Ada Unraveled (29 page)

I was thinking about the purloined diary.
Waiting for him to tell me the authorities were looking for it. But
he said nothing.

Tom just made a small sound at the back of
his throat that I couldn’t interpret. Then he returned to his
discussion of Eddie’s possible involvement in the crimes.

“More importantly, both Eddie’s small
bedroom in the den and the basement cell were swept. They held no
blood or hair evidence of any of the women. They’re also not
finding any proof that Eddie has ever ventured into his parents’
bedroom, not even since his release from his cage.

“Most of his clothing was likewise clean.
However Luke’s hair--and some blood from one of the women--was
found on a shirt discovered in a garbage can out back. Eddie
claimed the shirt is his and that it’s the one he wore the day he
shot Luke because he was hurting another woman.”

“Wait! He says he shot Luke?”

“Yeah. He confessed, more or less. But no
one thought to read him his rights. And the gun hasn’t been
produced.”

Beardsley let the errors float. So were they
deliberate? Were the authorities giving him a legal pass?

Matt was staring at him, expectantly. I was
thinking Tom had just let something slip he didn’t intend to. I was
thinking he wished he could snatch his words back.

I said, “We won’t breathe a word.”

He nodded, glanced at Matt. Matt nodded.
Mums the word.

So then I started wrestling with my feelings
on whether Eddie should be charged with Luke’s death or get a
medal.

The ME, followed by a small knot of uniforms
and one suit, entered the theater below us. I couldn’t make out all
of their faces because of our view from on high, but Tom Beardsley
was there.

While the three of us had chatted, Luke had
been removed from his bag and a sheet draped over him. That sheet
was now removed, exposing his corpse.

I gasped.

Matt said, “He still looks crazy.”

I said, “I thought death would end that. He
looks like he might open his eyes and go boo.”

I turned to look at him, almost let out a
giggle, then looked back at the body of Luke. He was frightening
even in death. Or maybe it was just death that made him seem so.
Hair wild, as if he’d been chopping it with a hatchet, cuts and
scratches on his face, gaunt from his years of alcoholism.

I wondered how he managed to lure women into
his home, up to his bedroom, looking like this. Even if the women
were stoned, they should have been alarmed at the sight of him.

Then I began trying to fix him up to look
normal. The way he might have looked after a shower and shave.
Before being shot…before being dragged out to the graveyard by his
son-nephew. Before being buried and dug back up.

Nope. I still wouldn’t let him take me home.
Maybe he appealed to these women for reasons I just couldn’t
see.

The blank eye of a large monitor suspended
above the dome sprang to life. Unfortunately, we’d have color close
ups. Marana proceeded according to routine, and I grimaced at the
sights and sounds of another Y section—the sounds cleverly
delivered through four speakers in surround sound.

What? No Dolby?

Delivering the details in a monotone voice,
the mostly-Asian doctor quickly identified two bullet wounds and
explored their routes. I watched as Marana dipped both his hands
into Luke’s exposed intestines, parting them and fingering the back
wall of the body cavity with one gloved hand.

My stomach contracted. This wasn’t getting
easier, exploring cadavers. The opposite.

Marana and his assistant lifted one hip and
peered at it. They let the body fall back on the table
unceremoniously.

He spoke into the suspended microphone
again. “The first GSW entered the subject’s back just above his
left hip then traveled through his small intestines, pierced his
pancreas and stomach, destroyed his right ventricle and exited
through his right lung. The second GSW entered the subject’s left
eye. There is no exit wound.”

Two gunshot wounds.

I found myself hoping Luke enjoyed several
terrifying moments of having his brain scrambled by the second,
ricocheting bullet.

Matt was on the same page with me.
Disgusted, he said, “Who was this guy?”

I said, “What we know is he beat his wife
Ada all through their marriage. We know he kept his son in a
dungeon for twenty years…but we don’t know if he still thought of
Eddie as his son. And he was a drunk. Drunks are capable of really
bad decision making.”

Marana caught our attention again, saying,
“The subject’s penis appears to have been tattooed.”

What?

As if in response, the camera did a close
up.

Matt moaned and said, “This goes way past
poor judgment. When did he get like this? Didn’t someone notice he
was going over the edge? He must have fallen under the influence of
some cult.”

