“The boy you tutor?” I questioned
“Yes,” she answered.
“Is Katie a bully, too?” I asked, leaning over, trying to get her to look me in the eye.
She shook her head. “Not really, she’s too into herself. She doesn’t pay anyone else too much attention.”
“How about Tiffany Bennett and Lisa Padilla?” I questioned her.
“They’re okay. Why are you asking? They weren’t hurt too, were they?” She looked up at me, suddenly concerned.
“No, honey, they’re fine—well, sort of—they are the one’s that found Jamie’s body.”
I looked up at her father. “How much did you tell her?”
“Just about everything you told me,” he answered me.
I turned back to my daughter. “Did you know anything about a disagreement that Katie and Jamie had about a boy, Bethany? Was it this boy Dylan?”
She didn’t answer my question, instead, she asked one of her own.
“You don’t think Katie killed Jamie, Mom? She wouldn’t do that. You’re way off base.” I thought I heard a hint of anger in her voice.
“Right now, honey, I don’t know much of anything. I know a beautiful young girl’s life was ended last night. I know a family is mourning their child and they need to know why this happened and who did this to her. They need to know that this person will never hurt anyone again.”
“I asked you a question. Do you know about the argument that Katie and Jamie had over this boy Dylan?”
“I don’t know.” She got out of her seat. “I have to study for a history test, may I be excused?”
I was exhausted and I knew where this might lead, so I chose to let it go.
“Yes, but we’ll talk later, okay?”
She mumbled a “yeah, sure” as she hastily made her way up to her bedroom.
I looked at Glenn, totally perplexed.
“Where is my daughter, and who is that creature pretending to be her?” I asked.
He totally ignored what I had just said.
“Tell you what: why don’t you go upstairs and take a nap? I’ll throw a few steaks on the grill and I’ll wake you up when it’s time for dinner.”
I just stared at him.
“Let it go, Jeannie,” he urged. “Maybe it’s just too much for her right now.”
“Okay, but only because I am tired and I can’t get that picture of you and that Hula Hoop out of my head.”
I grabbed my purse and made my way upstairs to get into a hot bath and take a much-needed nap.
***
Friday Morning
The Morgue
The ME’s workspace was in the sub cellar of St. Katherine’s Medical Center. I took the elevator down two floors and when the doors opened, I was reminded just how much this place gave me the creeps.
Unlike the upper floors of the hospital, this area was desolate and eerie. Fluorescent lighting gave a ghostly tint to the walls, which were painted a dull battleship gray. Exposed plumbing pipes were painted the same dull gray in a poor effort to make them blend in. The floor was covered with a freshly waxed beige tile that caused my rubber soles to stick. With each step I took, a sucking sound reverberated off the walls. The acoustics made each step sound like a marching band had followed close behind me.
Outside the autopsy room was a metal bench that was bolted to the wall, as if the hospital was afraid that someone would bother to steal it. Next to the bench was a metal closet that should have been bolted down, because it looked as if it would topple over the minute someone opened its flimsy doors. I opened it up and grabbed one of the white lab coats that hung on a broken rod held together with duct tape.
Above the rod was a shelf that held a lone blue plastic container of Vicks VapoRub, a staple of any autopsy room. I often wondered which was worse, the smell of a decaying body or the burst of menthol that the Vicks offered. I chose the Vicks and dabbed some under my nose as I pushed the heavy steel door open with my right hip.
As I entered the room, my left hand felt something in the pocket of the coat. I realized what it was as soon as I saw Rob Lyons and Marty standing over the body. What I was touching was a plastic medical mask, a clone of the ones they were wearing to avoid having any body fluids splattering in their faces. Both of them turned to look at me and I noticed that the blue plastic that covered the gauzelike material of the mask was the exact shade of Marty’s eyes.
I stopped to put the mask on before I got any further into the room.
I tried not to look at the extensive injuries that Jamie had sustained to her face, but I couldn’t help myself. Her thick blonde mane was now blackened and brittle, leaving part of her scalp exposed. Parts of her facial skin had literally melted off, exposing her nasal septum and charred cheekbones. Her lips were just a mass of blisters that seemed to trail down her chin.
It was not the girl’s face that Marty and Rob were focused on. Robert Lyons had the girl’s right arm lifted in the air, exposing her armpit.
The ME called me over to where he was standing. His voice was slightly muffled because of the mask.
