Born To Be Wild

FIFTY-SIX

No one screamed. They stood in the doorway, staring at Olivia Hildebrand hanging from one of the beautifully painted oak ceiling beams, a vanity chair on its side beneath her.

Mary Lisa ran to her and lifted her by her thighs as best she could to relieve the awful pressure twisting her neck. She wasn’t going to let her die. She heaved the woman up, felt the taut rope ease. “Lou Lou, Elizabeth, quick, help me get her down. Hurry!”

Elizabeth turned over the chair Mrs. Hildebrand had stood on and then had kicked away, and climbed up on it. “No, I still can’t reach the knot.” She felt for a pulse in Mrs. Hildebrand’s throat, knowing there wouldn’t be one. Elizabeth hadn’t seen violent death since she’d covered a bank robbery in Venice Beach nearly a year before, but she knew that, now as then, this human being was dead and there was nothing to do for her except to help protect her dignity. Her throat felt dry and cool, too cool. She looked at Mary Lisa’s set face, her arms still around Mrs. Hildebrand’s legs, and back at Lou Lou, who seemed frozen, her eyes filled with horror. “I’m sorry, guys, she’s dead. Her skin’s chilled. She’s been dead a long time.” She climbed back down, laid her hand lightly on Mary Lisa’s shoulder, but Mary Lisa was shaking her head.

“No, she can’t be dead. Cut her down, Elizabeth, please cut her down. She’s hurt bad, I know she’s hurt real bad. Hurry, please, hurry, she’s heavy and I don’t know how much longer Lou Lou and I can hold her up. Lou Lou, help me.”

“No, Mary Lisa, Lou Lou,” Elizabeth said, her hand on their shoulders, “we can’t touch her. Even if I could cut her down, I know that it’s the wrong thing to do. This is a crime scene now and we don’t want to touch anything. I’m sorry, but you have to let her go. That’s right, Lou Lou, call Jack, then call 911. And get the deputies downstairs.”

Lou Lou raced out of the bedroom, her cell in her hand.

Mary Lisa still held Mrs. Hildebrand. Tears were streaming down her face. “I can’t let her go, Elizabeth. Don’t you see? The pain would be so bad if I let her loose. I can’t.”

They heard Lou Lou yelling for the deputies outside, and then they heard her on her cell phone.

“Please, Elizabeth, cut her down. She’s heavy. I don’t know how much longer I can hold her up. I can’t let go, Elizabeth, she’ll break her neck if I let go. Please, Elizabeth.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I can’t. The forensic team needs to study everything so they can figure out exactly what happened. If we move her, then they can’t figure things out. Do you understand?”

Mary Lisa nodded, her forehead against Mrs. Hildebrand’s leg. “But-”

“I know, Mary Lisa, I know. I’ll tell you what, we’ll both hold her up until help arrives.”

Jack got there incredibly fast, a bit ahead of the paramedics. They heard him running flat out up the stairs. When he hit the bedroom doorway, he saw Elizabeth and Mary Lisa holding Mrs. Hildebrand’s body up, Lou Lou and his two deputies standing beside them. Why were they holding her up? It was clear Mrs. Hildebrand’s neck was broken, she was dead. He started to say something, but Elizabeth caught his eye and shook her head. He took in what was happening, that it was Mary Lisa who couldn’t deal with the reality that Mrs. Hildebrand was violently, horribly dead, couldn’t accept that she was helpless to change it. Jack had seen perhaps half a dozen people hanged over the years, most of them suicides, and not all of them well done. It was a violent, ugly death-the bulging, reddened eyes, the tongue thick and swollen, thrust partially out of her half-open mouth. Dear God, and it was Mary Lisa holding up that body.

The paramedics crowded behind him. He shook his head at them and walked to Mary Lisa and Elizabeth. He said, “Mary Lisa, you and Elizabeth have done a very good job. Now it’s time for you to come away. It’s time for you to let me take care of Mrs. Hildebrand. All right?”

Mary Lisa stared up at him. “But Jack, I can’t let her down. If I do-”

Elizabeth closed her eyes a moment. “Jack’s here now, Mary Lisa, and the paramedics. They can cut her down. Come along now, sweetheart, we have to let them do their job.”

