“Looks like the door hit him in the head. That’s my first guess. He doesn’t seem to have been shot, and there are no apparent wounds on the body, but he’s been down in that hole a while, at least four, five weeks, or more. He was reported missing when?” He looked at Jake.
“About six weeks ago.”
“Well,” the man wasn’t ready to make any hard and fast pronouncements, “it might be accidental death. He was going down into the cellar and the door fell forward on his head, and then he tripped, broke his neck. But then again, someone might have...”
“Dropped it deliberately on his head.” I refused to be sick, despite the odor, despite the awful knowledge that had hit me with that odor.
“Won’t know anything definite until the autopsy. Until then...” He looked at Jake, then to me. “Thanks for the tea,” he said.
“No way Frances had anything to do with this,” I found myself saying. “No way she even knew. She told me he had just left, that her sister said...” I clutched my arms to myself and stood in the front room where it was dark except for the candles in the windows. “No way. She’s completely... she wasn’t even here when he disappeared. She... he was her sister’s handyman.”
“No one’s under any suspicion,” Jake cautioned. “This investigation has just begun and if the autopsy shows it was an accidental death...”
“Except the cat knew he was there,” I said. I felt sick again. Okay, not the first dead body I’d ever found, or seen; I’d been unfortunate enough to come across a few. But this was different, and unexpected, and suddenly I felt like I couldn’t breathe again. I turned to look at Jake. “Can we go home? I got a test tomorrow. I need to study.”
“Hey, I heard a body was found on the Carter property in one of the sheds,” the senior said to me, actually leaning over my desk. I didn’t turn my head, just my eyes, to look up at the jerk who’d stopped to talk to me. There are always a few like him, a kid who has to repeat a subject so many times he takes most of his classes with sophomores and freshmen. But since I hadn’t said a word, he worked his face into a kind of smirk and speaking up louder (so everyone would hear, including the teacher writing on the board), said, “So what does this make, Sawyer? An even dozen? You just kick up dead bodies wherever you go, don’t you?”
“Take your seat, mister...” the math teacher barked suddenly; he was all of five foot two, but he spoke with the unchallenged authority of a veteran teacher. The kid jerked a little, then moved away from me.
Jake wasn’t surprised to get the call, but he didn’t come get me at school. He sent Officer Abe Andersen, who drove me straight out to the Carter house, as I’d requested. That didn’t surprise Jake either.
“Jerks at school,” I tried to explain. “I took my test and then told the school nurse I was sick.” I stood at the back door of the house, staring out at the shed as the rain came down.
“The cycle of flies, maggots, and reinfestation indicates six weeks.” Jake cringed; for a tough cop, he had his weaknesses. “Or so the preliminary findings suggest. There won’t be an official report for a few days more, but it looks like he had the door propped open, and when he was going down, it fell forward on him. The top of his head was caved in. Literally. Death was instantaneous.”
“My fingerprints are in that shed,” I reminded Jake, though he knew; he’d probably already given orders to screen me out. I’d been fingerprinted before, part of my unusual legacy — and one to which the kid in math class had referred when he mentioned my “kicking up dead bodies.” “They’ll be on the door, the handle, the ladder, and some of the tools out there.”
“We’ve taken care of that,” Jake said.
“You’ll need a precise date of death, won’t you?” I asked. “So you can tell if, well, Sophie Carter was still alive when he...”
“No one is under suspicion.” Jake looked out the back door; the driveway was full of cars, including the county crime scene van. I hadn’t gone out there; I knew I’d just be in the way even though my days of being told, “Back off, kid; nothing for you to see here,” were over. Many of them knew me and had even spoken to me in a friendly, familiar way when we crossed paths. I was Herbie Sawyer, son of Sergeant Valari’s suicidal girl friend. I was Herbie Sawyer...
“Though I do have a man talking to the neighbor — Mrs. Jean Pritchard, is it? She might be able to tell us when she last saw Dan Church.” Jake sort of shrugged. “Though I think this one’s going to turn up accidental death due to blunt trauma to the head. That door must weigh a good sixty pounds, at least. Oak, Abe Anderson says, and Abe knows his wood.”
“Why would he go down into that cellar?” I asked. From the kitchen door I looked out at the shed. Small, drab, and dilapidated in the drizzle, it looked like a miserable place to die. Members of the state forensics crime lab were out there now. I’d seen them arrive with the usual equipment: cameras, bags, small suitcases. Every few seconds there was a flash of light from the shed.
“Well, he was Sophie Carter’s handyman. Maybe he was looking for a tool, or putting something away.”
“Is it a root cellar?” I asked. “The house has got a big cellar with lots of junk down there. Are you going to take a look around here, too? I mean, in this house?”
“As soon as we contact Frances Carter, maybe.”
“Maybe she’s just out,” I suggested. Jake had been trying to reach Frances, using the number she’d given me, ever since I’d found the body, about eighteen hours ago, and still no response from her. And if I knew Jake — and I did — he had the New York police looking for her right now.
“No one’s seen or heard from her since last Wednesday,” Jake said.
“So,” I swallowed, felt my heart skip a beat. “She’s out of town. Took a few days off.”
“Frances Carter resigned from her job a week ago, Herbie.” Jake walked across the kitchen floor and turned on the gas to make a cup of tea. I remained in the doorway, watching as the professionals outside did their work. Jake had been out there with them but came into the house as soon as Abe dropped me off. “She worked for a nonprofit conservation group in New York. It was put together by some philanthropists about thirty years ago. She was in their research division.”
“Conservation,” I murmured. “She’s not a suspect, Jake. She wasn’t here when this happened. If anything, maybe her sister...” I bit down on my lip, turned back. They were removing Dan Church’s body in a black body bag. Large, silver-colored raindrops bounced off the thick plastic. “And so what if she resigned from her job? She told me she was planning to move back here, that’s why she’s fixing up the house.”
“In the spring.”
“So she’s on vacation.”
“If she is, she told no one about it. I’ve spoken to her colleagues, Herbie. They were very surprised she resigned like she did. She gave no notice, just put a letter on the chairman’s desk and walked out the door. She had already emptied out her office.”
“Does that mean she’s a murderer?” I demanded.
“It means that we need to talk to her. A man was found dead on her property.”
“She wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“Herbie, you barely know her.”
“I know her well enough! I know that she wouldn’t... that she’s too gentle, she’s too...”
Jake walked toward me. “Herbie, you can know someone your whole life and they can still surprise you.”
I turned away and watched as the police van backed out of the driveway and the other officers got into their cars to leave. A distraught woman was out there now; she’d just pulled up in a tan Saturn. She was arguing in the rain with one of the men. Dan Church’s girlfriend?