The Ragman's memory

18

Talking with Ned Fallows had both angered and saddened me. In the same way domestic disputes show how love can turn to violence, Fallows had shown me how a man’s ego, once used as a beacon for righteous behavior, could be twisted to stand for self-absorption and denial. Now faced with two homicides, a suspicious death, a disappearance, and a corruption case touching the town’s leading family, I had little tolerance for Ned’s mourning his own fallen image. That his vanity might be impeding our locating Mary Wallis made me furious.

I looked up from these reflections to see a middle-aged woman in jeans and a sweatshirt with her hair tied back, timidly standing by the half-open door. Her voice was strained with tension. “Janet said you wanted to see me? You didn’t answer when I knocked. I’m Sue Pasco.”

I rose and beckoned her to sit. “Joe Gunther. Thanks for coming. Please-make yourself comfortable.”

She perched on the chair’s edge, her legs tucked under her and her hands flat by her thighs, looking like a diver about to spring into the water.

“Is it all right if I call you Sue?” I asked.

She nodded tightly. “Everyone does.”

“Great-call me Joe. I’ve been told you were in charge last night when Mrs. Sawyer passed away. Is that right?”

Again she nodded, her body still frozen in place. “Was she really murdered?”

“We think so. An autopsy’s being done right now. How was Mrs. Sawyer discovered?”

Sue Pasco spoke quietly, in choppy sentences, as if fearful that longer ones might be traced back to her. “She was sick. On meds. They get checked. To see if they’re okay.”

“You do rounds, in other words.”

“Sort of.”

“Several times a night?”

“Yes. Ten, one, and three.”

“So it was during the one o’clock check that you found her.”

Her head dropped so I couldn’t see her face. “Yes.”

“Sue. Are you worried you did something wrong?” I asked, distracted by the intensity of her distress.

Her features were all twisted, her eyes brimming with tears. “I don’t know.”

“You followed the same procedure you do every night, right?”

“Yes.”

I touched her shoulder gently. “Then you don’t have anything to worry about. Just concentrate on my questions, and be absolutely honest. A terrible thing has happened, but it won’t reflect badly on you as long as you tell me everything you know.”

I paused to let her absorb that. “Okay. What happened when you checked on Mrs. Sawyer?”

She collected herself and then spoke in more measured tones, her eyes fixed on the floor. “We don’t knock, so as not to disturb them if they’re sleeping, but I thought something was wrong as soon as I opened the door.”

“Why?”

“There wasn’t any sound. She always snored. That’s why we moved her next to Esther. Nothing wakes Esther up.”

“What did you do then?”

“I felt for a pulse and discovered she was dead.”

“Did you start CPR, or call for help?”

“She had a DNR-a Do Not Resuscitate order. We’re not supposed to take any heroic measures with them. Those are the words they use-heroic measures-like CPR.”

“So you called for help instead?” I prompted.

She tucked her head again and began to shake. Given both Esther Pallini’s and Janet Kohler’s casualness concerning death, I wondered if Sue Pasco’s sensitivity might not be connected to something else.

I crouched by her seat and grabbed her forearm, forcing her to look at me. I opted for a standard interrogation ploy. “Sue, tell me what’s troubling you. If it comes out now, we can try to fix it. The worst thing you can do is let it fester inside.”

“I didn’t want to wake anybody up. I didn’t know… ” Her voice trailed off.

“… Didn’t know she’d been murdered?” She nodded, sobbing openly now.

“You’re saying you didn’t call for help? How did the doctor get here?”

Between sobs she gasped, “I called him. We’re supposed to get another staffer. As a witness to the death. It’s like a law or something. But we knew she was going to die. It was no big deal. So I let them all sleep. It never mattered before. And now it’s a murder… And I could go to jail.”

I squeezed her hand and reached for the file on Sawyer that Janet Kohler had left behind. I flipped to the back to see where Sue’s name and signature appeared, along with someone else’s, under the timed and dated heading, “Discovery of deceased.”

I showed her the sheet. “You cooked the books, right? Had the other person listed here add her signature early this morning, after she woke up?”

Sue Pasco nodded miserably, slumped back in her chair.

I glanced farther down the sheet. “I take it Dr. Riley played along? His signature’s here, too.”

