Coldwater confession, p.21
Coldwater Confession, page 21
“Come in, handsome. I’m having a party.”
Tom scanned the apartment through a filter that reminded him that this was Maggie Ryan’s mother. This was where she lived, how she lived, and who she had become. Curiosity compelled advance; gut signaled retreat.
“You look like your daddy,” said Karen. “Do you want a beer?”
“No thanks.” Tom had not introduced himself, but apparently that wouldn’t be necessary. He examined the bookshelves that lined one wall from floor to ceiling and perused the framed photos that screened most of the eye-level volumes, looking for one of Maggie. Karen disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a juice glass three quarters filled with a cold white wine. “Here.” She put the smudged glass in his hand and placed a free paw on his forearm.
Turning away from the photographs, Tom found himself looking into pupils that opened wide onto nothing. He put down the glass and reached into his pocket for the wallet of cd’s. “My brother asked me to return these. They were helpful.”
Karen tightened her grip on his arm and her button-sized pupils narrowed. “What’s he going to do about them?” she demanded.
“He didn’t say.”
“Bullshit.”
Tom shrugged and Karen pressed. “My ever-loving ex is not just a baby snatcher. He’s a killer. Maybe twice. If your brother lets him get away with that, they’ll eat him alive around here.”
“I’ll pass along the warning.”
Releasing her grip, Maggie’s mother slid hard into a deep vinyl chair. Her eyes treaded a spot midway to the wall and her lower jaw began to move from side to side.
“Can I ask you something about what’s in those journals?” Tom asked. The woman swiveled her head slowly and slowed her chewing. “I take it Dee Dee Ryan was a very sick woman.”
“Well, she married him.”
“I mean her physical health.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You didn’t read the disks?”
“I read the parts about my daughter. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the rest.”
“She had some pretty severe allergies. Did you know that?”
“You don’t get fat from ragweed, honey.” She raised her head to the shelf of framed photos. “It takes a lot of comfort food to go from that to this.”
Tom took a step toward the photo Karen’s nose was wagging at—a young, dark-haired woman in a black string bikini preening on a white blanket. The blanket was spread across the top of a large, flat rock and the woman in the bikini was doing something with her lips to the ear of a pale man with a jarhead haircut. “Do you date a lot of soldiers?” he asked.
“Used to.”
“This is Pocket Island.” He lifted the framed photo and brought it closer for inspection. “Washington’s Head.”
“There’re some pretty spots out there. Private.”
“Someone told me the island was popular with the Rangers before the last owner put Dobermans out there.”
“What an asshole! We had some crazy parties out there back in the day.”
“Where did you go to after that?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She rolled her head, face-up, neck like a socket. “I think the Fort started to downsize around then. I don’t really remember.”
“You were in the hospital around that time.”
“Says who?”
Tom looked at the photo and ignored the question.
“I have a recurring hormone imbalance.”
“Do you remember a Coldwater policeman who was there at the same time?”
She laughed. “You take a roundabout way, don’t you?”
“Do you remember him?”
She laughed again. “Your mama send you?”
“So you remember him.”
“He’s a hard man to forget. Even now.”
“Do you remember what you told him?”
“About what?”
“About what you saw on one of your picnics.” Tom held out the photo. “Or what Opie here let on after you finished swabbing his ear.”
“I’m not following you, handsome.”
“I think you follow me just fine. Crazy’s not the same as stupid, is it? I’ll bet people make that mistake with you a lot.”
Karen reached for the glass he had neglected and drained it. “How about a hint?”
Tom stared hard into vacant eyes. “The same thing you told Burdock. The thing that got his skull bashed-in.”
* * *
Tom eased the Grady White alongside the Ryans’ dock and tied the bowline so that the boat faced away from the wind. A bungee-banded tarp covered a huddle of lawn furniture at the foot of the dock, and dust devils of leaf debris skimmed across the lawn beyond it. He looked up at the line of storm windows fronting the lake and assumed that someone was frowning behind one. He gave her time to make up her mind, then walked up to the house.
The only car in the steep, circular driveway was a leaf-covered Mercedes parked off to one side. He ran his finger along the hood. Rosemary Ryan stood at the opened front door and watched him. Her age-spotted hand gripped the inside doorknob. “She won’t see you,” Rosemary announced as Tom turned away from the car and came toward the house. “Or your brother.”
“Hello, Mrs. Ryan. May I come in?”
“No.”
“I didn’t come to see Maggie.”
“I said, no.”
“And I didn’t come about Maggie. Or her stepmother.” He waved a hand at the unwashed car. “Or your son.”
“I don’t like riddles, Tommy Morgan. You should know that.”
“I came to see you, Mrs. Ryan. To ask you a question about Karen Ryan…and my father.”
