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Chapter 5

It was mid-afternoon when Liz left the bookshop. She’d lost count of how many times she wished the Banner supplied her with a cell phone. Now, without one, it was a question of taking time to return to the library’s phone booth or waiting until she was in the newsroom to contact Laura Winters, Veronica’s aftercare program teacher. Looking at her watch, Liz figured the aftercare provider would presently be welcoming her charges. She’d wait to phone her and get on the road immediately.

Seated in the Tracer, Liz wished she’d returned to the library after all, since it would have been the source of brownies and coffee served by the library’s friends. Having eaten neither breakfast nor lunch, Liz was ravenous. Once she was moving steadily along Route 290, en route to the Mass Pike, she took a granola bar from her glove compartment and turned on the radio.

The former was inadequate to appease her hunger. The latter only whetted her appetite for finding out what happened to Ellen Johansson.

“Turning to local news,” the announcer intoned, “Erik Johansson has been detained by police for questioning again today, in the case of the missing Newton wife and mother. Johansson’s remarks, reported this morning in the Beantown Banner, indicate he wished he had a better alibi for the hours during which his wife, Ellen Johansson, seems likely to have disappeared.”

Newton Police Chief Anthony Warner’s voice came on the air. “More troubling than that is the guy’s apparent belief that his wife is dead,” he said. “You can see in the Banner, the guy’s talking about his wife in the past tense.”

Hearing this, Liz stepped a little harder on the accelerator and made her way to the Mass Pike. This took her straight past her house and the billboard above it. The latter formed an amusing tableau, since half of the billboard still showed a rain-splashed scene and the words “DON’T BE CAUGHT,” while the other half showed a flashy red sports car zooming down a snaking road straight for the vodka bottle.

“At least the dealership name is not on that half of the billboard,” Liz thought. “Old Man Maksoud would be fit to be tied if he saw this combination of ads.”

The next few billboards along the pike advertised the Museum of Science—“IT’S ALIVE!”—and the Boston World—“The sun never sets on our coverage.”

“They don’t even give their own ad uppercase type,” Liz laughed to herself.

There was no billboard in sight for her newspaper. The Banner made up for that with huge advertisements for itself on the sides of their newspaper delivery trucks. With circulation done for the day, these vehicles were packed into the parking lot, making it harder for Liz to find a space for the Tracer. Backed by an image of the American flag unfurling in a wind, the ads on the trucks proclaimed the Banner’s well-known slogan—“STAR-SPANGLED REPORTING!”—in uppercase type.

Under icy gray clouds that looked loaded with snow, Liz hurried from her car to the Banner’s brick edifice. Liz rushed down the ink-stained hall that led past the huge room filled with printing presses, only stopping to grab a can of orange juice from the vending machine before heading to the photo department. She flung open the door to see René working on the Mac on photos of a fire.

In a rare move, Dermott entered the photo department at that moment. Usually, the photographers came to him.

“How you doin’ on those fire shots?” he demanded.

“They’re coming along. What’s the hurry?”

“We’ve got a goner, now, so the story may go front page. Especially if you’ve got a wham-o shot. Hey, is that a figure behind the flames there?” he asked, scrutinizing the photo now displayed on the computer screen.

“Could be. I think it is.”

“That does it! Print that one pronto. I want it in time for the news meeting.”

“Sure, Dermott. I’ll have it for you ASAP.”

“Have it sooner!” Dermot said, rushing out of the room.

“Yeah, I did get a chance to print the photos—not all of them but enough to get you started, I hope,” René said, anticipating Liz’s question. “As you can see, they sent me to a fire scene. Your prints are in my cubbyhole there, in a manila envelope. You won’t find any enlargements of details. There just wasn’t time. I’ll get to the rest as soon as I can.”

“Thanks, René. I owe you,” Liz said, and handed him Ellen Johansson’s film.

“That’s true enough!”

“Looks like a woman in the flames there. That’s a great shot, René. Upsetting, though.”

“Another case of the camera seeing more than the eye. I just kept shooting. It was only when it came up on the machine that I knew what I had.”

“I’ll let you get to it,” Liz said, collecting the manila envelope from DeZona’s cubby.

“Just so you know, Manning’s hounding the hubby in your Newton case. And the medical examiner thinks the mom may have manipulated the scene.”