“He told me once it was bureaucratic nonsense.”

I closed the file and sat back down. “Guess you won’t do that again.”

She looked up, surprise showing through the tears at my casual tone of voice. “You’re not going to tell?”

“Not right now. And not ever if I don’t think it has anything to do with the case. What’s important to me is that the rest of it is accurate-the time you discovered her, for example.”

She slid forward in her seat again, this time eagerly, wiping at her cheeks with the palms of her hands. “Oh no-it’s all true. I checked my watch as soon as I turned on the light-1:22-I still remember. Then I closed the door and locked it, like they tell us, and I phoned Dr. Riley, since he’s on the call list this week. I waited for him by the front entrance, took him up here, he examined her, and signed the death certificate. After that, I called Guillaume’s so they could get her out before the other residents woke up.”

I gave her a supportive smile. “Okay. That’s great. Now, thinking back to before you checked on her, did you notice anything unusual in the hallway, or anywhere else for that matter? Any sounds, any activity? Did you see anyone?”

She paused to reflect. “I always see a few people. Not all of the residents sleep well, so sometimes they wander around-watch TV, read-”

“But nobody struck you as acting odd?”

“No.”

“Were any of them on this floor?”

“No. It was empty.”

“How ’bout after you found the body? Did you see anyone then?”

“No. And we worked very quietly. By 2:45 Mrs. Sawyer was gone.”

I thought back to what Janet Kohler had told me. “Did you contact the next of kin? You didn’t mention that.”

Her face grew suddenly agitated and defensive. “I did, I did. You can check. I just forgot because it didn’t matter. Mrs. Tuttle didn’t care one way or the other. She was even a little irritated-asked me why I couldn’t have waited to call her in the morning.”

“You ever meet her?”

“No. But you could tell they were relatives by their attitude.”

I glanced down at the file. “They were sisters?”

“I think so.”

I closed the file and sat back. “I’ve been told Mrs. Sawyer wasn’t well liked-that she spread rumors, got into fights… ”

“I guess so. Being on the night shift, I missed most of that, but she wasn’t a nice person.”

“Could you list everyone who might have had a grudge against her, for one of my officers a little later?”

“You don’t think one of the residents did it, do you?”

“I can’t say yet.”

“I can come up with a few names, I guess. Some of it would be sort of like gossip, though.”

“That’s okay. Your list will be confidential. We just need something to get us started. Who stripped the bed?”

“I did. She’d peed all over herself, and I wanted to get the sheets cleaned as soon as possible.”

That was disappointing. “So they’ve been laundered?”

“Oh, yes… ”

“Is that pretty typical-a patient peeing on herself before dying?”

“Common enough. Sometimes it’s worse-their bowels open up.”

“But aside from taking the sheets, everything else was left the way you found it?”

She nodded vigorously. “Absolutely, and the door was locked again.”

“One last question. What’s the security like on the building’s exits?”

“All the doors are locked after nine, and the front entrance has a guard to let people in and out.”

“How ’bout fire exits?”

“They all have alarms.” She gave me a small smile. “And we know they work, because every once in a while, one of the residents tries them out.”

I rose to my feet and thanked her, telling her somebody would contact her later for that list of names. I watched her hurry down the corridor, no doubt to compare experiences with Janet Kohler, or to call the colleague who’d faked witnessing the discovery of the body.

I had the strong impression Sue Pasco wouldn’t be bending any rules for a long time to come.

J.P. and his crew were still scrutinizing Adele Sawyer’s room, but I could tell from the doorway they weren’t happy. Each one of them toiled in silence, obviously going through the motions with nothing to show for it. “No luck?” I asked.

J.P. looked up. “There’re enough fingerprints, hair follicles, and loose threads to start a museum. If you want this done right, I’ll have to print and take hair samples from everyone in this place, and even then I doubt I’d have anything to go on.”

Sammie was sitting at the small table by the window, leafing through a thin pile of papers and letters. “Nothing here, either. Mostly insurance forms, bills, official correspondence. Some junk mail she kept. There’re a few family pictures, including a group shot-looks like a reunion-but no personal letters. The best I could find was an address book. Not too many entries, but I’ll chase them all down.”

