Murder Scene Read online

  Ivy made some noise before stepping into the room. She knew her mother was never more than one footfall away from awakening. It was one of the reasons Ivy was never able to sneak into the house as a teenager.

  Her mother opened her eyes. ‘Delia?’

  ‘I’m not Delia, Mama,’ she said. ‘You know that. I know you know that. We do this every time, don’t we?’

  Her mother held the crazy-woman look as long as she could. She then waved a dismissive hand, calling an official end to the charade. She picked up the remote, muted the talking head on the Today Show.

  Not only was Ivy Lee third-generation Ivy – her grandmother was Ivy Belle, her mother was Ivy June – she was also third-generation law enforcement. Woman law enforcement. Ivy June had retired from her job as a deputy sheriff for Holland County two decades earlier.

  Ivy’s mother had raised Ivy and her sister alone at a time when being a single mother carried a lot more baggage and innuendo than it did today.

  When her father had walked out, in Ivy Lee’s sixth year, everyone and anyone who had an opinion knew the reason, or thought they did, and did not hesitate discussing it over the wash line.

  The truth was that Frank Holgrave was a weak-willed man who could not stand the fact that his wife was a strong-willed woman, a woman who had ticketed and arrested a number of his tavern and union buddies.

  Ivy set out the coffee and fresh crullers, as she did every morning. She sat on the couch, tucked in.

  They sat in silence, Ivy June turning her attention to the newspaper, Ivy Lee watching the news, keeping an eye on her cell phone. She was officially on duty.

  At eight o’clock, as every morning, Ivy got up and cleared away the clutter. She stepped into the small kitchen, filled her mother’s water glass with orange juice, set a fresh straw in it, put it on the TV table next to her mother’s chair.

  She took a moment, considered the woman.

  Here was a lady who at one time could knock back four fingers of Jack Daniels, then cut a bull’s-eye with her Smith and Wesson six out of six times.

  She was getting smaller, Ivy thought, ever closer to her place in the earth. Ivy wished she knew a way to stop time.

  ‘I’ll pick up some takeout tonight,’ Ivy said. ‘What do you want?’

  Whatever you want is fine with me.

  ‘Whatever you want is fine with me,’ her mother said.

  ‘Chinese okay?’

  Not Chinese.

  ‘Not Chinese.’

  ‘Love you, Mama.’

  ‘Love you back, baby girl. You stay safe.’

  ‘Always.’

  Before she stepped out the back door Ivy glanced at the calendar on the kitchen wall. She felt her heart flutter when she saw that the day’s date had been outlined in red. Nothing was penciled inside the square, but Ivy saw that her mother had drawn a small flower with red petals and green leaves.

  She did remember.

  Holy Cross was the largest Catholic cemetery in Cuyahoga County, located in Brookpark, Ohio, just a few miles from Hopkins International Airport.

  Ivy parked her SUV, cut the engine. She took her service weapon from her hip, locked it in the glove compartment, then exited the vehicle, crossed to the back, and opened the rear gate. She took out a pair of gloves and a small pair of clippers.

  The grave she was visiting was at the top of a small incline, in the shade of two large sycamore trees. She knelt next to the grave marker, put on her gloves, began to trim the grass around the stone.

  James D Benedict.

  It was the way he introduced himself, always with his middle initial. The first time they’d met, shaking hands in the rear parking lot of the Fourth District headquarters on Kinsman Road, she’d thought it an affectation, an icing that this strikingly handsome and charming young man did not need. Within a few months she’d come to learn that the D stood for Denton. It was his grandmother’s maiden name.

  Jimmy was twenty-eight on his final day. It had felt old enough at the time to Ivy, but it seemed like a child’s age now.

  She touched a hand to his headstone, closed her eyes, remembered the day as if it were yesterday, heard the monstrous blast of the rifle, still echoing these many years later.

  Terrance Duncan was the killer’s name. He was sixteen. He was distraught because his girlfriend had left him for another boy. The crack helped put the rifle in his hands.

