Delafield, p.16
Delafield, page 16
Kate took her cue about the case detectives’ due diligence. “After thirty years on the job,” she told Walcott, “I know a dead end when I see one.”
“So what have you got? This case is such a bastard, I’d be glad to entertain anything.”
“What I have is all due to Joe. He looked at the murder book with those fresh eyes of his, saw a crucial detail everybody missed.” Carefully, consulting her notes, she described the anomalous nature of the “Miss Hall” he had picked out in Stella Hayden’s diary and the revelation of her as the school therapist.
“Bloody hell!” Walcott exploded. “She’s a therapist? Fucking hell!”
Kate held the phone away from her ear as more expletives ensued. Walcott, a former homicide detective, knew as well as she did what a key source of information had been missed.
“Kate, is this a tip you’re offering or have you had contact?”
“Contact. I know Marietta Hall from a case previous to Shuster. She was a key interview then too.”
“She gave you information? Without a subpoena?”
“I was persuasive,” Kate said lightly, hoping Walcott would let her move on from the topic.
“You must have been. Any therapist I ever interviewed, it was like trying to extract the secrets of the confessional out of a priest. So what are you telling me?” Walcott’s voice had lowered with intensity.
“Some framework first.” Again she consulted her notes. “A teacher, I’ll get her name if we need it—” She had all but kicked herself when she realized she hadn’t followed up with Marietta for this detail. “—this teacher reported to Marietta about April appearing isolated and visibly troubled. So Marietta approached her with a story about various students talking to her about their lives and would April like to have a conversation. The fact that she came to Marietta speaks for itself, how desperate she must have felt. They had three separate sessions and then she fled when Marietta told her she was mandated by school policy to advise the parents if they continued. A week later she was dead.”
Kate picked up her fresh mug of coffee and in the pause Walcott asked, “Did she say who she was afraid of?”
“She was afraid of everybody, Captain. She was in a vise, caught between two forces, a homophobic religion she fervently believed in and a female best friend—her only friend—in love with her.”
“Was she…Had she acted on…”
“Was she lesbian? It’s not clear in the diary what April might have felt or did—Stella was way too hung up on just her own teenage emotions. From what April told Marietta, I’m guessing she had to be on that pathway or she wouldn’t have been so conflicted. So we have a fifteen-year-old girl convinced she’s already condemned herself to hell for a physical relationship with Stella Hayden—or that she will be if she acts on what she really wants.”
“Well, Stella didn’t help matters any,” Walcott muttered. “That diary…God, talk about obsession…Did your therapist suggest anything about this Stella maybe being bipolar?”
Kate was shaking her head as she said, “No way would she know. With only three sessions with April, she didn’t see any of the evidence we saw. And Stella had her own demons, Captain, given the father she had. She—”
Walcott interrupted impatiently, “I assume the therapist told her there was nothing wrong or unnatural about a lesbian orientation?”
“Of course. Emphatically. Even back in those days. But she couldn’t make a dent in fifteen years of daily immersion in homophobic rants.” Kate consulted her notes for the phrases she’d written down. “Why I’m calling is the other advice Marietta gave April. I believe it’s absolutely key to all this. She agreed with April’s mother, who strongly advised April to bring other friends into her life, male friends as well as female.”
Walcott asked cautiously, “What exactly are you telling me here, Kate?”
“April was killed only a week later. The most likely scenario is she took that week to think about this advice and maybe her mother even reinforced it. Then she told Stella she wanted to step away from their relationship in favor of other friends, possibly including a closer walk with God. I would imagine them having a violent argument. That Stella didn’t, couldn’t win. You’ve seen the crime scene photos—”
“Yes. As savage a killing as I’ve ever seen,” Walcott said, and Kate could imagine the grimace on her face from the tone of voice.
“Rage, from losing her grip on what made her life worth living. It explains why she went into the Shusters’ bedroom for that crucifix—she wanted their crucifix—and she confronted April. Ripped off the crucifix she had around her neck, then smashed April to death with the bronze cross. Rinsed it and slapped it back on the wall, and more in stone-cold vengeance than in any attempt to frame her, put April’s necklace in her mother’s jewelry box. Went back to her side of the duplex and into her own bedroom, didn’t bother to change clothes, maybe she even wanted April’s blood on her. Which would explain why we never could find any bloody clothes. She slashed herself in so many places that any wounds in her hands from hitting April with the crucifix looked like part of the suicide.” Kate concluded, “That’s what I have, Captain.”
Walcott was silent for some moments. Then said slowly, “It fits, Kate. It does. Assuming all this is true, we have a new primary suspect who’s dead and now we have an even worse problem of proof. Stella was so obvious a suicide the ME had no reason to retain anything for testing. We have no way of matching Stella’s DNA to the foreign DNA we found on April.”
