Lesser Crimes Page 9

  James looked at the mess that was Joe’s scalp, with the six long lacerations Paxton described; the skin must have been raised in flaps in a few places. The hole on the back of his head was more like a puncture or dent. The report assumed this to have been the first blow, delivered as Joe looked down and descended the steps.

  “These long lacerations were all made as Joe faced away from the killer,” Koestler said. “You can see where they started by the deeper hits in the frontal part of his crown. The instrument first hit there, then dragged toward the back. There is no way for Joe to have been hit just twice or three times to then turn to confront his attacker, because he kept getting hit the same way: from above and behind.

  “And yet what we don't find anywhere are skull fractures. A poker of this weight would have caused fractures, injury, edema or at least some bruising of the brain. There was only slight subarachnoid hemorrhage noted in the autopsy — as if the victim had not been hit with enough strength."

  "As if he had been hit by a child?" James looked up from the report. “If there are no fractures and there is no edema, then he might have been hit repeatedly by someone not very strong, or someone who hesitated to do harm. The blows from Cora weren’t strong enough to stun him, although she kept hitting him, and after a few, he managed to turn around, grab on to the wall and rail, but lost his footing, fell and broke his neck.”

  “Could be,” Paxton said with a grimace. “But he was hit seven times before he turned? If he could still turn around after that, wouldn’t he have done it before? Could Cora have become so manic that she hit her stepfather seven times in a few seconds?”

  "And the point is," Koestler added, "that the medical examiner’s office concurred that these were vicious blows supposedly delivered by a strong, able young woman, since the police blamed Lynette Miller — yet these blows didn't cause a single fracture or even any edema. Also, no one does a good job of explaining the different types of blow."

  "The discrepancies between these reports and those images," Paxton pointed to the wall as the assistant projected a close-up of the lacerations, "are so important that Gavin went up to Harvard, to consult Dr. Amos Azulay. He's one of the world's foremost forensic experts."

  "He basically thought that the lab did a lousy job of this examination," Gavin explained. "The lab said this single dent here on the back of Joe’s head matches the piece sticking out of the fire poker, but these two things don’t match even by looking at the images. He suggested we should request exhumation, so that we can examine the skull.”

  "I thought exhumation was nearly impossible to get," James remarked.

  "I can make a compelling case for what was missed both in the pathologist’s examination and in the forensic findings,” Paxton said. “The cluster thing — and how it was treated far too much as an 'open-and-shut case' in the words of the prosecutor at the prelim. You see, James, no one would have much cared before, or moved their behinds, because there wasn't money involved. There was no efficient defense team, no Gavin, no Dr. Azulay. I believe that now it will be in the court's interest to concede the exhumation. Keane has no close living relatives apart from April, only a cousin — isn’t that right Ava?"

  "A cousin in Asheville," Ava said.

  "And I doubt that as the next of kin April can stop the exhumation, considering that her prints are on the weapon.”

  James nodded. "Then let's do it.”

  "But we have more," Paxton said. "Gavin?”

  Koestler stood on the tip of his toes twice before he managed to say, with a smile that almost looked gleeful, "There are no bloody footsteps by Cora Miller on this staircase." The image on the wall now showed the light brown carpet covering the steps. "Look at the dollops of blood, at the pool that formed. Considering her size and the reach of her arms, Cora would have had to be no higher than here to hit her stepfather. Now look at the blood on the carpet. It would have fallen on her feet or slippers; and even if her mama decided to give her a bath and burn her clothes, we would have a footprint, or the negative imprint of one: a clear place with the shape of her foot with blood around it. Cora would then have made more prints running up, which would have been impossible to get rid of. They'd be on the carpet."

  "Which means that whole area could not have been cleaned so as to erase Cora's presence," Paxton concluded, folding his arms on the table as he looked at James. "That little girl was never on the stairs."

  "She couldn't have killed Joe," James muttered.

  "That leaves the two adult women," Paxton said. "And only one of them has done everything in her power to incriminate herself."

