Twisted Reason (33 page)

“If it were random, wouldn’t the driver have gone for someone in uniform?” Lucinda wondered aloud.

“Either of you dumped any boyfriends lately?”

The women looked at each other, rolled their eyes, and said, “No,” in unison.

“Was anybody else working with the Blankenships, Pierce?”

“Not that I know of, but . . . The third body!” Lucinda said.

“Dead people can’t drive,” Holland said.

“Yeah, but if someone else knows about that body . . .”

“You think?”

“It’s possible. She wasn’t shot, she was strangled. That tells me Gary Blankenship might not be good for that one. Could you call Jumbo’s captain and see if they can find any missing women who might have a direct or indirect connection to the Blankenships?”

“He’s not going to be thrilled to hear from me. But it’ll probably help if I tell him you were a victim of a hit and run.”

“Thanks, Captain.”

A patrolman came running up. “Lieutenant, they got him. They want to know if a man named Sandy Grisham means anything to you or Sergeant Colter.”

The women looked at each other and shook their heads.

“I’ll give that name to Missing Persons,” Captain Holland said.

“I want to question that guy when they get him here,” Lucinda said.

“You sure about that, Pierce?” Holland asked. “I can get someone else.”

“You better believe I want to face off with that guy. Try and stop me.”

“Take Colter into the interview with you. If she gets the job, watching you at work will be good experience.” The captain jogged back into the building, leaving both women smiling.

In the hallway outside of the interview room, Lucinda and Robin looked over the printout of Sandy Grisham’s criminal record. Although the list was long, the offenses were minor; Sandy spent time in jail but never in prison.

Inside, a scrawny man in a blue denim shirt and black jeans sat in a chair, handcuffed to a U-bolt on the table. His mop of light brown hair didn’t look as if it had been touched by a comb or brush for a week or more. He smiled at the sight of the two women, revealing a missing upper tooth. “Woo wee! Two women cops, God must love me lots.”

“We are the two people you attempted to kill today, Mr. Grisham. I truly doubt that makes God happy,” Lucinda said as she sat down and leaned towards him with her arms crossed on the table.

“Hey, I lost control of the car,” he protested.

“Bullshit,” Lucinda said. “I was there, remember. You veered straight towards us.”

“C’mon, c’mon, that’s what happens, you know? You say to yourself, ‘Oh look, someone’s in the road. Don’t want to hit ’em.’ And damned if you don’t steer right toward ’em without realizin’ it.”

“Mr. Grisham, you are facing some serious charges here. This isn’t like one of your old beefs where they toss you in county lock-up for thirty days then send you home with a slap on your wrist.”

“You know, I didn’t do all them things they said I did. In fact—” Grisham said, shaking his head.

Lucinda cut him off. “I don’t care about those petty crimes, Mr. Grisham. All that concerns me now are the present charges: attempted murder, assault of an officer of the law, attempted assault of an officer, hit and run, resisting arrest, speeding, running red lights. That’s just for starters, Mr. Grisham. I imagine the district attorney will find creative ways to slap a few other charges on you over the next few days. Why did you try to run us over?”

“I missed you. I didn’t run over either one of y’all.”

“That’s because we moved, not because of anything you did, Mr. Grisham.”

“How can you charge me with hit and run? I didn’t even hit you.”

Lucinda stood. She removed the jacket she’d retrieved from her office before coming to the interview. Turning her left side to Grisham, she said, “Explain that, then.” A bandage wrapped all the way around her arm. On both sides of it, the bruised area was growing darker. She slid back into her jacket and sat down. “Well, Mr. Grisham?”

“I did that?”

“Yes, sir. Didn’t you notice the damage to your side mirror?”

“Didn’t notice much of anything, to be honest, I just was trying to get home.”

“Just trying to get home? Do you normally drive seventy miles an hour through a residential neighborhood, Mr. Grisham?”

“No. Not normally. I won’t say I never done it before . . .”