Rosemary’s hand slid from the doorknob and fell against her dress. Cold, rheumy eyes stared into Tom’s. He pushed open the door. Rosemary followed him down the hall to a large, open room, separated from an enclosed wrap-around porch by a low divider inset with bookshelves. A couch and two wing back chairs formed a grouping of furniture in front of a stone fireplace. A mahogany credenza hugged the back of the couch. A lone candy bar lay at the bottom of a cut-glass bowl at its center flanked by two transparent, shell-filled table lamps at either end. In front of the couch on a low shin-smasher table, a beading can of Diet Pepsi pinned down on a pair of empty candy wrappers. “Sorry to interrupt your lunch,” he said.
Rosemary grimaced. “It’s the last of my daughter-in-law’s exercise snacks. I don’t like to throw away food, and no one else around here will eat them.” She took a seat at one end of the couch and gestured Tom toward the wing-back chair beside it. Before his trousers touched the cushion she laid out the ground rules. “I told your mother years ago that this was something I didn’t care to talk about. I haven’t changed my mind.”
“So she knew?” It was a confirmation rather than a question.
Rosemary pressed her lips.
“And you wouldn’t talk to her?”
“I don’t talk politics, religion, or husbands with my friends. Especially not Hellers. That’s why I still have them.”
“No exceptions? Not even when a friend needs a friend for support?”
“And I don’t talk to their children behind their backs.”
“This isn’t idle curiosity, Mrs. Ryan. My brother is looking at a possible connection between our father’s murder and some recent activities here in Coldwater. He’s asked me to help. Neither of us care to embarrass or hurt our mother by asking her questions that could easily be answered by someone else.”
“It’s none of my business, Tommy. If your mother wants to discuss it with you, that’s hers.”
“I don’t disagree with your principles, Mrs. Ryan. But in this case, they’re misplaced. And my sheriff brother isn’t going to give a hoot about what you do or don’t want to talk about. So you might want to talk to me. I have better manners.” When Rosemary didn’t respond, he stood. “If that’s your choice.” He picked up the empty soda can and candy wrappers. “I’ll dump these for you on my way out. Have fun with MadDog Junior. Don’t say I didn’t try to spare you.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Tom found a post-it note from Joe stuck to a folder on the breakfast bar when he came out into the kitchen the next morning.
I downloaded Karen Ryan’s CDs, scanned Burdock’s and Ryan’s autopsy reports, and loaded everything into a file named ‘Smart Boy.’ I left the hard copies in the folder. Weatherman says the temperature is supposed to drop twenty degrees tonight. Find something!
Tom made a pot of coffee and then started with the recent bank financials, comparing them to the spreadsheets Burdock had recovered from Ryan’s personal computer. Once again there was a significant difference between the value of the bank stock reflected in Ryan’s personal records and the roughly corresponding numbers in the most recent bank documents.
Ryan’s own records showed the value of the stock corresponding to the loan he took against it falling substantially over the previous six months. It also showed a decline in the value of the investments he’d made with the loan money. The bank documents on Burdock’s disks showed no similar erosion, but they were out of date. When Tom had visited Andrew Ryan, he had asked for the most recent financials to see if the discrepancy continued.
Comparing the documents in the folder with the ones on the screen, it was apparent that the gap between Ryan’s numbers and the bank’s was still there and still widening. If the personal records were accurate, both Ryan and the bank were steadily losing net worth. But the only evidence of it was in Andrew Ryan’s computer. He didn’t have enough money to pay back the bank loan with what was left of the investments he had made with it. A divorce this year would have bankrupted him. And if couldn’t have prevented it, he would have been screwed.
Tom went back to the computer and screened the autopsy report for Dee Dee Ryan.
“Body Examination:
Initial examination at Coldwater Hospital revealed an adult female Caucasian seen supine on a steel autopsy table. The decedent has blond hair, blue eyes, veneered front teeth (top and bottom), and small scars in the crease of each breast near the chest wall, typical of cosmetic surgery. Multiple medical appliances are seen in place including an ET tube, IV sites, and a chest tube. A small laceration is noted on the palm of the left hand and another slight laceration is noted under the upper right arm as well. No additional external trauma is noted during the preliminary visual examination.
Identification:
The decedent was positively identified by her husband Andrew Ryan.
Opinion:
Asphyxiation by drowning. When found, the decedent was in a moderately advanced state of rigor mortis, placing the time of death at 10-14 hours before she was examined or anywhere from 8 p.m. to midnight on Sunday 9/10. Skin was wrinkled due to excessive exposure to water. Algae and water were discovered in the lungs and lumps of undigested food (lab results indicate corn syrup, whey, peanut oil, and chocolate) were discovered in stomach and esophagus. Froth was visible at the mouth and nostrils. Bleeding was also visible in the decedent’s eyes.”