“But we do.” Kate realized her voice had risen, told herself to cool her excitement. “That’s the main reason I’m calling you, Captain, for your direct intervention in this. Stella’s DNA is right there with the April Shuster case evidence. From the day of the murder everyone working on the case had only photocopies of Stella’s diary because it was key evidence—it’s been preserved in its paper packaging except for when it was produced as an exhibit in court to prove its existence. It was too much to include in the murder book, so I used my phone to make copies from it when I was in the evidence room. Only April’s bloody clothing and test samples from the crime scene were ever tested. Same thing for the Innocence Project, that’s what they tested too—and we only verified their tests. But Stella’s diary was under her pillow where she died and has a cover soaked in Stella’s blood.”
Walcott hissed a breath. “Kate, I’ll move heaven and earth to get that test done. If you’re right about this, you’ll be the first to know and the news networks and Corey Lanier will be next.”
Corey Lanier. Kate rolled her eyes. How fitting. The persistent-as-a-mosquito veteran LA Times police beat reporter, her bȇte noir in cases past. She’d never broken Kate down for comment on any of her cases, but never for lack of trying. She would probably relish tracking her down for one last bite.
“God I hope you’re right. It all fits, and I’m betting you are.” Walcott continued, “There’ll be immediate news bulletins on a case this notorious. April’s mother will know who killed her daughter as soon as we can get the news out there.”
“Thank you, Captain.” While it would answer the question of who had murdered April Shuster, she doubted it would make much difference to Ellie Shuster about culpability for her incarceration.
“Please thank Joe for me, tell him he’s welcome if he would ever want to visit. Never mind, I’ll call him myself when I get some time. One more thing, Kate. Don’t blame yourself for anything. In this murder, that therapist is a needle—not in a haystack but in a goddamn wheatfield. This is no one’s fault. It took the case cooling off for years for someone to see something so miniscule.”
Walcott clicked off.
Kate dropped her phone on the counter and her head into her hands. I would have seen it.
She raised her head to look at her Marietta Hall notes. She would be visiting the woman again soon, and if she was right about the DNA on April’s body belonging to Stella Hayden, then at all costs she needed to figure out a way to prevent Marietta from climbing into the same pit she occupied. Forever racked by the image of two simple dots that if joined together would have led to the proper blood tests and saved Ellie Shuster nineteen years of anguish, imprisoned with her seething rage.
She picked up her phone, texted Cameron: Call when you can for news.
God, she wanted a drink. “Dakota,” she called, “let’s go for a walk.”
But Cameron called back instantly. “I’m in transit—”
“Where to?”
“The station. So I’ve got maybe ten minutes. What news? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” She brought him up-to-date with a condensed version of her two conversations, Marietta Hall and Captain Walcott, concluding with, “You’ll be glad to know you’re back in Walcott’s good books. You’ll be hearing from her.”
“Let’s see…” he muttered vaguely, distractedly, as if he hadn’t heard this last statement of hers. “She’ll for sure get that diary hand-delivered to serology. They’ll need what, at least an hour for extraction…The test for quantity, the same…PCR, that’s the one that takes the time…electrophoresis…analysis, the final report. What the hell time is it now, Kate?”
“Just after four.” She could only surmise that he did not want even a glance at the clock in his car to interrupt his thought process.
“With Walcott throwing all her weight behind this—and you just know she’ll be claiming the life of one of our own is hanging on it—it’ll go straight to the head of the line. I figure tomorrow afternoon, Kate.”
“Good to know, Joe.” She’d already factored all this in and come to a similar estimate. She might be four years gone from LAPD, he might be far more up to date on the current science, but the major variable when it came to lab tests had never changed in every major city: backlog.
“Smartest thing you ever did was call her. But wow, Kate. If there’s a DNA match, the case detectives will want your head on a post when they hear.”
“After they’ve boiled me in oil,” she agreed. But saving them embarrassment over a break in the case that did not circle them in was not worth the stakes. They would have done their own due diligence, reviewed the diary, reinterviewed Marietta Hall, followed procedure. In their place she would do the same. Afterward, they might not have taken their confirmation any higher than lieutenant, which meant the comparison test sitting in line at the serology unit for days, weeks—even months, for all she knew. She’d had no real choice; she’d absolutely had to involve Walcott.
“How’s Dakota doing?” he asked in a jarring change of subject.
“She’s good,” she said warmly, welcoming the topic. “Can’t ask for a better friend. She looks out for me, asks for what she needs but doesn’t try to tell me what to do.”
He chuckled. “I won’t take that personally.” He asked, casually, as if it were the idlest of queries, “Would you be keeping her if you could, if, say, her owner was okay with it?”
“I would, actually.” She didn’t have to think about it. “I already consider her a friend.”
“She’s yours.”
Having suspected this from the moment Dakota had greeted her at the door of her house, she still felt a leap of joy. She asked, perfunctorily, “What about the owner?”
“He can be persuaded.”
She held no doubt that he had chosen the dog especially for her from a rescue organization and had rolled the dice from there, trusting that his fabrication about her caring for Dakota for a few weeks would be enough to develop a strong bond. It had taken only a day. “Thank you, Joe. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. All of it.”