Emerging from the bottom of the one closet, Ron merely gave me a shake of the head.

“Okay,” I told them. “I’m going to find Annabelle Tuttle, the listed next of kin. I’ll see you all at the office.” I checked my watch. “Let’s shoot for a noon meeting. Supposedly, Dr. Riley’s coming over. If one of you could get a statement from him, that’d be great.”

As I entered the building’s lobby from the stairwell a few minutes later, a harassed-looking man, his hair tousled and his coat unbuttoned, came banging through the glass-paned double doors.

I took a guess. “Dr. Riley?”

He stopped dead in his tracks. “Yes.”

“I’m Lieutenant Gunther-Bratt PD-”

Before I could get any more out, he interrupted me by grabbing my arm, stepping close and asking in a hoarse whisper, “What the hell’s going on? I heard Adele Sawyer’s death was being called a homicide-that I screwed up the death certificate.”

I considered soothing him, pointing out that the postmortem results hadn’t come in yet. But then I decided to hell with it. I didn’t like the priority of his concerns. “You did.”

His face went slack and his cheeks reddened.

I relented a bit. “Look, nobody’s going after you. The mortician noticed some bruises around the neck. My forensics guy told me they probably surfaced after rigor mortis began setting in and the blood drained away from the neck area. She normally had a flushed complexion, right?”

“Yes-it was tied in with her breathing problems.”

“That’s what hid the bruises. The missed cause of death is no big deal-since we caught it-but you might want to be more careful next time.”

He stiffened slightly but took it without comment, which I appreciated. From his opening line, I’d figured him for more bluster. “The problem now,” I continued, “is to find out who killed her. Was she one of your regular patients?”

“I’ve been treating her for about five years.”

“A joyride?”

His pinched face cracked a thin smile. “I guess you’ve heard about her. Pretty unpleasant person.”

“How long had she been dead when you got here?”

He frowned. “She’d definitely begun to cool, but there were no signs of rigor. I’d guess two or three hours at most.”

“Anything unusual about her medical history?”

“Nothing a little physical self-respect wouldn’t have headed off. She smoked, ate poorly, never exercised, and was in a constant rage. Whoever killed her obviously had no patience-another six months and she would’ve spared him the effort.”

“Is that a medical estimate?” I asked.

The smile returned. “Probably more like wishful thinking, if that doesn’t put me on the suspect list. She should’ve been dead years ago, so I suppose she might’ve lasted a few more. The autopsy will give you the best answer to that one.”

Given all of Brattleboro’s neighborhoods, Spruce Street was purely middle ground. Shoved up hard against a hilly, wood-choked wilderness area, it contained a few solid, vaguely stately homes, scattered among a wider sampling of more bedraggled, tenacious, middle-class residences, pristine examples of which had been popular in family-hour TV shows in the fifties. Annabelle Tuttle lived in one of these.

I parked across the street from her address and looked at the building for a moment, studying the peeling paint, the odd shutter or two in need of repair, the furrow carved in the snow from porch to driveway, the width of one shovel. I guessed the occupant to be single, living alone, no longer young, and on a diminished income.

I got out, navigated the narrow path to the weather-beaten porch, and pushed the doorbell.

The woman who opened up a minute later was white-haired, slightly stooped, and looked permanently fatigued.

“Mrs. Tuttle? My name is Joe Gunther. I’m from the Brattleboro Police Department. I was wondering if I could have a word with you.”

She registered no surprise, but stood back to let me in, shivering slightly in the draft of cold air that accompanied me. “I suppose this is about Adele. They called me already.”

I stood in the overheated hallway, wondering if I should presume to remove my coat. My hostess made none of the usual gestures to indicate I was invited to stay. “That was last night?”

She let out a tiny snort of derision. “More like two o’clock this morning.”

“Right. We were wondering why you hadn’t come by the Skyview to pick up her things, or contact Guillaume’s to see about the arrangements.”

She was a short woman and had been gazing at the middle button of my coat so far, but at that, she looked up my frame and nailed me with a hard stare. “That’s a concern of yours?”

“It’s a source of curiosity. You’re the only one listed as next of kin.”

“Sisters,” she said, as if talking about the flu. “We weren’t close.”

“All that’s left of the family?”

