Lorna Hunt Ellison sat in a lightweight plastic chair, facing me. Her hair was white and Einstein wild, like she’d just French-kissed an electric outlet. Her face looked worn, eroded, but the eyes sparkled like oily blue marbles.
She wore jeans, perhaps a size sixteen, her belly hanging over the waistband. Her shirt was light blue, big enough to be a painter’s smock. Armpit stains spread down her sides, past her ribs, her small breasts hidden in the folds of the fabric.
“Good morning, Lorna. Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Pig.” Her voice came out cracked and squeaky. A witch’s voice.
I sat in the second chair, facing her, our knees almost touching. Lorna scooted her chair backward.
“Got nothing to say to you, pig.”
Charm to match her beauty.
“I just saw Bud. He says hello.”
She hocked up something from deep in her lungs and spat it onto the floor. “He’s not saying dick. He’s unconscious.”
“That’s what the papers say. The truth is, he’s talking up a storm. He’s telling us all kinds of things. Things about you. About your victims.”
Lorna squinted, her oily eyes focusing.
“I didn’t kill none of those folks. You can’t prove nothing.”
I kept quiet. We both knew she had a hand in the killings. But that wasn’t why I came.
The silence stretched. Lorna scratched an armpit and left her hand tucked beneath it. She broke first.
“What’s your name, pig?”
“Lieutenant Daniels. And if you call me a pig again, Grandma, I’m going to grab you by your chicken neck and make you lick the toilet clean.”
Lorna cackled, her eyes crinkling in amusement. “Daniels! I know you! You the one that got little Charles.”
“You did a good job raising that one. He was a real piece of work.”
“Charles was already ruined, ’fore I moved in. Bud thought he was the devil hisself.”
“Is that what you thought?”
She shrugged. “Boy had some problems.”
Which might have been the understatement of the century.
“How about your boy? Caleb? Did he have problems?”
“Caleb was a good boy. Listened to his mama.”
“Where’s Caleb now?”
She didn’t answer, but her eyes stayed on mine. I didn’t see any intelligence there, but I saw cunning. Animal cunning, as if I were staring at a snake, or a rat.
“Did you once have red hair?” I asked.
“No. Used to be brown. Been white since my forties.”
“So Caleb got his red hair from his father?”
“Damn Irish deadbeat. Wasn’t worth his weight in shit.”
“Where’s his father now?”
She smiled, like a naughty child caught in a lie. “Caleb didn’t like his daddy much.”
“Are you telling me Caleb killed his father?”
“I’m not telling you nothing…” Her lips were about to form the word pig, but she read my expression and instead said, “Lieutenant.”
“Were you married to his father?”
“Up until his untimely death.”
“Caleb keep in touch with you?”
“Writes me, sometimes.”
“Do you still have his letters?”
“Maybe.”
“Would you like to show them to me?”
“Fuck, no.”
Lorna folded her flabby arms. She had an unhealthy-looking brown growth on her elbow.
“I’ve talked to Ms. Pedersen. She’s authorized me to give you certain things if you cooperate.”
“She thinks I’m going to give up my son for some extra pie? She can kiss my hairy hole.”
A real charmer, this woman. She should send in her application to Who Wants to Marry a Psycho-Bitch?
“When did you and Caleb move in with Bud?”
Another hack. Another spit. “Years ago. When Caleb started the junior high.”
“Did Caleb get along with Charles?”
“Caleb got along with everyone. Such a good boy.”
“For a good boy, he seems to get in trouble a lot.”
“He’s misunderstood.”
“I’m sure he is. Plus, look at the hand he was dealt. Growing up in a house full of psychotic perverts.”
Lorna didn’t like to be called names. I watched her hands form into fists. I kept up the heat.
“You think that’s why he hates you? Because you’re a fat, psychotic pervert?”
“Watch what you say, cop.”
“I’d hate my mother too, if she was retarded gutter trash.”
“I ain’t trash.”
“Have you looked in a mirror the last couple of years?”
“And I ain’t no retard.”
“I read your file, Lorna. And if you were able to read, you’d see the word used several times.”
Lorna seemed too focused on the older insults to process the newer ones.
“I ain’t no retard, and my boy don’t hate me. He loves his mama.”
I leaned in closer, fighting the stench. “Why hasn’t he ever visited you?”
Lorna’s face twisted. “He’s been busy.”
“Busy every day for the last twelve years? Isn’t that how long you’ve been here, Lorna?”
“He sends me letters.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“He does.”
“Show me.”
“You want me to show you? Then you gotta do something for me.”
I waited.
“I want to see Bud.”
“No.”
“I want to see his beautiful face again.”
“I’m sure you’ll share the same cauldron in hell.”
I stood up, headed for the door. I needed some fresh air, and I knew Lorna wasn’t going to give me anything else.
“You don’t want Caleb’s letters?”
“I don’t care about his letters. I want to know where he is.”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me. But I do know something, might interest you.”
“All I’m interested in, Lorna, is getting away from you.”
I pounded on the door.
“Let me see my Bud again, and I’ll show you something.”
The door opened. I’d had enough of Lorna for the rest of my life.
“I know where more bodies are buried.”
That stopped me.
“What did you say?”
“If you let me see Bud, I’ll take you to more bodies.” She smiled, showing me tiny sharp teeth. “Lots more.”
CHAPTER 31
MS. PEDERSEN WAS painfully clear on prisoners’ rights to privacy.
“They have none. They’re prisoners.”
So Lorna Hunt Ellison stayed in isolation, and we raided her footlocker. We found some stinky clothes, a collection of empty candy wrappers, a faded Polaroid of a younger Bud standing in front of his ancient pickup truck, and two letters from Caleb.
I donned a single latex glove and appropriated the picture and the letters. They had no return address on the labels. The postmarks came from Detroit. The first relayed, in some of the worst handwriting ever, that Caleb was sorry he hadn’t written before, because he was busy, but he’d write more often from now on. It was dated eight years ago.
Apparently he’d lied, because the second letter was dated three months ago. According to the chicken scratches, Caleb’s PO had made him get a job and he was working at a car wash, but wouldn’t for very much longer because he was planning on killing the fat prick who ran it.
That didn’t make sense. I checked with Detroit PD, and according to them, Caleb Ellison didn’t currently have a parole officer. So was Caleb lying to his mother? Or did he recently do time under another name? And how could I find that out?
I put thoughts of Caleb on the back burner, threw the letters and the pic into a paper bag that Ms. Pedersen supplied, then used her office phone to call the Indianapolis PD. I talked myself up the chain of command, and eventually got a captain on the other end, a gruff-voiced woman named Carol Mintz.
“Talk fast, I’m busy.”
“You’re following the story in Gary?”
“The whole state is.”
“I’m here at IWP, and just had a heart-to-heart with Lorna Hunt Ellison, who was Bud Kork’s common-law wife. They lived together for more than a decade. She claims to know where more victims are buried, but there’s a catch. She wants to visit Bud.”