Blood of Others (20 page)

“Yeah, I heard about that bride
shop case in San Francisco,” Snell said after Reed explained why he was
calling. “At the time, I think I was in Sacramento, delivering a load of lumber
from Spokane.” Snell was a trucker. In one early story, he told the
Republic
how when Elinor was young, he would take her with him on some trips.
“My
little girl saw America from the passenger seat of a Freightliner and to see
her life taken in this way just tears a man to pieces.”

Snell told Reed his timing was
good.

“Why?”

“Well I just got home from
business downtown. Had to see a lawyer about Elinor’s affairs, so I dropped by
Phoenix homicide to see if Bill Sample was around.”

“Bill Sample?”

“The detective on Elinor’s case.
I dropped by to see if they had anything new. I figure that’s why you’re
calling from San Francisco, because of the new lead?”

The new lead?
Reed’s mind
raced.
What new lead? Just bluff it. Pretend you know.

“What do you make of it, Mr.
Snell?”

“I’m hopeful. Bill said he should
not be telling me, but we’ve put back a few since my daughter’s death, and he
was pretty encouraged by the break.”

“I bet.”

“ ’Course he didn’t tell me the
details, just what the FBI relayed to him, you know, that San Francisco might
have something that could connect their case to Elinor. And all those others.”

All those others.

Reed swallowed. Jesus.

Olivia looked
through Caselli’s storefront
window and happened to see a uniformed police officer strolling by. Her
attention went to his holstered gun and she thought of Ben.

It concerned her, seeing how
deeply troubled Ben was at being blamed for his partner’s wounding, how he
desperately needed someone to
believe him.

She believed him. He was a good
man. An honest man. She saw it in his face, his eyes, felt it in her heart. She
sensed he somehow needed to be forgiven, to be free of the terrible weight of
being wrongly accused.

It was funny, Olivia thought
while tidying the greeting card selection in “Forgiveness.” She had long ago
given up on the possibility that someone like Ben would ever need someone like
her for anything. But here he was, reaching out to her, risking his heart. She
would help him, even if it meant risking hers. Because she wanted to, because
she needed to. And if it meant her heart would be broken in the end, well, so
be it.

The transom bells chimed and Mrs.
Caselli entered to relieve Olivia for lunch.

“How is it today?”

“Very good, Mrs. C., forty-one
orders.” Olivia went to the back room, returning with her lunch and purse.

“Olivia, wait. I don’t like
this,” Mrs. Caselli was behind the counter. “When are you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“You change. You change your
hair, you talk more to people. Now you have a new boyfriend, but you don’t tell
me. Juanita from the coffee shop told me she saw you with a man just the other
day. She says he’s a very nice-looking man. But you don’t say anything to
anybody.”

“His name is Ben.”

“Ahh. Ben.” Mrs. Caselli said,
clasping her hands. “Is it serious?”

“We just met.”

“What does he do, this Ben?”

“He’s a police officer. A
detective.”

“Detective.” Mrs. Caselli cupped
her cheek in her hand. “You’re going to see him for lunch now, maybe?”

Olivia shook her head.

“But you will bring him to the
shop soon, right?”

“We’ll see.”

“Olivia, wait!” The older woman’s
eyes were glistening as she toddled from the counter to embrace her. “I’m so
happy, and you make my Georgio happy too. In my prayers tonight, I’m going to
tell him.”

On her way home from the shop
Olivia passed by the bridal boutique. Its windows remained sealed with brown
paper, and now a sign that said: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

Down the street Olivia saw a
young family loading their two children into their van. The mom was lovingly
buckling her son, who was about two years old, in his car seat. The dad was
taking care of the daughter, who appeared to be a year or so older. Observing
them, Olivia realized for the first time that she was not experiencing her
usual ache of futility, but rather, a flutter of hope for the
possibility
that something like that could one day be hers.

During her ride home she did not
pull out her paperback novel, choosing instead to savor her thoughts on how
hope was such a sweet thing, how it kept you going, it kept you alive.

Now hope permeated her beautiful
home. For while she ate her dinner, she never heard the ticking of the
grandfather clock. Her mind was too busy sorting details of the meal she was
going to make for Ben in a few days. She had invited him over for dinner. While
she munched on her garden salad and pita bread, she jotted down notes of the
items she had to buy and the things she had to do to. It was fun.

Later, while washing her dishes,
Olivia was reminded of something else she had to do. It came to her as she was
running the faucet and squeezing a thread of dish soap into the sink. The soap
was the same brand her mother had used and its lemon scent resurrected a moment
from her past.

