Pray for Silence

CHAPTER 20

I break every speed limit in the book on the way to the Melody Trailer Park. Making a big arrest is always a thrill, particularly for a violent suspect that has been elusive. I can feel our collective adrenaline zinging around the inside of the cab. Beside me, Tomasetti grips the armrest. He looks excited—too excited considering his superiors have no idea he’s here. It’s a subject we should have dealt with already. I won’t risk screwing up this case. I know from experience if some defense lawyer gets his claws on that kind of information, he’ll use it to get his client off, guilt be damned.

The Explorer’s tires screech when I make the turn into the trailer park. Pulling up to the curb two lots down from Long’s place, I hit my mike. “This is 235. I’m 10-23.”

Glock’s voice crackles back. “I’m 10-23 at his place of work. Long didn’t show up today.”

“Get over here.”

“Ten-seventy-seven five minutes.”

I rack the mike. “Backup’s on the way.”

“Let’s go.” Tomasetti reaches for the door handle.

I grab his arm and stop him. “Are you armed?”

He glares at me. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re only here to observe.”

Temper flashes in his eyes. “Goddamnit, Kate.”

“I mean it,” I snap. “I want this done by the book.”

“Fine.” He shakes off my hand with a little too much force.

We disembark simultaneously. I can see Long’s trailer from where I parked. The black pickup sits in the driveway. “Looks like he’s home.”

“I’ll go around back,” Tomasetti says.

Giving him a nod, I draw my .38 and ascend the wooden steps of the deck. Standing slightly to the side, I knock hard on the storm door. “Todd Long! Police! Open the door. We need to talk to you.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tomasetti disappear around the rear of the trailer. I hammer the door with my palm. “Police! Open up!”

A cop has got to be cautious when approaching a suspect’s residence. Contrary to popular belief, the door doesn’t have to be open for you to get shot. Depending on the weapon, a bullet can go right through a steel door. This particular door is made of wood and has a small diamond-shaped window just above eye level. Opening the storm door, staying to one side as much as possible, I set my toes on the threshold and put my eye to the glass.

The interior is dim. No lights. Curtains drawn. I see a living room with dark paneling. A kitchen with oak cabinets. Countertops littered with beer cans, newspapers and several days’ worth of mail. A bottle of top shelf whiskey sits on a glossy coffee table. Beyond, I see the outline of a flat-screen TV.

“Todd Long!” I shout. “Open the door now!” I’m about to pull away and wait for Glock to pile-drive the door when something snags my eye. Cupping my hands, I put my face to the glass. At first, I think the massive stain on the wall behind the sofa is food or drink. The kick of adrenaline in my gut tells some part of my brain it’s not.

“Shit.”

“No sign of anyone.” Tomasetti takes the steps two at a time and stands next to me.

“I think that’s blood on the wall,” I say.

Grimacing, he puts his face to the window and looks inside. “I think you’re right.”

He’s nearly a foot taller than me and has a better vantage.

“Any sign of a body?” I ask.

“Can’t see much from this angle.” He looks over at me. “Are you reasonably suspicious of foul play here?”

I jerk my head and try not to think of his unofficial status. “Do it.”

He steps back, then lands a kick next to the lock.

Wood splinters and the door flies open. Before I can move, Tomasetti drops into a shooter’s stance and thrusts himself inside. “Police! Put your hands up!”

My weapon leading the way, I follow him. Tomasetti goes right, toward the kitchen. I go left where the living room opens to a hall. I smell blood an instant before I see the body. On the other side of the room, Todd Long is sitting upright on the sofa, his arms and legs splayed. His head leans against the back-rest. His face is angled up, toward the ceiling, as if he fell asleep while watching TV. From where I stand, I can see that the back of his head is missing. His hand grips a big .45 revolver.

“Aw, shit.” Tomasetti’s voice reaches me as if from a great distance.

“Looks like we’re a little late,” I hear myself say.

“Or maybe we timed this just right.” I look at him and he shrugs. “Son of a bitch saved everyone a lot of time and trouble.”