Jack nodded three paramedics over. “I want you to hold up Mrs. Hildebrand, all right?”

They realized what was happening and silently nodded. When the three of them had taken over, Jack took Mary Lisa’s hand and led her to the bedroom door. Lou Lou stood with them in the doorway, her eyes on Mary Lisa. He said to Elizabeth, “Please take Mary Lisa and Lou Lou downstairs to the living room. Wait there for me, all right? I’ll call John. He needs to get over here as well.”

His words gave Elizabeth the focus she needed. She nodded. “Yes, don’t worry about us, Jack. We’ll take care of Mary Lisa. We’ll wait for you.” She led Lou Lou and Mary Lisa down the wide staircase toward the open front door, where paramedics and policemen were still streaming in. Elizabeth kept Mary Lisa and Lou Lou headed directly for the living room. “That’s it, we’ll go in here. This isn’t the time to talk to these people. They’re here to take care of Mrs. Hildebrand.” They sat down on the sofa and huddled together, content to say nothing. Elizabeth hoped John would arrive soon.

Upstairs, Jack motioned Deputy Randall out of the bedroom. She didn’t look well and he couldn’t blame her.

“This can’t be happening, Chief. It can’t-” Her face grew pale, and she swallowed hard, turned, and raced down the hall toward the bathroom. Jack hoped she made it in time.

He and the forensic team went about their business. They started with dozens of photos. The M.E., Dr. Washington Hughes, arrived and spent about ten minutes examining the body in situ. He bagged Mrs. Hildebrand’s hands to preserve any traces of rope fibers on her palms or beneath her fingernails. Finally, they cut the body down. Soon after John arrived, the paramedics wheeled her out of the house to the morgue.

Dr. Hughes held up the rope. “Okay, Chief, as a preliminary, the body showed all the stigmata of hanging, you know that. Death occurred about six hours ago, give or take. It looks like a classic suicide. She got ahold of this rope, climbed up on this chair, flipped the rope over the beam, then tied it around her neck, and kicked away the chair.”

“Yes, that’s how it looks.”

“I’ll get started on the autopsy right away.”

Jack nodded. “It seems she got up sometime during the night, went out to the garage where she had this handy rope lying around, or she planned it and had the rope in here beforehand.”

“I don’t keep heavy-duty rope like that in my garage,” one of the techs said.

“It could be that she planned it long ago,” said John. “Rope’s not hard to find.”

Jack asked John to see to Mary Lisa, and tried to stay focused on his job. He watched his team dust the surfaces in the bedroom for fingerprints. He himself examined the window, the sill. He climbed out the window, saw it was an easy step up onto the roof and over to the edge where there was an emergency ladder to the ground. No problem at all for anyone to go up or down, Mrs. Hildebrand included. The garage was tucked around in the back, not a dozen feet from the ladder.

Back in the hallway, he ran into Deputy Randall again, looking surprisingly calm. He smiled down at her. “You’re doing very well, Deputy. Can you tell me who came to see Mrs. Hildebrand last night?”

Her hands shaking, which she hated, Deputy Susan Randall opened her notebook and read aloud, pleased her voice didn’t shake. “Mrs. Beverly came by last evening at eight o’clock. Mrs. Hildebrand’s daughter, Marci, came at nine-thirty, right after Mrs. Beverly left, and stayed an hour.” Deputy Randall cleared her throat. “I didn’t hear any arguing, no raised voices.” She shut her notebook. “No one else came by, Chief. I personally spoke to Mrs. Hildebrand at about ten o’clock, asked her if I could get her anything. She said no, she was tired and she wanted to sleep. She asked not to be disturbed, said she was going to take another sleeping pill, maybe sleep late. So I said good night and closed her bedroom door. Then Lucy and I shut up the house, set the alarm at about midnight. I went upstairs to check on Mrs. Hildebrand and she was sleeping soundly, at least it looked that way.

“When Lucy and I knocked on her door about eight o’clock this morning and there was no answer, we didn’t go in. We decided to leave her alone, let the poor woman sleep.” She paused, ran her tongue over her dry mouth. “Only she wasn’t asleep.”