“I should hope not. Because right in front of me it says you were going seventy-five miles an hour a couple of years ago when you drove past a suburban elementary school.”

“Yeah, somebody was pissed at me. I was just tryin’ to get away.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, Grisham. I’m beginning to get a little pissed at you myself.”

“C’mon, c’mon, I’m sorry I hurt your arm,” Sandy whined.

“Why, Grisham? Why did you point that car at us and try to run us down?”

“It weren’t personal, honest.”

“Just tell me why.”

“I can’t. I just can’t. I would if it was just up to me. But it’s not. So I just can’t.”

Lucinda wanted to jerk that weasel up out of his chair and bang his head against the wall. Instead, she stared at him. He squirmed beneath her gaze. Thirty seconds of silence was all Sandy could tolerate. “C’mon, c’mon, you know how it is, dontcha?”

A rap at the door caused a spark of anger to ignite inside Lucinda. She turned her head sharply towards it. Captain Holland’s head stuck in and he motioned her out into the hall. Her anger dissipated in the hopes he had some information she could use.

“His daughter-in-law, Darlene Karnes Grisham, has been missing for a couple of months. Most of her friends and neighbors thought she’d gotten fed up with supporting her abusive husband and just walked out. But maybe not,” Holland said.

“Is it her body in the morgue?” Lucinda asked.

“We think it is. Her driver’s license photo looks like a match.”

“How about if I take our boy down to look at the body?”

“Might do the trick. She’s pretty ripe. She’s out in the isolation unit.”

“Tell a tech I’ll be coming down for an ID,” Lucinda said.

As she returned to the room, Sandy said, “This cop here needs some work. She didn’t do the good cop thing too well while you were gone.”

Lucinda ignored him. “Sergeant Colter, unlock the prisoner from the table and cuff his hands behind his back. We’re going on a little field trip.”

Robin raised her eyebrows in an unspoken question and did as requested. The threesome went out of the police department and down the elevator to the basement. When they went through the stainless steel doors into the autopsy room, Sandy balked. “I don’t want to go in here. This place gives me the creeps. It’s worse than a cemetery.”

Robin tugged on the chain between the cufflinks. “Keep moving, Grisham.”

 “We’re just passing through,” Lucinda added.

They walked through the back door and across a concrete platform leading to a small, separate building butted against the wall of the bigger structure. A tech in a white jacket unlocked it as they approached. He pulled open the heavy insulated door. It made a popping sound as the seal released.

Sandy stopped at the doorway. “Man, it really stinks in there.”

Robin manhandled him inside. “If I have to put up with it, you can, too, Grisham.”

“Won’t be here long, Grisham,” Lucinda assured him. “We just need you to identify the body.”

Sandy squirmed as Robin dragged him closer to the sheet-draped stainless steel table in the middle of the room. Lucinda pulled down the top of the sheet, exposing the face. “Look familiar, Grisham?”

Sandy turned his head away and closed his eyes. Lucinda grabbed his chin, twisting it towards the woman’s body. She pushed down on the top of his head bringing him closer to her. He held his breath and squeezed his eyes tighter in response.

“Open your damn eyes,” Lucinda shouted. “You can’t hold your breath forever and you’re not leaving here until you look at this body.”

Sandy’s face turned red. His breath exploded out. When he inhaled, he made a disgusted sound and struggled. “Get me out of here. Get me out of here.”

“Open your eyes, Grisham,” Lucinda demanded.

Sandy relented. He looked down at the dirt-stained face and sloughing skin. His shoulders jutted upward and he doubled over. Robin jerked him to the side of the room where he heaved up the contents of his stomach on to the floor.

“Who is she, Grisham?” Lucinda shouted over his retching. “Who is she?”

“Get me out of here. Get me out of here and I’ll tell you. Just, for God’s sake, get me out of here.”

Lucinda dampened a paper towel and handed it to Robin who wiped Sandy’s mouth. They led him back up to the interview room and cuffed him to the table. He sat, panting, his face ashen, beads of perspiration dotting his forehead.