I don’t agree with that; I have too many questions rolling around in my head. That’s not to mention my need to see justice done for the Plank family. But my thoughts are too scrambled at the moment to rebuff his statement.

“I’m going to clear the rest of the trailer.” Tomasetti heads down the narrow hall toward the bedrooms.

I can’t take my eyes off the dead man. Sightless eyes stare at the ceiling. His mouth is open and filled with blood. I see powder burns on his lips. Broken front teeth. Blowback covers the wall behind him. I can make out tiny pieces of brain tissue, blood and small flecks of bone on the dark paneling.

Tomasetti emerges from the hall. “Clear.” He glances at the body and for a second I’m afraid he’s going to draw down and put another bullet in it. He motions toward the bottle of whiskey on the coffee table. “Looks like he got juiced up and took the easy way out.”

Neither of us has any sympathy for a man who drugged and raped a fifteen-year-old girl. But I didn’t want it to end like this. I feel as if someone yanked the rug out from under me. There’s no sense of justice. No closure. Just a dead man, a dead family and a hundred questions that will never be answered.

Trying not to think about that too much, I hit my lapel mike. “I’ve got a 10-84 at three five Decker in the Melody Trailer Park. Can you 10-79?”

“Roger that,” comes Lois’s voice.

“Deceased is Todd Long. See if you can find contact info for NOK, will you?”

“Sure thing, Chief.”

Movement at the door snags my attention. I glance over to see Glock enter, his eyes on the corpse. “Damn. Fucker bit it, huh?”

“Looks that way.” But the scenario troubles me in some vague way I can’t put my finger on. I thought this would feel better. Instead, it feels unfinished.

I look around the trailer. The place is messy. I don’t relish the thought of an in-depth search; there’s nothing I hate more than human filth mixed with a little biohazard. But I’m not going to be leaving any time soon.

For a moment, the three of us stand there, staring at Long’s body. It’s an anticlimactic moment; I’d been hoping for an arrest. I wanted to know what happened inside the Plank farmhouse on the night of the murders. I wanted to know why. I’m not proud of it, but a small part of me wanted to take my best shot at the bastard responsible.

“He didn’t seem like the kind of guy to have an attack of conscience,” I say to no one in particular.

“More than likely it was the thought of going to prison that did him in,” Tomasetti replies.

“Going to save the taxpayers a bundle,” Glock adds.

Sighing, I look at Todd Long’s body and silently curse him. “Let’s gear up and see what he left us.”

In the sweltering heat of the day, Glock, Tomasetti and I thoroughly search drawers, cabinets, and any other conceivable hiding place. With painstaking care, we bag, label and box, preserving as much of the scene as possible. Our efforts pay off. By noon we’ve filled three large plastic storage bins with evidence, including photographs, half a dozen computer disks, two flash drives, several types of unidentified pills, a video camera, books on photography, pornographic magazines, clothing and a suicide note.

The note is hand-printed in pencil on a sheet of tablet paper. Holding up the bag, I stare at the childish lettering and say to Glock. “Long worked for the railroad. Can you run over to the office and get a sample of his handwriting so we have something to compare this to?”

“Sure.” But he gives me a puzzled look. “You think he didn’t write it?”

“I just want to cover all the bases.”

Glock heads out the door. I’m aware of Tomasetti watching me as he places labeled and sealed bags into the last storage container. He doesn’t say anything, but I know what he’s thinking. I’m being too thorough, looking for things that aren’t there. And no matter how much effort I put into this, the Plank family is still dead.

Doc Coblentz arrived on the scene half an hour earlier. Enough time to give me a preliminary assessment. “What do you think?” I ask.

The doc is wearing olive-green slacks. The back and armpits of his scrubs shirt are sweat-soaked. The doctor shakes his head. “I attended a seminar at Nationwide Children’s in Columbus a couple of weeks ago. We toured the cancer center where most of the patients are pediatric. We’re talking brain tumors. Lymphoma. Leukemia. Sick kids who’d give anything just to go outside and play.” Motioning toward Long, he shakes his head. “I see something like this, and I wish there was some way this wasted life could be given to one of those children.”

