Split Second

CHAPTER 25

Coop slammed out of Gloria and ran to her. He took one look at her white face and without hesitation pulled her against him. “It will be all right. I spoke to Savich, and he told me you’d found your grandfather’s skeleton, that you’d said your grandmother had murdered him. He and Detective Horne will be here soon. I’m so sorry, Lucy, so very sorry.” They stood beneath the porch light, silent, Coop simply holding her. She didn’t cry. All her tears were frozen deep inside her.

He said against her hair, “You don’t have to tell me what happened—we can wait until everyone arrives. Breathe deeply; that’s right. Get yourself together. I’m here now, and we’ll deal with this. Are you cold?”

She shook her head against his neck. “My dad helped her, Coop. After she murdered her husband, they carried him up to the attic and put him in a steamer trunk. My dad lived in this house twelve years, knowing his father was lying with a white towel spread over him in a trunk in the attic. And they spread lots of cake deodorizers on top to keep the smell down. How could he bear it? Do you know they locked the attic? I was never allowed to go up there. Come to think of it, I can’t ever remember wanting to.”

“I know, Lucy, I know. We’ll get this all figured out. You’ll see. Do you want to go inside? You’re freezing.”

“No, no, please, I don’t want to, not yet, not until I have to.”

Coop shrugged out of his shearling coat and wrapped it around her.

She hugged the big coat close. She was freezing. “I keep thinking that knowing all those years his own father was in the attic, murdered by his own mother—it must have driven my dad mad. But he protected her, kept quiet until the end. Do you think keeping this ghastly secret all these years, knowing what he’d done, feeling the guilt, the stress, the need to protect his mother—do you think it made him die too soon?” She didn’t wait for him to say anything, which was good, since he had no idea what to say. “But why did he keep the body there after my grandmother died? Why didn’t he move it, give his own father his own private burial?”

“We’ll figure it all out, Lucy. Now, here’s a cavalcade of cars coming, Savich’s Porsche leading them in. Can you deal with this now?”

She raised her face. “Of course.”

Detective Horne was new to the job, but he knew what to do. He was pleased Special Agent Savich didn’t grind him under—indeed, deferred to him. He introduced himself to Lucy Carlyle and Cooper McKnight. He asked a female officer to stay with Lucy while the rest of them trooped up to the attic. When Lucy shook her head and got to her feet, Detective Horne pointed a cop finger at her. “Stay.”

Ten minutes later, Coop walked back into the library to see Lucy standing by a big burgundy leather easy chair, her hands clenched at her sides, the female officer in the kitchen, making coffee. She still had his shearling coat wrapped around her. He walked to her, took her hands. “We’ve seen everything. It will be all right, Lucy. We’ll figure all this out.”

“What’s to figure?”

“Sorry, dumb question. Do you want me to call your aunt and uncle? Anyone else?”

She thought of Uncle Alan, Aunt Jennifer, Court, and Miranda. She thought of her closest friends, all of them hanging back for the past week because she’d asked them to. No, she couldn’t call them; they’d been overburdened already, what with seeing her through her father’s funeral. She shook her head. “No, I’ll call my uncle in the morning. You want some coffee, Coop?” Uncle Alan, did you know what happened?

He shook his head. “Lucy? Ah, crap, come here,” and again he pulled her and his shearling coat against him.

He saw tears snake down her cheeks. She wasn’t making a sound. He flicked them away with his fingers. “I’m very sorry, Lucy. Listen, did you find or remove any ID from the body to prove it was your grandfather?”

“No.”

He said against her hair, “Savich has asked the autopsy be performed at Quantico. Detective Horne called his lieutenant, and she agreed but said they’d be sending along one of their medical examiners. The attic is a crime scene, of course, and the forensic team will be up there a good couple of days. There was dried blood on his shirt, over his chest, so we’re probably talking a gun or a knife. That’s all I can tell you right now. We won’t know any more until the autopsy.”

“It was a knife. Maybe it’s still in one of those steamer trunks I didn’t open.”

How could she be so sure it was a knife? Coop would get to that in a minute. She was speaking calmly, logically, and that was a relief.

“You know, Coop, there’s no reason to expend all this manpower. It’s my grandfather. I know his wife murdered him. It’s over, case solved and closed.”

He said, “I know, but there’s a protocol that has to be followed, you know that. And you’ll explain everything to us in a little while. It would be good to find the knife. I saw those suitcases full of men’s clothing. We might find ID there.”

Lucy felt herself finally getting back in control. “Coop, I want to go back outside now.”

They walked side by side out of the house to stand on the top porch steps, watching two techs bring out a green body bag for her grandfather’s remains. She said, “I can give them a swab from my cheek to check DNA, if they need it.”

“They will,” Coop said.

It was a dark night, only a sliver of moon and a long blaze of stars shining through the lowlying clouds. They heard techs talking by the van, heard voices from inside the house.

Lucy said, “Maybe it was too painful for Dad to think about touching his father’s body again, stealing away with it. I can understand that, sure I can. Can you imagine, Coop, trying desperately to continue your routine, treating your little daughter—namely, me—calmly and naturally? And his own mother, being civil to her, not wanting to kill her for what she’d done. It always seemed to me he loved her, treated her courteously. But how could he? Did he ever find out why she killed him?”

