Murder In the Past Tense (A Giorgio Salvatori Mystery Book 2) (19 page)

By that afternoon, the body buried next to the basement window had been removed, and they’d found a skeleton wrapped in an old tarp under the tree. McCready had also found anomalies in the ground beneath the pond with the GPR unit, which meant the pond had to be drained and removed. Tents and teams of police officers and forensics personnel had overrun the property, and the Johnson’s nice backyard now looked like a mining operation.

There was a crime investigation van pulled up in the driveway, along with the medical examiner’s van and several police cars parked at the street. Uniformed police officers were positioned along the front sidewalk.

A tent sat in front of the garage, complete with work tables and forensics equipment, while an ambulance was ready to transport the remains. The M.E. called Giorgio over at one point to look at the girl who had been buried by the tree.

“I wanted you to see this,” he said. “The bones are still pretty dirty, but right here, in her left chest cavity, there are several nicks consistent with knife wounds.”

Giorgio flinched, remembering that this was the girl who looked as if her breast had been removed. The doctor looked over at him.

“And there are similar marks on other bones in places that wouldn’t kill her – at least right away.”

“You think she was tortured?” Giorgio said without emotion.

The man’s gray eyes didn’t waver. “Yes,” he said. “But also, she’s missing her big toes. Someone hacked them off.”

“Can you tell how she died?” Giorgio wondered out loud.

He shook his head. “Too early to tell.”

The doctor gestured to his assistant to bring a body bag and then he moved over to where they had laid the body that came from the back door.

As the M.E. carefully sorted through the jumble of bones, he gestured to Giorgio.

“Look here,” he said. “More cuts on these bones. These are her rib bones. And it looks like she’s lost at least a couple of fingers.

The M.E. studied the bones a moment, and then said, “I’d say this is also a young woman.”

He turned with a resolute expression. “I’ll get as much information as I can about these girls and their deaths,” he said. “And then I hope you fry the bastard who did this.”

Giorgio nodded. “Thanks. We’ve got to get busy on that pond,” he said, and turned to find McCready.

They drained the pond and used sledgehammers to disassemble it. More officers were brought in to remove the bricks and plaster. Then the dogs were brought in again. Bones immediately marked a spot right where the middle of the pond would have been.

The news that there was a body beneath the pond flat lined all activity for a moment. Everyone stood and stared.

They’d been working for so many hours that the gravity of the situation hadn’t sunk in. Finally, it did. They’d found three bodies buried in someone’s back yard. A backyard that kids and families had probably played in over the years. How many others would they find?

“C’mon,” Giorgio finally said to everyone. He looked at the darkening sky. “We need to get this done before it rains.”

That reanimated the group, and they went back to work. Giorgio walked over to where Todd Atwater was resting the dogs.

“Ready to go back to work?” Giorgio said.

The handler looked up, a bottle of water in his hand. “Sure. Front yard?”

“No,” Giorgio said. “We have a search warrant for the basement.”

The man’s eyebrows shot up, but he just nodded and stood up.

“Okay, let’s go.”

Giorgio led Atwater, his assistant and the two dogs to the basement, with Rocky trailing behind.

“My own dog seemed nervous about being down here yesterday,” Giorgio explained as they went down the steps. “He sniffed those bookcases and then acted like he was scared of something.”

Giorgio pointed to the wall of shelves at the opposite end of the room when they reached the bottom. Atwater regarded the bookcases and then approached them, Molly in tow.

“They won’t smell anything underneath the concrete,” he said, glancing down to the floor.

“I know,” Giorgio responded. “But Grosvenor sniffed the drain first and then made a beeline for the bookcase. Whatever he picked up really bothered him.”

Atwater turned to the bookcase again, leaned over and patted Molly’s head, released her leash and then gave her the command to search. She immediately put her nose to the floor and started moving back and forth.

