Body of Evidence (19 page)

"Her?"

I interrupted. "Do you mean Clara?"

"I'm talking about Sterling Harper."

He looked speculatively at me. "She's the artist." He paused. "That would have been years ago when she did a lot of painting. They had a studio in the house, as I understand it. I've never been there, of course. But she used to bring in a number of her works, most of them still lifes, landscapes. The painting you're interested in is the only portrait I recall."

"How long ago did she paint it?"

"At least fifteen years ago, as I've said."

"Did someone pose for it?" I asked.

"I suppose it could have been done from a photograph ..."

He frowned. "Actually, I really can't answer your question. But if someone posed for it, I don't know who that might have been."

I didn't show my surprise. Beryl would have been sixteen or seventeen and living at Cutler Grove then. Was it possible Mr. Hilgeman, the people in town, didn't know this?

"It's rather sad," he mused. "Such talented, intelligent people. No family, no children."

"What about friends?" I asked.

"I really don't know either of them personally," he said.

And you never will, I thought morbidly.

Marino was wiping off his windshield with a chamois cloth when I went back out into the parking lot. The melted snow and salt left by road crews had splotched and dulled his beautiful black car. He didn't look happy about it. On the pavement beneath the driver's door was an untidy collection of cigarette butts he had unceremoniously dumped from his ashtray.

"Two things/' I began very seriously as we buckled up. "In the mansion's library is a portrait of a young blond girl that Miss Harper apparently had framed in this shop approximately fifteen years ago."

"Beryl Madison?" He got out his lighter.

"It may very well be a portrait of her," I replied. "But if so, it depicts her at an age much younger than she would have been when the Harpers met her. And the treatment of the subject is a little peculiar. Lolita-like ..."

"Huh?"

"Sexy," I said bluntly. "A little girl painted to look sensual."

"Yo. So now you're going to tell me Gary Harper was a closet pedophile."

"In the first place, his sister painted the portrait," I said.

"Shit," he complained.

"Secondly," I went on, "I got the distinct impression the owner of the framing shop has no idea Beryl ever lived with the Harpers. It makes me wonder if other people know. And if not, I wonder how that's possible. She lived in the mansion for years, Marino. It's just a couple of miles from town. This is a small town."

He stared straight ahead as he drove and didn't say a word.

"Well," I decided, "it may all be idle speculation. They were reclusive. Perhaps Gary Harper did his best to hide Beryl from the world. Whatever the case, the situation doesn't sound exactly healthy. But it may have nothing to do with their deaths."

"Hell," he said shortly, "healthy ain't the word for it. Reclusive or not, it don't make sense for no one to know she was there. Not unless they had her locked up or chained to a bedpost. Damn perverts. I hate perverts. I hate people picking on kids. You know?"

He glanced over at me again. "I really do hate that. I'm getting that feeling again."

"What feeling?"

"That Mr. Pulitzer Prize took Beryl out," Marino said. "She's going to spill the beans in her book, and he freaks, comes to see her and brings a knife."

"Then who killed him?"

I asked. "So maybe his batty sister did."

Whoever murdered Gary Harper was strong enough to inflict blows so forceful he was rendered unconscious almost immediately, and cutting someone's throat didn't fit with a female assailant. In fact, I had never had a case in which a woman did such a thing.

After a long silence, Marino asked, "Did Old Lady Harper strike you as senile?"

"Rather eccentric. But not senile," I said. "Crazy?"

"No."

"Based on how you've described things, it don't sound to me like her response to her brother getting whacked was exactly appropriate," he answered.

"She was in shock, Marino. People who are in shock do not react appropriately to anything."

"You thinking she committed suicide?"

"Certainly that's possible," I replied. "You find any drugs at the scene?"

"Some over-the-counter meds, none of them lethal," I said.

"No injuries?"

"None I could see."

"So, you know what the hell killed her?" he asked, looking over at me, his face hard.

"No," I answered. "At the moment I have absolutely no idea."

"I assume you're heading back to Cutler Grove," I said to Marino as he parked behind the OCME.

"Real thrilled about it, too," he grumbled. "Go home and get some decent sleep."

"Don't forget Gary Harper's typewriter."

Marino dug in a pocket for his lighter.

"The make and model, and any used ribbons," I reminded him.

He lit a cigarette.

"And any stationery or typing paper in the house. I suggest you collect the ashes in the fireplace yourself. It's going to be extremely difficult to preserve them--"

"No offense, Doc, but you're beginning to sound like my mother or something."

"Marino," I snapped, "I'm serious."

"Yeah, you're serious, all right--seriously in need of a good night's sleep," he said.

Marino was as frustrated as I and probably needed sleep, too.

The bay was locked and empty, the cement floor mottled with oil stains. Inside the morgue I was aware of the tedious humming of electricity and generators I hardly noticed during business hours. The rush of foul-smelling air seemed unusually loud as I entered the refrigerator.

Their bodies were on gurneys parked together against the left wall. Maybe it was because I was so tired. But when I pulled the sheet back from Sterling Harper, I went weak in the knees and dropped my medical bag to the floor. I recalled the keen beauty of her face, the terror in her eyes when the mansion's back door opened and she looked out as I attended to her dead brother, my gloved hands bright red with his blood. Brother and sister were present and accounted for. That was all I needed to know. I covered her gently, shrouding a face now as empty as a rubber mask. All around were tagged and protruding naked feet.

I had vaguely noticed the yellow film box beneath Sterling Harper's gurney when I had first walked into the refrigerator. But it wasn't until I reached down to pick up my medical bag that I took a good look and realized the significance. Kodak thirty-five millimeter, twenty-four exposure. The film on state contract for my office was Fuji, and we always ordered the thirty-six exposure. The paramedics who had transported Miss Harper's body would have been in and out many hours ago, and they wouldn't have taken any photographs.