“You mean in the kitchen?”

“That’s right.”

“What makes him think that?”

“Manning will explain in tomorrow’s Banner,” Dermott said, standing in the door. “For Chrissake, let DeZona get on with his work! Now what have you got for me on the mystery mavens? Whatever it is, you’d better be able to spell it out in six inches. Between the freakin’ fire and the missing mom case, there’s a squeeze on for space.”

“Six it is!” Liz said. For once, she was relieved to have little space. It would allow her to file her story and head out again. “I’ve got Mary Higgins Clark and a private eye telling mystery fans how they go about their work. You could head it, ‘HOWDUNIT?’”

“We’ll see about that,” the city editor said.

At her desk, Liz took out another granola bar and opened her orange juice. Then she scanned her contact list on ATEX and dialed the Children’s Enrichment Aftercare Program.

“Laura left for the day,” a receptionist informed her. “May I take a message?”

“Isn’t it early for her to leave?”

“It is, actually. But she’s helping out with a child who’s been traumatized.”

“Veronica Johansson?”

“How did you know? And whose mom are you?”

Liz hung up without answering. Then she wrote an unremarkable, six-inch story about the mystery conference. While she was writing, the message “File and fly rule in effect’’ flashed at the top of her screen. She looked out the window. Heavy snow. Marvelous! This meant she could send the story into the system and split. Liz pulled a file photo of Mary Higgins Clark from the Banner’s photo library, turned it in at the city desk, and returned to her desk.

She looked in the West Suburban Boston phone book for Laura Winters in Newton. No Laura there, so she turned to the Boston book. A “Winters, L.” was listed at a Brighton address. Liz noted the address on Summit Street, took down the phone number, then dialed the latter. A perky voice on the phone answering machine invited her to leave a message. It sounded like the daycare provider. Again cursing her lack of a cell phone, Liz left a message with her work and home phone numbers. On impulse, she said she’d be at the Green Briar around 7:00 p.m., and invited Laura to call her there. Then she phoned Veronica’s home. If she didn’t catch Laura Winters there, perhaps Erik Johansson would pick up.

“Hello there! You’ve reached the Johanssons’ voice-mail box. If you’d like to leave a message for Erik, Ellen, or Veronica, go right ahead after the beep,” announced Ellen Johnasson’s recorded voice. Just as though nothing had happened to her.

The cheerful ordinariness of the message stopped Liz cold. She had sipped tea with this woman, even held Ellen’s traumatized child in her arms. But in her quest to grab the front page, she’d offered only cold comfort. Now, miles from their home, she did the best she could to embrace Ellen’s shattered family more warmly.

“I’ll find you, Ellen,” she said after the beep. “I’ll bring you home.”

As she pulled on her coat, she saw a copy of the front page that had been prepared earlier. “A PINCH OF BLOOD,” its headline read. It would never run, since the story had been bumped off Page One by the fire fatality. On an inside page there’d be smaller type and less hype.

And because it would never run, the rejected page was fair game. Liz snatched it up and made a swift exit into a driving snowstorm.

The Banner’s parking lot was normally a litter-strewn expanse of concrete, old-model cars, and newspaper delivery trucks. But now the fast-falling snow softened every angle, transferring this urban eyesore into a winter wonderland. If there had not been a missing mom or fire fatality, Banner headline writers might have been playing with words like “GUARANTEED WHITE,” since this snow would surely stay on the ground until Christmas. Unless Ellen Johansson showed up in the six days remaining before the holiday, the little girl who started out the season finding the area’s best Santa would not find her Christmas to be merry and bright.

Shivering, Liz approached the snow-covered Tracer, unlocked it, and took out her combination windshield scraper and brush. As she pushed snow off the spoiler designed to improve the aerodynamics of her car, she shook her head at the silliness of it. The accessory only made the vehicle look like a clunker that aimed—and failed—at looking sporty.

“Not unlike this reporter,” she thought. “I’d like to be the Banner’s hottest writer, but . . .”

Still, the car made up for its uncool appearance with compact size and reliability. In a city where parking spaces were at a premium, Liz could park the car on a dime. Now, it started up immediately when she turned it on. On the snowbound city streets, it performed just as well as the much more expensive, four-wheel-drive vehicles that shared the roads with her. But, in this snow, would it make it up the hills in Brighton? And when she arrived at the Green Briar, would Kinnaird be there after all? Would the good doctor be so keen on Irish music that he’d brave a blizzard for a chance to play his banjo?