Her nose took her to the drain in the middle of the floor. Then, just like Grosvenor, she followed a trail back across the floor to the center bookcase. She pushed her nose right up to the bottom and sucked in several breaths. Then, she lay down and looked up at Atwater, allowing a whine to bubble up from her throat.

His eyebrows arched. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Looks like you’re going to have to move those bookcases.”

Giorgio turned to one of the other officers. “Call Mulhaney. We need pictures first.”

There were three sets of shelving units in all, set side by side. Each was about four feet wide and made of heavy oak, but painted a deep gray. Each unit had five shelves equally spaced apart. The bottom shelf on all four units ended about two inches above the floor, with a faceplate of wood that capped it off, hiding the unit’s underbelly.

After Mulhaney had taken photos, Giorgio found a crowbar and removed the faceplate on the center unit. Then, using a flashlight, he got down on the floor on his right shoulder and flashed the beam underneath.

“There are rolling casters down here.”

Rocky knelt down, bent over and examined the area Giorgio had illuminated.

“Damn. What about the others?”

Giorgio removed the face plate on the right bookcase and shined a flashlight underneath.

“No casters here.”

“So only the center one moves,” Rocky said. “Maybe there’s a hidden door or something back there.”

“Well, no one’s ever found the root cellar,” Giorgio said, standing up and wiping dust off his hands.

Giorgio bent over and studied the floor. “Look at this,” he said to Rocky.

He pointed to faint grooves in the concrete that curved away from the center bookcase.

“If I’m not mistaken, these grooves will match up to those casters under the bookcase.”

Rocky nodded. “No mystery there,” he said.

Giorgio called to one of the officers who had come down with them.

“We need an electric screwdriver,” he said.

The officer disappeared up the stairs, while he and Rocky began removing the boxes and canisters from the shelves. When everything had been removed, they yanked on the bookcase. It didn’t budge.

A moment later, the officer returned with the screwdriver. Rocky took it, gauged the size of screw head they would need, plugged in the driver and went to work in the upper right corner of the bookcase.

“It’s bolted right into the concrete wall,” Rocky said, straining to get the first bolt out.

Because the screws had been painted over several times, it took some time to get them loose. What finally dropped out were 3 inch concrete screws. They found two more at the bottom corners. When those two came out, the entire unit seemed to relax.

“Someone didn’t want this thing moved,” Rocky said. He put down the screwdriver and glanced at his brother. “Ready?”

Giorgio took a deep breath. “Not really. I’m not sure what we’re going to find.”

While the handlers, three officers and Fong looked on, the brothers each took a side of the massive unit. On the count of three, they pulled.

The unit hesitated, as if held back by fifty years of secrets. Then it released and inched forward.

It took some grunting and groaning, but the bookcase finally cleared its neighboring units, and Rocky was able to swing the whole unit out from the wall to the left. When he did, the rollers skated across the concrete floor almost exactly where the indentations were.

Behind it was a mass of cobwebs, dirt, and bugs. And behind all of that was an old, rotting wooden door that hung off its hinges.

“Shit!” Rocky said as he stared at the door. “Now even
I
have a bad feeling.”

Giorgio turned and asked Fong for a towel. A moment later, he was wiping away the bugs and cobwebs.

“Don’t forget to glove-up,” Fong said, handing over a couple of pairs of latex gloves.

“You really think there will be fingerprints left after all these years?” Giorgio said.

“Don’t know,” the man said. “But it’s better to be careful.”

Giorgio put on the gloves and then grabbed the flashlight.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said to Rocky.

The door hung inwards off one metal hinge. They pushed it all the way open, nearly pulling it free from the bent metal casing. As Giorgio stepped onto the landing of the old, rickety staircase, he was met with a flood of musty, damp air from below. He flicked on the flashlight, revealing a set of old wooden steps and a railing that led down.

Rocky peered around the corner and down the steps with a shudder. “I wonder how many rats are down there. I don’t much like rats. After you, Sherlock,” Rocky nodded to Giorgio.