Olivia and her Aunt Maureen had
stood here together doing the dishes at this very sink, using her mother’s dish
soap, after the guests had left the reception following her mother’s funeral.
In the quiet, the air had been taut with that naked rawness that accompanies
such events. Olivia and Maureen had exchanged few words. But having Maureen
near, in her dark dress, pearls, heavy lipstick and perfume, had been like
having her mother next to her. Overwhelmed, Olivia pulled her hands from the
sink, threw her arms around her aunt, and sobbed. Her tears and soap bubbles
falling to the floor.

Now, Olivia felt the pull of that
memory evolving into an urgent message compelling her to call her aunt in
Chicago.
Call Maureen. Tonight.

The dishes done, she fetched the
number from a drawer in the living room. It was early evening in Illinois. She
glanced at the grandfather clock as the number rang. A man’s voice answered,
late sixties, subdued, tired.

“Uncle Randall?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Olivia in San Francisco.”

“My goodness. Olivia, it’s so
nice to hear your voice. How are you?”

“I’m fine. How is Aunt Maureen?”

Her uncle hesitated. “To tell you
the truth, she’s been in and out of the hospital. But I know she’d love to talk
to you. Just a moment.”

Olivia heard the phone being
shuffled and her uncle’s distant voice rattling in their big house in Oak Park.

“Mo! It’s Olivia in California!
Yes!”

The extension clicked and Olivia
was overcome by an emotional whirlwind, for her aunt’s voice was identical to
her mother’s.

“Liv, is that you, dear?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, it’s so good to hear from
you, sweetheart. Is everything all right?”

“Yes.”

How do you begin to reconnect
with the few remnants of family you have? How do you begin to make up for time
you lost? Olivia fought her tears.

“Aunt Maureen?”

“What is it, dear?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Whatever do you have to be sorry
for?”

“It’s been so long since I’ve called,
or replied to your letters. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right, dear. You’re
calling now.”

“How are you feeling? Uncle
Randall said you’ve been in the hospital?”

“Some days are better than
others. The last round of surgery went well, but tell me about you.”

Olivia suspected her aunt’s
health was much more grave than Maureen and Randall were letting on. She’d
detected it in her uncle’s voice when he first answered.

“I’m fine. I was thinking, I’d
like to come and see you in Chicago, a visit. Is that all right?”

“Is that all right?
Darling, I’ve wanted you to visit for so long.” Her aunt repeated the news to
Olivia’s uncle. “When, Liv? You’ll stay with us. I’ll call Heather. They’re in
St. Louis now after Martin got transferred from Tampa. Maybe they’ll visit too.
We could have a little family reunion. They have two little boys now.”

“Two?”

“Cutie pies. Devon is two, Dillon
is one.”

“I’ll come soon. I’ll call you
when I have the dates and my flight and details.”

“Yes, dear. This is wonderful
news, so wonderful. Olivia, I am so happy you called.

“Me too.”

Soaking in her tub that evening,
Olivia peered at her scented candles and reflected on how far she had come from
that terrible night on the Golden Gate Bridge. On how the tragedy of Iris Wood,
a person she had never met, had somehow offered her salvation, forcing her to
take control of her life, leading her to Ben, to reconnect with the fragments
of her family, to feel hope, to touch it, to taste it, to risk her heart and be
alive in this world. Olivia cherished her new self-confidence, her strengthened
self-esteem, and vowed not to abandon those who had helped her find it: her
on-line friends. In sharing their anguish, their pain, the torment from the
universe of lonely-hearts, they encouraged her to be brave and take a
successful step into life.

Time for me to help them.

Olivia sat at her computer,
wrapped in her robe, her face glowing from the monitor as she went on-line to
chat with her pals out there, thanking them, telling them briefly and without
many details that she had met a wonderful person who needed a little
understanding and to be forgiven for his past.

A friend from San Diego was the
first to respond:
No need to thank us. We’re all here to help each other.

That’s what friends are for,
wrote a friend in New Orleans.

You made it over the wall,
cheering in Philly.

So what’s his “past?” Old
girlfriends? Ha ha,
said a Nashville friend.

Annalee in Dallas was applauding:
What a great thing, reconnecting with your family.

Hey, livinsf, you go, girl,
but just make sure he’s telling you EVERYTHING about his past and is not like
some of the LOSERS that have inflicted their sorry selves on me,
came
advice from Boston.

Olivia nodded. Yes, she was
careful about getting too close to “virtual people,” especially after reading a
recent article in the Star about the dark side of on-line dating.