The weather dictated Liz’s next decisions. Traffic was too slow to allow time for a quick stop at home before her Green Briar meeting. So she steered the Tracer to Brighton. The Beatles belted out “You’re Going To Lose That Girl” on her radio as Liz passed Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital. It made a welcome change from the Christmas carols jamming the airwaves. Until Liz thought about the song’s title, that is. Feeling sure Veronica’s mother would not voluntarily abandon her daughter, Liz looked up at the hundreds of illuminated windows and large electrified cross that glowed through the falling snow on the massive hospital complex set high on a hilltop.

Below, traffic was snarled in the complicated intersections of Brighton Center. A Christmas tree lit with multicolored bulbs shared a small traffic island with an antique clock topping a pole like a lollipop. Liz passed the Green Briar, traveling about a half-mile farther west to the base of Summit Street. Finding the road ran one way in the wrong direction, she drove around in the intensifying storm until she found a road that wound around the hill to what she thought was the other end of the one-way street. But it was the wrong road after all, Liz realized, as she pulled out of a skid in time to read “Tip Top Street” on a snowy street sign. Liz recognized the street name but, distracted by the storm, couldn’t recall why. It turned out the well-named street went up one side and down the other of a hill cluttered with quirky houses. With many of the houses lit up in Christmas lights, the effect was like an illustration in a child’s picture book. Descending the hill, and ascending another, Liz at last found Summit Street.

The street was neither plowed nor sanded, so Liz drove at a steady pace to a house on the hillside where, thanks to a porch light, she could make out Laura’s house number. Reasoning that if a snowplow came by, it would be preferable to dig out the tail of her car than the full length of it, she pulled into the tiny driveway.

The doorbell of the hillside house was labeled with three names: Winters, Smythe, and Jacobson. It was just a one-in-three chance that Veronica’s aftercare provider was at home. But Liz was in luck. Although another young woman answered the door, she invited Liz inside and called for Laura. The bungalow was fragrant with the smell of Indian food. To a reporter who had dined on nothing but granola bars all day, it smelled heavenly.

“Have some,” Laura said, leading Liz into a kitchen fitted with a breakfast nook. “We’ve got plenty,” she added, taking down an extra dish.

Laura introduced Liz to her two twenty-something roommates, Sue Smythe, a student nurse at Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital, and Becca Jacobson, who had answered the door. An aspiring actress, Becca said she was supporting herself by walking dogs. Clearly excited to be talking with a reporter, the young women needed no nudging to talk about the Johansson case.

“It’s totally shocking,” said Sue, spooning raita and chutney onto her plate. “Laura says Veronica is a mess.”

“I gather you helped out with Veronica today,” Liz said to Laura.

“Not for long. Her grandmother was coming in from Wellesley. I just kept Veronica occupied while her father took phone calls. Veronica would have been much better off following her normal routine and attending aftercare, but Mr. Johansson didn’t want to let her out of his sight. I guess I can understand that.”

“Was he screening his phone calls?”

“Yeah, that’s what the police told him to do. He had to keep the volume up on the answering machine so he could hear who was calling in. We kept hearing Mrs. Johansson’s voice on the answering machine message. Over and over again. It was eerie, I can tell you, and I know it upset Veronica. I was glad when Mrs. Swenson arrived.”

“Is that the grandmother? Do you know where she lives?”

“Yes. And no. Mrs. Swenson is the grandmother but I don’t have her address.”

“What about at work?” Becca offered. “I bet you have it on Veronica’s emergency card.”

“It’s possible. I could look tomorrow.”

“What was it like at the Johansson house?” Liz asked.

“Weird. Mr. Johansson was totally tense. I could see he was really upset about it, but he did bring in the Christmas tree and set it up when Veronica asked him to. She said she wanted to decorate it and surprise her mommy when she comes back. I could see he was having trouble staying cheerful, so I offered to put the lights on the tree. I didn’t get very far before Mrs. Swenson arrived.”

“Tell her about the weird calls,” Becca urged.

“Some woman called sounding like she thought she was some kind of hero. ‘I’ll find you, Ellen,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring you home.’ Go figure!”

