A Violent End at Blake Ranch (9 page)

Addendum:

“Pursuant to finding out more about Nonie Blake's state of mind, I interviewed her teachers, who confirmed that Nonie had become intractable in the classroom. She misbehaved, making wild claims and generally being disruptive. No one could account for her disturbance, although Lottie Raines, her English teacher, said she had a sister who became unstable in her teenage years, and that her family was told that the teenage years are when mental illness makes itself manifest. The school had brought the Blakes in and discussed the matter with them, but they had not taken any steps to corral the girl.”

Addendum 2:

“I conferred with doctors at the hospital in Bobtail, and they recommended a psychiatrist in Houston. As a result of Nonie's actions and the psychiatric evaluation, and at the expense of the family, Nonie has been sent to the Rollingwood Institution in north Texas for further evaluation. Due to this action on their part, I see no need to further involve the law in the matter.”

I lean back in my chair. Despite its strangely archaic language, Whitehall's report is thorough, for which I'm grateful. When I first heard that Nonie Blake was back, it seemed to me that twenty years was a long time for someone to be in an institution. Back when I was a youngster, you would sometimes hear about “crazy” people being put away and never seeing the light of day. Reading the details, I realize that she had major problems. Still, with the kinds of drugs they've developed since then, and more enlightened policies, I don't believe people spend that much time in institutions anymore. So why was she there for so long?

There's nothing in the report to indicate that Nonie was involved with someone outside her family, but the fact that she was having behavior problems in school might have some significance. If she knew a secret about somebody, it could have troubled her or given her an idea about blackmail. I'm going to have to go back into the past to find out what it was she might have known.

The last thing in the folder is a formal letter of evaluation from a psychiatrist in Houston, Dr. Richard Buckley, recommending that Winona Blake be sent to a psychiatric facility for further evaluation. He states that he administered standard mental tests as well as a physical examination. He refers to a complete evaluation for the details. There's no such evaluation in the folder. It's possible the chief didn't ask for it, since the family agreed that Nonie should be sent to Rollingwood.

Texas law regarding psychiatrists sharing patient information has probably changed since I was last chief of police. It was pretty haphazard as I recall, especially with regard to minors. I don't know what the current law says about obtaining records of either a minor offender or an offender who has died. My vague recollection is that if someone was accused of a crime, and the state ordered an evaluation by a psychiatrist, the evaluation could be shared with law enforcement. But this was all pertaining to court proceedings, and Nonie's case never went to court.

It's also possible that Dr. Buckley has retired by this time and his records destroyed if they've passed the statute of limitations. But even then, since Nonie was being evaluated at the behest of the state, the state would have copies of the evaluation. I could probably find out what the current law is regarding all these questions, but before I go to that trouble, I'll try a direct approach.

I call the telephone number on the letter from the psychiatrist. A recording with the doctor's soothing voice asks me to leave a message, which I do. So at least he is still practicing.

When I hang up, I pick up the folder again and read Whitehall's first few lines. There's one puzzling detail. Why did the family even notify the law about what Nonie had done to her sister? They surely would have known that calling in the police was going to bring down a world of problems on their family. Some families would have tried to hide it. The fact that they called in the law means that the Blakes must already have had a sense that Nonie was too big a problem for them to handle. The school had already called them in to discuss Nonie's bad classroom behavior, and this must have been the last straw.

I'm still mulling this when the phone rings. It's Charlotte Blake. “I was on the phone with the telephone company for an hour trying to get our phone log.”

“Did you get it?”

“Yes, it turns out I can look online anytime and find it. Who knew? Anyway, I took a look and there was only one number I didn't recognize. So I called it and it was a company I forgot I'd contacted to get car insurance rates. So Nonie didn't make any phone calls that I can see.”