Giorgio paused, feeling a heavy weight in the middle of his chest. This was the yin and yang of police work. There was the exhilaration of finding something that could blow a case wide open, and the chilling anticipation of what that find might actually mean.

He paused and took a deep breath. Then he began his descent.

The staircase shifted under his weight and the ancient steps creaked and groaned, sounding like the sound effects from every horror movie he’d ever seen. He waved the towel in front of him to remove cobwebs and dust motes, as he dropped into a well of inky blackness.

The flashlight beam bounced around, revealing snapshots of a small empty room with brick walls and a hard-packed dirt floor. The cellar was only about ten feet square. A sagging ceiling was held up by solid wooden columns in each corner and one in the center of the room.

Giorgio stepped off the last step and glanced around. An old dangling light bulb socket hung from the center of the ceiling, its bulb long gone. The floor was uneven and there was no furniture, no shelving, nothing that spoke to the sordid past Giorgio firmly believed it had. But as the flashlight splayed across the dirt floor, it revealed darkened splotches.

“It’s okay,” he called up to Rocky. “C’mon down.”

He moved into the room, as he heard Rocky come down behind him. Giorgio crouched down to examine an area by the far wall.

Something had seeped into the dirt, leaving a jagged demarcation between it and the surrounding soil. He reached out and touched it and then rubbed his index finger and thumb together. It wasn’t oily. Whatever it was had dried completely. And he knew by instinct that it couldn’t be anything but blood.

“What’d you find?” Rocky said from behind him.

Giorgio straightened up.

“Not sure. We need some lights down here. Then we’ll need Molly and maybe Bones.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

As late afternoon became evening, the team brought in electric generators and scoop lights to allow them to work outside after dark. They also strung long extension cords into the basement to set up pole lights. Finally, they brought the dogs down. Molly signaled four spots on the packed dirt floor. For training purposes, Atwater allowed Bones the same opportunity and he hit every spot.

“The earth is much damper down here,” Atwater said to Giorgio. “I think that’s why there’s still the scent of human decomp.”

Giorgio nodded and called in the forensics team.

By the time Giorgio emerged from the house to get some fresh air, they had found four more skeletons, along with the partial skeletal remains of two others. It had been dark outside for some time and the scene in the backyard reminded him of a night-time movie set, minus the actors. The lovely pond had been removed and was now just a pile of concrete rubble. A big hole had been dug right in the center, where the third body had been found. The area under the basement window had also been dug up and the second body removed.

A tired and haggard-looking Mulhaney cornered Giorgio, a haunted look etched into his normally friendly features.

“You know, Joe, I’ve worked for this department for more than seven years,” he said grimly, “In all that time, I think we only worked four murder cases. Now, between the monastery murders and this, we’ve encountered more dead bodies than in my whole career here.”

“I know,” Giorgio replied, feeling his own spirits weighted down by the enormity of it all. “But now we need to focus on finding out who these remains belong to and then work to bring whoever did this to justice.”

“How the hell are we going to do that?” Mulhaney said, glancing back at the chaos behind them. “These bodies are so old. The perp must be long gone. Maybe dead.”

Giorgio looked up at Mulhaney, who was a good three inches taller than him.

“Maybe. But we owe it to the families to try.”

Mulhaney nodded and went back to work, videotaping the remains as they came out of the ground.

Every inch of the backyard and side yards had now been scanned twice, and the dogs had signaled one more location along the side of the house. Cops and forensics techs were busy digging up that location and the basement. Both dogs had been allowed to go home. News vans had lined Lima Street for hours, and pools of onlookers strained to catch a glimpse of something they could record on their cell phones.

But by ten-thirty that night, the curious spectators had dispersed and the team was packed up and ready to leave. They would resume their work the next day, when they would scan the front yard for good measure. Giorgio felt confident they wouldn’t find anything there, since the yard was too visible to prying eyes. But it had to be done. He stationed officers overnight at the front corners of the property and in the back yard.

