Diehl, William - Show of Evil (8 page)

'I'm offering you a deal, Paul. We'll let him plead to second-degree
murder. He gets twenty years without parole. I'm offering you twenty
years and he's out. He'll be fifty-something and broke, but he'll be
out. I think society will be happy with that arrangement.'

'You're crazier than a Christmas mouse, you know that?'

'I know you, Paul. I know you believe that Darby's innocent and it
happened the way he said it happened. But I hate to see you get conned
by your own client. Listen to the tape again.'

'I don't have to listen to the tape again. I heard the tape. It
doesn't mean a damn thing.'

'It means Darby came into his house, walked over to his wife, who
was watching TV, and shot her in the head. Then he put the .38 in her
hand, fired four shots - one into the ceiling - and then backed off and
shot her in the side with the shotgun. And it also means it was
premeditated. Malice aforethought. The whole magilla.'

Trial transcripts, autopsy reports, photographs, old police reports,
and copies of book pages were all spread out on Martin Vail's large
table. Naomi, Flaherty, and Harvey St Claire stood in front of the big
desk, studying what St Claire called his 'exhibits.' Naomi and Dermott
Flaherty stared mutely at the display, occasionally picking up a report
or a photo and studying it, then slowly replacing it, obviously stunned
by what St Claire had laid out on the table.

'You make a good case, Harve. You ought to be a lawyer,' Flaherty
said.

'I don't make a very good impression in a courtroom. 'Cept in the
witness stand. Hold m'own pretty good under oath.'

'What's Abel say?' Naomi asked.

'He's concerned,' said St Claire.

'For Abel, that's verging on panic,' Flaherty said with a chuckle.

'Am I wrong about this?' St Claire asked. 'Am I just being paranoid?'

'Paranoid! I hardly think so,' said Naomi. 'Why the hell didn't we
know about this sooner?'

' 'Cause Gideon don't want the world't'know about it,' said St
Claire.
'From what I gather, the town is run by old Fundamentalist farts. I
imagine they all look like Abraham or Moses or John Brown. They don't
want the world't'think Satanists are loose in their holy little
village.'

'Don't they care who did it?'

'Doesn't seem so. Been about six months, ain't happened again.
Guess maybe they decided to shut it outta their minds. Pray it away on
Sunday mornings.'

'And they just wrote off Linda Balfour?'

'One way a puttin' it,' said St Claire.

'The first question that pops into my mind is, Who? And the second
is, Why?' said Flaherty.

'Well, I can tell you who it ain't. Ain't Aaron Stampler.' St Claire
dropped a wad of chewing tobacco in his silver cup. 'He's still locked
up in max security at Daisyville.'

'That's Daisyland,' Naomi corrected him.

'Just as stupid,' St Claire said.

Naomi looked up as Vail, Parver, and Stenner got off the lift. 'Here
comes the one person who can answer these questions if anybody can,'
Naomi said, nodding towards Vail.

'What've we got here?' Vail asked as he entered the office.

They all looked at one another and then focused their attention on
Harvey St Claire. He smoothed out his moustache and got rid of the wad
of tobacco in his cheek.

'Tell ya how it started out,' he said. 'I was runnin' the HITS
network, thinkin' maybe we could turn up something outta town on them
bodies in the city dump. Missin' persons, maybe a bank heist, drug
gang. Playin' a hunch, okay? And Ben Meyer runs across this brutal
murder down near the Kentucky border. Town called Gideon. Ever hear of
it?'

'Not that I recall,' Vail said.

'Anyway, uh, this town's run by some old religious jokers and they
hushed it up. Wrote it off as Satanists. We got interested outta
curiosity much as anything. The victim was a housewife. Happily
married, nice solid husband. Year-old son. I thought what I'd do, I'd
read the autopsy report. The police chief brushed me off, but the town
doctor, he's also the coroner, was a nice old guy, most cooperative.'
St Claire searched around the table and found Doc Fields's autopsy,
which Ben had entered into the computer and
printed out, and read it out loud.