Jack laid his hand on her shoulder, to comfort her a bit, he hoped. “I know this is tough, Deputy. Was there anything else?”

“No, we didn’t check on her again. When Mary Lisa and her friends arrived, we waved them up. I wasn’t worried, I really wasn’t. Why not let Mary Lisa speak to her? And they found her. Oh dear God, I’ll never forget Mary Lisa trying to get Mrs. Hildebrand to wake up, trying to convince everyone that she’d be all right.”

She looked ready to crumble again, and Jack now took her hands and squeezed them between his. “You’re doing great. So there was nothing at all to alert you or Lucy during the night?”

She screwed up her face in concentration, but in the end, she had to shake her head. “No, we didn’t hear any unusual noises during the night. The house creaks, but all older houses do.”

“You got no impression when you spoke to her last evening that Mrs. Hildebrand was unusually depressed or worried, pick up on anything unusual that could explain her suicide?”

“She had a great deal to be very sad about, we all know that. But I didn’t expect this of her, Chief.”

He arched an eyebrow at her.

“My grandfather killed himself. With him I knew something was terribly wrong, it was like he was waving a red flag for several days before he stuck a gun in his mouth. I didn’t sense that from Mrs. Hildebrand.” She drew in a deep breath. “I can’t believe she managed to do this, Chief.”

He patted her arm. “Thank you, Susan. Take Lucy back to the station. I’ll speak to her later. Keep a lid on this, all right?”

Jack stepped back into the bedroom and looked around one last time. He’d learned long ago never to jump to a conclusion until all the facts were in. He would have to wait until the autopsy was done. But he wondered. Had Mrs. Hildebrand been overcome with remorse for poisoning her husband, and opted to kill herself? Unless, a voice said in his head, unless she thought her suicide would mean I’d close the case, and she was trying to protect her daughter. But he shook his head. If that was the case, where was the suicide note? And if it was a murder, it was extremely well done. Dammit, why hadn’t this case come together for him before this happened? Why did everything still seem scrambled behind a veil?

It was close to an hour before Jack opened the living room door. The three friends sat side by side on a lovely overstuffed cream sofa, speaking quietly. He wanted to go to Mary Lisa, try to tell her everything was going to be all right, but it wasn’t the time. “I’m sorry this is taking so long,” he said.

“No problem, Jack,” Elizabeth said, with remarkable calm. “Do what you have to do. We’ll be here.” He saw she was holding both Lou Lou’s and Mary Lisa’s hands. Mary Lisa didn’t look up at him. She was looking inward, probably still seeing Mrs. Hildebrand, still unable to accept it. Lou Lou looked up at him, no, beyond him. He wondered when he’d see the vivacious smart-mouthed women he’d come to like so much.

He said, “I’m sorry the three of you had to find her. That had to be very tough.”

Mary Lisa raised her eyes to his, back for the moment to the world of the present.

John Goddard appeared in the living room doorway beside him. “I’ve been on the phone to Dr. Hughes, Jack.” At Jack’s nod, he turned to the three women. “You guys all right?” But his eyes were on Elizabeth, and he walked to her like a homing pigeon. She smiled up at him. “Yes, John, we’re fine.”

“We should get you all out of here,” John said. “There might be media, especially if they find out Mary Lisa is here.”

“You’re right,” Jack said. He cursed under his breath, streaked his fingers through his hair, making it stick straight up. He looked out the wide front window. Neighbors were standing in their yards, a clump of them directly across the street huddled together. At least a dozen cars were still in the Hildebrand driveway, some climbed onto the curb in front of the house, one even parked on the grass. He couldn’t, at that moment, think of anything that could possibly be worse.

He walked over to Mary Lisa and held his hand out to her. She took it and stood up, and he pulled her into his arms. “I’m sorry, really sorry you had to find her.”

She pressed her cheek against his neck. “It was pretty bad.” She swallowed down a sob. No more falling apart. It wouldn’t help anything.

“I want you to go back to the inn, okay? Please, stay there until I can get back to you.”

She leaned back in his arms, studied his face. “All right,” she said finally, “but I need to go see my parents soon.”