“I don’t think life’s that fair.” That reality makes me sigh. I motion toward Long’s body. “You think this was self-inflicted?”

“From all indications, he put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Judging from the exit wound, the bullet angled slightly up, went through the cerebellum and exited the skull at the back of the head. Death would have occurred instantly. Of course, I’ll perform an autopsy and tox screen. But my preliminary ruling is that this man killed himself.”

The words make me feel deflated. Maybe because I wanted answers, and Long will never be able to give them to me.

Tomasetti comes up beside us. “I think we’ve got just about everything.”

“Did Glock check beneath the trailer?” I ask, knowing it’s a favorite hiding place for criminal-minded mobile-home dwellers.

He nods. “Pulled the skirting aside and crawled under. Nothing there.”

I glance out the window. An ambulance idles in the driveway, waiting to transport the body to the morgue. I should be in a hurry to get out of there, where the smell of blood and death hang heavy. I should be anxious to review the evidence we’ve retrieved thus far so I can get the paperwork rolling and close the case. I should be anxious for life to get back to normal. For a reason I can’t readily identify, I’m reluctant to leave. I feel if I walk out, I’ll be closing the door on unfinished business.

Tomasetti picks up on my frame of mind. “Something bothering you?”

“I can’t see Long killing himself like this.”

“He’s been to prison before. Maybe he didn’t want to go back. Took the easy way out.”

I sigh. “Damnit, I didn’t want it to end this way.”

“Could have been worse.” He motions toward Long. “He could have run, gotten away.”

I think of Mary Plank. The shattered hopes and dreams. So many lives cut short. And for what? Money? Sexual gratification? Cruelty for the sake of cruelty?

“I wanted to know why he killed that family,” I tell him.

“Police work isn’t always that neat.” He gestures toward the storage containers. “I think the only answers we’re going to get are in those boxes.”

It’s nearly dusk when Tomasetti and I arrive at the station, lugging the boxes of evidence from Long’s place inside. The reception area smells like nail polish and Obsession perfume. Jodie, the new dispatcher, greets us with a Cosmo smile. She’s wearing snug black slacks and a white body-hugging tunic. Too sexy for a police station. Just what I need. “Hey, guys,” she says perkily.

T.J. and Glock stand upon hearing us enter and peer at us over the tops of their cubes. “Need a hand?” T.J. asks.

Glock lowers his voice. “This is your chance to show Jodie those biceps.”

T.J. smacks the other man on the back of his head with a little too much force. “Shut up, shithead.”

Their mood is jovial. I should be feeling the same now that one of the most violent cases in the history of Painters Mill has come to an end. I should be glad it’s over. But I’m not, and I simply don’t have the energy to pretend.

We carry the boxes to the storage-room-turned-command-center off the hall. Glock and T.J. shuffle out as I turn on my laptop and open the antivirus software. “I’m going to take a look at the drives.”

“A lot of them.” Tomasetti goes to the first box, digs around for a moment, then passes me a flash drive. I plug it into the laptop. While it’s being scanned for viruses, I turn my attention to the suicide note and read it for the dozenth time, looking for some hidden clue that’s just not there.

I can’t take it anymore. I can’t live with what I did. I loved Mary. She was sweet and beautiful and kind. But she told her parents about the kid. She was gonna tell everyone. And I went a little crazy. I’m so fucking sorry. Mom, you know I’m no killer. Don’t feel guilty. I’m just so fucked up. The meth fucked up my head. I’m sorry you have to deal with this, but I’m not going back to prison. There’s no other way. I love you, Blinky.

I shake my head, pissed by the lack any real answers. “Fucking coward.”

I look at Tomasetti to find him watching me intently. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” I rub at the ache between my eyes. “I just hate the way this played out.”

“Kate, look at this.”