I said, “A lot could have happened between
the death of Ada at the end of June, and the death of Jake and
discovery of Eddie in mid-September. Maybe all of this.”

Below us, Marana continued. “The angle and
pathway of the wound on the forehead indicates that Luke Stowall
was turning toward and looking down at his assailant with the
second shot.”

The ME’s impersonal recitation of the
visible facts was making me nuts. Explain why, for heaven sakes.
Give us the obvious hypothesis. My now thorough familiarity with
the Stowall master bedroom came into play here, and I whispered
some of that knowledge to Matt as we watched.

I said, “Luke was prone, belly down,
probably on his bed with the first shot, while the assailant was
positioned near the door into the room.”

Matt said, “Eddie.”

I said, “Eddie, no doubt moved by the
feminine screams from upstairs—had just entered the room, catching
him unawares. First bullet went in directly from behind, second
caught him turning to see who was shooting him.”

Another voice joined us. “She’s probably
right. But you got it wrong about Luke.”

I turned to see who had joined us. Mosby,
the black horse named Famine, had slipped in unbeknownst to us and
was sitting up one level.

I wondered if he thought I was right about
the positioning of Eddie and Luke, or about Eddie being Luke’s
nephew and not his son.

But Mosby was intent on illuminating his
second comment, that Matt had it wrong about Luke.

“Jake is the one who was a cult worshiper,
not Luke. Luke was just a vicious drunk.”

We caught our breaths. Finally Matt said,
“Who did Jake worship?”

Mosby shifted in his seat, re-crossing his
long legs. “A doctor, a quack. He was so bad that even back then
when the county had only one other doctor he couldn’t get his
practice up and running. Guy became a drunk. Then tumbled upon Jake
and his many children. Jake raised rattlers. He was, like, obsessed
with them. The doctor was Jake’s connection with the medical field
in San Diego. Helped Jake sell his venom, skimmed some of the
profits.

“I guess it kept the doctor out of the poor
house, but mostly this quack liked to practice “the art of the
knife”. I’ve heard people say he had Mengele’s disease. Jake was
too foolish to understand this.”

Dr. Joseph Mengele, infamous torturer in
Hitler’s death camps.
Just the mention of this monster’s name
made my heart shrink. Trying to hide in my chest.

“What’s this doctor’s name?” Matt said.

“Doesn’t matter. That was decades ago. He’s
dead by now. Or senile.

“Luke went crazy after killing Ada—boys are
thinking he hit the bars, got so juiced up he finally went looking
for Ada substitutes. Luke had pretty much become a recluse by the
time Ada died.”

The sounds of the saw drew my attention.

Marana’s heavy voice said, “What’s
this?”

“Sir?” The pathtech.

“This. What’s this blue? Is this another
tattoo?”

The knot of observers moved as one toward
the head of the steel table. From our perch, Matt, Mosby and I
could see quite clearly on a suspended television monitor what the
others were viewing up close and personal. There were two
elongated, triangular blue marks at Luke’s hairline. Definitely
tattoos. Marana began pushing his gloved fingers through Luke’s
short, steel-gray hair, examining the scalp.

“Get me a razor.”

He’s gonna scalp him?
My stressed
brain shouted. No. Just shave his head.

A few seconds later a new buzzing began and
Marana slowly exposed the top of Luke’s head.

The ME said, “His entire head. You didn’t
notice this?”

The pathtech shook his head, no.

“How far does this go? Why didn’t you tell
me about this?”

“I didn’t set him up, sir. I was removing
the first woman.”

“Stitch him up. We’ll have to flip him.”
Seething, Marana left the room. The downstairs witnesses mulled
around staring at anything but the body being sutured.

Matt said, “Who’s the suit?”

Mosby said, “FBI. Latest victim is one of
our Mexican visitors. We’re into multinational jurisdictions
now.”

I heard a loud slap, of flesh hitting steel.
The two pathtechs had just unceremoniously flipped Luke.

And then we saw what was on Luke’s back.

Marana stepped back into the room and
stopped. His face was turned down, but I was certain he was
shocked.

“How quaint. A full body snake.”

“Snakes, sir,” The lead pathtech. He held up
three fingers.

