The Rule of Nine

EIGHTEEN

It’s like a nightmare. I want to wake up, but I can’t. I keep thinking she’s going to call me any minute and tell me she’s okay, but she doesn’t. Dad, she can’t, because she’s dead.” She starts to cry all over again.

Standing in the living room, I hug her in my arms and pat her on one shoulder as she sobs.

“Who would do this? Jenny never hurt anybody. Why, Dad? Tell me. Why?” She looks up at me, searching for an answer I don’t have. Her eyes are as red as road flares. She has been crying on and off for more than an hour, ever since hearing the news that her friend Jenny Beckfeld was found dead in her house early this afternoon.

“When she didn’t show up for work, I figured she was sick. I tried to call her but she didn’t answer.”

“What did the police tell her parents? Do you know?” I ask.

She eases out of my embrace and reaches for the Kleenex box I had tossed on the coffee table. Tears run down one cheek. My daughter does not cry easily. In fact, I can recall seeing her like this only once before. Sarah was seven when her mother died.

“They’ve told them nothing!” Sarah gives me a merciless look. She turns her back to wipe her eyes, and begins to pace across the front room once more. Her shoulders are hunched up tight, one hand at her side holding a wad of Kleenex.

“Why don’t you sit down and relax?”

“I don’t want to sit. I want to know what happened,” she says.

“Herman went over to Jenny’s to see what he could find out,” I tell her. “I called him from my cell on the way home and asked him to go by and get whatever information he could.”

She turns to face me and sniffles into the Kleenex. “And what exactly are they going to tell Herman if they won’t even talk to Jenny’s family?”

“Herman has his ways,” I tell her. “Relax. We’ll find out when he gets here.”

According to Sarah, Jenny’s older brother, a CPA with one of the big firms downtown, went to her house and they wouldn’t let him in. They held him on the front lawn and refused to answer any of his questions. When he got angry, they threatened to arrest him unless he calmed down.

“So much for your police,” she says. The gulf between sorrow and anger in Sarah at this moment is narrow, and increasingly tapered toward fury. She wants answers, and if I know my daughter, at this moment she wants revenge.

“All they would tell him is that Jenny was dead and they were treating it as a homicide. Nothing more.” She turns to face me again. “So somebody killed her, right? It couldn’t be suicide, right? What am I saying?” She throws her hands up and tosses the Kleenex in the air. “Jenny would never kill herself.”

“If it’s homicide, it’s death at the hands of another,” I tell her.

“I can’t believe it. Damn it!” She stamps one foot on the carpeted floor hard enough that it rattles the glassware on the shelf behind me. “It makes me so mad. They wouldn’t even tell her brother or her mom and dad how she died.”

“They’re just doing their job,” I tell her. “Is anyone with her parents? Do they have family in the area?”

She nods. “And a minister from their church.”

“That’s good.”

Sarah starts to tear up once more.

I walk over to her and try to comfort her.

“No.” This time she feebly pushes me away and steps back. “You know what I’ve been thinking? Why would someone want to kill Jenny?” She looks directly at me.

“I don’t know,” I tell her.

“I think maybe you have an idea.” She looks at me with bloodshot eyes. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“When Jenny and I went out, you didn’t want me to go. Why?”

“It had nothing to do with Jenny,” I tell her.

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” she says. “But you didn’t want me to go out and it wasn’t because you wanted me to stay home and visit. I want the truth.”

I turn my palms up and begin to launch an expression of denial. “What-”

“Don’t you dare treat me like a child. I want to know what’s going on and I want to know now.”

“It had nothing to do with Jenny.”

“What had nothing to do with Jenny?” She reads me like a book, and snaps it closed before I can turn the page. “So there is something?”

The same question has been plaguing me ever since Sarah’s phone call to the office telling me that Jenny was dead. My own private nightmare, the thought that Herman and I may have screwed up and missed something when we followed them. It’s a selfish notion, one I can’t help but harbor. If it must be that Jenny is gone, I hope and pray that the cops have a clear suspect or at least an evident motive for why she was killed, something unrelated to me or my daughter. Call it guilt.

“What is it that you’re not telling me?” says Sarah. “I want to know.”

“It’s nothing.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll get it out of Uncle Harry. You know I will. Harry can’t keep a secret. Not from me.”

“I was just worried because of everything that’s happened. That’s it. That’s all.”

She looks at me askance. “Then you won’t mind if I go out this weekend,” she says. “On a date.”

I hesitate for only a second as I think about this. “Sure. No problem.” I call her bluff.

“Sure, because you know I won’t. Like I’m going to go out dancing on Jenny’s grave. I want you to tell me what’s going on. Tell me or you won’t be able to leave this house.”

“What are you going to do, ground me?” I laugh.

“No. But if you leave, I won’t be here when you get back,” she says.

I take a long, hard look at her. Sarah has me in a box and she knows it. “I was just worried that, well…that what happened out at the base might not have been entirely over.”

“What do you mean?”

I’m saved by the front doorbell, followed by a sharp rap on the door.

“That’ll be Herman.” I can see him through the glass sidelight in the entryway. I head toward the door.

“Don’t think for a moment that you’re off the hook,” she says.

I open the door and Herman steps inside, all six foot six of him. He’s wearing a nervous smile and whispers, “You guys all right?”

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

When he hears her voice, Herman looks toward the front room and sees Sarah standing there.

“Hello, Herman.”

“There’s my girl. How you doin’?” One look at her and he knows the answer. “Stupid question,” he says. “Sorry to hear about your friend.”

He turns back to me. “I stopped by out there like you said, and made a couple of phone calls.” He glances toward Sarah. “Maybe you and I should talk privately.”

