Ada Unraveled (25 page)

The north wall possessed the man’s bureau,
littered with small items as well--a plastic shoe horn, a green jar
full of buttons and the usual pocket leavings. And a small chair
with a circular table lamp much like the one downstairs filled that
remaining corner of the room. Men’s worn clothes were piled on the
chair. A small wooden box on the table contained scraps of paper
with telephone numbers, a couple of match books and half-smoked
cigar.

I recognized one of the bars advertised on
the match books as a local dive, Red’s Rebels, but the other
one—The Devine Dog--I didn’t. Later I would tell Matt about these
bars. Maybe people there who knew Luke and Ada could enlighten us
further. I snapped a picture then opened both books. But nothing
had been scribbled inside the covers. I needed a much better
picture of this guy Luke than I was getting by snooping through his
home and even his bedroom. I briefly wondered if Red, of Red’s
Rebels, was a woman who might have visited Luke sometime
recently.

A smell began to fill my nostrils. It wasn’t
pleasant. I wished the windows were open again, and then knew why
Tom had closed them. So I’d notice the odor. I couldn’t identify
it. Maybe blood. Maybe urine. Maybe death.

The pale green or gray curtains hung partly
torn from the rods. The stained quilted bedspread was in a state
somewhere between tattered and shredded. My heart skipped a beat
when I wondered if it had been hand sewn by Ada. The room was like
an old woman approaching death.

Tom drew the ancient curtains against the
gray day, leaving us only the meager light from one small lamp. It
was then I realized none of us were speaking, especially Tom. Not a
word.

My heart notched up a speed. Was Tom afraid
we were being listened to? Or, recorded? We were done with our
surface inspection. I knew what was to come next would be even
worse. Tom Beardsley left the room and we waited, standing alone
with our separate thoughts.

On the farthest wall I saw a brown area I at
first thought was a partial paint job. Drawn to it, I moved closer
to take pictures. It was layered splatters of what could only be
blood. But…not just brown. Shuddering, I snapped several more
pictures.

Some of the splatters were dark red going on
lipstick red.

“Chemiluminescence scan?” Hannah
whispered.

“What?” Gerry.

I nodded and stepped closer to them, and
into my teacher mode.

I whispered, “Luminol is a chemical compound
that reacts when it’s sprayed on blood or other bodily fluids, even
if old. It interacts in different spectras, usually blues and
greens.”

Hannah said, “It’s the hemoglobin. It’s just
like the female lampyris noctiluca, only that’s called
bioluminescence.” She noticed our blank stares. “Fireflies.
Electroluminescence is similar, but mechanically produced with
electricity. LED’s.”

Gerry added, “I know this one, a light
emitting diode. You’ve been studying, Hannah. Did you get any
sleep?”

Hannah said, “Enough. Wouldn’t the ME’s have
done this already?”

I shrugged a response. You’d have thought
they would, given the stains on the walls.

Detective Tom returned, with a full spray
bottle dangling at his side. He closed the door and turned out the
solitary light.

We had moved far away from the brown spot,
assuming that was where he would spray.

“Didn’t they do that already?” Hannah
repeated in a whisper, her words muted by her steno pad which she’d
pressed against her lips as a small shield.

He shook his head no. I saw Gerry grasp
Hannah’s arm.

I was flabbergasted, began to speak.

He stared at me hard, turned his back and
stood very still.

What was all this eye contact about?

I checked my camera settings again.

He stood, poised, waiting--for what?

I thought I heard a car engine out front,
and pulled a corner of the curtain back to peer out. No one was
there. When I dropped the curtain back down Tom began spraying the
chemical on the far wall by the bed. Instantly a blue glow began to
form where I’d just seen the dark brown and red stains.

Blood
. No surprise there. I was
expecting that.

But as he widened the arch of his spraying
we stared in shock as the blue glow covered a much higher and wider
space on the wall. He kept spraying, moving toward the small
closet. The blueness continued across the room like some spreading
alien infection. Gerry, Hannah and I backed away unconsciously,
pressing up against the entryway door.

