At the Scene of the Crime (11 page)

The sergeant who studied the evidence seized on a peculiar mark on Erin’s jaw, a curved flame shape with a slight space below, and beneath that a kind of pear shape, a teardrop with a touch of high waist. Two of each shape. Sergeant Geerd Scranton showed me a photo of it. “What does that look like to you, son?”

“I don’t know, crooked carrots? With a blotch below?”

“I took up an interest in Indians when I was a boy.”

“Did you,” I said. Where was this going?

“My name,” he said, “means ‘spear brave’ in Dutch. Piscataway Indians used spears. They’d hunt fish and bear with them.”

“Are you onto something, Sergeant?” I asked, feigning only an intellectual interest in the case.

“It’s part of a bear print. The nails, the pads. See? Perfect in the photo.” He turned the photo my way.

“You could be right.”

“I’m told you wear a ring with a bear print on it, Justin. Trooper Buttons says you always have it on.”

“Hah. I do. Or almost always. I guess I left it on the sink this morning.” I smiled. “I spent some time in Montana with my dad and uncle. God, what beautiful country. Have you ever . . . ? The grizzly is the state mascot. Lots of people wear it on jewelry.” I said.

He nodded, waited a few beats, or maybe it was minutes, or maybe it was an hour, before he said, “Why don’t you just tell me about what happened, Justin? It must be very uncomfortable for you. Sergeant Kunkle, myself, Major Manning—we know there must have been some pretty powerful extenuating circumstances or you would have done the right thing. Isn’t that so, son? Look, we know that sometimes we get pushed to extremes.
Maybe you tried to romance her? Maybe you had a little too much to drink?”

I sat looking at him, stunned he would suggest such things, but not arguing because arguing would only deepen what he already believed.

Again he went on like that, and I shook my head as if I just couldn’t believe what test they were putting me through now. I did say I was clueless as to what response they wanted.

And then he used the tool of silence. Crows could have been squalling in the steel mill shadows. The wails of warning cats went chasing their own echoes around. The hollow laughter of the homeless kept piercing my ears.

 

There is a certain terror in the veins of those who would do right always. I am the junior to the senior, our standards so high there is no true escape.

Perhaps my father knew that, and maybe that’s part of why he left us, his daily companions a fifth of whiskey, a bottle of bennies, and tricked-up tubing duct-taped to the exhaust pipe of his cruiser, snaked into his window on the passenger side as it sat hub-deep in mud on the side of a cornfield, a stand of trees blocking the scene from the main road, no reason known, no final written note to tell us why.

As a child, nights, I’d be in bed listening to my parents argue, my mother’s voice loud and clear, my father only sometimes shouting back. After his death I tried recalling what all they argued about. I couldn’t then, but today I remember a woman’s name. An odd name, to me even then: Clarabelle. I remember my mother calling her “whore” and my not knowing what the word meant but that it had an awful sound, the way a roar issues deep from within a throat. Perhaps I should have known, but I was a quiet child and did not hang with any special friends.

It wasn’t until I was twenty and spent a final summer with my uncle outside of Butte that I learned the real story of my father’s death. Until that time, and even after, I kept hearing of what a good man he was. How positive. How good, how perfect. A model of a man. My image of him was forever ruined by what my uncle revealed and, later, by other things I came
to know. I longed to be better than Enoch “Eddie” Eberhardt, and determined to shape my longing into action to become, if it is possible in this world, the truly moral man.

Commander Ooten became my model. I would learn to be like him. Anything or anyone that got in the way to diminish the image I had must only be possessed of a fierce and terrible magic. In my obsession to know what the power was that did trip him up, I laid out a woman who in no way deserved an early end, whose only fault was to be a friend to a family and to a lonely madman.

To this day I do not know if I deliberately put my fist to her jaw. But does it even matter? I either committed or omitted, failed to do what I should have, and encouraged what I should not.