“Here, Jean, come look at this.” With a latex-gloved finger, he pointed to an area that was covered with small, red, swollen lumps. Still keeping Jamie’s arm vertical, he shifted her wrist over to Marty to hold as he leaned over to get a pair of small tweezers from a metal tray that held his instruments.
“What is that?” I asked, as I leaned in to take a closer look.
Not answering, but applying the tweezers to the flesh of one of the nodules, he gently pulled something out. It looked like a tiny pubic hair to me.
“If I am not mistaken, this is a stinger from a species of Hymenoptera, commonly known as the honeybee. It appears that we have at least half a dozen stings in this area. I would take an educated guess and say this kid died of anaphylactic shock, an allergic reaction to melittin, the most prevalent chemical in the venom of the honeybee. Do you happen to know if her family was aware she was allergic to bee stings?”
“Easy enough to find out,” I answered, as I looked at him, bewildered.
“You’re telling me this wasn’t a homicide? What about the burns on her face?” I asked.
“I’m not saying that this is not a homicide,” he replied. “Can you see this?”
His finger traced a red mark that seemed to circle the swollen areas. Taking out a ruler, he measured it.
“The diameter of the circle measures exactly two inches, or precisely the measurement of a Smucker’s Jelly jar.” He stopped and walked toward a refrigerator that was in the back of the room. I caught a glimpse of the inside. It contained some jars with bizarre-looking substances, a couple of cans of Coke, and what looked like a hero sandwich in the familiar green-and-white Subway wrapper.
From the shelf of the refrigerator door, he pulled out a jar of grape Smucker’s Jelly and twisted off the cap. Wiping off the top of the jar with a moistened paper towel, he measured it. He was right, it was exactly two inches in diameter.
“Looks to me like someone deliberately caused this kid to get stung,” he said.
He wiped some jelly off that had gotten on his finger. “The burns are post-mortem—an afterthought. Apparently, watching her die wasn’t enough for this sadistic bastard. He or she would have watched as this girl began to have difficulty breathing. Her face and throat would have become swollen and she would have had difficulty swallowing. She would have experienced an immediate drop in blood pressure, leading to shock, and eventually cardiac arrest. This kid suffered a horrific death. I don’t know if whoever did this knew she was allergic, but I am guessing that he had at least six honeybees in a small jar, and it was the method used to inject her with the venom.”
He nodded to Marty, who was still holding Jamie’s arm upright. Marty carefully placed the arm back down next to the girl’s body.
“What about the facial burns?” I asked him.
“Most likely the Zippo lighter fluid is the chemical that was used to accelerate the fire that caused the damage to her face.”
I removed the gloves and then the mask from my face. “Well, I guess we have to find out who knew she was allergic to bees. It’s a start,” I said.
“Do you think they burned her face to make identification difficult?” I threw out the question, not really thinking it was a possibility or a motive.
Neither man answered. I didn’t really expect them to.
I turned my attention to Marty. “Let’s go talk to Lisa Padilla again. Maybe they bonded over their allergies.”
I discarded the gloves and mask in a nearby wastebasket. “Thanks, Rob. Let me know if you come up with anything else.”
He nodded as Marty and I walked over to the sink and moistened some paper towels to wipe the Vicks from our noses.
“Get the bastard, Jean,” he added, as Marty opened the door letting us exit the room. I turned back to Rob and gave him a silent reply with a nod of my head.
After leaving the autopsy room and the lifeless body of Jamie Camp, the desolate hallway took on a different aura. What had appeared a half hour earlier to be quiet and spooky now seemed serene and tranquil to me. The sound of our shoes stomping down the empty corridor was comforting. At least I had gotten some answers… we got the cause of death answered. Now we just had to figure out who did this to the girl, and why.
Chapter Seven
Friday Evening
Marty was behind the wheel. We drove for several miles in silence. I don’t know what Marty had on his mind, but I had a multitude of thoughts bombarding my brain cells all at once. Did any or all of the three girls know Jamie was allergic to bee stings? Could our teenage threesome be a group of sociopathic murderers? Who did they catch a lift from, and did they really not know who the driver was? I didn’t think so.
Marty was right about one thing: Miss Katie Hepburn and her two friends were being less than honest with us. As far as I was concerned, we gave them way too much latitude when we had the chance to get answers. Now, with them lawyering up, we might have screwed ourselves.