Even the curtains. Even the top of the man’s
bureau. The woman’s bureau.
Geode blue.

Disbelief turned slowly to fear and
disgust.

“It’s everywhere,” Hannah whispered from
behind her book-shield.

“Bleach?” Hannah whispered hopefully.

Tom threw us another look.

He was thinking the room was bugged.
Earlier I’d been thinking he was concerned that people in the
house, or maybe in the yard, might somehow hear us. But we seemed
to be alone now.

If he was thinking electronic bugging then
he might be in trouble thanks to our little talk while he’d been
downstairs. I tried to remember just what we’d said. But then the
color beginning to fill the room drew my attention.

The glowing-blue would have been beautiful
if you didn’t know what the sprays and splatters were.

He didn’t stop. He sprayed above the
headboard, and on the floor at the foot of the bed, and then moved
to the other walls.

I finally remembered myself, and furiously
snapped my flash-free shots of the walls, floors and ceiling before
it began to fade.

Moving closer to the violence with every
picture, I found myself standing in the narrow space on the far
side of the bed near the bloodiest wall. I snapped more pictures,
bending at the waist to do close-ups of the lower half. The camera
focused and refocused and slowly something began to form in the
iridescent blue sea. A pattern. A shape. Low down by the floor
wedged between the bed and wall.

I stood abruptly and turned to look at the
others.

Tom’s eyebrows asked me “what?”

I crooked a finger and he approached. I
pointed. I lowered myself to my knees, and he squeezed in next to
me. I felt his warmth pressing against me and was briefly
embarrassed. He mouthed the question, what?

He couldn’t see it.

I scrunched down further and he leaned
closer, and a sudden terror filled my heart as I imagined Ada’s
distress at being trapped in this narrow confine, being beaten and
beaten. I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I spoke softly.

“L.”

He frowned disapproval then peered more
closely at the wall, turning his head from side to side. His face
finally registered comprehension.

“And U.”

It was Gerry. She had leaned across the
blued bedspread to see what we were looking at, one hand directly
in the Luminol spray. I cringed. She’d leave a hand print, and
maybe a knee, but at least no detail thanks to the glove.

Before either of us could finish spelling
the name that had been written onto the wall in blood over the many
old layers, Tom grabbed us and pulled us away.

The final letters had been “K” and “E
”.
Luke
.

Numbed, I wondered which of his victims had
lived long enough to identify her murderer.

I glanced over at Hannah. She had her back
pressed against the door and was reaching for the knob. She was
going to bolt. I snapped more pictures of the spot before she could
let the light in.

Tom noticed my concern, and placed the
squeeze bottle on Ada’s bureau and joined her by the door, his hand
resting calmly atop Hannah’s. But the worried scowl on his forehead
betrayed the act of calm.

I moved up next to him and whispered,
“Wasn’t this standard crime scene procedure done earlier today?” I
emphasized standard.

“Yeah.”

“Was there just as much of a reaction?”

He shrugged.

Why was he worried? Why the need for
silence? I couldn’t figure out his attitude. If the Sheriff himself
had authorized this action, why be so secretive?

“Wasn’t the writing noticed before?”

“Not that I know of. We were kept out of the
loop.”

“The Sheriff’s Department?”

“Everyone. A couple of people I’ve never
seen before were here when we arrived, around five. Said they were
from the Mayor’s office. Said we didn’t need to go upstairs at all.
That there wasn’t anything up there. It was like an order. They’d
taped the stairs. Those men just left.”

Hannah sniffled, and I realized she was
crying. Gerry wrapped her in her arms.

I half expected Hannah’s phone to ring—Ruth
warning her daughter.

My own eyes welled with grief for the women
who suffered here.

We stayed in the room for close to an hour,
silently searching the bureau drawers and shoeboxes high up on the
closet shelf, even under the bed. We were looking for any helpful
information about Luke, Ada and Eddie, but also giving the Luminol
time to fade.

There was nothing else.