  Ivy said her piece, gathered her tools, and walked back to her vehicle.

  Ivy sat in the parking lot of the Airport Marriott. She thought about heading east, getting onto St Clair Avenue, over to 152nd Street, down to Holmes Avenue. Five houses on the left. The tidy double, painted powder blue the last time she’d seen it.

  She wondered if the Terrance Duncan’s grandmother, Arcella Richards, was still alive. It was a ritual Ivy had kept up for more than a decade but had now passed into memory.

  Perhaps it was better if it stayed there.

  Ivy settled into the chair in her basement, opened the file on her desk.

  The dead girl’s name was Paulette Graham.

  The scene was a remote clearing in the forest, near the intersection of Route 44 and Jennings Road, just east of the Holland County line. In the long shot photograph, the dead girl’s body was a smudge of chalk white against the bark of the box elder.

  According to the coroner’s report, the girl had been dead more than three weeks when she had been discovered by a pair of teenaged boys. In the time between the girl’s last breath and her body’s discovery, it had snowed and melted twice. The remaining snow was arrayed in the field in large white patches.

  The close-up of the victim showed the bloated and darkened flesh, nearly unrecognizable as having once been human.

  Ivy sometimes envied those who worked in urban settings – she’d done so herself – for the simple reason that they often arrived at a crime scene minutes after the crime was committed, and therefore walked into an all but pristine setting. Blood, fingerprints, hair and fiber, all in a fully preserved state.

  In the country, especially with homicides, there were many more hazards to investigations. When nature is disturbed, it immediately tries to heal itself, to keep to its heart its secrets.

  Paulette was, by all accounts, a shy and respectful girl, abandoned by her mother when she was only two, raised by her grandparents. An average student, she kept to herself, volunteering at a food shelter in southern Holland County on holidays.

  She was last seen at the Gas ’N Go on Route 40 at just before 2 p.m. on December 14. Video surveillance from the store showed her enter the property alone, walking into the lot from the northern entrance. Once inside the store, she picked up a loaf of sandwich bread and a tin of potted meat. She paid cash at the register, passing a few words with the clerk.

  Video showed her exiting the property, alone, at just after 2 p.m.

  She was never again seen alive.

  Ivy slipped the USB flash drive into her laptop. She clicked open the program.

  She’d seen the video dozens of times, but each time she watched it anew she saw something else. At the 1:57:20 mark Paulette is seen entering the frame from the right. There is only one other person in the frame, an elderly man filling his Toyota truck.

  At the 2:00:02 mark a subject enters the frame at the upper left part of the screen. The person appears to be male, but age and race are undetermined, as the subject’s upper body is not visible. The subject is wearing heavy boots, denim jeans, a heavy coat and gloves.

  As always, Ivy stopped the video when the subject turned toward the camera.

  Something was in the subject’s gloved right hand. At first, Ivy had thought it might be a small handgun, and it might have been just that. The cause of death determined by the coroner was inconclusive, but there was no evidence that Paulette Graham had suffered a gunshot wound.

  Because Ivy had already printed out this frame, as well as having saved it as a digital image, she let the video play. The subject lingers for a fe
w moments, then exits the frame, heading in the direction of the store. He does not enter.

  At the 2:01:16 mark Paulette Graham is seen crossing the parking lot with her small bag of groceries, and exiting the frame heading north.

  Her body was found in a field, precisely 8.7 miles northeast of the Gas ’N Go, twenty days later.

  Ivy poured herself a few inches of Jim Beam. She crossed the room, stepped into the small alcove that housed her washer and dryer. She opened the dryer, took out a clean sweatshirt and pair of yoga pants; pants designated yoga in name only.

  She returned to her computer.

  As she did every night she scanned the databases and wires. There had been no Amber Alerts in the tri-county area on this day. The two missing persons reports were males.

  She sat down in front of her iMac, and opened Photoshop. It brought her to her current project, a photograph she had been restoring, on and off, for more than a year, one pixel at a time.