“You can talk right here,” she says. “Dad was just about to tell me what’s going on when you rang the bell.”

Herman gives me one of those uncomfortable looks reserved for an untimely entry into a family feud.

“What did you find out?” I ask.

“The house is cordoned off. Cops all over the place. Homicide dicks, one of ’em I recognized.”

“Was he helpful?” I ask.

Herman shakes his head. “Not that friendly. Brant Detrick.”

Herman and I went toe-to-toe with Detrick on a case two years ago. He is not likely to help us out. If Herman started posing questions, Detrick would assume that we already had a principal suspect lined up as a client.

“Told you he wouldn’t get anything,” says Sarah.

“Had to go a different way,” says Herman.

“How’s that?”

“Paramedics,” he says.

“I would have thought they’d be long gone,” I tell him.

“They woulda been, except two of ’em were held over to do shoe impressions for forensics,” says Herman.

I raise an eyebrow. “Was she alive when they got there?”

“Nuh-uh. They got a call, so they had to respond. Tramped through the crime scene before they realized she was dead.”

“You think the cops have a shoe impression from the perpetrator?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“Go on.”

“So I talked to the paramedics,” says Herman. “Both pretty friendly. According to them, the landlord found the body. He was called by somebody who didn’t identify himself. This unidentified voice told the landlord the victim didn’t show up for work and they were worried about her. So the landlord called the vic’s cell phone. When he got no answer, he figured he’d check the house with a passkey.”

“So the door was locked,” I say.

“Uh-huh. If whoever did it came in that way, they either had a key or picked the lock,” says Herman.

“Or maybe she let him in?” I say.

Herman shakes his head. “Not according to the paramedics. It looked like she was in bed alone. Whoever got in caught her lying there facedown. Whether the perp made noise and she woke up they couldn’t say. But the way the blankets were laid out covering the body, and the blood pattern, they were guessing she was surprised.”

“How was she killed?” I ask.

“Stabbed. Of course, they couldn’t verify that as the cause of death. But according to them it looked like she bled out.”

“Sarah, you really don’t need to be listening to this,” I tell her.

“I want to know.”

“Fine. Then please tell me you didn’t have a key to Jenny’s house.”

“No. Why?”

“I’m just checking.” Unless the police already have a primed and warmed-up suspect, they are likely to throw a wide net. They will want to talk to everybody who knew Jenny. And unless they identify another point of entry, they’ll be asking about keys and who had them. “The police are probably going to want to talk to you at some point.”

“Why would they want to talk to me?”

“You were probably one of the last people to see Jenny alive.”

“But I can’t tell them anything, that is unless you tell me what’s going on,” she says.

“In a minute,” I tell her. “Did Jenny have a boyfriend?”

“No,” says Sarah.

“Nobody she broke up with recently?”

Sarah shakes her head. “Nuh-uh.”

“Did she have any male admirers who weren’t welcome?”

“Not that I know of. She never said anything to me.”

“Go on. Anything else?” I look back at Herman.

“Yeah,” he says. “The landlord panicked when he saw the blood, called 911, and asked for an ambulance. He didn’t wanna go inside, and he couldn’t tell if she was dead. According to the paramedics, it’s not a pretty scene. Reason for the shoe impressions, there was a lotta blood. They stepped in it. Whether anybody else did or not they didn’t seem to know, or if they did they weren’t saying.”

“When you say a lot of blood, did it sound like a rage killing?”

“No,” says Herman. “That’s the problem. It’s more like whoever did it knew what they were doing. They couldn’t be absolutely certain, but according to the paramedics it looked like there were only two stab wounds.” Herman stops and looks at Sarah. “You really don’t want to be listening to this stuff,” he tells her.

“She was my friend. I want to hear it all. Every bit of it. I want to know who did it and why.”

Herman looks to me for a reprieve.

I shrug my shoulders. “She’s an adult, as she keeps reminding me.”

“You’re the one’s gotta stay up with her when she gets nightmares. Both wounds were well placed. Seems they caught all the vital organ systems. To get that much blood it’s either that or a main artery. They didn’t get a real good look at the two wounds. They weren’t doin’ a postmortem,” he says. “As soon as they confirmed she was dead, they backed out of the room and tried not to disturb anything any more than they had to. But one of ’em said the wounds looked small and narrow. It was not a wide-bladed weapon, but deep, like maybe whoever did it might have used a long-bladed shiv or a stiletto.”

Herman can tell this has my attention.

“Anything else?” I ask.

“Like what?”

“Like maybe fingerprints?”

“You mean…”

“Yeah.” My darkest dream, the one I will curl up with tonight, is that forensics will find an itinerant thumbprint at the scene, one they cannot exclude or identify.

“It’s too early.” Herman turns his nose up. “They wouldn’t have had time to pull all the latents yet and check ’em against the victim and anybody else who had regular access to the house.”

“So there’s no way to know,” I say.

Herman shakes his head. “We’ll have to wait and see,” he says.

“Wait for what?” says Sarah.

“To see if they can identify a perpetrator from the fingerprints,” I tell her.

“I see.”

Herman looks at me, round eyed, as if perhaps I should tell her.

“Oh, I am,” I whisper to him. “Got no choice now.”

“You gonna tell her all of it?” he whispers back.

“All of it, including what you and I did,” I tell him.

“What are you two talking about?” says Sarah.

“I was asking Herman if he wanted to join us for a cup of coffee in the kitchen.”

“I’d like to, but I gotta go,” he says.

“Nonsense.” I have one hand on his shoulder, steering him toward the kitchen. “Come on, Sarah, there are some things we need to talk about.”