'The victim, Linda
Balfour, is a white female, age 26. The body is
53.5 inches in length and weighs 134 pounds and has blue eyes and light
brown hair. She was dead upon my arrival at her home on Poplar Street,
this city. The victim was stabbed, cut, and incised 56 times. There was
evidence of cadaver spasm, trauma, and aero-embolism. There was
significant exsanguination from stab wounds. The throat wound, which
nearly decapitated Balfour, caused aero-embolism, which usually results
in instantaneous death. Wounds in her hands and arms indicate a
struggle before she was killed.'

St Claire looked up for a moment. 'Beginning to sound a little
familiar, Marty?'

'Where are you taking this, Harve?'

'Okay, now listen to this. It's from the ME's testimony in
Stampler's trial.'

He read excerpts from William Danielson's description of the wounds
that had killed Archbishop Richard Rushman ten years before:

'DANIELSON: Body trauma,
aeroembolism, cadaveric spasm,
exsanguination, that's loss of blood. All could have caused death

The St Louis Homicide Division was almost devoid of people when
Flaherty arrived at the downtown office, a stuffy room jammed with
desks, telephones, file cabinets, and computers. Only two detectives
were in the room: Oscar Gilanti, captain of the division, who was
heading the investigation, and Sgt. Ed Nicholson, an old-timer who had
the dignified demeanour and conservative look of an FBI agent.

The two detectives were more pleasant than Flaherty had expected.
The captain was a short box of a man, bald except for a fringe of
jet-black hair that curled around his ears. He had deep circles under
his eyes, his cheeks were dark with the shadows of a two-day beard, and
his suit looked like he had slept in it, which he probably had. His
deep voice was raspy from lack of sleep.

'I gotta get back out to the scene,' he growled to Flaherty. I'm
giving you Sergeant Nicholson here fer the day. Knows as much as
anybody else about this mess. What was yer name again?'

'Dermott Flaherty.'

'Okay, Dermott, you wanna go anywhere, see anything, Nick'll drive
yuh. I pulled a package for yuh - pictures, preliminary reports, all
that shit. Autopsy won't be up probably till tomorra. We can fax it to
yuh, yuh need it.'

'I can't thank you enough, Captain.'

'Hell, you know anything, we'd appreciate it. We can use all the
help we can get on this one. Fuckin' nightmare.'

'I can imagine.'

'I'll be out at the scene, Nick. If Dermott here wants to come out,
bring him along.'

'Right.'

The sergeant, obviously a man of habit, asked pleasantly if he had a
weapon.

Flaherty smiled. I'm an assistant DA, Sergeant,' he said. 'Things
haven't got
that
bad yet.'

The cop chuckled. He was an old pro, tall, very straight-standing,
with a tanned and leathery face, gentle, alert eyes, and blondish hair
turning grey. Nicholson unlocked his desk drawer and took out his 9mm
H&K and slipped it into a holster on his belt. He also wore his
badge pinned to his belt like an old western sheriff. He slid a thick
file folder across the desk to Flaherty.

'You might take a look at this picture first, give you a point of
reference. Hilltown's about thirty miles down the pike, off to the
northeast of US 44. The Spier place is a couple miles out of town,
little frame house, one storey, two bedrooms, kitchen, den, and big
bathroom, that's about it. Sets back in the trees.'

He had picked out an aerial photo showing the house at the end of a
quarter mile of dirt road that wound through scrub pines and saw grass.
Behind it, the road connected with another country road that ended at a
lake.

'Calvin Spier and his wife - they own the place - are out in Las
Vegas. Weren't due back until the middle of next week, but they're
coming back now.'

'Do the Spiers know him?' Flaherty asked.

'Spier says no. Want to go out to the scene? It's a thirty-minute
drive' - he winked - 'if I put on the flasher.'

Flaherty nodded and said, 'You're the boss.'

The drive was pleasant despite a misting rain. Nicholson, a social
creature, spoke in a quiet, authoritative voice, filling Flaherty in on
the prologue to the killing while the young prosecutor made a cursory
examination of the package. The pictures confirmed his suspicion that
this killing was a repeat of the Balfour/Gellerman murder.

'Fellow owns a quick shop down the road from the road into the
Spiers' place, lives behind it. He found him,' Nicholson said. 'Noticed
the UPD truck through the trees when he got up yesterday morning. When
it was still there at lunchtime, he strolled over to take a look. Front
door was standing open. Then he heard the flies. Damn near had a heart
attack when he saw that young guy in there all carved up like that.
Plus he'd been dead about sixteen hours.'

