Regrets Only (12 page)

“How did they meet?” Archer asked.

“My mother came to Boston as an au pair when she was fifteen. She met my father when the family she worked for was burgled. He was a young police officer who responded to the call and took a list of what was stolen. He never caught the crook but he had the telephone number so he asked her out instead. They were married six months later and have been ever since. Forty-one years.”

“They’re Catholic,” Mr. Haverill proclaimed.

If his implication was that they were still together because the church forbade divorce, nothing could be farther from the truth. Her parents’ happy marriage was a source of tremendous pride.

“Historical allies of the Quakers, at least here in Philadelphia.” She shifted the conversation. “As I’m sure you know.”

“And what do you mean by that?”

“The Religious Society of Friends came to the defense of Irish immigrants because they empathized with victims of religious persecution. I read one story of Quakers patrolling Saint Joseph’s Cathedral to prevent an anti-Catholic mob from destroying it. So even though the two religions couldn’t be farther apart, they found a common ground.”

“Who knew you were a history teacher,” Archer said.

Lucy took a sip of her wine. “I’m fascinated by people who protect others when there is no legal or even moral obligation to do anything. You hear about firemen all the time, and believe me I admire them too, but I’m talking about the white students who lost their lives in the Civil Rights movement, the ones who jeopardize their own comfort or well-being to act on their beliefs. They seem so much nobler than the rest of us. And the Quakers were that for the Catholics.”

“Are they nobler because they hold such strong convictions to begin with or because they act on them?”

“I suppose both. It doesn’t do much good to believe in justice or equality or freedom of expression or whatever it might be in the abstract.”

“So is that why you’re a police officer?” Mr. Haverill cut a piece of meat, transferred the fork to his right hand, took the bite, and then rested his fork on the side of his plate. “Part of a quest for justice?” he asked with obvious sarcasm.

“In part, I suppose, although given my family history, I didn’t have a role model for any other career. But I’m hardly the Good Samaritan. I often chastise myself for not even stopping to help someone on the side of the road with a flat tire. No, if I’m to be that nobler type of person, it will have to be outside the realm of my work.”

“So what is it that a detective is supposed to do?”

“I’m told that a homicide investigator’s mission is to hear the dead speak from their graves. But I think if I ever get to the point where I’m responding to voices, it’ll be time for a career change.”

Mr. Haverill smiled and for the first time in the evening, Lucy felt herself relax. Just then her beeper vibrated on its clip at her waist. She glanced at her watch: 11:32. Jack Harper’s cell phone number appeared on the screen.

“I’m very sorry, but I must excuse myself for a moment.”

Perhaps thinking she needed a powder room, Mr. Haverill gestured in the direction of a closed door.

“Actually, I need to use a phone if you don’t mind.”

“You’ll find one in the library. This way.” He stood up and placed his napkin onto the seat of his chair.

“Here, I’ll show you,” Archer said. “Excuse us.” He bowed his head slightly in the direction of his father.

Archer led her back into the burgundy sitting room that they’d been in earlier. She was glad he’d come with her. The telephone was tucked inside a small cabinet that she never would have discovered on her own. She quickly dialed Jack’s number while Archer waited.

“Harper,” he answered.

“It’s Lucy. What’s up?”

“We’ve got a body. Caucasian woman. Late forties, early fifties. Looks like a suicide.”

“Where should I meet you?” she asked instead.

He gave her an address on Belmont Avenue. “Brace yourself. It’s on a golf course by the eighth hole but you can spare me the birdie jokes. It’s a brutal sight.”

9

Sunday, May 18th 12:03 a.m
.

A
rcher drove with the windshield wipers on to dispel the thick mist that filled the night air. Lucy listened to the sound of the wipers and watched the headlights illuminate the blackness outside.

“That must be it,” she heard him say. “Just ahead.”

Looking up, she could see a flurry of red and blue police lights and a cluster of official cars parked at odd angles, blocking off the intersection of Belmont Avenue and Christ Church Lane, the entrance to Fairmount Links, a public golf course. A floodlight illuminated an expanse of grass and two ambulances. Dozens of people moved in and out of the light in silhouette.

Archer pulled to the curb.