I went back out into the hallway. The light over the elevator caught my attention, and I realized it was stopped on the second floor. Someone else was in the building! It was probably just the security guard making his rounds. Then, as my scalp began to prickle, I thought of the empty film box again. Gripping the strap of my medical bag tightly, I decided to take the stairs. On the second-floor landing I slowly opened the door and listened before stepping inside. The offices in the east wing were empty, the lights out. I turned right into the main hallway, passing the empty classroom, the library, and Fielding's office. I didn't hear or see anyone. Just to be sure, I decided as I turned into my office to call security.

When I saw him, I stopped breathing. For a terrible moment my mind wouldn't work. He was deftly and silently riffling through an open filing cabinet. The collar of a navy jacket was up around his ears, eyes masked by dark aviator glasses, hands sheathed in surgical gloves. Over a powerful shoulder was a leather strap attached to a camera. He looked as solid and hard as marble, and it wasn't possible for me to step out of sight fast enough. The gloved hands suddenly stilled.

When he lunged, it was a reflex, my medical bag looping back like an Olympic hammer. Momentum propelled it with such force between his legs the impact jarred the sunglasses from his face. He fell forward, doubling over in agony and knocked sufficiently off balance for me to send him sprawling with a kick to the ankles. He must not have felt any better when the hard metal lens of his camera was the only cushion between his ribs and the floor.

Medical impedimenta scattered as I frantically dug out of my bag the small canister of Mace I always carried, and he bellowed when the heavy stream hit him in the face. He clawed at his eyes, rolling around, screaming, while I grabbed the phone and called for help. I squirted him one more time for good measure just before the security guard hustled in. Then the cops arrived. My hysterical hostage begged to be taken to the hospital as an unsympathetic officer wrenched his arms behind his back, snapped on cuffs, and frisked him.

According to his driver's license, the intruder's name was Jeb Price, age thirty-four, address Washington, D. C. Wedged in the back of his corduroy trousers was a Smith & Wesson 9-millimeter automatic with fourteen rounds in the clip and one in the chamber.

I don't remember going into the morgue office and getting the keys off the pegboard for the other state car leased by the OCME. But I must have, because I was parking the dark blue station wagon in my driveway as night began to fall. Used to transport bodies, the car was oversize, the tailgate window discreetly covered with a screen, and in back was a removable plyboard floor that required hosing down several times a week. The car was a cross between a family wagon and a hearse, and the only thing harder to parallel park, in my opinion, was the QE2.

Like a zombie, I went straight upstairs without bothering to play back my telephone messages or turn off the answering machine. My right elbow and shoulder ached. The small bones in my hand hurt. Laying my clothes on a chair, I took a hot bath and numbly fell into bed. Deep, deep sleep. Sleep so deep it was like dying. Darkness was heavy and I was trying to swim through it, my body like lead, as the ringing telephone by my bed was abruptly cut off by my answering machine.

"... don't know when I'll be able to call back, so listen. Please listen, Kay. I heard about Gary Harper ..."

My heart was pounding as my eyes opened, Mark's urgent voice pulling me out of my torpor.

"... Please stay out of it. Don't get involved. Please. I'll talk to you again as soon as I'm able ..."

By the time I found the receiver I was listening to a dial tone. Replaying his message, I slumped against pillows and began to cry.

The next morning Marino arrived at the morgue as I was making a Y incision on Gary Harper's body.

I removed the breastplate of ribs and lifted the block of organs out of the chest cavity while Marino looked on mutely. Water drummed in sinks, surgical instruments clattered and clicked, and across the suite a long blade rasped against a whetstone as one of the morgue assistants sharpened a knife. We had four cases this morning, all of the stainless-steel autopsy tables occupied.

Since Marino didn't seem inclined to volunteer anything, I introduced the subject.

"What have you found out about Jeb Price?" I asked.

"His record check didn't come up with squat," he replied, staring off and restless. "No priors, no outstanding warrants, nothing. He ain't singing, either. If he was, it'd probably be soprano after the number you done on him. I stopped by ID right before I came down here. They're developing the film in his camera. I'll bring by a set of prints as soon as they're ready."

"Have you taken a look?"

"At the negatives," he answered.

"And?" I asked.

"Pictures he took inside the fridge. Of the Harpers' bodies," he said.

I had expected as much. "I don't suppose he's a journalist for some tabloid," I said in jest.

"Yo. Dream on."

I glanced up from what I was doing. Marino was not in a jovial mood. More disheveled than usual, he had nicked his jaw twice while shaving and his eyes were bloodshot.

"Most reporters I know don't pack nine mils loaded with Glasers," he said. "And they tend to whine when they get leaned on, ask for a quarter to call the paper's lawyer. This guy's not making a peep, a real pro. Must've picked a lock to get in. Makes his move on a Monday afternoon, a state holiday, when it's not likely anybody's going to be around. We found his ride parked about three blocks away in the Farm Fresh lot, a rental car with a cellular phone. Got enough ammo clips and magazines in the trunk to stop a small army, plus a Mac Ten machine pistol and a Kevlar vest. He ain't no reporter."

"I'm not so sure he's a pro, either," I commented, fitting a new blade in my scalpel. "It was sloppy to leave an empty film box inside the refrigerator. And if he really wanted to play it safe, he should have broken in at two or three in the morning, not in broad daylight."

"You're right. The film box was sloppy," Marino agreed. "But I can see why he broke in when he did. A funeral home or squad comes in to deliver a body while Price's inside the fridge, right? In the middle of the day, maybe he's smooth enough to make it appear he works here, has a legit reason for being inside. But let's say he's surprised at two A. M. No way in hell he's going to be able to explain himself at that hour."