So who is this new person who
needs forgiveness?
  one friend wrote.

We all need forgiveness,
right? I actually give it out every day. (smile),
Olive answered, chuckling
because she sold greeting cards.

The friend left the chat site and
sent her an e-mail.

I asked you about forgiveness.
I’m the person seeking it.

An e-mail exchange flowed between
them.

Did you truly mean it,
livinsf, when you say that if you found the right man your love would wash away
the sins of his past life?

Yes I truly mean it from the
bottom of my heart.

I need your help.

How can I help you?

I’ve just made a horrible
mistake. I trusted my heart to someone who, like you, had promised they could
help me.

What happened?

They lied.

Sounds like you were hurt.

Deeply.

I’m so sorry.

Can you help me survive this?

Yes.

I need to know something from
you and it must be the truth.

Olivia was cautious. Pulling up
her guard. No personal information. No meetings.
Nothing weird or you
terminate the conversation,
she warned herself before writing
What do
you need to know?

Do you truly mean it when you
say that if you found the right man your love would wash away the sins of his
past life?

I do.

You can forgive any sins of
his past life?

Yes.

Explain how you would not
betray that forgiveness.

I believe pure love can defeat
any darkness.

Any darkness?

Any darkness.

Thank you.

Have I helped you?

No reply came.

It was one
of those strange number things,
Detective Sergeant Martin Reesor thought, looking at downtown Toronto from
Wendell Holcomb’s twenty-fifth-floor room in his hotel.

Belinda Holcomb’s apartment was
on the twenty-fifth floor, and the office where she had worked was on the
twenty-fifth floor. Now, her exhausted father, Wendell, was sitting on the
king-size bed of his room on the twenty-fifth floor, talking on the phone to a
funeral director about the final arrangements for taking her home now that her
body had been released.

“That’s how you prepare it for
transporting. Is that a casket?” Wendell said. “I see. Do I sign that form at
the airport?”

Across the city through the rain,
Reesor saw the SkyDome, where the New York Yankees were playing the Toronto
Blue Jays. He’d had plans to be at the game with his nine-year-old son. His ex
had custody. Things usually worked out all right since the venom between them
had been replaced by court-ordered clauses. But when Reesor had to cancel, his
ex gave the tickets to her new boyfriend. He was sitting in the Dome with
Reesor’s son right now because Belinda Holcomb had been murdered. Reesor had to
swallow it because this was his life. Belinda Holcomb was his case. Had been
since his pager went off a few days ago.

Wendell finished his call. He did
not speak, letting the hum of the air conditioner fill the silence.

Reesor’s eyes were like black
ball bearings, shining hard from his bald head. He was six one, two hundred
pounds, with a thick black moustache. The job had exacted a toll on his life.
So, with each case he forged a little personal payback by way of relentless
righteous investigative excellence. Woe to the suspect who drew Reesor. His
leather shoulder holster squeaked when he turned from the window to his
partner, Detective Jackie Winslow, on the bed next to Wendell, rubbing his arm.

“We’ll talk with our services
people on how you can make arrangements to get her belongings from her
apartment shipped home later. They’ll talk to her landlord, okay, Wendell?”
Winslow said.

Wendell nodded, staring at his
shoes through his thick-framed glasses. He was sixty-six years old. His thin
white hair was parted neatly, laced over his ruddy skin. His face was the
creased, weatherworn face of a God-fearing farmer. His was a life that had been
invested in the land, directed by a moral compass, guided by the Good Book.

Reesor saw the hotel room’s King
James Bible splayed open on Wendell’s night table, next to his airline ticket.
His suitcase, a fiberboard deal which may have been fashionable in the 1960s,
smelled of mothballs. It was open on the dresser, a framed picture of Belinda
at the age of seven, laughing, arms around her grinning father, his hair thicker,
darker, rested atop a folded shirt, next to a sweat-stained John Deere ball
cap. Had the cap been tossed in by mistake during his anguish after
notification,
or on purpose for comfort?

Wendell was wearing black shoes,
black socks, navy pants, a white shirt loosened at the collar with an
out-of-style checkered tie that clashed with his jacket. It was what he was
wearing when they picked him up at the airport the other day. It seemed he was
dressed for Sunday church in a small rural town. Wendell placed his large
workman’s hands with their powerful fingers and short, worn nails on his knees,
the words crawling out of his raw throat as he uttered, “I’m ready to take her
home now.”