“Thanks for the ride,” Lucy said reluctantly, as she got out of the car. She shut the passenger door behind her, blew him a kiss, and then listened to the distinctive sound of his BMW as he shifted into gear and drove away. For a moment she had to resist the urge to sprint after him. She wanted to be home in bed curled up next to him, to feel his sides rise and fall as his breath moved in and out of his lungs, to hear his snores, to wiggle her hand between his legs and hold on to him. But this was her job. She took a deep breath and turned around to face the site of the disaster.

A group of policemen congregated around a large white sign prominently displaying the golf club’s logo. Several of them drank coffee from Styrofoam cups, one kept the few curiosity seekers at bay, and another spoke on a two-way radio. As she passed, she flashed her identification.

Yellow police tape held up by makeshift stakes marked off a giant square surrounding the eighth hole. The Medical Examiner’s van was parked just outside the barrier with its back doors open. Homer Ladd, the assistant examiner, bent over the front seat of his vehicle organizing his bag of tools and checking his bag labels to make sure everything he needed for his fieldwork was in order. Despite the late hour, his night was just beginning.

Jack stood just inside the perimeter with a camera around his neck and a Dictaphone in one hand. Although he combed his hair over his ever-increasing bald spot, tonight the wisps seemed in disarray and shot at odd angles from his head. “Sorry to interrupt your dinner.”

“Hard duty,” she mumbled as she followed a few steps behind him toward the body. “What’s going on here?”

A Mercedes sedan with a buckled front fender rested against a large maple tree. The driver’s-side door was open and the airbags had been deployed. Glass from the shattered windshield and broken headlights littered the well-kept grass. The roof and trunk were dotted with dents and the taillights were shattered, too. Frank Griffith, a Crime Scene technician, squatted by the passenger-side door. He lifted a short hair from the leather seat with tweezers and placed it in a Baggie.

“What is it?” she asked, leaning over his shoulder. A faint floral aroma filled the interior of the car.

He shrugged. “My SWAG?”

His Scientific Wild-Ass Guess was not what she wanted, but she’d have to wait until all the evidence had been gathered and processed through the Crime Lab to get a definitive answer.

“How’d a front-end accident manage to damage the top and back?” she asked. “It looks to me like someone bludgeoned this car.”

“Why don’t you give me a few moments to do my job before you start demanding answers or speculating about them yourself?” Frank asked without shifting his focus away from the interior.

“Sorry,” Lucy said in a less than heartfelt apology as she took a few steps away. “Why are the criminalistics guys here if this is a suicide?” she quietly asked Jack.

“Come on,” he said, nodding in the direction of a sand trap where a figure with a black tarp draped over it was visible. “I’ll show you.”

A paramedic hovered, unwilling to accept the futility of his presence despite the arrival of the Medical Examiner’s wagon. Two cops wearing black Windbreakers with
CRIME SCENE
written in white lettering stood a few feet away. One was making several notations in a small spiral notepad. The other, a young officer whom she recognized but did not know by name, smoked an unfiltered cigarette.

When the two of them approached, the smoker ground out his butt with one foot, reached into his pocket, and removed a rubber glove, which he pulled onto his hand with a snapping noise. He moved to the tarp, took hold of the top end, and pulled it back.

A woman lay on her back with her stiletto-heeled shoes crossed at her ankles. Blood covered her chest, arms, and hands. A black hole in her flesh and burnt fabric marked the bullet’s entrance somewhere in close proximity to her heart. Mascara had smeared onto her cheek and blood was streaked across her chin. One eye was open, the other shut. There was something familiar about the face.

“Who is she?”

“Name’s Morgan Reese. A doctor. License lists her address in Bryn Mawr.”

Lucy covered her mouth with her hand to contain her gasp.

“Do you know her?” Jack asked.

She shook her head, trying to organize her thoughts. The mother of Archer, the lost love of Mr. Haverill, and here Lucy was in the middle of the night to investigate her horrible death. She couldn’t hold out with her information for long, but she needed a chance to collect herself. It was too early in her career in Homicide to fall apart over a body while her seasoned partner watched.

Fortunately Jack didn’t belabor the point. “The police found a thirty-five caliber handgun just beside her body,” he continued, pointing to where a white outline in the shape of a pistol had been spray-painted onto the grass.