“Everything you’ve done for me, we’re nowhere close to even, Kate. How about I come over tonight?”
“Dakota’s still not enough protection?” she joked.
“I figure there’s one more day till Ellie Shuster finds out who really did this. I’m thinking maybe it’ll shift things, change the equation.”
It wouldn’t. She’d had months and months to think through the probabilities. Why would it? Even so it would be good to have him here while she strategized her next moves, given this development and what she’d further deduced. “I’d be glad to have you, Joe. We’ll give Dakota a good long walk.”
“Great. I’ll bring some Pollo Loco.” He clicked off.
15
It was bound to happen. Of course she would be asked to visit someone in the same room and occupying the same bed in which Maggie had died. It was to be expected in a place as small as Silverlake Haven, and in fact it had already happened to her several times before. But Walt Masterson in that bed—someone, like Maggie, entwined with the significant history of her life—it was upsetting, disorienting.
Acute leukemia, Marla had told her. Agent Orange, she’d immediately surmised: the stealth assassin implanted in the bodies of many who had served in Vietnam, the defoliant war crime inflicted on the country’s citizens. Standing quietly in the doorway, a hand on the doorframe as if for support, she took her time inspecting him.
His head, devoid of hair undoubtedly from chemotherapy, was turned away. Either he was asleep or his gaze was fixed on the trees and bougainvillea blossoms beyond his window. The shoulders were bony in his blue short-sleeved pajama top; the arms resting on the blanket were wiry and prominently veined. From what she could see of his face, it appeared compressed to the fundamentals of bleached skin over bone. But, even with his life now reduced to a matter of days in this place for the dying, he still gave off an aura of toughness. To her he looked the very essence of a Vietnam vet.
“Walt, company!”
His attention summoned by a woman in the bed nearest the door calling to him, he jerked his head toward her and she was staring into pale blue eyes that pierced her.
“Staff Sergeant Walter F. Masterson,” he said and raised a hand stiffly to his forehead in formal salute. “Second battalion, fourth marines, Chu Lai, nineteen sixty-five.” The voice was reedy, with a slight Southern twang.
She returned the salute. “Captain Kate Delafield, second battalion, first marines, Da Nang supply corps, sixty-eight and sixty-nine.”
With a nod to the emaciated woman in the adjacent bed who was peering at her with watery, puzzled eyes, she strode into the room and pulled up a chair to Walter Masterson’s bed. He had continued to hold his salute and she told him with a grin, “At ease, Sergeant.” Seated, she extended a hand. “How did you know who I was?”
He took her hand, trying and failing to firm up his grip. “Marla described you. Anyway, no offense, you look like you could be a vet.”
“No offense taken. I think,” she added, continuing to grin, liking him on sight.
“You’re here sooner than Marla said.”
Holding onto his hand, she replied lightly, “I was that eager to meet you.”
Which was somewhere in the vicinity of the truth. As soon as Cameron’s Rav4 had disappeared down the road this morning she’d made haste to leave. Had topped up Dakota’s food and water, the dog gazing at her with eyes so mournfully aware of what this portended that Kate had knelt down to her and stroked her ears and head in consolation. “I’ll be back just as soon as I can,” she promised. “Soon as I get the DNA results.”
At this moment LA was the easiest and safest place she knew to be. She’d located an AA meeting in Hollywood and had already attended the hour-long gathering. This visit to Silverlake Haven, combined with the trip in and back, would take her well into the afternoon and give her a productive passing of time when she would not have to be on guard this day when Ellie Shuster might finally learn the truth of her daughter’s death.
“How come you’re here and not at the VA?” she asked him, releasing his hand but resting hers close to his.
He tried to lift his head from the pillow only to have it fall back, and she saw how weak he was. He began to speak, shook his head as if dismissing those words, began again. “It’s complicated. I’ll be interred with my comrades in arms but…let’s just say that I’ve spent considerable time in VA hospitals these recent years and I felt…well, conflicted about where I wanted my final surroundings to be.”
From his diction, the acute perceptiveness in his eyes, she gathered that this very ill man was deeply intelligent. “I think I might have some understanding about that,” she told him. It had never occurred to her to care about exactly where she might want to be when she died. But forty-three years after the war in which she had served, what kind of allegiance did she now feel to anything associated with it? For whatever reason, he had asked to see her, and she said, casually, searching for ground on which to meet him, “So what’s your best memory of being in country?”
“Best memory…Well, let me see,” he said, gazing off somewhere beyond her, stroking his chin with two skeletal fingers as if a goatee had once been there. “The heat. No, maybe that teeming thundering rain. Nope, the bugs biting me right where I couldn’t get at them under all my gear. No…maybe it’s everybody in my company strung out on any junk we could find to get through our days in country.” He shook his head and looked directly at her. “No, it has to be the sounds. Of destruction. Artillery. Bombs. Helicopters. Villagers screaming and running for their lives from us. Captain Delafield, you tell me why the hell we were ever there.”