It may be two years now that I’ve lived on the banks of the Pocono River, there until weather drives me and my fellow campers to find a collapsed barn, a forgotten shed, a building in wait for a bulldozer. Days, we hook fish and toss whatever’s left to forever-hungry cats skulking in the bushes. We keep watch on our meager holdings and quickly drive out any offenders. Draw straws to see who will go buy the wine. Days are good. Blackbirds chainsaw the nights. I tell those of you who would listen that even the strongest of girders rust. We are all just wanderers here.

TESS CASSIDY, CARRYING HER CRIME SCENE UNIT DUFFLE BAG
over a shoulder, heard the uniform at the house’s front door say to Detective Lieutenant Kyle Hayes, “Bad one, Loot.”

Hayes just nodded, then, almost as an afterthought, glanced back at Tess. “How’s your stomach, Cassidy?”

Stung by the implied dig at her professional ability, she said, “Never had a problem so far.”

Hayes moved past the patrol officer. “Always a first time.”

As Tess followed the detective, she noticed the uniform was a little green at the gills, and, suppressing a shiver, she remembered what the other techs in the CSU called a “debut”: covering your initial homicide and autopsy.

 

“Well,” said Hayes to the uniform inside the den, “I don’t think we have to wait for the ME on cause of death.”

Tess looked at the body sprawled over an oriental throw rug, then looked away, drawing a deep breath.

The house—a McMansion—had a huge living room they’d had to cross before reaching the den, which was more a library. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and not the artsy, leather-bound volumes she’d seen in other rich people’s places. No, lots of novels and travel guides, jackets worn, even torn from being handled, and, Tess figured, read more than once. She wasn’t that involved in books herself, thanks to dyslexia. In fact, Tess nearly flunked seventh grade before her big sister, Joan, made the principal see
what their parents had ignored. But Tess always, secretly, admired anyone who loved reading.

As, apparently, the dead man on the rug had. Hayes said to the uniform, “We got a name?”

“Decedent’s Zederberg, Martin, middle initial ‘D’ as in ‘David.’”

“Who found the body?”

“His wife. Nanette. Kollings is with her in the kitchen.”

Tess knew Kollings, an empathetic patrol officer and a widow herself.

“Other family?”

“Just a son, Steven, with a ‘v.’ We reached him, and he’s on his way.”

Hayes nodded. “How about a weapon?”

“Negative so far, sir.”

“Cassidy, what would you say?”

Tess didn’t mind being called by her last name. Appreciated it, in fact, as a badge of “blue” respect. But she also knew that “Kyle” used it to buffer his own emotions, because he called her sister—the lieutenant’s preferred investigation partner—“Joan.” The older Cassidy was out on maternity leave three weeks prior to having her baby, which Hayes wished was his baby, too. Despite his romantic hopes, Joan had chosen the law over law enforcement for a husband, marrying an attorney named Arthur.

And now Joan was at the hospital, about to deliver, while Tess was wading into a grisly crime scene commanded by a scorned, pissed-off detective.

“Cassidy,” said Hayes, “Am I talking to myself here?”

“Sorry, Lieutenant.” Tess forced herself to look at the body. “From the way his skull’s caved in, I’d guess an axe. Or, with that big RV in the driveway, a camp hatchet?”

“Might be hope for you yet, Cassidy. That’s my take, too.” Hayes squatted next to the slight man’s torso. “No defensive wounds on the hands or forearms, so I’m guessing this one in the back of the head was Blow Number One. Then, after the vic fell and landed sideways, Numbers Two through—what, Six, maybe?—on the floor.” Hayes rose. “Barefoot, too, and bloody soles but no tracks in the living room, so probably he was already here in
the den when attacked, rather than being chased into it.”

Tess thought out loud. “Or running for it.”

“What?”

She looked around the library. “If Mr. Zederberg knew somebody was going to kill him, maybe he wanted his books to be the last things he saw.”

Detective Lieutenant Kyle Hayes just stared at Tess. “Cassidy, you are one odd duck.”

Consider the source, sister Joan would have told her, so Tess took that as a compliment.

 

Dusting for latent prints at the threshold of the kitchen, Tess Cassidy could hear Hayes interviewing Nanette Zederberg, but not actually see them. It was like listening to a play being read aloud on the radio.