He hugged her and his shearling coat, and realized he was getting a bit cold himself.

Savich came up, lightly placed his hand on her shoulder. “You’re coming home with me, Lucy.”

She turned to smile at her boss. “No, I want to stay here. I’ll be fine; don’t worry about me. I’ll admit I was pretty freaked out—”

Detective Horne said from behind her, “I know, I know, you’re FBI, you’re tough, and you’re nearly back to chewing nails again, right?”

Lucy was wrung out, but she managed a small smile. “Thank you for letting me stay in the loop, Detective.”

Detective Horne hadn’t intended she be anywhere near the loop, but since she was in Savich’s unit, and his lieutenant really admired Savich, he said easily, “Not a problem.”

Coop said to her, “This is why you moved back here after your father’s funeral, isn’t it, Lucy? And why you were so mysterious about it? You wanted to find your grandfather?”

“No, it never occurred to me I’d find him. I was looking for something, anything, that would tell me why my grandmother murdered him in the first place.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe she stuffed him in a trunk in the attic.”

Detective Horne blinked at that. “Your grandmother?”

“Yes, my grandmother.”

“But how do you know your grandmother murdered her husband?”

Lucy pulled away from Coop to stand facing the three men, clutching that big, soft coat to her like it was her security blanket. “I’m not cold, but I’ll bet Coop is. Let’s go back inside.”

When she was seated in a big green wing chair in the staid and formal living room, she drew in a deep breath. “My father had a heart attack. He was in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he recognized me, sometimes he simply looked at me and went under again.

“In the final moments before he died, he opened his eyes and yelled—it was terrifying because his voice was so frantic, panicked. He said very clearly, ‘Mom, what did you do? Why did you stab Dad? Oh my God, he’s not moving. There’s so much blood. Why, Mom?’ She lowered her head. “I won’t ever forget that for the rest of my life.”

Coop wouldn’t, either, he thought. What a load to carry—first for the father and now for the daughter. He studied her face. Smudges of dirt were stark against her pale cheeks. Hair was coming out of her French braid, tangling around her neck, but her hands were smoothed out and quiet on her lap. He knew she was calm again. He realized he admired her very much in that moment.

She looked at each of them in turn. “I knew I had to find out what happened.”

Savich said, “So, this past week you’ve been looking for clues?”

“Yes. I’d already gone through my grandmother’s study, all her desk drawers, some of her many books, but I didn’t find anything, so I decided to try the attic. The door was locked—it always was, and now, of course, I know why—and it was easy to break open.”

Savich said, “Lucy, what did your dad say when he told you to stay out of the attic?”

She looked blank. “Do you know, I don’t remember. I just know I never wanted to disobey him and go up there.” She paused for a moment, then said, “It was neat and organized, and as you saw, the boxes are all clearly marked; the old discarded clothes hung in plastic bags on wooden rods. The luggage was in neat stacks, too, at least before I went to work on it.”

Detective Horne pulled out a small black book. “Let’s back up a minute. You had no idea your grandfather was murdered until just before your father died? When was that?”

“My father died a little more than a week ago, Detective, and no, I didn’t have a clue.”

“Had you missed your grandfather? What happened?”

“I was nearly six years old when I was told my grandfather had simply left his family without a word. That was twenty-two years ago. My father and I already lived here then; we’d moved in with my grandparents after my mom died.”

Detective Horne studied her face, his pen poised over his notebook. “So your father saw your grandmother murder her husband?”

“Yes. If he didn’t see the murder itself, he walked in moments after she’d done it.”

Detective Horne had heard so many outrageous stories happily recounted by veteran cops over beers, but he’d never heard a story like this. He said, “He never said a word about it to you, ever?”

“No.”

“Do you think your father ever told anyone? A really close friend, or a relative he trusted?”

“My grandmother’s youngest brother, Uncle Alan, has never let on that anything like that happened, so I’d have to say no one knew, only my father and my grandmother. We can ask Uncle Alan. I have to tell him about all this now, anyway. I think it will be as much of a shock to him as to me, especially so soon after my dad died.”

Detective Horne said, “We’ll be speaking to him and his family. You said you moved in here to look for clues why this happened.”

Lucy gave him a twisted smile. “As I told you, Detective, I hadn’t found anything yet that would tell me why, but I will keep looking. Surely something will turn up that will give me some idea of why this happened.” She paused, looked down at her hands, now tightly clasped in her lap. She raised her head and looked at Coop, her face leached of color. “She covered him with an expensive white towel and deodorant cakes and closed the trunk lid on him.” She paused for a moment, then said, “Dillon, I think I remembered something when I was in the attic, when I was looking at the padlock on the trunk. I was small and I was scared, but I saw—”

Lucy lowered her head and cried.

She felt arms go around her, and turned to lean into them. She pressed her face against a warm, soft neck and breathed in a floral scent. It was Sherlock. How long had she been here?

Sherlock whispered against her hair, “It will be all right, Lucy. We’ll all figure this out. You’re not alone with this any longer.”