The Prostitutes Ball

Chapter 33.

After the raccoon vacated I went back downstairs and retrieved the canister of Luminol. Then we sprayed the bedroom.

Nothing fluoresced.

The bed linens and mattress had been removed and the box spring didn't glow. But the important fact was the headboard with the bullet hole also showed no sign of blood or CFS splatter. Neither did the wall behind it.

"Vulcuna wasn't killed in this room," I said and Hitch nodded.

I saw a color picture in a silver frame on the dresser so I walked over and picked it up.

The photo was of the Vulcuna family, done in studio by a professional photographer who had used a draped multicolor sheet as his background. They were a nice-looking family. Thomas was a handsome, middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and a prominent chin. He was looking into the lens, his eyes projecting pride in his wife and daughter. Elizabeth was a fragile forty-five-year-old beauty with a long neck and wistful smile. The real looker, however, was their young daughter, Victoria. She had long dark hair and almost perfect features.

Somehow, seeing them made this cold case investigation more relevant. I now had a mental image of the family for whom I was attempting to seek justice. I carefully set the picture back down.

"I'm about ready to get out of here," Hitch whispered. "Let's go think this out in a crowded bar someplace."

"I want to open a few of those presents downstairs first."

"Why?"

" 'Cause I had a shitty Christmas and maybe I'll like something," I said sarcastically.

"I want to go now," Hitch persisted.

"And I want to see what these people were giving each other for Christmas. Norris and McKnight got pulled from this case before they could fully investigate it. That's something you know they would've done."

Hitch followed me downstairs and I started with the presents marked to Victoria from her dad. The notes inside the cards were sweet. It was obvious that Thomas Vulcuna had cherished his eighteen-year-old daughter.

One read:

Dear beautiful Victoria, As you grow, you make your dad prouder with each day. Nothing in my life equals the joy you have brought me.

I hope you still like this necklace. You admired it in New York, so I snuck back and bought it for you.

Merry Christmas, darling,

Poppie I handed the card to Hitch, who took it and read it carefully. After he was through, he said, "This guy didn't beat his daughter to death with a damn hammer."

I didn't think so either.

There were lots of presents to his wife, Elizabeth. One box contained a flimsy negligee and a note that said:

Open after Christmas right after.

Tommy More notes and cards to Vulcuna's wife and daughter followed. Each one was loving, all of them written in his neat, careful hand.

I looked up from my unwrapping project and saw that Hitch had gone wandering. I found him in the library looking at the Vulcunas' book collection.

"What are you doing?"

"You can tell a lot about people by looking at the books they read."

He began reciting titles. "Jacqueline Susann Valley of the Dolls, Stephen King The Stand, Jackie Collins Lovers and Gamblers. The Vulcunas were populists."

"And that's unusual?"

"Where's the Shakespeare, the Chaucer, the Beowulf? This guy chooses The Divine Comedy to leave as a suicide note, yet there's not one piece of classic literature in here."

"Good get, homes."

Then he said, "I don't want you to think I'm scared, and in the movie, Hitch would stay all night if need be, but I really think we're done here. Okay?"

"I want to check one more thing," I said. "Let's Luminal the area out back where we found the 7.65 slug. That's probably where Thomas Vulcuna was actually killed."

"We aren't going to find anything with Luminol out there," Hitch said. "It happened over twenty-five years ago. If he was killed by the side of the house, the rain and weather has long ago washed all the blood evidence away."

"What about the trash shed? It's wood. Wood is porous."

"Okay," he sighed reluctantly.

We backed out of the house, relocked the padlock, and headed around the side to the trash area.

The wooden shed had an overhanging roof covering two new Dumpsters. I went inside and sprayed the area. The low glow of blood suddenly fluoresced everywhere. It was much fainter on the walls of the trash shed than it was in the living room, because, as Hitch said, over the years, weather had diluted the blood. But it had seeped into the wood out here in '81 and had managed to remain for the intervening quarter century.

"This is where Vulcuna got it," Hitch stated.

As we were leaving, I walked around the side of the trash area and caught a glint of something metal in the beam of my flashlight coming from behind the holly bushes that were planted there. I pushed the thorny growth aside, carefully threading my arm through the brambles. About two feet in, I touched cold metal.

"There's something back here," I called softly to Hitch. "Get the leaf strainer pole. It's lying by the side of the pool house."

A minute later Hitch came back with the long-handled pool net. I turned it around and poked the pole's handle into the holly bush.

Something very large and metallic was hiding back there. I probed several other spots and hit the same metal object.

"What the hell?" Hitch said.

"Lets cut these bushes back," I suggested.

We went in search of the gardeners shed, which was on the north side of the house in the back. The door was locked, but I had it open in a minute with my trusty set of picks.

Inside we found some long-handled hedge clippers and gloves. We returned to the trash area and began cutting away the holly bush. It took us almost half an hour.

When we finally had it cut back, we were looking at an anodized metal door that had been painted silver. It was on the front of a poured-concrete building the size of a one-car garage.

I realized that this was the structure we'd seen in the old photos hanging in the solarium. There was a raised metal plate on the locked door and I leaned forward to read it in the dim light. It said:

DEPARTMENT OF WATER AND POWER

1928