Once the chaos had died down and the big house was dark, with only a few security lights illuminating the back yard, Giorgio and Rocky stood side-by-side as the rest of the police personnel dragged themselves down the long driveway to their cars.

“Wanna get something to eat before you go home?” Rocky asked.

Giorgio turned bleary eyes in his direction. “Yeah. That pizza we ate tasted like cardboard. Mama’s should still be open if we hurry.”

They took separate cars and met at Mama’s Café a few minutes later. The place was almost empty and would be closing in less than twenty minutes. But Eve, the waitress on duty, allowed them in.

“You guys must be exhausted,” she said, following them to a table. “Everyone’s been watching it on the news.” She handed them menus and then took out her order tablet. “It’s too late to do anything like fried chicken, but there’s meatloaf left and it was pretty good. It’s on the house,” she said proudly.

Eve stood poised and ready to write. Giorgio just slid the menu back to her without even looking at it.

“The meatloaf sounds great.”

“Me, too,” Rocky said.

“Okay,” she said. “And two Cokes?”

“Just water for me,” Giorgio replied. “I need to sleep tonight.”

“Same for me,” Rocky concurred.

Eve left to get their dinners, and the brothers sat motionless for a few moments. Giorgio felt like someone had poked a hole in him and drained him of any life-giving fluids. To say he was exhausted was putting it mildly.

“So how did you know?” Rocky suddenly said. “I mean, really?”

Giorgio glanced over at his brother. Rocky’s eyes were dull and lifeless with fatigue.

“I’ve never thought this was just about Lisa Farmer,” he replied.

“Why?” his brother asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe because of the people involved. Maybe because of the way she was disposed of. It just didn’t seem like a random murder. Someone went to a lot of trouble to hide her body. There had to be a reason.”

“But we don’t even know yet whether all of these other murders have anything to do with Lisa Farmer’s death,” Rocky said.

Rocky normally couldn’t stop moving. If his knee wasn’t bouncing up and down, his fingers were reaching for something to touch, grab or move. Right now, his left hand reached out for the salt shaker, but this time more out of habit. When his fingers wrapped themselves around the shaker, they stopped. He didn’t seem to have enough energy to even give it a twirl.

“The earring proves that Lisa was at the Pinney House that night,” Giorgio said. “What if she found something, heard something, or saw something that got her killed? Finding all those bodies at the house can’t be a coincidence,” he said quietly.

“Maybe,” Rocky said. “But I know you. And I watched you today. You were never really surprised by any of the finds. In fact, the only time you seemed surprised was when you found the earring. You didn’t expect that, did you?”

Giorgio watched him cautiously. “No.”

“But you did expect everything else. Including finding the root cellar.”

“Grosvenor signaled the root cellar,” Giorgio replied quickly.

“You know, when we were at the monastery, investigating Mallery Olsen’s murder, you seemed to know things there, too. I know you get hunches, but…” Rocky paused, thoughtfully regarding his brother for a moment.

“I do,” Giorgio cut in. “I can’t explain it.”

He wasn’t ready to reveal the boy to his brother. He didn’t know if he ever would.

Fortunately, Eve returned with their meals, forcing them to forego the conversation for the moment.

“Sometimes I hate my job,” Giorgio said after a few bites. “Even though we’re cops, I can never seem to accept how someone can appear so normal on the outside and yet be such a sick bastard on the inside. Most likely whoever killed those women, tortured them, murdered them, and then went on about their business like nothing had ever happened.”

“Do you think it was one of the Martinellis?”

“I’d bet one of them did Lisa Farmer. But we won’t know for a while if the other bodies were buried before or after the Martinellis lived there.”

“Do you like Ron Martinelli for Lisa Farmer’s death?”

Giorgio shrugged and reached for his water. “I don’t know. Right now, I’m too tired to think.”

