Death Angel (11 page)

“Why don’t I explain what we hope to
accomplish this morning?” Carl indicated chairs, but only Kate and Bea sat
down. “In crimes of this nature, the murderer will frequently attend the wake
or funeral of the victim. Sometimes he will return to the crime scene,
especially if there is a crowd of people. He gets a kick from the risk of being
there and from the opportunity to relive the experience.”

Kate shuddered. Richard stood behind her
chair, his hands on her shoulders. He squeezed firmly as if to remind her of
his presence and to encourage her. Carl had stopped speaking. He too must have
gauged her distress. For an instant, pity flashed in his eyes.

“Believe me, Kate. This will not be
awful. It will only be pictures of faces. Just faces,” he repeated.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m all right.”

“We’ve gone through the film, both ours
and the news media, and plan to show you each of the faces for identification.
There will be friends, family, neighbors, and strangers. Your help in this will
be invaluable.”
 

He paused as if waiting for them to
indicate their cooperation. Kate nodded. Behind her, she sensed Richard’s
agreement.

“It works best if we do one of you at a
time and then run through one final time with both of you together in hopes
that you can jog each other’s memory. Kate, if you’ll go with Bea she’ll
explain everything to you and stay with you in case you have any questions.”

Kate could feel her stomach drop in a
sickening free-fall sensation. What if she saw guilt on the face of someone she
knew? She couldn’t bear that.

“Come on, Kate.” Richard took her hand,
rubbing it between his own. “If you get moving, we’ll be done in time for
lunch. I’ll buy you an avocado burger at Lynn and Diane’s. We’ll sit on the
back deck and watch the birds.”

“You know the right buttons to push,”
she said, forcing her mouth into a smile. Rising to her feet she followed Bea
out of the room.

They went through the main room with its
quiet bustle of activity to a hallway running toward the back of the building
and a door marked
Film
.

The room was spartan, painted a neutral
cream color, no pictures on the walls to distract the eye from the viewing
screen on the right hand wall. Rows of cushioned theater seats faced the
screen. Close to the front, a young woman sat at a table that held a computer
and a small lamp. The lamp with its mauve ceramic base and white pleated shade
was incongruous in the otherwise colorless room.

She nodded to Bea, aware that the woman
had been giving her time to look over the room. It was so nonthreatening in
appearance that Kate could feel herself relaxing. Bea led her toward the
uniformed policeman standing at the back of the room.

“Mrs. Warner, this is Lieutenant Walker,
better known as Squint. He’s in charge of all the photography and will explain
how everything works.”

Kate shook hands. Walker was in his
early thirties, tall and angular, with intense dark eyes and blond hair pulled
back into a ponytail. The crow’s feet beside his eyes were evidence of the
amount of time he spent behind a camera. With his long hair and a pomaded
mustache with spike ends, a la Salvador Dali, he appeared more rebellious youth
than policeman.
 

“He’ll be controlling the computer
images,” Bea said, then escorted Kate to the front of the room.
 

“And this is Sue Byrne,” she said,
indicating the young woman at the keyboard of the computer. “When you identify
a picture, she will enter the name. Sue’s a student at Northwestern University,
working here on an internship. We’re hoping to spoil her enough so that after
graduation she’ll come back here to work.”

The young woman grinned as Bea led Kate
to one of the seats in the front row. As soon as they were seated, the lights
faded except for the lamp on the computer table. Kate jumped as Walker’s
disembodied voice came from behind her.

“Mrs. Warner, I’m going to ask you a
series of questions and then begin showing you pictures on the screen. Ready?”

Kate nodded then realized he could not
see her in the dark and said “yes.” Her voice sounded too whispery but
apparently it was sufficient. He asked her several questions, then a series of
faces flashed on the screen. Richard, Mike, Chessy, and several of her
neighbors. After the first few identifications, she could feel her breathing
slow to a more normal rhythm until suddenly she was looking at a man she could
not identify.

Heartbeat pounding in her ears, she
gripped the arms of the chair in rising agitation.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Warner,” came
Walker’s voice. “This is Dr. Mitchell, my dentist in Seattle. I use his picture
so you can get the idea that you’re not going to recognize everyone. I had
lousy teeth as a kid and I’m hoping someone will positively identify him as a
car thief.”

Even knowing it was a well-rehearsed
quip, Kate could feel her body relax, settling against the back of the seat.

Face followed face in a mind-numbing
array. Carl was right. There was nothing frightening about it. It was slow,
tedious work. Once or twice Bea asked if she’d like to take a break, but Kate
was anxious to get it over with.

“Thank you, Mrs. Warner.”

Walker’s voice and the lights filled the
room at the same time. Blinking rapidly, Kate stared at her watch, amazed that
an hour had passed.
 

Someone must have signaled to Leidecker
because when Bea opened the door into the hall, Carl and Richard were just
approaching.

“How’d it go?” Brow furrowed in concern,
Richard stared down at her.
 

“Much to my surprise, it wasn’t bad,”
she said.
 

She noted the strained expression on his
face and wondered if Carl had been harassing him. She sensed a coolness between
the two men. She was glad Richard would be with Bea for a while. The older
woman’s attitude was less threatening.
 

The door closed behind Richard, and Kate
turned warily toward Carl.

“I don’t know about you, but I could use
some coffee,” he said. He started down the hall, opening a door to a small
lounge.
 

In contrast to the barren film room, the
decor was positively homey. A small kitchen was on the left. Two easy chairs
and two couches were upholstered in blue corduroy and looked comfortable.
 

“Coffee?” Carl opened a cupboard and
took down two mugs.