Liz used her napkin to hide a sheepish expression.

“Tell her about the other call,” Becca put in.

“Some guy with an accent called saying she forgot to pick up some book. Mrs. Johansson’s a librarian, you know. Imagine a library patron calling someone’s home at a time like this! And some foreign woman called in saying, “Ellen, I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault, but I will make it up to you.”

“I’m surprised the husband wasn’t instructed to keep callers on the phone so the calls could be traced,” Liz said.

“I think he was supposed to do that if the call seemed suspicious. The idea was to screen the calls, I think, and pick up ASAP when one seemed significant.”

“It sounds like he didn’t see these calls as significant.”

“I think he might have tried to pick up that foreign woman’s call but she hung up too quick. At least, I heard him curse when, I guess, the call ended. I wasn’t in the room with him, so it’s hard to be sure. I know he picked up real quick on the call after that one and talked to someone. That seemed odd because you could hardly tell who it was before he picked up.”

“Did you hear what he said?”

“It was hard to hear. Remember, I was putting lights on the tree and trying to talk to Veronica so she wouldn’t get upset hearing her mom’s voice again and again. I did think it was strange when one caller on the answering machine started humming, though. Weird time to be singing, huh?”

A loud scraping noise sounded from outdoors.

“Must be the plow,” Sue volunteered. “If you’re parked on the street, your car’ll be buried.”

“Fortunately, I’m in the driveway, but I’ll still need to borrow a shovel to get out. I’d better get digging,” she said, looking at the clock. It was 6:50.

“I’ll help you,” Sue said. “I’ve got to get over to the hospital.”

Liz offered Sue a ride, thanked the young women for sharing their dinner, got assurances from Laura that she’d check on Mrs. Swenson’s address, and hurried to the door. In her haste, she dropped the envelope of René’s photos from her purse. Sue picked them up.

“Omigod!” Sue cried. “How awful! Is that the Johanssons’ kitchen? We knew from news reports the kitchen was bloody, but it’s a different matter to see it.” Sue paused. “You know, an expert can tell a lot from blood like that.”

“Like what, Sue?”

“Well, there are genetic tests, of course, to prove whose blood it is. But you can also tell if the person was anemic, for instance.”

“I’m on my way to meet a forensics man now.”

“Cool!”

With Sue’s help, Liz cleared boulder-like hunks of snow that had been pushed and compacted by the plow and then she backed the Tracer onto Summit Street. With Sue in the passenger seat, she rode the brake down the hill and turned toward Brighton Center. Now the snow was coming down so hard that the lights of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital seemed veiled. Sue pointed out a parking lot and urged Liz to let her out there to avoid struggling along the sloping hospital driveway. Located next to a police station, the parking lot across the street from the Green Briar seemed to have priority on plowing. It was cleared of snow for the moment at least. Liz parked there and crossed the street to the bar, full of doubt that Kinnaird would show up.

The Green Briar’s unremarkable exterior offered little hint of the atmosphere within. And the latter arose less from the décor than from the sound of some thirty musicians who filled the place with traditional Irish music. Liz passed through a barroom to a brick-walled room hung here and there with photos of Irish scenes. Under a weathered pub sign from Dublin, the players were clustered around a large table. It was difficult at first for Liz to tell whether it was the fiddler or the pennywhistle player who served as leader here, but it was clear that the rest of the musicians were taking their cues from one or both of them. It was immediately obvious that the more confident players were seated closest to this pair while those who sat farther from this inner circle included some who seemed to lean in toward their instruments while playing lightly on them, as if they were trying to learn the music by ear.

The players were remarkably mixed. Septuagenarians and teens, working men and yuppies, ruddy-faced Irish-Americans, and a twenty-something Asian Indian all lost themselves in the music that went on and on, gaining momentum and spirit along the way. Liz marveled to think this world existed a few miles from Gravesend Street without her having enjoyed it until now.

She scanned the group more than once before picking out Dr. Kinnaird. He was sitting behind a man who was playing an instrument Liz had never seen before, which required squeezing a bagpipe-type inflated bag repeatedly with his elbow. There was no doubt the unusual instrument was enough to distract Liz’s attention. But there were other reasons she did not recognize Kinnaird at first. He was dressed far more casually than he’d been during his bite-marks presentation. Along with his suit, tie, and cuff links, he’d left behind his know-it-all demeanor. The expression on his face as he bent over his banjo was positively boyish.