“Was death instantaneous?”

“She was dead by the time the EMTs arrived. We’re assuming a heart wound, which would mean pretty quick—almost instantaneous depending upon where she hit—but we’ll need an autopsy to tell us definitively. There’s also a fairly nasty head injury—blunt-force trauma. When I told you we thought suicide, we hadn’t seen that yet. Contact was on the left side toward the back of her head. Hard to imagine it was even physically possible for her to do that to herself.”

“Who called the police?”

“A woman named Gertrude Barbadash. She heard the shot. She lives by herself over there,” he replied, pointing behind them to a yellow clapboard house that Lucy hadn’t noticed before. Nestled back from the road, it had a long covered porch in front and black shutters on all the windows. “The place is called the Rabbit Club. It’s my understanding she runs it.”

“The Rabbit?”

“It’s a men’s club. Bunch of guys meet a couple of times a month to cook. Old Philadelphia,” Jack offered, as if that phrase somehow clarified the situation. “Barbadash is the house manager. The club provides her with living quarters upstairs.”

Lucy glanced over at the building and noticed a small light in a window on the second floor. Not the most hospitable setting, but perhaps the pay was good. Although many of the houses along South Concourse Drive and Parkside Avenue had been rehabilitated, the neighborhood surrounding this section of Fairmount Park wasn’t the best; she certainly wouldn’t want to live alone in a seldom-used building in the middle of a seasonal golf club.

“Where is she now?”

“A paramedic took her to the ER. She complained of dizziness,” the officer explained. “She’s an older lady and was visibly upset.”

As anyone would be, Lucy thought. Age had nothing to do with it.

“What else did she say?”

“Not much. She was reading in her bedroom and heard a shot. She called the police but was too scared to look out the window.”

“What about the car wreck?”

He pulled out a notepad and flipped through several pages. “She didn’t mention it. Just said she heard a ‘deafening bang’ that was ‘very close.’ That’s all she described.”

It did seem odd that she’d missed the crash, the broken glass, perhaps even the sound of repeated banging, no more than three hundred feet away.

“Who found her?”

“Officer Callahan. He and Mike Regio responded to Barbadash’s call. On the way up Christ Church Lane, they saw the car. They got out and started looking around. And here she was.”

“What about the Mercedes?”

“It’s registered to the deceased.”

Lucy looked at Jack, who’d furrowed his brow. He seemed lost in thought. “So what happened?” A car accident, a head wound, and a bullet to the chest. Whatever demons Dr. Reese had tried to escape caught up with her tonight.

“Your guess is as good as mine. There’s no apparent blood in the car. Looks like both head and chest injuries were inflicted after the crash.”

“As I told Harper, we found this in her purse,” the police officer said. With his gloved hand he held out a piece of light blue stationery with the initials
MAR
in the top right-hand corner. Across the sheet was scrawled in almost illegible black ink:

Dearest Avery,

For all I’ve done, I’m sorry. I never meant to harm you or anyone. I hope that with time you will understand the choices I made and that you can find it in your heart to forgive me. We are all imperfect. Perhaps I was more imperfect than others, but you must never doubt my love for you.

“And these.” He handed her a ziplock bag containing an orange plastic canister. Lucy could see that it was a Klonopin prescription for Walter Reese. The antianxiety medication had been obtained from a pharmacy in Bryn Mawr. The prescribing physician was Morgan A. Reese.

“Who is Walter?”

“Don’t know. Husband; maybe a relative.”

“The other thing you probably noticed was this.” The officer crouched down and pointed to a series of scars partially obscured by blood on Dr. Reese’s limp wrists.

The three pinkish lines in her flesh, each no more than an inch long, ran perpendicular to her thin radius and ulna. The scars were revealing—but of a cry for help, not an intent to succeed. As a doctor, Morgan would have known that if she truly wanted to die, incisions along the forearm were more likely to sever high-pressure arteries. She could also have prescribed heparin or other drugs for herself to decrease her blood’s ability to clot, making a parallel cut foolproof. That’s not what she’d done—then or now—but whoever had bashed her in the back of the head wanted her death to appear self-inflicted. He might even have known about the failed earlier attempt and tried to capitalize on it.