“I’d prefer tea.”

“Lemon, milk or sugar?”

“Just lemon.”

Kate sat down on the sofa, watching Carl
move around the kitchen. He poured himself black coffee, then brought Kate her
tea, sitting down across from her.
 

“I’m not an ogre, you know.”

His words startled her and she almost spilled
her tea. She was embarrassed that her feelings were so transparent. She wanted
to ignore his statement but decided that she might as well speak her mind.

“I thought you were our friend.”

“Policemen do not have that luxury.” He
must have realized that his words were too sarcastic. “I have a job to do,
Kate. I can’t let friendship blind me to that.”

“Richard could never have hurt Jenny.”

Carl set his cup down and leaned toward
her, his eyes intent on her face. His voice was harsh when he spoke.

“You believe your husband is innocent
and that may well be true. It would be all too easy for me to see him only as a
grieving father. However his actions have not been fully explained and until
they are, I have to treat him as a possible suspect.”

“You know Richard. You’ve talked to him.
You’ve seen him in our home and around other people. Can you really believe he
could do something so loathsome?”

“Christ, Kate,” Carl said. “If you’d
seen as much as I have, you’d realize that anyone is capable of evil. Mother,
father, rich, poor. A momentary loss of control and even a saint can become a
sinner.”

“If Richard was in any way guilty, I
would know it. Do you think I would be a party to such a crime?”

Kate held steady as Carl’s eyes searched
her face. It was a slow scrutiny as if he were weighing the possibility in his
mind. When he spoke, he did not apologize for his hesitation.

“I am absolutely convinced that you had
nothing to do with your daughter’s death. You could not hide your surprise that
Richard had not been at the office the day she died.” With both hands he rubbed
his eyes, sliding his fingers down his cheeks and tenting them at the base of
his chin. He held her gaze. “There’s one thing I don’t know. If, and I am only
saying if, Richard were guilty, would you protect him?”

Kate refused to comment. She simply
could not deal with what she considered Carl’s betrayal. She drank her tea in
silence. He remained with her, prowling the edges of the room until the
intercom announced that Richard had completed his session. He ushered her to
the door of the film room, leaving her with only a polite goodbye.

“You’ve both done extremely well,” Bea
said as Kate sat down beside Richard. “Now you have a choice. We can either
continue with the joint session or you can come back tomorrow.”

“I’d rather get it over with,” Richard
said. He turned to Kate and she nodded her head.

When it was over, Kate asked Richard to
take her home. Neither of them could face going out for lunch. The session at
the police station had given her some awareness of the monumental task of
finding Jenny’s murderer. It was overwhelming.
 

“Don’t get out,” she said. “Just leave
me and go in to work.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. I’m exhausted. I’m going to
grab a sandwich and lie down for a bit.”
 

He leaned across and kissed her on the
cheek. “I’ll call you later.”

Kate unlocked the front door but before
she could go inside, she heard someone calling her name.

“Yoo-hoo, Kate. Up here, dear.” Marian
Granger’s voice issued from a second-story window in the house next door. “Some
flowers came for you while you were out. Is this a good time to bring them
over?”

“Don’t bother. I’ll come and get them.”

“It’s no bother. I’m going out to the
store as soon as I finish making the bed. I’m running late today. Are you going
to be home for a while?”

“Yes. I’m here for the rest of the day.
I’ll leave the door open.”

Inside, Kate dumped her purse on the
hall table, hung up her blazer, and headed back to the kitchen. As she passed
it, the wall phone rang and without thinking, she picked it up.

“Hello?”

“I saw him in the forest preserve.”

The voice was a sibilant undertone.
 

“Who is this?” Kate’s breath caught in
her throat and she could barely get the words out. “What do you want?”

“He took her into the woods. I saw what
he did. You knew, didn’t you?”

Kate began to cry, sobbing with pain at
the whispered words, but unable to hang up the phone.

The voice rose in anger. “You knew he
did it.”
 

“Who? Who did it?”

“Your husband. He bashed her head in with
a rock.”

Eight

“I
saw him in the woods.
He killed her.”

“No! No!” Kate shouted. “He didn’t do
it.”

Kate shook her head with such violence
that she lost her balance, falling against the countertop and sliding down the
wooden surface of the kitchen cabinet until she sprawled in a heap on the
floor, ear still pressed to the receiver.

“He killed her, and I saw it all. He’ll
pay for his crime.”

“He didn’t do it. He’d never hurt
Jenny.”
 

Her voice had fallen to a low moan, an
echo of the evil whisper on the other end of the line. Words spewed from the
caller. Vile words. Hurtful words. Sobbing now, Kate pushed the phone away,
curling into a tight ball, rocking back and forth on the linoleum.
 

“Kate! Kate! What is it?”

She heard Marian’s frightened voice, but
she could not stop crying. Strong hands raised her to a sitting position and
then Kate felt the older woman’s arms around her. Marian held her, patting her
back until her sobs became shuddering hiccups. Tremors shook her. Eventually
they lessened and she was able to lift her head from her neighbor’s well-padded
shoulder.

Marian reached into a deep pocket of her
skirt and came up with a square of neatly folded Kleenex. “Tissue?”
  

The use of such an old-fashioned word
brought a sense of normality back to Kate. She shifted her position, leaning
back against the cabinet, too exhausted to get to her feet. She blew her
nose.
 

Marian stood up, brushing off her skirt
as she leaned over to pick up the receiver. She listened to the dial tone then
hung it up without comment. She opened drawers in the cabinets until she found
some kitchen towels. Taking one out, she ran it under the faucet for a minute,
wrung it out, and brought it over to Kate.