  THIRTEEN

  In Leviticus, the scapegoat was the animal ritually burdened with the sins of the tribe and driven out into the wilderness as a sacrifice. It would obtain pardon for all.

  As James stood on Howard Lane, he thought of Lee leaving the house, bearing the weight of a crime she hadn't committed. She had left feeling guilt and misery for abandoning Cora and Billy, the two people who depended on her.

  Number 247 stood on its own on the quiet street. The neighbors were hidden by bushes and thickets of trees. April Keane's house was two-storied, with three steps leading to the porch that featured a window and a narrow front door. It was the sort of unsubstantial house one could imagine blown away by a hurricane or carried by a flood. Once it must have had a coat of yellow paint, which had faded to dirty beige, and the dark shutters upstairs were peeling.

  A dry lawn with more bald patches than grass undulated unevenly toward the porch, and the trees around the property were drier and more lifeless than they ought to be, even in winter. An old red car was parked in the driveway, and by glancing inside James could imagine the mess he was about to see in the house.

  However, the curtain at the window twitched, and the door was flung open by April Keane. She was wrapped in a robe of terrycloth mimicking leopard spots.

  "Mr. Bryce, innit?" she asked.

  "I'm sorry I didn't call before coming," he said. "If it's a bad time—"

  She laughed out loud. "It ain't never a bad time for tall and gorgeous!"

  April stepped aside so he could go in, which he did with slight alarm at the sight of her hard, pink claws holding a wine glass. Well, it was five in the afternoon on a Saturday, and the woman had a right to her drink. He squeezed by her and into the house with a smile. Her look, through eyes the same color as Lee's, was coy.

  "I apologize, it will look a bit of a mess to you at the moment," April said, hurrying around the living room to grab cups, dishes and plastic wraps.

  It looked much worse than a mess; it looked like both the hurricane and the flood had been through the living room. As she bustled around apologizing and explaining, James stood near the door.

  To the left of the entrance, in line with the window, the stairs went up a few steps, then made a sharp angle to continue straight to the second floor. The space between the stairs and the window, to his left, was just enough for a sofa, a television and the fireplace. In front of him there was another space with a round dining table and three rickety chairs, and beyond it, the kitchen. It was the crime scene he had seen in the slides Paxton had obtained from the prosecution.

  The inside of the house hadn't seen a coat of color in a while either. He suspected that without a man in her life, April couldn't be bothered.

  There was a crash of dishes in the kitchen as she called, "D'you want some wine?"

  "Better not, thanks. I'm driving."

  "Coffee? Or d'you drink tea? I think I have some tea here ..."

  April rummaged inside cupboards, and James wanted a moment to look around. "Tea would be lovely, thank you."

  Her low, muttered curse made him smile.

  The stairs had been stripped of the light brown carpet of the crime scene photos. Now there was cheap wood, full of scuff marks. James walked by the bumpy sofa, whose flower pattern probably hid food and drink stains; the fireplace didn't seem as if it had been used in a while. A small shovel that must
have belonged to the same set as the poker, judging by the handle, gathered dust against the wall.

  On the mantelpiece, there were frames. The biggest ones contained photographs of April, and she must have been in her early twenties when they were taken. Lee had said her mother had once been stunning, and if one were to judge a person solely on features, she had. April’s skin, now blotchy, looked flawless in the images, her eyes like a tropical sea, her lips plump and pink. Her natural hair was a light brown streaked with blonde highlights, as healthy and shiny as Lee's. A bit of generous cleavage hinted at a body that must have been alluring.

  A later photograph showed April sitting on Joe Keane's lap near a lake as they held cigarettes. There was already a big difference between the girl in the studio photos and the woman at the lake, although she must have been only in her early thirties then.

  James moved to the more recent photo of a teenage girl. Blonde and pretty, she stood in the snow amid houses and mountains: Cora. Her eyes were almost closed in joy as she held a ball of snow and laughed. That was the happiness Lee had done so much to preserve, just as he had tried to preserve Caitlin's.

