Delia's Shadow (18 page)

As soon as they turned onto Pine, Gabe saw the house. Police cars blocked the road and horses from the mounted patrol grazed on a neighbor’s neat lawn. Lights blazed in all the windows of the large front house, floor lamps and wall sconces casting streaks of flickering yellow into the yard. Officers moved in and out of that light, silhouettes going about their jobs. He thought he recognized a few members of his squad, but the distance was too great to be sure.

Henderson pulled the car to the curb three houses down, as close as he could maneuver. Gabe stuffed the fedora back on his head and got out. Dread of what he might find set his heart to racing, making him sweat despite the cold night air.

Curious neighbors craned their necks from upper-story windows and front yards, straining to see if the new arrival was someone of note. Death and its aftermath was a spectacle, something to gawk at if the tragedy didn’t touch you directly. Gabe would never get used to that.

“Lieutenant?” Henderson stood near the front wheel, one hand on the corner of the windscreen. “Should I see if I can help or stay with the car?”

Uniformed officers swarmed over the yard and in and out of the house, but Gabe waved the rookie toward them anyway. After spending the entire day waiting by the car, Marshall Henderson deserved his chance to feel useful. “Go. Find me something I can use to catch this bastard.”

The rookie took off at a trot. Jack joined Gabe on the sidewalk. “A gravel drive goes down the side of the house to the cottage in back. From the size and the position, my guess is the carriage house was converted to living quarters. That was pretty common the first couple of years after the quake.”

Gabe nodded. “I remember. My parents lived in a neighborhood like this before they moved to Santa Rosa. Those who still had a safe place to live shared with family who didn’t. Who lives in the front house?”

“Elaine’s landlord, Gerald Robinson. We haven’t been able to locate him.” Jack coughed and cleared his throat. “There’s a question among the neighbors about the exact nature of their relationship. The older woman next door, Mrs. Knickerbocker, liked Elaine and thought she was a nice girl. She’s more than happy to explain how Gerald took advantage of a younger woman if you’re interested.”

“I’ll pass for now.” Gabe glanced at his partner. “I’ll bet you lunch for a week that our male victim was Gerald Robinson. There’s probably a photograph in either the house or the cottage.”

Jack pulled his moleskine and a pencil from an inside pocket. “Bet with the rubes who don’t know you, Lieutenant Ryan. I already checked the photographs. Mrs. Knickerbocker doesn’t need to worry about Gerald corrupting another young woman. I’ve already got men searching for next of kin.”

They moved toward the house and the organized chaos of a preliminary investigation. Gabe slipped his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, set his shoulders, and settled into a relaxed, purposeful stride. His father had taught him from his rookie days that if you looked like the person in charge, that’s who you were. That mask of command was habit now, one he seldom need think about.

None of the neighbors tried to speak to him; instead they stepped back apprehensively to let him and Jack pass. The officers he knew nodded and kept working. Most of the men were strangers, sent out from the local station house. That meant their commander was likely here, too.

“Front house or the cottage, Jack? And was Parker here when you left?”

“He was here. Go down the drive and to the cottage first. Stick close to the hedge. Maybe we can get back there without being seen.” Jack muttered so only Gabe could hear. “If we’re lucky, Captain Parker’s gone home to rehearse giving his report to the mayor.”

An older man dressed in a dapper, double-breasted suit and a gray-serge coat detached himself from a knot of men near the front of the house and started toward them. Parker’s coat hung from broad shoulders and stopped just shy of dragging the ground, making him look squared off and shorter than he was. He leaned forward when he walked and bounced off his toes, an odd gait more than one rookie made fun of when they thought no one could hear.

“Too late.” Gabe flipped his collar up and pulled his hat low over his eyes. “Walk faster and pretend you don’t see him.”

Parker raised a hand and called out. “Lieutenant Ryan! Over here.”

He’d no choice but to stop and wait, but Gabe was damned if he’d come when summoned. Captain Parker was in command of the Gough Street station, not Gabe and not his men.

As the older, more experienced detective, Parker had tried to convince the chief to let him conduct the investigation into the murders. He’d been humiliated when the chief turned him down. Now he went out of his way to make Gabe look bad.