CHAPTER 7

When I telephone Lottie Raines, she tells me she was only a schoolteacher for five years before she got married and later started having kids, and she never went back to teaching. She says she's always involved in school events, though, since she has a pack of children in the school system. She and her husband live not too far from me. I know her to say hello to. She's a talker—a skinny, jolly person, always surrounded by people whenever I see her.

I tell her what I'm after, and she says she'll be glad to tell me whatever she can remember about Nonie Blake. She says I can come over right away. “I was cleaning my house. Weekends, things get pretty torn up around here. But I'd rather talk to somebody than clean house any day.”

Her husband has a good job as an engineer with the county, and they have a sprawling house with a big fenced-in yard. From the street you can see a tree house in the backyard and various climbing structures. The front yard is well kept, and when I step inside I can tell right away that Lottie was exaggerating about the mess made over the weekend. It's obvious that she's house-proud. Kids' toys are kept in bins instead of strewn all over the place and the entry floor is gleaming.

“I'm going to get you some coffee, and we'll sit in the living room,” she says. She shows me in and disappears. It's one of those rare living rooms where a lot of living gets done. There's a big TV and lots of chairs of various sizes and a whole wall of family pictures. The furniture is sturdy—meant to be used.

She comes back in carrying a giant-sized mug of coffee, for which I'm grateful, and a plate of sugar cookies. She sets the plate of cookies in front of me and plops herself down with a big sigh. “I don't know how we ended up with five kids. I love 'em dearly, but they keep me running from morning 'til night.” One of the effects is that she doesn't have an ounce of fat on her. But she looks happy, with laugh lines around her eyes.

“You look like you're up to the task,” I say.

“Some days, yes, some days, no. Now. You wanted to ask me about Nonie Blake. I can't believe what happened to her. Such a sad story. I mean, what she did way back then was awful, but it seems to me she had paid her dues. I'll help any way I can. What do you want to know?”

“I'm going through her files from back then, and I found a reference to you as a teacher who thought she showed signs of mental unbalance.”

She nods. “That puts it mildly. She was a little hellion. I bet they didn't say that I recommended to the principal that he tell the parents they ought to send her for psychiatric evaluation.”

“It says in her file that the school did talk to the parents.”

Her eyes narrow. “Oh, they might have hinted around that she could use a little discipline, but the principal would never have suggested a therapist. Perish the thought! He told me that the parents would be better served by taking the girl to church. He said she had been overindulged at home and all she needed was a guiding hand. That was plain hogwash.”

“The file did say that you told the police that you recognized similar behavior to your sister's.”

Her face clouds over. “Poor Allie. At least she had the benefit of my folks, who recognized that there was something wrong and took her to a psychiatrist. Of course we lived in Sugarland and it wasn't so hard to find someone close by. The doctor put Allie on some drugs and recommended a special school for her, but they couldn't afford it.”

“What happened to her?”

“My mamma home-schooled her and she seemed to get better for a while. But when she was in her twenties she took her own life. I know this is going to sound awful, but in some ways it was a relief. She was a sweet girl, but when she was depressed she was hard to be around. A burden to my mamma in particular.” She shakes her head as if to rid it of her thoughts. “Anyway, I was so caught up in her problems that I took a few psychology courses in college, thinking I might want to be a therapist. Turned out not to be a good fit for me, but I did learn a few things, and one of them was that it's the teenage years when some of these problems start to manifest themselves. I believe I saw that in Nonie.”

“Do you remember anything in particular?”

“She exaggerated things. I wouldn't say she deliberately lied, but she said things that couldn't possibly be true. Kids made fun of her behind her back. I remember once she said her mamma was going to buy her some kind of fancy car—I can't remember what kind—when she was sixteen. Another time there was some rock concert in Houston that all the kids wanted to go to, and she told everybody that she went to it. They were silly things, but they added up. One of the problems for her teachers was that she refused to do what she was told in school. She flat out would not do homework. She told me her parents told her she didn't have to—which I knew wasn't true.”

“That doesn't sound like such a big behavior problem.”