On the drive to the airport,
Reesor and Winslow reviewed what they could of the case with Wendell, who sat
in silence, the car’s wipers thumping, the radials hissing. At one point,
Wendell said, “Belinda was supposed to get married, have a family and stay
home. I don’t know how her mother is going to survive this.” In the rear-view mirror,
Reesor saw Wendell cover his face with his big hands.

They stayed with him at Pearson
International until he boarded, watching the jet slowly roll from the terminal,
its running lights strobing, turbines whining. The rain not letting up. Aboard,
a broken-hearted father, the body of his murdered daughter in the cargo hold. A
country girl going home for the last time, to the edge of Altona, Manitoba,
near the Minnesota border. She would be buried in a small cemetery of the Red
River Valley amid fields and fields of sunflowers.

Working their way through traffic
from the airport, Reesor and Winslow said little. Reesor turned on the car’s
radio to catch the ball game, keeping the volume low as the rain fell and the
wipers pulsed.

“FIS expects to have more results
from the crime lab for us tonight,” he said. “I want to go back to the squad,
go through some statements. Maybe go back on some people tomorrow.”

Since they were called out to
Belinda Holcomb’s murder, everything that had to be done so far, everything
that could be done so far, had been done.

Cause of death: multiple stab
wounds to her heart. It was a small art-house theater. Two tickets were sold
for the showing. No security cameras. Three on the staff. Ticket seller, snack
seller and usher. Projectionist had been reading a book. No one remembered the
suspect or saw a thing, except the girl at the snack bar.

“Maybe the guy was wearing
glasses and was kinda ugly, I can’t say for sure. Maybe he was tall and talked
to the woman. I thought they were sorta together and, my God, this is really
creeping me out, my God, a woman was murdered and we were there, you know, I’m
really not sure I remember anything.”

No witnesses. No weapon found. No
other injuries or suspect substances found. No evidence of sexual assault, or
sexual activity whatsoever.

“I think he stalked her, Jackie,
followed her there,” Reesor said after they returned to headquarters from the
airport and headed up to the squad room.

“The café staff said she sat
alone for over an hour, acting like she was waiting for somebody. Maybe a blind
date? Remember all the newspapers in her apartment? Maybe she hooked up with
him out of the personals?”

It was getting late, a couple of
detectives were working at the far end of the squad room.

“The newspapers were clean of any
markings. We checked for ads. But we can go back on that. What we also need to
do is more work on her computer. When the FIS guys tried to fire it up, it
malfunctioned or something. They said they’re still working on it. Her ISP get
back to you yet?”

“They say her account is garbled
or something. They’re trying to sort it out. We’re hoping to track her
activities.”

“Good. All right.” Reesor sat
down and reached for a large file.

“What now, Marty? What about
ViCLAS? Want to start filling out the book while we wait for FIS to call? We
could get most of it done now.”

“Not yet. I want to go through
the videotape and pictures of the crime scene. See if I missed anything. You
checklist the book, see if we covered everything.”

Winslow knew her partner would
scrutinize the scene material for hours. “All right. Since we’re going to be
here a while, I’m going to get us some food.” She reached inside her drawer for
a take-out menu, then called over to the two other detectives in the squad.
“We’re ordering Chinese. You guys in?” They waved off the offer. They were on
their way out.

Reesor opened the file with
copies of enlarged photographs of Belinda Holcomb’s murder. She was in her
movie theater seat, slumped to her left. Eyes open. Sweater and slacks soaked
with blood, dripping to her shoes. Attacked in the dark from behind. The usher
found her. Thought she was asleep. Never touched her. Called 911. They managed
to get a patrol unit there fast, kept the scene clean.

When the food came, Reesor ate
while rereading all the reports and statements they had so far, making notes on
who they needed to talk to next.

Nearly two hours later, he stood,
stretched, then poked around the containers of mushroom fried rice, almond
chicken, deep-fried won ton, for leftovers, while Winslow peered outside. The
squad room’s windows overlooked the street and she watched the traffic. Reesor
had settled on a fortune cookie cracking it, reading the prediction on the
ribbon:
You will find the truth if you keep seeking it.

He shrugged, crunching on the
cookie, passing the slip of paper to Winslow for her amusement, then answering
his phone on the first ring.

“Homicide. Reesor.”

“It’s Fydor at the lab.”

“Anything new?”

“Yes, I think I’ve got something
but it’s going to take me some time.”

“How long? You told me tonight.”

“Not tonight. Go home, I’ll call
when I have it.”

“Come on.”

“Look, I’m jammed up. I’ve got to
do more work on what we found at the movie theatre.”

“Well Fydor, can you give me a
hint?”

A long, tense moment passed.

“I think your guy’s a traveler.”