He waited until Parker came to a halt before acknowledging him. Gabe nodded, but didn’t offer his hand. “Good evening, Captain. What can I do for you?”

“Explaining where you’ve been until now is a start, Ryan. It’s after eleven.” Parker made no attempt to keep the conversation private and more than one patrolman turned to scowl at the captain’s back. Not all of them were Gabe’s men.

“Pursuing other areas of the investigation.” Gabe stood easy and kept his hands deep in his pockets, concealing they’d curled into fists. He was tired and still had a murder scene to face, but snapping at Parker would only make things worse. “Is that a problem? Sergeant Fitzgerald and my men have everything well in hand.”

Parker’s hand swept out to the side, the gesture encompassing all the work going on around them. “I’ve got men working a double shift waiting for you. You’re the officer in charge of this investigation. Regulations say I can’t dismiss them without your permission.”

“I beg your pardon, Captain.” Jack took a half step forward. The tap of his pencil on the side of the moleskine grew faster, a sharp contrast to the flat, professional tone in his voice. “As Lieutenant Ryan’s second in command, I do have the authority. I gave your men permission to go off shift before I left to apprise the lieutenant of the situation. They could have gone hours ago.”

Gabe stepped in before the storm brewing on Parker’s face broke over his partner. “Send your men home, Captain. I appreciate their assistance, but Sergeant Fitzgerald is right. There’s no need to keep them from their families. We can handle everything from here.”

“The mayor expects results, Ryan. So far you’re not handling this any better than your father did in his day.” Parker glared, trying to provoke a reaction. When he didn’t get one, he barked an order over his shoulder. “Andersen! Gather the squad and send them home.”

Gabe spun on his heel and started down the drive again. If he stood there one second longer Parker might get what he wanted. Jack was right with him, red-faced and breathing hard. Neither of them could afford to let Parker goad them into losing their tempers.

Roses climbed a trellis against the side of the house, filling the air with a peppery summer scent. Gravel crunched under their shoes, the sound vaguely reminiscent of eggshells cracking or walking on seashells mounded up on a beach after a storm. He listened hard to that sound, using it to drown out Parker’s voice shouting orders.

Jack nodded to the men on their way to the street and home. “What was that about?”

“The remark about my father?” Gabe shook his head. “Parker takes every opportunity to remind me that Dad never found the killer.”

The cottage door was propped open with a high-backed kitchen chair. Light spilled across the threshold, shining on an older man leaning over the low iron fence between houses. Marshall Henderson stood on the cottage side, scribbling down what the old man told him. Movement off to the left turned out to be Maxwell, on his knees under a window in the cottage wall and mixing plaster of Paris to make a mold of a footprint.

His men knew their jobs; so did he. Gabe’s anger at Parker flared, but he let it die. This case was hard enough without nursing a grudge.

He paused in the doorway before stepping inside, noting details and setting the scene in his mind. Narrow stairs to the left of the front door went to a second story. The small living room had been ransacked, furniture overturned and destroyed. Braided rugs were bunched and flung against the fireplace, cushions on the green and gold settee slashed and stuffing scattered. The few paintings hanging on Elaine’s walls had suffered the same fate.

Strips of canvas hung from broken frames, limp as wilted flowers. Draperies were torn from the windows on either side of the fireplace. Gabe’s face was reflected back at him, ghostly pale against the darkness outside. He turned away. “What’s behind this cottage?”

Jack flipped through his moleskine. “A veranda, some flower beds, and a rather tall stone wall. All very private. Beyond the wall is an alley and an overgrown lot. If you wade through the weeds to the farside, you come out in the play yard for the local parish school.”

“Is there a back door? A gate in the wall?”

“No gate. The back door is in the kitchen.” Jack gestured at a plastered arch to the right. A pale yellow beaded curtain hung by one corner, open cupboard doors showing beyond. “Be careful if you go in. There’s broken glass and china all over the floor.”

“I’ll take your word on it. Even if I went outside I couldn’t see anything.” Gabe stepped around an up-ended table to stand in the middle of the room. He turned in a slow circle, surveying the pattern of damage. “He was angry when he did this, furious at someone or something. This was all for him, not anything he planned for us to see.”