'What's the victim's name?' asked Flaherty.

'Alexander Lincoln,' Nicholson answered. 'They called him Lex.'

Alex Lincoln
, Flaherty thought.
The last of the Altar
Boys
.

Except one. Aaron Stampler.

Rain dripped off the yellow crime ribbons that had been wrapped
around a wide perimeter of the house when they got there. A sheriff's
car was parked beside the driveway. A cop waved them through. Several
police cars were parked single file as they approached the house.

'We're going to have to run for it,' Nicholson said, turning up the
collar of his suit coat. The two men got out of the car and ran through
the rain to the small porch that spanned the front of the house.
Several detectives in yellow rain slickers stood under the roof. They
nodded as Nicholson and Flaherty ducked under the eaves.

'It's a bitch, Nick,' one of the cops said. This rain has washed out
footprints, tyre tracks, everything. The old man's a bear.'

Nicholson and Flaherty stood just inside the front door for a few
moments. A plainclothes detective was standing beside the door jotting
a note to himself in a small notebook.

'Hi, Nick,' he said. 'What a mess, huh.'

'That it is. Ray Jensen, this is Dermott Flaherty. He's a prosecutor
with the Chicago DA's office.'

Jensen offered his hand. 'What brings you out here?' he asked.

'We have a thing working up in Chicago. It's a long shot, but there
could be a tie-in.'

'Be a nice break for us if we could get some kind of a lead,' said
Jensen. 'Right now we're sucking air.'

A hallway led to the rear of the house. Flaherty could see white
chalk lines marking where the victim's legs had protruded into the
hall. He held a shot of the interior of the house taken from the front
door out in front of him. Lincoln's legs could be seen protruding from
the door halfway down the hall.

'The Spiers left a light on in the living room,' said Jensen. The
rest of the place was dark. My guess is the killer called Lincoln back
there to do his dirty work.'

They walked past a living room that was cluttered with kewpie dolls,
embroidered pillows, and dozens of photographs. The furniture was
covered with plastic sheets. Flaherty smelled the acid-sweet odour of
blood and death.

The death room was a small den with a fireplace. Sliding glass doors
led from the room to an enclosed porch on the side of the house.
Another door led into the kitchen, which dominated the rear of the
place. There was blood everywhere: on the walls, the ceiling, the
carpet. Flaherty found a full-length shot of the corpse. Lincoln lay on
his side, his head askew. A terrible wound had almost severed his head.
His mouth gaped open like that of a dead fish. The wounds were numerous
and awesome. Lincoln's pants were pulled down around his knees and he
had been emasculated. The results of the brutal amputation had been
stuffed in his mouth.

Flaherty flipped through the pictures, found a close-up of the rear
of Lincoln's head.

There it was: 'R41.102.' Flaherty showed no emotion. He kept
flipping the photographs.

'How'd he get in? The killer, I mean?' he asked.

'Broke a window in back,' Jensen said. 'The way we figure it, he
cased the place very carefully. Knew the back road to the lake would be
abandoned this time of year; particularly after dark. He came in the
back way, pulled on down to the house, and broke in through the sliding
glass door leading from the little deck in the back. Here's what's
interesting. It rained the night before, but there were no footprints
in the house and the porch was hosed down so there were no footprints
out there either. What I think, the perp took off his shoes when he
came in. Then when he left he hosed off the deck so there weren't any
out there, either. Probably used the hose to wash off the victim's
blood, too. I mean, you look at the pictures of Lincoln, the perp had
to be covered with blood.'

'Yeah, somebody did some homework on this,' Flaherty said, still
flipping through the photographs. 'Whoever set up the victim knew Spier
and his wife were away. Little town like this - '

'Was in the
Post-Dispatch
,' said Nicholson.

'What was?'

'About Spier and his wife going out to Vegas. A story in the people
section. He drives a semi, won a trip for ten years' service without a
citation or mishap.'

'How about the package?'

'Mailed from over in East St Louis, one of those wrap-and-send
places,' Jensen offered. 'During lunch hour. Place was jammed, nobody
remembers a damn thing about who posted it. Return name and address is
a phony.'

Flaherty looked at the receipt slip. On the line that read 'sender'
was the name M. Lafferty.