Finally the blue stain on the walls dulled,
and we opened the drapes, turned on the overhead light, and with
bated breath opened the door. No one was there.

And the downstairs was still silent. Lunch
was probably two hours.

I headed for the bathroom. There was nothing
inside worth noting, just the usual male and female toiletries, and
as I stepped back out, Hannah shoved past me eagerly. I suppressed
the worry that she might be sick and turned toward the second
bedroom down the end of the short, transverse hall.

Police tape had been placed across the
door.

Uh-oh.
That hadn’t been there when
we’d first climbed the stairs.

I searched for and found Tom lingering back
by the closed master bedroom door and our eyes held for a moment.
Someone from his department, or perhaps from the City
Police—
Famine?
—had come upstairs and taped the second room
shut while we’d been doing our investigation.

I worried for Tom. Our work here had been
approved by the top guy, but that didn’t mean a junior detective
wouldn’t suffer more because of his part in it. Especially with his
sister involved.

On the flip side of that coin was the
possibility that her husband’s power and influence might scare
these unknown people from the Pinto Springs Mayor’s office back in
the hole they’d crawled out of.

Well, if Tom could be brave, so could I. I
scooted forward to the barricaded door, twisted the knob, and
pushed the door open. I heard Tom begin to protest. Then he moved
up close behind me, along with Hannah and Gerry.

It was a quilted memorial. The walls,
ceiling, and windows, were all draped with her quilts. I furiously
snapped pictures. Her son’s childhood bed had been draped with a
quilt made of satins and silks in whites and ivories.

Wedding dresses
. For the wedding he’d
never have.

We heard angry voices rising from the first
floor. I stowed my slim camera in a secret place, and turned to
face the music with my compadres.

The contrast between the blood-stained
horror at the other end of the house hit me once more as we made
our way down the stairs.

Three cops of senior rank and Pestilence and
Famine were standing around the now empty table staring us down.
Learner and Mosby were among them.

Newly appointed Pinto Springs Chief of
Police Howard Halloran wasn’t.

As Tom slid around the corner and out the
front door to await his fate in the yard, Gerry and Hannah began
talking loudly behind me as if there were nothing unusual about our
actions.

I wondered why the seemingly angry
authorities hadn’t just busted in on our little ice-blue picture
show.

My thoughts were interrupted when I spotted
the little door leading off the kitchen.
Was that the way down
to the basement?

Only one way to find out.

I moved swiftly around the angry suits,
opened the door and pulled it shut behind me. Quickly looking
around, I found a shovel hanging on the wall, pulled it down, and
wedged it under the door handle, across to the handrails on the
basement staircase. Maybe that would slow them down.

I flipped the wall switch, took five quick
steps down while resetting my camera. Upstairs, the cops and
sheriffs were doing some kind of near-yelling match with each other
while my eyes adjusted to the dim overhead light. Finally Famine
and Pestilence began screaming like banshees for me to halt,
banging their fists against the door. The noise got me moving the
rest of the way down.

The commotion behind me increased as I got
my bearings. I was certain gripping hands would yank me back up at
any moment. The door banged open and I began taking pictures
willy-nilly, just snapping away furiously.

Gerry was forming a Dumb Blond Blockade with
the two Pinto Springs detectives, carrying on as if her wild blond
hair was on fire.

“Excuse me! Sir, don’t push! I’m falling,
I’m falling! Sir! How rude!”

“
Get out of my way, you stupid….”

And then I heard Hannah--who must have
entered the stairway immediately behind me--continue to impede all
attempts to follow by shouting that she had every right to be
there. That she was an official private investigator!

Oops. Not yet.

Between them my wonderful new helpers made
it possible for me to reach the cage Eddie had spent years in.

I stared in horror.

Then someone switched off the lights. Using
the flash of the camera I proceeded as if under strobe lights. It
was all I could do to control my emotional response. The basement
had been divided in half by an interior wall made of a steel mesh.
In the middle of the wall was a door, standing open, and beyond
this lay a small bed, table and television.