“No. That’s upstairs.” Jack cleared his throat. “He left his message in the bedroom.”

The odor of wet paper and mildew hit Gabe as soon as he stepped onto the landing at the top of the stairs. Dampness glistened on the hall floor in front of the bathroom, the wood already saturated and dark. A runner down the center of the hall squelched with each step.

He nudged the bathroom door open with his toe. Books and newspapers filled the washbasin, soaked and swollen by a steadily running tap. More newspapers and magazines floated in a bathtub full of ink-stained water. The steady drip of water echoed against tile floors and walls.

What he took to be streaks of gray newsprint smeared on white plaster walls resolved themselves into symbols the longer Gabe stared. Rough sketches of Anubis and hawk-headed Horus were drawn over and over.

“We didn’t follow his instructions. The newspapers didn’t print his letters, so he destroyed them.” Gabe plucked the corner of a newspaper from the sink and held it up. The print had run together, smeared and unreadable. He let it drop and wiped his hand on his coat. “How bad is the bedroom?”

Jack pushed back against the wall to let Gabe pass in the narrow hallway. “Not as bad as it could be. The park was worse.”

A breeze fluttered blood-splattered lace curtains on the open windows. Coverlets and sheets were stripped from the bed and tossed into a corner. The mattress ticking was soaked in blood, days old and dried to the color of rusted iron. A faint odor filled the room, but if Gabe breathed shallowly, he almost didn’t notice. Corpses smelled the same, sweet with rot and decay. They hadn’t found a body. That didn’t mean one hadn’t lain here.

More pictures decorated the walls, drawn in blood: Anubis and Osiris on a crude throne, Horus and a dog-headed beast that must be Ammut. Scales large and small filled the spaces between the Egyptian Gods. These were rendered with more skill, more detail.

On the night table sat an apothecary’s scale, tipped out of balance by a feather on one side and a square wooden box on the other. Blood had seeped from inside, swelling the dovetailed joints that held the corners together and turning the yellow pine black. The source of the smell was suddenly clear. Gabe didn’t need to open the box to know it held a human heart. The question was whose heart, which victim hadn’t they found.

The killer’s message was clear as well. Propped against the base of the scale was a pale blue envelope, addressed in crisp black ink to Lieutenant Gabriel Ryan.

He wrapped the letter in his handkerchief, the singsong refrain he associated with the killer running through his head. That was the true message.

Run, Gabe, run. Catch me if you can.

CHAPTER 10

Delia

Since the day they’d started, Annie had invited the young officers Gabe sent to watch the house inside for breakfast each morning. Duty rosters rotated among the squad and the faces outside changed every few days, but with Gabe’s blessing, Annie cooked for all of them. She was in her glory, a mother bird with a nest full of chicks always willing to be fed. Jack confided that guarding our house had become the most coveted duty in only a week.

Sadie and I took turns taking breakfast up to her mother or helping in the kitchen. I’d gone down early and piled Esther’s breakfast tray with fresh strawberries, eggs, hot biscuits, coffee, and cream. She wouldn’t eat half, but I’d help. I felt sure that Baxter and Henderson would make short work of the rest if I offered what was left in the serving dish.

Esther’s thin, breathy voice carried down the hall. I paused outside her door, knowing that Sadie was in the kitchen, and listened. She was talking to ghosts again.

I’d caught glimpses of the ghosts in her room over the last week, a dark-haired man, a girl of three or four, but they vanished as soon as I entered. The feeling they belonged in the house and with Esther was too strong to ignore. Perhaps that was why random spirits never wandered through; the house had its compliment of restless dead. Still, my feeling of home being a safe haven was shaken. Eavesdropping had convinced me that Esther carried on conversations with her ghosts. The give and take of asking questions, and waiting for replies, was unmistakable. Seeing spirits was disturbing enough. I was glad I couldn’t hear their answers.

That Shadow no longer stood watch outside her door was a relief. Esther’s new companions seemed just that, company to fill empty hours and not harbingers of death. All I need do was see the stress in Gabe’s face and the anxious way Jack hovered over Sadie, or count the policemen eating in our kitchen to be reminded how death stalks all of us. I didn’t need more reminders.