“So how
did
you know about these women?” Rocky asked, unwilling to give up on his question.

Giorgio stopped mid-bite. He’d hoped they’d moved off the topic of ghosts. He put his fork down again.

“I had a weird dream,” he said, grabbing a napkin. “No big deal. It happens sometimes.”

He
had
had a dream about the women, running from a faceless man in a stocking cap.

“So, you’re a psychic now?” Rocky said with a snort.

Giorgio had to tread lightly.

“No. I just get dreams sometimes.”

Rocky shifted in his seat. “You’d better not tell anyone else. Cops don’t accept that sort of thing very easily.”

Giorgio leveled a serious look at him. “I don’t plan on talking about it. And neither should you.”

Rocky held his hands up in defeat. “Don’t worry. I have no plans to mention it to anyone. They’ll think you’re crazy.”

“Thanks,” Giorgio said with irritation. “I didn’t think you were so closed-minded.”

Rocky glanced at him under hooded lashes. “I’m just realistic,” he said. “Ghosts don’t exist. And there’s no such thing as psychics. It’s all fakery.”

“Well, then, you’d be surprised to learn that Detective Abrams uses a psychic,” Giorgio said.

“The guy up in Seattle?”

“Yeah. He works with a psychic up there. He brought her in when Montgomery was killed.”

Giorgio avoided mentioning the fact that he’d also been to see a psychic, and that it was Flame who had confirmed the fact the girls were buried at the Pinney House.

Rocky blew out a dismissive breath. “Bunch of malarkey.”

“Well, Abrams seems pretty convinced she’s the real deal.”

Rocky’s eyebrows shot up. “Shit, Joe, we’d better be careful. I don’t want to get laughed out of the department before I even get started.”

“Don’t worry,” Giorgio said, his voice reflecting caution. “This conversation stays between us. I’m just telling you that Abrams asked her to see what she could see.”

“And?” Rocky said skeptically.

Giorgio shrugged. “She didn’t see much, other than something about a cabinet and a rose.”

“Well, that’s helpful,” Rocky said sarcastically.

“Yeah, I don’t know what it means. It’s probably nothing,” Giorgio said.

“So what would you do if you thought you saw a ghost?” Rocky asked quietly.

Giorgio wondered whether Rocky was testing him.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, taking a bite of his mashed potatoes. “It would be freaky, that’s for sure.”

He swallowed, hoping that Rocky would change the subject. He didn’t.

“I thought I saw Grandpa Reno when I was little,” he replied.

Giorgio shot his brother a look. “Seriously?”

Rocky tensed. “Yeah, but I didn’t. Mom just said it was my imagination. A kid thing.”

“But you had an invisible friend when you were little, too,” Giorgio said. “What was that all about?”

“Nothing!” Rocky said defensively. “I had a vivid imagination. I always have. Not like you. You’re the dull one.”

Giorgio let the comment ride. They continued to eat for a moment.

“Remember fat ‘ole Craig Melbourne?” Rocky asked all of a sudden. “He told me once that he saw his dead mother.”

“No shit?” Giorgio said, wide-eyed. “He was a no nonsense kind of guy. He didn’t even have a sense of humor as I remember.”

“I know,” Rocky said with a chortle. “But he said that his mom would appear to him in dreams and help him with his tests.”

Giorgio laughed out loud. “Damn! I could’ve used that kind of help back then.”

“Me too,” Rocky said. “Who knows, maybe your dreams are…you know…maybe there's something real about them.”

Giorgio glanced at his brother. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t think it’s any big deal, though.”

“You do get hunches, though,” Rocky said. “And your hunches are usually spot on.”

It seemed to Giorgio that Rocky was trying to say something. Make some kind of point. But his gut said to let it go.

“Well, next time I have one of those weird dreams, I’ll call you.”

Rocky smiled. “Okay. But what if it’s a ghost?”

“Then I’ll send him to your house. You need all the help you can get.”