I started to question my own ability to handle this case with the same brilliance that Joe would have conducted it. Now I was in charge, and Marty was dependent on me to lead the investigation. It would be totally on me if something went wrong, and I wasn’t feeling too adequate at the moment. I murmured a strong expletive under my breath.
“I don’t think I ever heard you cuss, Jean,” Marty said, glancing in the rearview mirror as he changed lanes in preparation to exit the highway.
We were headed to Lisa Padilla’s grandparents’ home. The older couple had recently sold their large colonial family home and moved into a fifty-plus gated community only a stone’s throw from the high school that two of their grandchildren attended. They had downsized with the anticipation and prospect of traveling, now that they had both retired from teaching school. Lisa’s grandfather had been the vice principal of the elementary school since its inception thirty years ago, and her grandmother taught art at the Community College in the town of Loch Sheldrake, a few miles away. Their plans of retiring and enjoying the golden years were shot to hell when they assumed custody of Lisa and her siblings.
I suddenly realized that Marty was probably waiting for me to reply to his statement about my language.
“Sorry, I’m just so damn pissed at Joe for taking off without a word. I mean, how much effort does it take to make a friggin’ phone call?”
I guess he knew that I really wasn’t expecting an answer, because he didn’t give me one.
Marty showed his badge to the elderly uniformed guard at the gate. It tickled me how a geriatric wanna-be cop could give the residents a false sense of security. This particular guard bore a striking resemblance to Barney Fife from
The Andy Griffith Show
, making it seem even more absurd.
The second we pulled into a guest parking spot in front of Lisa’s grandparent’s residence, both our cell phones rang, using the same exact ringtone. I finished my conversation and waited patiently until Marty concluded his.
Marty spoke up first.
“That was Sully. He says that there is a caretaker living at the Forester place. Claims he was home asleep the night of the murder and didn’t hear a thing.” His fingers danced nervously on the back of his cell phone, as if he was deep in thought. He let out a snort.
“What?” I demanded. I hate when men do that… have a thought and, instead of vocalizing it, they keep it to themselves. When a thought crosses a female’s mind, she says it out loud. Men—they sit there in total silence, their brains calculating, their mouths clamped as if they were glued shut. You have to pry it out of them. My partner Joe would do the same thing to me. Sometimes I felt like a dentist instead of a cop. Getting them to speak up was like pulling teeth.
“Oh, sorry,” he apologized, realizing I couldn’t hear his thoughts.
“The caretaker.” He paused for a second. “It’s Cameron Knox.”
“Any relation to our esteemed mayor?” I asked him.
“Yeah, he is. Cameron is Paul’s son, from his first marriage, or at least I think it was his first.”
‘The mayor has a son? Why didn’t I know that?” I replied, surprised at my own ignorance about the man.
“Yup,” he answered, as he unbuckled his seat belt and got out of the car. He started down a narrow path that was bordered with a variety of shrubbery and foliage. It led to row of coral-colored block townhouses, each one an exact duplicate of the one next to it.
Joining him on the sidewalk, I suddenly recalled his exchange with the mayor the other day. Marty had asked Mayor Knox how Cameron was doing, but there seemed to be a hint of animosity in the exchange.
“I didn’t know he had a son—at least, I didn’t think I knew.” I tried to take a glimpse into my memory bank. This information wasn’t sounding the least bit familiar.
“He moved to Connecticut with his mother when his parents got divorced. That was years ago… at least ten years ago, maybe more.” We reached Lisa’s house. He rang the doorbell.
“Well, apparently he’s back,” I remarked, as I looked up at Marty. He had a faraway look in his eyes. I wondered if the mayor’s son and Marty had some sort of personal connection.
“What? What is it?” I prodded. Yes, men are all the same; it was like trying to pull teeth.
He didn’t answer, because at that very moment, the door opened and the woman I recognized as Lisa’s grandmother was standing there.
She looked to be about sixty, give or take a few years. Her hair looked like it had been recently coiffed. Unlike most women her age, it was uncolored, and I could understand why. It was a unique shade of gray that matched her eyes perfectly. I recalled my first meeting with her granddaughter and taking notice of her eyes as well.
“Mrs. Padilla? I’m Detective Whitley, this is my partner, Detective Keal.” It sounded a little foreign to me, calling Marty my partner, but I guessed I could get used to it. “We’d like to have a few words with Lisa, if that is all right with you.”