  She had just about every book she could find and afford on the early days of photography, including a signed copy of Paul Strand in Mexico, and Eve Arnold’s All About Eve. She also had many books on the pioneers of photography, including works by Julia Margaret Cameron, James Mudd and, of course, Mathew Brady.

  In the photograph, Delia stood on the Fairgrounds, near the center, right by the huge sugar maple. She wore faded jeans and her favorite white cardigan, one that Ivy had purchased as a birthday present for her from the O’Neils at Rolling Acres Mall.

  This picture was the last photograph ever taken of Delia, at least as far as Ivy Holgrave knew. It was taken in the late afternoon, seven days before the beginning of fall, just hours before Delia Holgrave disappeared into the mist.

  17

  It had gotten to where Will didn’t know where the dream stopped and the waking started, what was real and what was the dark vestige of sorrow.

  His days were wind sprints from Xanax to Wellbutrin to Valium to Ambien. The four medications were a toxic cocktail keeping him numb to his loss.

  His was a hollowed-out life, a feeling that he was existing in white, featureless time. Each morning, an hour before the alarm sounded, he lay in darkness and tried to think of a single reason to get out of bed.

  In March he found one.

  On a late Saturday morning in mid-March Will and Detta walked back from the Whole Foods at Union Square. Winter was still clinging to the city, but there was something in the air that day, a scent of spring that delivered Will Hardy to a moment in the past, an incident when Detta had been about six years old. Will had been teaching part time at Hunter College.

  On that day they had just gotten off the IRT at 68th Street. While they’d been on the train Will had been approached by a homeless man. The man asked Will for money, but Will denied him. The man, too beaten down by circumstance and weather, had moved on without asking a second time, or pressing his luck, as some in his position were wont to do.

  Later, while waiting to cross at 69th and Lexington, Detta furrowed her brow.

  ‘Dad?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah, honey?’

  ‘That man on the train?’

  In that moment, Will expected his daughter to ask about the man’s plight, about why he was dressed the way he was dressed, why he was unshaven, or why he smelled the way he smelled, which was not pleasant. Will geared up his best explanation – at least the one that might fly in the mind of a six-year-old – regarding homelessness, and society’s role in both the many causes and the many possible solutions.

  ‘What about him?’ Will asked.

  ‘How come you didn’t give him any money?’

  Oh, boy, Will thought. He did not have a back-pocket answer for this one.

  ‘It’s kind of complicated, sweetie.’

  The light changed. They joined hands, walked across 69th Street.

  ‘Right now that man doesn’t have anywhere to live, you see,’ Will said. ‘And I feel for him, I really do. It’s just that—’

  ‘He doesn’t have a house?’

  ‘No honey. He doesn’t.’

  ‘But we have a house.’

  Technically a co-op, Will thought, but close enough for a six-year-old. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We do. But sometimes life can be really unfair, and he—’

  ‘Does that man know where our house is?’

  Will was more than a little surprised by the question. ‘Do you mean does he know where we live?’

  Detta just nodded.

  ‘No, honey. Why would you ask that?’

  ‘Because,’ she said. ‘If you gave that man money, how was he going to pay us back?’

  Will almost laughed, but checked himself. ‘Well, that’s a really good question.’

  Will then went into an overly long explanation of the difference between loaning someone money and giving someone money. He didn’t do a very good job. By the time they got to the Ukrainian bakery at 71st, with its bounty of treats in the window, Detta had moved on.

  Does that man know where our house is?

  Anthony Torres had known where they lived.

  After fumbling with the keys and the bags of groceries, Will managed to get the door opened. Detta brushed right by him, heading to the steps, knocking a bag from his hands.

  She didn’t stop to help him, didn’t even acknowledge what she had done. She just kept walking. Will was getting used to this, but it did not make it better.

  While gathering the oranges scattered across the lobby, Will’s cell phone rang. He fished the phone out of his pocket, looked at the screen. It was Patrick Richmond. As much as Will liked the man, had needed his counsel and legal expertise over the past months, he hoped this was not another welfare check-in. He took the call anyway.

