Death Benefits

17

Walker stared across the desk at Daniels’s gold badge. It was as huge as he remembered it. It looked more like a plaque the chamber of commerce had given him to nail to his office wall than like anything a man was supposed to pin to his shirt. It had CHIEF OF POLICE in quarter-inch enameled letters along the top and a wheel in the center with a blue “1” at the hub.

Daniels looked good behind a desk, because when he sat forward with his weight on his elbows, the bulging stomach was compressed against the top drawer, and all Walker could see were the big arms and the shoulders jutting outward from the thick neck, and the small brown eyes. He looked somber, and his expression was mirrored in miniature on the childlike face of Officer Ormond.

“The police in Pasadena, California, have dug out the report of your run-in with the two men near Ellen Snyder’s house, and we gave them the description you gave us. Now they’re wanted for questioning in connection with this murder here in Wallerton,” said Daniels.

“Thank you, Chief,” said Stillman.

“I honestly don’t know what good it’ll do,” he said glumly. “I invited you two here to tell you we’ve about reached the end of our investigation. I’m going to give you what we’ve got now, before it gets kicked over to Springfield and disappears in somebody’s filing cabinet.”

Walker glanced at Stillman, but there was no answering glance. It was exactly as Stillman had predicted, but he did not seem to notice. Instead, his face was as somber as the chief’s. Walker could see that Ormond was sitting with a couple of file folders on her knees, her face now taking on an expression of distaste.

Stillman said, “We appreciate it, Chief.”

“Sandy?” said Daniels.

Officer Ormond took a deep breath, her mouth in a pout as though she were contemplating some drastic action.

“Sandy, give him the damned file,” said the chief wearily. She leaned forward quickly and set the file on Walker’s lap, like a woman reaching into a cage at the zoo, then retreated back into her chair. Daniels said, “Officer Ormond has objected to sharing this information with private persons,” he said. “Ordinarily I would agree with her, of course. She’s an excellent officer.”

Walker wondered what had made Daniels overrule her. He could see from her stony expression that the compliment had not mollified her, but Daniels seemed to have accepted that in advance. He said, “There are no tracks around the scene that haven’t been connected with your shoes or ours. There are no bits of physical evidence conveniently left around for us to bag and analyze. We’ve interviewed everybody along Locksley Road, and everybody on Waterman, but nobody saw or heard anything. So all we’ve got is a corpse. What we know so far is that she was dead at least twelve hours before you found her, probably buried between nightfall and dawn the night before.”

“Any cause of death yet?” asked Stillman.

“Well now, I’m not sure yet. The autopsy is being done in Chicago. They haven’t filled in that line yet, but they’ve given us some hints. Her blood tested positive for heroin. That wouldn’t be unheard of for a young lady on her way from Chicago, but nothing you fellows have given us would indicate she would have taken it voluntarily. That right?”

“Absolutely,” said Walker as firmly as he could.

“So my money is on heroin overdose as cause of death. She also had morphine in her blood, which strikes me as an odd combination. Probably that was what kept her under until they were ready to give her the overdose. She has . . . .” He turned to Ormond. “How many needle marks, Sandy?”

“Sixteen that they’ve found so far,” said Ormond.

“No abrasions around the wrists or ankles?” Stillman asked her.

“Nothing obvious,” Ormond answered. “There’s a bruise on her right arm.” She raised her own to point to a spot on the inside below the biceps, and Walker could tell she was acutely aware of the similarity between her body and Ellen Snyder’s. It was both inevitable and strange that she used herself as a visual aid. “That could be an indication of force. There’s also a scrape here on the left hip, but both could have been caused by the strain of moving a half-conscious person in or out of a car.”

Stillman kept his eyes on her. “So you think she was probably kept drugged for a long period, then killed and brought here?”

Ormond answered, “It’s possible they just made the other needle marks to make a heroin overdose plausible. But that’s what I think.”

“Any evidence of sexual assault?”

She shook her head. “Not so far.”

“So far?” Stillman raised an eyebrow.

“They haven’t given us all the results of the autopsy. The smear was negative for semen, and there was no obvious abrasion of the vaginal area. But she’s been missing for two weeks. We can’t say the test shows what happened to her during about the first twelve of those days.”

Walker looked at the chief, who was staring down at the blotter on his desk, as though he had noticed something there that demanded his full attention.

Stillman stood up with the file in his hand. “Chief, Officer Ormond, you’ve done us a big favor, and we appreciate it.”

Walker caught his cue, stood up, and muttered, “Thank you.”

Ormond said nothing, but the chief stood too, and said, “I sure wish we could have gotten somebody to take to trial on this one, but we’re not really set up to go very far beyond what we can investigate locally.”

“Nobody could have done any better,” said Stillman. “This was just the place they happened to hide the body.”

“Well, Officer Ormond will send on copies of whatever we get from Springfield.” He waited, his eyes on Ormond.

Ormond was looking at him, angry and unblinking. “Yes, sir.” Walker wondered what the conversation had been like that had brought her to that point.

He followed Stillman out of the police station. They walked along the quiet, sunny street toward their hotel. It was not until they were inside Walker’s room that he spoke. “That’s it?” he asked. “They collect all this information and put it in a file and send it to the state capital?”

Stillman’s stare seemed to be an evaluation of Walker. His eyes were not without sympathy, but Walker could tell he was not in a pleasant mood. “They’re not doing it for now,” he said. “They handled the scene professionally, made records of everything, preserved the evidence, searched for witnesses while anything they saw would have been fresh in their minds and not picked up in a newspaper.”

“What do you mean, ‘not doing it for now’?”

Stillman sighed. “Frauds, embezzlements, things that we’ve been worrying about up until now, are passing events. If they don’t get settled pretty quickly, not much is going to be accomplished later. Murder is different. The cops investigating a murder that doesn’t seem likely to be solved work for the future. They hope that somebody, sometime will get an inspiration or an informant, or invent a new gadget that will make sense of the evidence they preserved.”

Walker shook his head. “It’s not good enough.”

“It’s not good at all,” said Stillman. “It’s just what there is.” He stared at Walker for a moment. “Pack your suitcase. It’s time for us both to go home.”