“Yes, please come in.” She opened the door wider. A long foyer led to an enormous living area. Glass and black Formica were everywhere. A long black-and-white sofa sat flush against the wall and on the opposite wall, a large, sleek LED flat-paneled TV was on, but the sound was muted. I recognized my late mother’s favorite soap opera on the screen.
“She’s upstairs. We kept her home from school today. I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to go back yet. It’s just too soon. Her asthma is really bad this time of the year, and stress makes it even worse. Please sit down.”
She waited until we were seated and then took a seat on a luxurious white suede recliner opposite us. I thought she must have gone shopping for new furniture long before she had any inkling that she would be raising her three grandchildren.
“Has Lisa told you anything about what happened, Mrs. Padilla?”
“Please, call me Mary Jo, I like to reserve ‘Mrs. Padilla’ for my husband’s mother,” she told us, as a sweet smile crossed her face. I liked this woman. I immediately got the feeling that she was genuine and I wouldn’t have to worry about her being honest with us.
“Mayor Knox told us that we shouldn’t talk to the police without an attorney present.” She hesitated for a moment.
“But personally I don’t like or trust that man,” she said. Her mouth made a gesture as if she was eating a lemon.
I smiled, letting her know that our feelings were mutual.
“Actually, I was waiting for my husband Frank, to come home and we were going to come back into the police station. Let me call Lisa downstairs, I think she needs to be the one to tell you herself.”
She got up and walked to the stairway. She called out her granddaughter’s name and then turned and looked at Marty and me. “She’s scared to death, please understand that. This has been very traumatic for her. This poor child has been through an awful lot in such a short period of time. I could kill my son and daughter-in-law for that. I don’t know what happened to that boy; he was such a good boy until he met her.”
The last few words she said, she spoke in a whisper. Lisa had appeared at the top of the stairwell and her grandmother didn’t want her to hear what she was saying.
“Yes, Me–Ma?” Lisa appeared at the top of the landing. Even from this distance, I could see her eyes were red and puffy.
“Lisa, can you come down here? The police are here, and they want to ask you a few questions.” I saw a visual exchange between the young girl and grandmother. I recognized the look as something that had often been passed between my daughter and myself. It was the look of “I know you’re scared, honey, but it’s going to be all right. I am here. I will protect you.”
When Lisa came down, I noticed that the streak of hot pink that had previously adorned her hair was now gone. Her black nail polish was also gone, and her nails were now short. The diamond stud in her nose was also gone. It was as if she had made a conscious effort to wash away what had happened by simply changing her appearance.
She didn’t say anything, but I could tell she was obviously shaken up. She sat down on the chair that her grandmother had previously occupied. She started to scratch a design in the suede like material on the arm of the chair.
“How are you feeling, Lisa?” I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Lisa, answer the lady properly,” her grandmother, who was now standing behind her, interjected. I could tell that even though the woman was stern, her words had certain warmth to them.
“I guess I’m okay.” She sat back in the chair and started to rock gently.
“Lisa, are you ready to tell us what happened the night Jamie died? Can you tell me how you got up to the woods? Can you describe the car and driver?”
She turned to look at her grandmother, who nodded, her hand now resting on Lisa’s shoulder.
“I didn’t tell you the truth,” she said, looking straight at Marty. “We didn’t hitchhike up there.” Her eyes fell to her lap. Without looking back up, she continued.
“Dylan drove us up there.”
“Dylan? Dylan who? What’s his last name?” I recognized the first name immediately, but I wanted to make sure we were talking about the same person.
“Silver… Dylan Silver,” she replied.
“Is this Dylan Katie’s boyfriend?” I questioned her.
“Well, sometimes. They’re really close, they date sometimes. They’re more like brother and sister, but they go out with other people. Dylan and Jamie were together that night, but they got into a fight. That’s why she took off.”
Marty leaned closer.
“Lisa, why wasn’t Dylan there when Officer Beck arrived?” he asked. “It was just the three of you. Where did Dylan go?” He had taken a small notebook from his side pocket and opened it. He fumbled around for a pen so he could write down the boy’s name. Mrs. Padilla noticed and handed him one that was on the coffee table.
The girl took a deep breath and continued her story.
“Katie told him to leave, she was afraid that he would get into trouble. So she made up this story about us hitchhiking up there. Dylan was scared that the police would think he hurt Jamie, ’cause they were fighting. After we found her, Katie told him to go home so no one would even know he was there.”
“What were you doing up there, Lisa? Why there?” Marty asked her.