  And there was Lee, in the smallest of all frames. Hers was the high school yearbook photograph that all American teenagers apparently possessed. Their forced smiles, their gaze somewhere above the lens, their innocent-looking sweaters and fluffy hair would be reproduced in newspapers, magazines and the internet as soon as anything went wrong in their lives.

  She wore a blue shirt, with a gold heart hanging from a chain to lie against the crevice of her neck; she must have been the most beautiful girl for thousands of miles, or perhaps it would just be hard for him to think any woman more beautiful than Lee.

  The photographer had probably asked her to smile, but she hadn't. Lee had just sat looking like she belonged elsewhere, or nowhere.

  He turned away, the imprint of Lee’s face swimming before his eyes. She was tidy and loved harmony, and she would have spent a lot of time trying to make the house look nice. It would have been like Sisyphus' punishment in the underworld: starting the same terrible task from scratch every day.

  Not to mention the task of dealing with April, who was swaying his way with a mug that said "Hug Me."

  The edges of the mug looked brown as he took it from her, and he could tell by the scum gathering on top that the tea was undrinkable. But then, he hadn't planned to drink it.

  April held up a sugar bowl. "How many?"

  "I take no sugar, thanks."

  "No sugar, how do you manage?"

  James only smiled, and she stood glowing under his eyes, patting her neck with a long-nailed hand. She was flirting.

  "Do I call you Mr. Bryce?" she asked, drawing out the vowels in his name for about three seconds. Br-aaaah-eeesss?

  Cute.

  "James."

  "You call me April, please. I was only seventeen when I had Lynn, you know. I'm not such a dinosaur!" She motioned toward the sofa. "Please.”

  He sat, and she perched on the edge of the seat next to him, making a visible effort to keep her back straight. She wanted to seem genteel, and for a moment he almost felt sorry for her.

  "I thought you had left," April pursued. "I mean, with the whole ridiculous business of Lynn going over to Billy. I told her not to do such a thing! I mean, she hadn't seen Billy in five years, and she had been with you ... how long?"

  He wrinkled his nose. "Hard to say."

  April threw back her brassy head to laugh. "Ah, one of those complicated things, right? When we can't even tell how it started. But still, at least some months, no? And I say, finders, keepers."

  "Lee cares for Billy," James pointed out quietly.

  "But she's been gone five years, James. There ain't nothing she can do for that poor boy! I guess you didn't meet him?" She grimaced. "I mean, I guess it would be sorta awkward ... Even though, you rest easy, I don't think that is how things are between them."

  She widened beautiful eyes at "that."

  Unable to help a slight frown, he said, "Lee is doing what she must do.”

  Pink claws landed on his sleeve. "I'm one hundred and ten percent sure she'd much rather be with you. She's just a soft-hearted girl. Got it from me. Heaven knows, I find it hard to even see a chicken sufferin’." Her smile grew, spreading wrinkles around her face. "I'm happy that you've come to meet me. Now you see—" she threw a glum and almost frightened look up the staircase, "—what I live with. Horrible memories. I just can't afford to move!"

  Lee would have used the first money she ever made or stole to get Cora away from April; but that would have probably involved some sort of pay off. She would have needed April's consent to get Cora out of the country and to a boarding school, and April was obviously moved by cash.

  There was no doubt that Lee would have sent her mother enough money to buy another house. Real estate prices in Hawkshaw were as low as $50,000. He also didn't doubt that April would have spent the money Lee sent her on just about anything else.

  "You didn't come only to meet me, did you?" April suddenly asked. "You've come to see where Lee grew up.”

  She took his hand, and he wanted to pull it away — but he suspected that she would be happier and more cooperative if he let her touch him as she played the naive young girl.

  "You can see, there are still stains here," she cried as they went up the stairs, clutching the back of his hand to the side of her breast. "I can't get rid of them, no matter how much I scrub."

  Out, out damned spot.

  The small-town Lady Macbeth leaned toward him as he flattened himself against the wall. "His head was shattered! Blood everywhere, and blood has a smell. I couldn't get it off my nostrils for ages. Metallic and sweet at the same time. In the morning, when I found him, he already smelled like meat. Just lying there!"

