Aubrey ejected the tape. “Weird combo, isn’t it? Procaine and lily of the valley-a sophisticated heart drug found only in hospitals and a weed that grows everywhere.”
“Sissy apparently isn’t the sharpest cheese in the dairy case,” I said, remembering Dale Marabout’s stories on the murder. “But she did work as a food service aide at Hannawa General Hospital, taking trays to patients. Theoretically she could have known what procaine was, and what it could do. She could have stolen it from an unlocked drug cabinet, just as she confessed.” I poured some of my popcorn into Aubrey’s empty bowl. “As for the lily of the valley, you’re right. It grows everywhere. I remember picking it in the spring for my mother. She loved those little nodding white bells. Who knew the water in the vase could kill you.”
Aubrey filled her fist with popcorn and fed the kernels into her mouth one at a time. “You know what really intrigues me about all this? The tongue thing.”
That’s the part that had intrigued Dale Marabout, too: Buddy Wing’s flap with Tim Bandicoot had been over speaking in tongues. And the killer had chosen a drug that instantly numbed Buddy’s lips. Surely the killer knew Wing’s first reaction to the poison would be to lick his lips. Surely the killer knew there would be a close-up on Wing’s face. Dale had asked the police about it, but their PR guy just shrugged and shook a Tic-Tac into his mouth. They already had Sissy’s confession.
“What about the lily of the valley?” I asked Aubrey. “Think there’s anything symbolic about that?”
She had the next tape in the VCR ready to go. “I’ve thought about that.”
“And?”
“Bell-shaped flowers? For whom the bell tolls? Sissy’s not that deep and neither is anybody else. More than likely, it was just a very handy poison to get down Buddy’s throat in big gulps.”
The next tape was a short one: the police department’s jerky shots of Sissy James’ ramshackle garage. The digital time and date on the tape showed that it was made on the Monday morning following the murder, shortly after they showed up at Sissy’s door to question her. The camera panned the cluttered workbench inside the garage and then showed several different angles on the garbage cans lined up on the sidewalk behind the garage. Finally it zoomed deep inside one of the cans, focusing tightly on a Ziploc freezer bag. Now we could see Hannawa’s top homicide man, Scotty Grant, examining the bag’s contents: a small jar of gold paint, a tiny paint brush, a pair of vinyl surgical gloves, a tiny glass bottle with a syringe stuck in the top.
“That’s all too convenient, isn’t it,” Aubrey said. “All that evidence in one bag in one place. The bag wasn’t even stuffed down inside a milk carton or anything. Just lying there on top. Puh-leeze.”
The next shots were of a spare bedroom in Sissy’s house where she kept her crafts supplies: jars of paint and glitter, brushes, a glue gun, shopping bags filled with feathers and plastic beads, Christmas ornaments at various stages of completion. Aubrey paused the tape. “So we know from this shot that Sissy knew her way around slow-drying paint. Too easy, don’t you think?”
I was no more impressed than Aubrey. “If Sissy was into crafts,” I said, “then everybody who knew her knew she was into crafts. And no doubt ran the other way screaming every time they saw her coming with her shopping bag full of her cutsie-wootsie crap.”
Aubrey stretched out on the floor, flat on her young straight back, chewing popcorn. “A lot of planning went into that murder, Maddy. Either the killer knew Sissy very well-all about her hospital job and her stupid hobby and her absolute worship of Tim Bandicoot-or they researched the hell out of her. They designed the murder around her. But the evidence is too perfect. A killer that methodical must have figured the police would find it too perfect, too.”
“And go arrest Tim Bandicoot?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“But then Sissy confessed.”
“Yeah.”
“But wouldn’t the killer also know she might confess to save Bandicoot’s neck?”
Aubrey sat up in one flowing motion-I hate how young people can do that-and propped her chin on her knees. “Maybe the killer didn’t care who got arrested. As long as it wasn’t him-or her.”
I went to the kitchen for more milk and came back with the most brilliant thought. “Maybe the real killer did care. Maybe the real killer knew Tim Bandicoot had a solid alibi for that night.”
“Somebody like Bandicoot’s wife, maybe?”
“Maybe.”
“And why would she kill Buddy Wing?”
“To get Buddy Wing out of her husband’s way,” I said. “And Sissy out of hers.”
Aubrey covered her head with her arms, as if the ceiling were going to come down. “We are absolutely evil. And absolutely in over our heads.”
She resumed the tape. There were shots of Sissy’s closets and the shelves of junk in her basement. Nothing interesting or unusual. Then there were various angles on the house’s exterior. It was one of those old two-story frame houses built just before the Depression. Hannawa is full of them. They were once the dream homes of big middle-class families. Now they rent cheap to people on the edge.
Next came the interrogation tape. It was slightly out of focus and the voices were barely audible. Aubrey didn’t pause it once. She just let it run. It lasted about fifteen minutes.
Sissy was only twenty-six, but on that tape she looked forty-six. She was a tad plump. Her hair was ridiculously blond. Despite her blank face and sunken eyes she was pretty. She was wearing an enormous ill-fitting sweater with a Thanksgiving turkey on the front. I’d guess she knitted it herself.
Detective Scotty Grant asked her if she killed the Rev. Buddy Wing and she said yes. He asked her how and she said with a combination of heart drugs she stole from the hospital and drinking water laced with lily of the valley. Every question was more specific and so were her answers.
“Her confession sounded pretty convincing,” I said when the tape ended.
Aubrey agreed. “She did have it down pretty good. The poisons. The paint. How she got in the church. The whole deal.”
“Maybe she did do it.”
Aubrey slid in the next tape. “I wonder if she would have been so convincing if she’d been interrogated before Dale Marabout’s story on the poisons ran?”
“Dale’s story ran before her confession?”
“Three days before. You can see why I don’t trust the police. Kudos to Marabout, but they should never have given him that evidence so early.”
The next tape was from the arraignment. Sissy was wearing an orange jumpsuit now. Her hair was flat and greasy and pulled back into a makeshift ponytail. She told the judge she was guilty. She said she was ready for whatever punishment God and the state of Ohio had in mind. The judge ordered the obligatory psychological testing.
The last tape was from the sentencing. Sissy’s childhood had been horrible enough for her to avoid a death sentence but not life without parole. Deputies led Sissy from the courtroom. You could see Guthrie Gates sitting in the gallery.
Chapter 5
Monday, March 20
Monday evening Aubrey got into a big mess with Dale Marabout and managing editor Alec Tinker. I’d already gone home for the day, but Eric Chen was still in the morgue and overhead most of it.
Chief Polceznec’s reorganization plan had reassigned all of the district commanders but one, the 3rd District’s Lionel Percy. Aubrey thought that odd, given that most of the city’s problems with police corruption came out of the 3rd District. The 3rd is a royal mess, that’s for sure. Hardly a month goes by that some cop there doesn’t get demoted or indicted for something. Sometimes a whole slew of them get in trouble at once, like the time two years ago when TV 21 reporter Tish Kiddle found eight officers moonlighting at a Morrow Avenue show bar where the lap dancers were completely naked and cocaine as easy to get as pretzels.
So Aubrey wanted to investigate why Chief Polceznec didn’t reassign Commander Percy. Tinker was all for giving her the green light, but Dale filibustered: It wasn’t the paper’s job to go on fishing expeditions-that, he said, was the job of the state attorney general, or the U.S. Justice Department, or the department’s own internal affairs division.