The tone of Tomasetti’s voice jerks my attention back to him. I glance over to see him staring at my laptop screen, where he’s already opened the first file. All thoughts fall by the wayside the instant my eyes hit the screen. The images come at me like knives. I see Mary Plank lying on an old-fashioned iron bed. A man wearing a full-head latex mask—some sort of grotesque jester—is on top of her, arms braced, his hips pumping. I see his neck muscles straining. Mary wears only her kapp and black ankle boots. Her eyes are unfocused, but the look of revulsion on her face is clear.

“Oh no.” My voice is but a whisper. All I can think is, I don’t want to see this.

“Looks like Long,” Tomasetti says. “Same build.”

The screen goes black. We stare for an instant, unspeaking. Tomasetti is in the process of reaching for the mouse when abruptly the screen jumps back to life. Same lighting. Same bed and sheets. Same bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. A man sits on the side of the bed. He wears the same jester mask, but this time I’m sure the man is Todd Long. My chest tightens when Mary Plank kneels between his knees, her head bobbing as she performs oral sex.

“She’s been drugged.” Tomasetti’s words come to me as if I’m hearing them through cotton. “I’ll bet the pills we found are some type of barbiturate. Or Rohypnol, maybe.”

I want to respond, but feel as if there are two hands around my throat, squeezing my larynx, and I can’t get any words out. I glance at the screen, and see yet another twisted scenario playing out in terrible black and white. I feel Tomasetti’s gaze on me, but I don’t look at him. I don’t want him to see what I know is in my eyes.

This case isn’t about me, but it hits home in ways I never expected, and with a force that leaves me gasping for breath. Tomasetti knows what happened to me seventeen years ago, but he doesn’t know all of it. He doesn’t know the deepest, darkest secret of all.

“Kate.” He says my name gently, like a horse trainer trying to calm a frightened colt. “You don’t have to watch this.” He starts to close the laptop.

But I stop him. “Yes, I do.” The words are little more than croaks, but I force them out. I can feel my emotions winding up. I know if I don’t get a grip they’re going to spiral out of control. My brain chants Danger, danger, danger! But I don’t stop. “She was in love with him,” I grind out. “She wanted to marry him. Have his child. Spend her life with him. She was willing to leave everything she’d ever know. And he did this to her.”

The muscles in Tomasetti’s jaw flex, and he looks away. “He got what was coming to him.”

“That’s not justice.”

“Maybe not. But it’s about as happy an ending as you’re going to get with a case like this.”

It’s a hard, cynical view. But then John Tomasetti can be a hard, cynical man. At this moment, staring at the cruel realities playing out on that laptop, the world feels like a hard and cynical place.

I don’t want to look at that awful screen, but my eyes are drawn to it. Another unspeakable scene stares back at me. I see the glazed eyes of an innocent girl. A young woman full of goodness and life. I see evil in its most insidious form. He raped her body, her mind, her heart. He committed upon her the ultimate betrayal.

I stand so abruptly, my chair nearly falls over backward. Tomasetti looks uneasily at me. “Kate . . .”

“Can you get this stuff to the lab?” I hear myself say.

“Sure . . .”

Before even realizing I’m going to move, I’m heading toward the door. I hear my breaths rushing out as I shove it open. It bangs against the wall, and then I’m running down the hall. I hear John say my name, but I don’t stop. I see the dispatcher’s concerned expression as I cross through the reception area. I’m aware of T.J. standing in his cube, staring at me. Glock calls out my name as I yank open the door. Then I’m outside. Only then do I realize I’m crying. Giant, wracking sobs that rip out of me with a force that makes my entire body shudder.

Relinquishing control of your emotions is the ultimate bad form for a female cop. Especially a female in a position of command. I need to get a grip. Suck it up and get the hell back in there. Start the paperwork that will close this godforsaken case once and for all.

But I’m in no condition to go back inside. I can’t face my team. I’m too raw. Too far gone. Already over that precipice and tumbling down the mountain. I know Tomasetti will take care of any evidence that needs to be sent to the lab. The paperwork can wait until in the morning. Climbing into my Explorer, I back blindly onto the street and head for the nearest haven I can find.