Lottie leans across and takes a cookie and shoves the plate closer to me, so I take one, too. She nibbles the cookie and says, “You're right. I cut her some slack because I figured it wouldn't do any good to make a federal case out of it. But some teachers can't deal with a child who won't follow the rules. And they have a point. The problem is it sets a bad example. If one student gets away with refusing to do homework, pretty soon others think they should be able to get away with it, too. Nonie made good grades, so it didn't matter if she did homework, but if a student was struggling and decided to follow Nonie's example, it could hurt their grades.”

While she talks, I take a bite of cookie, and it's delicious. “Did you call her parents?”

“Of course I did. But they didn't seem to be able to control her.”

“Did she refuse to take tests, too?”

“No, in fact she liked them. I think it gave her a chance to show off.”

She sees that I've polished off the cookie. “Have another one.”

I take another cookie. “How did the other teachers handle it?”

“The math teacher—what was his name? Alvin something—graded her down for not turning in homework, even though she made one hundreds on her tests. He said she told him she didn't care, she wasn't going to do it.”

“So no homework. Anything else?”

“Refused to go to assemblies. Said it was a waste of time. Instead, she'd go to town and get a soda or something and wait outside until it was over. Refused to go outside during fire drills . . .” Suddenly her hand comes up. “Wait. I remember one of the things she said that I found a little disturbing. One day I came into class and I heard her telling some girls that she had a way to get a lot of money. They called her a liar and she said, ‘You wait. I know something that somebody is going to pay me not to tell.' They were impressed by that and wanted to know what she knew and who it was. Of course she wouldn't tell. I didn't think there was anything to it.”

“Did anything more ever come of it?”

She sighs. “No. I had a class full of rowdy teenagers and I let it go. I probably should have taken her aside privately and tried to get her to tell me what she meant, but I imagine even if I'd done that she wouldn't have told me.”

She picks up a manila envelope from the table and hands it over. “I don't know if this is anything you'd be interested in. After you called, I went and fished these out of my files. I kept the class picture from each class I taught—five years in all. I taught Nonie two years—I had her in sixth grade and then again in eighth grade.”

I take out two eight-by-ten black-and-white photos. She points out Nonie in both of them. You can't tell anything from either photo. Nonie is a face hidden among eighteen other youngsters, and not a particularly memorable face either. In both, she's standing in the middle row, and you can only see her face. In the eighth-grade photo, she's scowling, but so are several other students.

“Did you ever hear anything that might indicate why she tried to kill her sister?”

“Not anything credible. Once the kids found out what had happened, they made up all kinds of things—that she was a Satan worshipper or that she wanted to get in the newspaper and that's why she'd done it.” She snaps her fingers. “Oh, this was a good one. There was a rumor that it was actually the brother who had tried to kill Charlotte, and he blamed it on Nonie. And my personal favorite, that Nonie was a vampire and that her sister found out and Nonie had to kill her.”

We both laugh, but I do take note of the idea that Nonie's brother might have been to blame and he put the blame on Nonie. But there would have been no reason for Nonie to go along with it. Besides, there's plenty to indicate that Nonie was troubled and perfectly capable of doing what she did. What I want to know is why she told the doctor who examined her that she had done the deed deliberately. She must have known it would mean that she would be in terrible trouble.

“How did all of Nonie's trouble affect her siblings? With all the rumors, did they have problems in school afterward?”

“They suffered from all the talk, but not for long. Charlotte was a sweet girl, and eventually all that died down.”

“And her brother?”

She smiles. “He reminds me of my middle boy, Dan. Quick with his fists. Not that I hold with boys fighting, but sometimes that's the most efficient way for them to settle their differences. What can you do? Anyway, Billy had a couple of fights and after that he was right back in with his friends. It didn't hurt that the idea of him being something of a hero made him a subject of great admiration among the girls. Girls are so silly at that age.”