The snort was repeated. “The family’s large enough. I was the only one who volunteered to be contacted. The nursing home had to have someone to call. Why are you so interested?”

For the sake of form, I took a shot at solicitude, although I doubted it was necessary. “Mrs. Tuttle, I’m afraid I may have some shocking news. Would you like to sit down?”

“No.” Her eyes on me didn’t waver; her face didn’t change expression.

“We don’t think your sister died of natural causes. She was murdered-strangled to death.”

I’d added the last bit for effect, but all it registered was a bitter half-smile. “One of her housemates, no doubt.” She sighed, and then added, “Maybe I will have that seat. Come.”

I followed her into the living room, gratefully removing my coat. We sat on opposing hard, straight-backed couches. She seemed as composed as ever-just a bit more tired. I thought perhaps the brevity that had so offended Sue Pasco on the phone may have been merely weariness and economy.

“My sister,” she began, “was an angry, disappointed woman. She married badly twice in a row, had three kids who won’t talk to her anymore, and got fired from every job she ever had because of her mouth. Every comment was taken as an insult, every look was an accusation. To say nobody loved her misses the point. Nobody even liked her, including me.”

I sat there in silence for a moment, wondering when I’d last heard such an eloquent and devastating tribute. “Apart from you, did she keep in touch with any other family members?”

“No. And she didn’t with me, either. The Skyview put my name on her application form-she didn’t. Who killed her?”

The bluntness of the question caught me by surprise. “We don’t know yet. I was hoping you might be able to help us with that.”

“I never visited her-never knew any of the people she was living with.”

“I was thinking more of outsiders-someone who might have come to see her.”

“I don’t know who that could have been. I doubt she had any friends, and I already told you about the family.”

“How about her possessions? Did she have any property or assets that might benefit anyone?”

Annabelle Tuttle shrugged and sighed, focusing on a distant chair. “No-everything she had was in that room. She had no money. I paid for a few things-a pair of slippers or some new underwear-but it never came to much. To be cruelly honest, she was always a burden, and it looks like she still is, even in death.”

I stole a glance at my watch, realizing the time for the staff meeting I’d asked for was drawing near. I stood up. “Are you the only family member who lives in the area?”

She looked up at me. “Oh, no-most of them do.”

“Would it be all right if I sent somebody by to collect their names and addresses later today?”

Her eyes slid away from my face and grew unfocused and dull. “That would be fine.”

I moved partway to the door and then hesitated. “Are you all right, Mrs. Tuttle? Is there someone I could call to keep you company?”

She smiled slightly-sadly, I thought. “No. That’s all right. I don’t really know what to do with company anymore.” She paused, and added, “It doesn’t seem like anyone in my family was much good at it.”

The noise from the people milling around outside my office drowned out Beverly Hillstrom’s opening words on the phone. I caught the edge of the door with my foot and swung it shut. “I’m sorry, Doctor. What was that?”

She spoke a little louder. “I said, ‘It’s definitely a homicide.’ Your Mrs. Sawyer was strangled. The assailant used his left hand on the mouth, and his right hand on the throat. I’ll be faxing you the details as soon as I have them typed up.”

“Did you find anything else? Drugs, alcohol-”

“Phenobarbital? No-I’m afraid not, Lieutenant.”

I hesitated a moment before changing subjects, still rankled by the release of Milo’s cause of death to the media. “By the way, does your office have a protocol concerning when a cause of death is made public? Some specific time lapse, for example?”

Either I hadn’t kept my tone of voice lighthearted enough, or Hillstrom had been adversely hit by this general topic before, because her response was a frosty, “Do you have a complaint?”

“No. I just dropped the ball when I forgot to ask you to sit on the Milo Douglas results earlier, and I wanted to know what kind of time window I have available for future reference.”

Apparently mollified, she answered, “There is no protocol. Unless told otherwise, we release our findings as they are completed. In point of fact, I hadn’t gotten around to Mr. Douglas before the media contacted us.”

I sat dumbfounded for a moment. “They called you? Who did?”

“Your own paper-the Reformer. I don’t recall who, precisely.”

“I’ll be damned,” I murmured.

“Is there a problem?” she asked, her voice guarded again.

“No, no. I’m just wondering how they found out about it.”