Liz noticed he was seated far from the leader. Here, he was not the top of the heap. And he didn’t seem to care.

The tune went on and on. To Liz’s untutored ear, it was repetitious, but highly pleasing. While the musicians played on, she took off her coat, and removed from its pocket the crumpled front page she had taken from the Banner newsroom. The “PINCH OF BLOOD” headline played on Dick Manning’s report of his conversation with Medical Examiner Barney Williams: “‘The distribution of the blood over the countertop and baking ingredients, but not on the floor or elsewhere, suggests the scene was manipulated,’ Williams said. ‘One has to wonder if the blood was sprinkled there intentionally, rather than spilled as the result of an injury.’”

As Liz read, the Irish tune came to an end and Kinnaird noticed Liz. He set his banjo down on his chair and joined her.

“So you braved the storm?” he said.

“I’m so glad I did. This is terrific.”

“You brought the photos, I suppose,” Kinnaird said, looking longingly at his banjo as the music started up again. “I know this tune.”

“Do you want to join in? I can wait,” Liz said, hoping he would not take her up on the offer. “Or you can let me buy you a beer. You’re my research assistant after all.”

“I wouldn’t hear of it. I’ll take care of it,” he said and ordered a lager for Liz and a tall glass of water for himself. “I usually don’t take alcohol until much later in the evening if I’m playing,” he explained.

No table was particularly well lit, so they chose one for privacy rather than illumination. Kinnaird’s lighthearted expression vanished as he looked over the prints. His eyes lingered over them for a long time.

“Most interesting,” he said. “Of course, without being privy to accurate measurements of the spaces between the blood droplets, the precise shape of them, and the chemistry of them, I can’t draw any detailed conclusions. But I can tell you what someone with that information should be able to glean from this scene.”

“Please do.”

“First, look at the big picture. There’s blood on the countertop and ingredients but apparently not on the floor.”

“Does that suggest the blood may have been intentionally sprinkled there?”

“Possibly. It would be odd for blood flowing from an injury sustained in a violent attack to confine itself to one surface area. That’s why it would be important to study the shape of the drops. If they fell straight down from a wound, they would be fairly circular with a spreading pattern around the perimeter of each. That doesn’t look to be the case from these photos. If they were strewn there, say, with someone’s fingers, they would likely lay out in an arched pattern like a sunrise, with no blood underneath a kind of horizon line,” Kinnaird said. He demonstrated by bringing his fingertips together, dipping them into his water, and opening his fingers quickly to fling water on the table.

“The problem at the Johanssons’ house is most of the blood drops have fallen into the sprinkles and shredded coconut. That seriously undercuts any conclusions about how the blood fell there.”

“If the blood did come from a wound, what kind of injury might account for it?”

“Impossible to say. Could be a facial wound. They flow freely and, given that the blood is confined to a rather high surface area, it would make sense for it to come from the upper body. The wound might have been stanched before the injured person crossed the floor. That would account for the lack of blood anywhere else. But I wouldn’t bet my life on that. The droplets here don’t scream ‘head wound’ to me. They’re small. The few I can make out on the countertop appear teardrop-shaped and too evenly distributed to suggest that.”

“What about the chemistry you mentioned? What might be learned from that?”

“The amount of drying would suggest how long the blood had been there. Analysis of the blood would reveal blood group, whether or not the person was anemic or suffered from certain diseases, and, of course, DNA analysis would pretty much nail the bleeder’s identity. If you had a sample to match it to.”

“Those are all things that show up in mystery novels these days, aren’t they?”

“I suppose so. Less often mentioned in mystery novels is luminol, a chemical that would be sprayed around such a scene to reveal traces of blood that someone tried to clean up. If and when the police release what they learn from that, the reporter whom they inform first will have a huge advantage.”

Across the room, the musicians had started up another tune.

“That’s a hornpipe. Do you hear the syncopation in it?” Kinnaird said, brightening measurably and looking longingly at his banjo. “If you’d like to stay on, you can pull up a chair over there. The musicians tend to sit as close together as they can, near the leader.”

“Maybe another time. It’s been a long day. But thank you for sharing your expertise.”

“Bring me a drop of blood from the scene, and I’ll tell you more.”