 

HAYES

Did your husband have any enemies?

ZEDERBERG

No. No, Marty was in medical supplies. He was always helping people, not hurting them.

HAYES

Anybody else you can think of who might want to hurt him?

ZEDERBERG

Just the man I told Officer Kollings about.

HAYES

The man?

KOLLINGS

Mrs. Zederberg was driving down the street, saw a quote, “hulking man,” unquote, walking toward her—meaning northward—about two doors up from the house here.

HAYES

Mrs. Zederberg, can you describe him for us?

ZEDERBERG

Not really. I mean, as she just said, he was . . . well, “hulking,” the size of a professional wrestler? But also kind of mean.

HAYES

Mean?

ZEDERBERG

The way he walked. And moved his head. Like he was really angry about something.

HAYES

Did you get a good look at his face?

ZEDERBERG

No. I . . . I really only glanced at him. He stared at me, I know, but I was . . . well, frankly, scared of the way he seemed, so I just kept driving. Then I found the front door open here, and Marty—Oh, God, Marty in . . .

KOLLINGS

Here you go, Ma’am. These tissues will help.

 

Good cop, Kollings.

Tess was almost finished dusting when she heard from behind her, “Cassidy, you know where the Loot is?”

The green-gilled uniform they’d met at the front door. “In the kitchen, with the widow.”

“The son is here. Where should I put him?”

“Ask Hayes, but maybe call him out blind first. He might want to interview the guy without his mother knowing. Or in earshot.”

 

“Stepmother, actually,” said Steven Zederberg.

Now Tess was working the entrance to the library, and she could see Hayes with the younger man in the living room, sitting across from each other on matching armchairs. The son took after his father, slight frame and black, curly hair, with a Jewish skullcap bobby-pinned to the back of his head.

Looked a whole lot better than blade wounds. Thinking back to the
corpse, though, Tess didn’t remember any cap on or around the victim.

Hayes said, “You realize I have to ask some awkward questions?”

“Lieutenant, my father’s just been brutally murdered, and you’ve told me I can’t see Nanette until after you’ve interviewed me. So, please, ask away and be done with it so I can go to her.”

Tess thought, kid’s got some guts.

Hayes said, “We haven’t found a weapon so far. Do you know if your parents keep an axe or a hatchet on the premises?”

“If you mean the house, no. But I’m sure Dad has one—had one in the camper.”

“The recreational vehicle outside?”

“Yes. My father traveled a lot in his business, but mainly via airplane to convention cities and big hospitals. He always yearned to see the rest of the country, and so when he got a good offer for the medical supply company, Dad sold it.”

“Can you tell me how much he got for it?”

A pause. “Is that really necessary for your investigation?”

“Yes.”

Another pause. “All right. My father asked me to work with his lawyer on the deal.”

“Why?”

“I’d just gotten my accounting degree, and Dad thought it would be good experience for me. And it was. Overall, we netted about three million.”

“‘We?’”

Tess looked up to see Zederberg clench his teeth. “My father did, that is.” A shake of the head. “They were going to put the house on the market, too, though I told them he’d take a wicked hit—God, I’m sorry.”

The son began rubbing his eyes with his fists, like a little kid. Tess’s heart went out to him, but her job meant returning to the dusting.

Hayes said, “I know this is difficult for you.”

“Yes,” Tess hearing what she thought could be palms slapping thighs,
“yes, you probably do, Lieutenant, because this is your job. But it’s our lives.”

Tess thought: The son’s got guts and humanity.

Then Steven Zederberg made a noise that sounded almost like a laugh. “The bizarre thing is, Dad was always afraid he was going to die by fire.”

“Fire?”

“Yes. The hospital he was born in burned to the ground like a week later. Then my father’s first warehouse was struck by lightning when he was at his desk on the second floor of it. And, just before Dad decided to sell his company, he got caught in a hotel fire in Rochester, New York.” The son hung his head. “Never thought he’d be killed like . . . this.”

Hayes cleared his throat. “When you said your father and stepmother were going to ‘take a wicked hit . . . ’?”