“Okay, Mr. Grisham,” Lucinda said, “who is she?”

Sandy sighed and shrugged without answering her question.

“Grisham, we can go back and have another look if you need to refresh your memory.”

“Dammit,” he spit out. “It’s my daughter-in-law.”

“Her name?”

“Darlene Grisham.”

“How did she end up in Gary Blankenship’s backyard?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m waiting, Grisham.”

“Well, it started about twenty years ago or so. Me and Gary were drinking and watching a game on the tee-vee. Sadie was ragging on him about something he was supposed to do. Gary got really pissed after a while. He got up and backhanded her, knocking her into a wall. Then instead of crying and saying she was sorry like she usually did, she sassed him.”

Lucinda bit her tongue.
Sassed him? Sassed him? She wanted to beat the crap out of him for even using that word.

“Gary grabbed up a poker from by the wood stove and raised it up. Sadie ran for the stairs. Gary dropped the poker and chased after her. I just sat there until I heard the gun shot. Then I went upstairs. Gary had the gun in his hand. Sadie lay flat on the floor. ‘Did you kill her?’ I asked. Gary just nodded.

“I don’t remember how it all went after that but I know we buried her under the steps in the backyard and cleaned up the blood in the bedroom. Before I drove off, I said, ‘Gary, you owe me big time.’ He said, ‘Yep. Call on me anytime. And Sandy,’ he says, ‘did you know my tramp of a wife ran off with her boyfriend and abandoned her own kids. Can you imagine a woman who would walk out on her kids?’ And that was that.”

“Not quite, Grisham. We did find Sadie’s body right where you’re saying. But we still have the other body – a far fresher corpse. How does that tie in?”

Sandy ran his fingers through his hair. “I never called in that favor – never needed to. Not till a few months ago. My son came to me, real upset. He didn’t mean to kill her. He was just tryin’ to teach her a lesson, that’s all. He just held on a little too long. It was an accident.

“That’s when I thought of Gary and the favor he owed me. But I couldn’t find him anywheres. That got me thinkin’ about Sadie. All these years and nobody ever found her body. Seemed Gary’s backyard was a mighty good place to hide Darlene’s body, too. Gary was nowhere to be found and nobody else’d moved into the place.  So me and Steve, that’s my son, loaded her up and buried her in the corner by the fence. And thought that was the end of it.”

“Still, Grisham,” Lucinda pressed. “You haven’t explained why you tried to run us over.”

“That was pretty stupid. I shouldn’t have listened to my boy. But he came to me all desperate. He showed me a picture of you he’d cut from the newspaper after you found the bodies. He said you’d figure it out. He said you had to be stopped.”

“Whose idea was it to use a vehicle to kill me?”

“It was mine,” Sandy said with a shrug. “He wanted me to choke you to death or stab you or cut your throat. I couldn’t do that kind of stuff. I never killed nobody. So I told him, maybe I could hit you with my car – it’s old but it’s a Mercedes, built solid, sure to do the trick.

“He said, ‘Perfect. It’ll look like an accident.’ And here I am. And I’m sorry. On the long list of stupid things I’ve done, that one’s right at the top.”

Lucinda sighed and rose to her feet. “Sergeant Colter, take him over to the jail and book him. I’ll go have a word with the DA”

Lucinda went up to the fifth floor, briefed the DA and then walked down the stairs to her third floor office. She picked up her phone and called the office of Dr. Rambo Burns to schedule her next surgery.

Epilogue

Lucinda wore a broad white bandage from cheek to cheek across her nose when she picked up Charley Spencer. It fascinated the young girl no end. “Can I look under it?”

“No. Dr. Burns told me not to mess with it,” Lucinda said.

“But Rambo likes me. It’ll be okay.”

“No it won’t Charley. Dr. Burns particularly warned me about you. He told me to be on my guard and not let you talk me into taking it off.”