  ‘Hey, Patrick.’

  ‘How are you, Will?’ he asked.

  There were probably a hundred answers to that question. Each time someone asked, Will considered all possible responses. If he had learned anything in his many years in his chosen profession, it was that it was better to wear the mask of your own choosing.

  ‘One day at a time still,’ Will said. ‘Just getting home from the grocery store.’

  ‘And Bernadette?’

  Will now knew that this would not be a drive-by. He sat down on the step. ‘Not great,’ he said. ‘She’s still not talking much.’

  ‘She’ll come around. She’s a tough kid.’

  Just like her mother, was the line that usually came next. Patrick was too smart, and too sensitive, to say it.

  ‘I’d like you to come by my office today, if you can,’ Patrick said. ‘Tomorrow at the latest.’

  At first, Will thought he had heard incorrectly. He thought he was done with the legal aspects of murder and the virus of its aftermath.

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘It’s probably best that we talk face to face at my office. Or, I could come to your place. Or we could meet for coffee. Whatever’s most convenient for you.’

  Will could not go to the man’s office. He’d signed too many papers there. Amanda was a folder in a steel cabinet there.

  ‘Can you meet me at my place?’ Will asked.

  ‘Of course. I can be there in an hour,’ he said. ‘Will that work?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘See you then.’

  Will did not touch his coffee, coffee he didn’t want to make in the first place. Patrick had taken only one or two polite sips from his mug. Will knew he made the worst coffee on earth. Somehow he managed to mess up K-Cups.

  ‘Not sure how to begin with this,’ Patrick said. ‘I received a FedEx delivery yesterday from a man named Charles Bristow. Are you familiar with that name?’

  Will thought about it. The name didn’t ring a bell. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Mr Bristow is an attorney in Ohio.’

  Patrick reached into his briefcase, took out a large envelope, opened it. He extracted a single document.

  ‘Mr Bristow is the attorney of record for Camilla Strathaven’s estate.�
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  ‘I’m at a loss here, Patrick.’

  ‘Mrs Strathaven was a stepsister to Janna Schuyler.’

  Will thought he had surely misheard the man. Janna Schuyler was his mother’s mother, whom he’d never met. There were no Strathavens in his family. Then it hit him. He was talking about Aunt Millie. His mother’s great-aunt’s name was Camilla, not Millicent, as Will had assumed. He never knew her married name. In fact, he didn’t know anything about her. Sarah Hardy had spoken of her estranged family in Ohio only a handful of times, and even then it had been a bit cryptic.

  ‘I thought she died years ago,’ Will said. This was more of an assumption than anything based in fact.

  ‘Not years ago,’ Patrick said. ‘Just recently, in fact. She was in a state-run hospice in Ohio. I’m sorry for your loss, Will.’

  Will didn’t know what to say. He said: ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Because she was indigent, she didn’t have many possessions. In fact, she just had one.’

  Patrick placed a photograph on the coffee table. Will glanced at it. It was a large, ornate house, with two wings and a rather expansive field behind it.

  ‘I have to say, I’ve been practicing estate law for twenty-six years, and this is a first for me.’

  Will pointed at the photo. ‘What is this?’

  Patrick was silent for a moment, then said, ‘It’s yours, Will.’

  ‘I don’t get it. How could this be mine?’

  ‘I should say, it will be yours if you want it.’

  It was as if Patrick was speaking another language. His attorney moved ahead. More envelopes, more pictures.

  ‘The property itself is just over three acres in an incorporated village called Abbeville. The town is located about forty-five miles east of Cleveland in Holland County.’

  Patrick pushed a few photographs across the coffee table. They were reprints of old black and white pictures of a county fair, complete with a midway, food stalls and a Ferris wheel in the background. One of the pictures appeared to be from the 1920s or 1930s, with women in high-collared blouses and long skirts.

  Quoting Denzel Washington’s character in Philadelphia, Will said what he felt. ‘Talk to me like I’m eight years old, Patrick.’