Where were you yesterday?”

“Church.” Caley gave her a weak smile. “How's that for an alibi?”

“All day?”

“In the morning. I played for the services.”

“Both eight and eleven?”

Caley nodded.

“What did you do between services?”

“Came home to check on the kids. They were fine, waiting for their father to pick them up.”

“What time did he pick them up?”

Caley scratched at a hole in the vinyl tablecloth. “How did he die?”

Usually that was the first question asked. “We don't know yet.”

“Wasn't it an accident?”

“Dr. Fisher will be able to help.”

Caley scratched her hand down her face as though wiping away the vision of a man with his head stuffed in her furnace.

“It's just— He was kind of creepy. Looked like he would drool over books about Ted Bundy.”

“What do you mean?”

Oh—he just—” With one finger, Caley smoothed the edges of the hole. “He looked like those pictures you see of psychopaths who killed dozens of people and you wonder why anybody would let them get close enough to— You know.”

“You let Tim in.”

“Well, I was expecting him. I called to get the furnace fixed and he came. We were freezing.” She started to get up. “I have to check on my children.”

“They're fine,” Susan said. “Officer Demarco is with them.”

Caley almost smiled. “I hope he's brave and strong.”

“The bravest and the strongest.” Susan didn't know about giving three innocent children over to Demarco. Would he terrorize them so much they'd have to tell it to some shrink thirty years from now?

“This man was creepy…” Susan prompted.

“Yeah. I thought it was just the way he looked, you know. Like being nearsighted or having brown hair. He just looked—weird. Then there was the snake.”

“Snake?” What the hell kind of case was this?

Caley explained, and added, “Black snake, he said. Harmless.”

“You had never seen, the children had never seen, this snake in the basement?”

“Never. Believe me, I would have had it removed.”

“Would the children have told you about it if they had seen it?”

“Well—”

“What?” Susan said.

“Zach would have told me. The Littles— Adam might have found it interesting to just have it there, so he could study it, and Bonnie … she loves everything. Not only furry things, but birds and insects and— She'll barely let me kill a mosquito. If she thought it might be hurt she wouldn't have said a word. She's apt to weave everything into some story in her mind. Fairy tales with spells and wizards and princes and—she might have decided the snake was someone a wizard had cast a spell on. Who knows what she might have thought.”

“What time did you get back from the second service?”

“About twelve-thirty.”

“Where were the children?”

Caley bristled. “They were with their father.”

“His name?”

“You don't believe me? I don't blame you. It's a rare occurrence. Henry James.”

“Excuse me?”

“My ex-husband. His name is Henry Matheison James. Affectionately known as Mat.” Caley pressed the heels of her hands hard against her temples. “My head is going to explode. Is it all right if I take some Advil?”

Susan nodded. She asked for the name of the company Tim Holiday had worked for and why Caley had called that particular place. “I'll need to talk with the children.”

“Not unless I'm there.” Caley stared at her, fangs showing, claws extended.

“I'll be very careful,” Susan said. “I won't hurt them.”

“Not without me.” Caley said.

“Of course,” Susan said, but only because she had no choice. Children were usually more forthcoming without their parents. With a parent present they said only what they thought the parent would approve of.

All three children were crawling around on the floor in Adam's bedroom, picking up bits of paper or dirt or debris. Caley's eyes widened in amazement. The room that had been in shambles was now perfectly neat, toys all put in boxes and stacked on shelves, clothes neatly arranged in closets, books lined up according to size.

“Hi, Mommy,” the little girl said. “We're playing Marine.”

“He wants to see nothing but elbows and assholes,” Adam said in a voice as deep as he could make it.

Susan looked at Demarco and choked on a laugh. Caley looked at him with awe. He stood at attention, face expressionless. “It gave them something to do while we waited,” he said.

Susan asked them if they'd ever seen the repairman anywhere before. At school or ice-skating or the library.

“You mean the evil prince?” Bonnie asked. “He was trying to steal the princess.”

“School's out till January,” Adam informed her.

Zach seem worried, but Susan thought it was concern about his mother. She'd try to speak with him when he was alone, but on the whole she thought there was nothing any of them could tell her.

Adam had nothing to say, except he thought it was cool to have a dead guy in his basement. Susan felt it was something he was eager to relate to his friends. Bonnie told a convoluted tale about a beautiful princess who lived in a castle and rode a golden horse. One day the evil prince made the horse stumble and he kidnapped the princess. A handsome man with a little girl of his own saved the beautiful princess.

Susan gravely thanked the children, apologized to Caley for any inconvenience, and said she might be back with more questions. She nodded at Demarco to come with her.

*   *   *

From the living room window, Caley watched Chief Wren and the other cop get into separate cars. When they were gone she found Bonnie in her own bedroom.

“Bonnie, did your daddy stay with you all day yesterday?

“Sure.”

“The whole time? Even when you were having lunch?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And when you were ice-skating?”