They exchanged a glance that lasted two
seconds too long. Marana reached for his microphone again, clearing
his throat. He began searching Luke’s posterior, from the top of
his head to his buttocks. Then he moved to the feet and followed
the markings up his legs.

Straightening and inhaling, he dictated,
“The subject has a large tattoo on his posterior of multiple
rattlesnakes. The first, done entirely in blue ink, begins on the
bottom of the subject’s left foot with seven rattles.”

“Seven Stowall children,” I murmured.

“Snake number one winds around the subject’s
heel and up his calf and thigh, to his left buttocks, widening and
thinning rhythmically as it climbs the leg.

“On his buttocks, the blue tattoo is joined
by a red and yellow snake, and rises up his torso, level with his
scapulas.

“Correction. There are three snakes, the
first blue, the second and third, red and yellow. At the center
point between the scapulas, the two smaller snakes veer away, the
red going left across his left acromion, and the yellow going right
to his right acromion. These two side snakes finish up in the
subject’s two armpits.”

“Ouch.” Matt.

“The blue snake continues, widening
considerably and forming a mouth with two lower fangs at the
posterior of the neck, and two larger, upper fangs pointing down
onto the forehead.

“The tattooed snake head gives the
appearance of swallowing Luke Stowall’s head from behind.”

I heard a spattering of remarks from the pod
of viewers below. Someone said, “Devil’s horns.” Marana shot them a
look and they quieted.

Marana and the pathtech lifted each arm to
peer into the armpits.

“I note at this point, that whereas the blue
snake begins on the head and ends on the left foot, the red and
yellow snakes end in the armpits; the left, red snake ending with
four rattles, and the right, yellow snake ending with three
rattles.”

I murmured, “Four pink daughters and three
yellow sons. Maybe Luke was taking pointers from Ada’s quilting.
He’s tattooed secrets on his body. Pink is normal for females, but
yellow speaks to the boys’ characters.”

Matt said, “But the left snake is red, not
pink.”

I almost argued this with him. But he was
right. The tats were still fairly recent, and the snake was
definitely red. Perhaps for blood?

A thought popped into my head--the reason
why Mosby was sitting upstairs with us. He was angry at Matt for
forcing them to accept me in the middle of their investigation.

It took three men to flip Luke over again
and set up gynecology stirrups.

“So tell me, Colonel Lyons, you were sent to
Vietnam in its final days, is that right?”

Matt turned slightly in his seat, clearly
caught off-guard by the sudden change in conversation.

“Right. Why?”

A butterfly lifted off in my tummy.

“So I was wondering were you part of the
group of Marines who were sent in to bring out the embassy
staff?”

Matt’s frown deepened.

“What’s your point, Detective?”

“Well, you know, like what were you doing
there? Did you actually fly them out? Cause I heard you did.”

Matt turned in his seat, a cord on his neck
standing out like an explanation mark.

It was time for us to leave. As coolly as he
could, Matt replied that he didn’t.

I had no idea what was happening between
these two men. Absolutely none. I just knew it wasn’t good.

Feeling Matt and I needed to exit as quickly
as possible, and that it was imperative that Matt not lose face or
be forced into some kind of confrontation with Mosby, I heard
myself speak in
queenly tones.

“I think it’s time to go, Matt.”

I distinctly remembered learning how to do
queenly tones when I was in kindergarten. The teacher used them. It
came in handy speaking authoritatively, and to let everyone know
how close to anger you were, without losing your cool. Matt stayed
focused on the spectacle before us. So much for queenly tones.

Khoja Marana said something we couldn’t hear
to his assistant and the camera angle changed, doing a close-up. I
quickly climbed the three steps to the door.

“I’m leaving Matt.” My back was to the freak
show taking place beneath us.

I felt a staying hand on my arm.

“One more thing, Ms. Lyons. In case you’ve
heard the rumors, let me explain what really went down at Ada’s
discovery. A couple of dirt-bag sheriffs were the ones who scared
off Eddie. They’d been covering for Luke for years, and they
freaked when Eddie started making noises about how his father
killed his mother, and now was even killing other women. They had
to shut him up to cover their asses. So they hustled him out of the
house and scared him into staying away. We tried to find him—to
help him, and to question him about his claims--but he’d gone way
underground.”