  A tragic finger pointed to the bottom of the stairs, but again April clutched James' hand and kept climbing. They reached the second story, where there were three doors, with a fourth so narrow it could only be a closet.

  She pulled him toward an open door through which he could see an unmade bed. "This is my room."

  He stepped back. "What about this one?"

  "That was the room Lee and Cora shared. Then it was only Cora's."

  They passed the bathroom, decked out in furry pink carpets and pink toilet covers, and April opened the door of the second bedroom.

  "I didn't really change it after the girls left. Cora wanted to keep Lee's side as it was — because Lee slept here sometimes as well. They liked to have their pajama parties." Entering, she picked up an old plastic tiara with rhinestones on it. "Princess parties. Innit cute?"

  James was busy looking over the room. The right side, which had been Cora's, bore April's influence, with stuffed animals and a frilly bed cover.

  On Lee's side he might have expected posters of Monet or Klimt, the taste a sensitive young girl might have picked up in a small high-school environment from an art teacher. Instead, there were postcards on the wall showing paintings of Rothko, Francis Bacon, Max Ernst. There were photographs of Louise Bourgeois' giant spiders. There were drawings too, and he knew they were Lee's.

  On top of the bed there was a shelf with books: Heart of Darkness, The Sound and the Fury, The Stranger, In Cold Blood, Lolita, Anna Karenina.

  How had she developed her taste? Where had she found those ideas? Why had she felt drawn to them?

  "Yeah, Lynn,” April said. “Always a bit weird. Liked the opposite of what everyone else liked. If anyone said 'A' she had to say 'Z.' Liked all this devil-looking stuff."

  April motioned toward the print of a Jean Dubuffet painting.

  "I thought she might be an artist, you know," April went on. "Some people talk about artists starving to death, but I know a man who charges almost a hundred bucks to make a drawing of your pet. And he has a lot of work, too. And Lynn could sing as well. I didn't know about what happened with that man who was at the hearing — but James, if I told you the number of times so
me man just grabbed me at a job! Well, you just get away from them. You laugh it off, you push them. Lee came home that day saying the man had fired her, and all the time she had hit him on the head!"

  Opening the closet where clothes for children still hung, April searched for something as she kept talking, "In any case, with the new feminist movement and all, you can get thousands of dollars out of a man for even hinting at stuff. ’Cause I don't think you can make them stop doing it, I think you can just make them pay." She moved the clothes aside, mumbling, "One day I'll have to give all this away."

  With a cry of satisfaction, she produced a box. "Now this was cute. This was Lee's box. I swear I thought she'd come back just to get this box or ask me to send it to her."

  She handed it to James. It was a Japanese secret box depicting Mount Fuji.

  "Her father gave her that. Said it was an antique." April shook her head, lips curving down at both corners. "Didn't do much for me when I was struggling. That witch mother of his convinced him I was trying to get him to marry me, and that Lynn wasn't even his. At that age? I didn't know how to fool anyone."

  James played with the box until it opened.

  "Look at that, you know how to do it!” April cried. “Lynn was sweet with that box, I have to say. It was like a game for her, to go out and come back with stuff she thought was precious. I can still see her running around in her little dress. Then she rebelled and just wore dungarees, with short hair."

  The box contained bits of quartz, some semi-precious stones like amethysts, turquoise and lapis lazuli, as well as silver or gold pendants: things that might have been lost by someone and found by Lee.

  "Her father used to call her Magpie," April said, sitting next to him. "She couldn't resist a shiny thing."

  For the first time April sounded nostalgic, even sorry for the little girl Lee had been.

  "I thought he wanted nothing to do with her," James said.

  "I didn’t find him for a while, it’s true, to even tell him I got pregnant. He had spent a holiday by the sea where I was waitressing and bam, it happened. And when I did find him near Raleigh, there was that whole to-do, you know. The family saying I was lying, and Lynn and me living like animals in a trailer park.” She stopped and shook her head. “Now you say what you want ’bout Cora’s daddy, but he was a man. What he did and didn’t do was all him. Lynn’s daddy — well, he was supposed to be all sensitive, but he was weak.