Tom also read Joe’s handwritten notes of his conversation with a Dr. Tran, which were also scanned and uploaded into the file.
“Hospital allergist notes that condition of body also consistent with non-aspiration drowning (i.e. decedent choked while in water or before entering water). Closed throat and small volume of water found in lungs atypical of aspiration drowning. However, no external trauma to throat area that would indicate strangulation.”Tom translated. Basically, she drowned. Or she choked on something and then drowned. No one bopped her on the head and threw her overboard, or put his or her hands around her throat, or held her underwater. That didn’t tell him much.
He went back to the other journal entries—the ones about Maggie that her mother claimed were the only ones she had read, and the ones about Maggie’s stepmother that had made both Tom and Joe question Andrew Ryan’s manhood. Tom spent an hour rereading the juicier bits and reviewing the autopsy material one more time. Then he took a piece of paper and made a chart.
Tom took a highlighter and ran it over Karen Ryan’s name and over her ex-husband’s journals as the catalyst. There was enough in those to make any biological parent, much less a crazy one, want to murder her step-successor. And Karen Ryan was not the bloodless dullard she had married. Andrew was all about stoic, ineffectual self-sacrifice. Karen was about Karen. And her ‘hormone imbalance’, or whatever it was, clearly leaned toward the passionate, not the passive. She wouldn’t need Burdock to do the wet work; though she might have easily bullied him into it.
Tom looked again at the chart. There were holes and a lot more to do—alibi’s for time of death, a method of causing Dee Dee Ryan to drown without leaving evidence of a struggle. He would need some smart doctor to make progress, assuming there was really anything to figure out. Only Joe seemed to feel that Dee Dee Ryan’s death may not have been accidental. And Joe’s recent behavior made Tom question his state of mind.
Putting aside the chart, he opened the copy of Burdock’s autopsy report. It followed the same standard Coldwater Hospital format: scene description, body examination, identification, and opinion. According to a Dr. Elliott, Burdock died of blunt force trauma to the head. Even in dry medical-ease, it was grim reading:
“The distribution of cerebral contusions suggests that the majority are contrecoup injuries. That is, they are on the side of the brain opposite the site of the scalp trauma and skull fracture noted above. This pattern is typically associated with injuries produced as a result of a fall. However, multiple separate cerebral contusions are also present on the frontal portions of the brain in close proximity to the injuries to the face noted above. These frontal cerebral contusions are more characteristic of coup lesions, typically associated with an overlying blunt force blow(s) to the face, with direct localized force impact creating the frontal cerebral contusions.”
In plain English, somebody didn’t just bop Burdock on the head with a poker. They beat him thoroughly and with such force that every part of his head, front, back and sides had corresponding injuries to the brain. Whoever it was didn’t just smack Burdock around, he (she?) went ballistic on him.
Tom took another piece of paper and made another chart.
Tom put down the pen. He had not planned to write his brother’s name. But it belonged there. Joe had more or less admitted that he had smacked the man around when Burdock had shown up at Karen Ryan’s apartment and mouthed off about MadDog. Joe had been seriously out of control with that soldier on the boat. Too many wise guys seemed all of a sudden to know something about the former Sheriff Morgan’s death. Joe had always had a tendency to emote rather than repress, and to do it with his fists rather than words.
The autopsy report made it clear that Burdock did not die quickly. If Joe were asking the questions and Burdock had the answers, then surely Burdock would have coughed them up. And if Burdock didn’t have the answers, would Joe have beaten his brain to mush anyway? Tom didn’t think so, or at least he hoped not. But how well did he know that side of his brother? A side that had undoubtedly matured with the temptations and tools that went along with a badge. Tom stood from the table and began to pace the room.
Joe had always had a temper. Starting in high school, people on the receiving end often got hurt. But Joe had always stopped when got what he wanted – victory, surrender. Maybe he didn’t always stop soon enough. But he stopped. He’d never crossed the line where a message beating might have become permanent injury or fatality.
Or had he?
You’ve been gone a long time, Tommy. Joe doesn’t appear to be mellowing with age. The autopsy lists Burdock as fifty-three years old. How many punches does it take to croak a geezer?
As Tom walked these troubling thoughts around the open room, the telephone in the kitchen began to trill. He let the answering machine take it. When he heard the familiar voice scream into the tape, he turned toward it and stopped. “Joseph! What the hell is going on! Rosemary Ryan just left here. I damn near strangled the woman! I told you to leave well enough alone! PICK UP THE GOD DAMN PHONE!!! ANSWER ME!!! FIND OUT WHAT THAT BROTHER OF YOURS IS UP TO AND PUT A SOCK IN HIS MOUTH!! I MEAN IT!! NOW!!!
Chapter Thirty-Three
Tom stared at the phone long after the machine had clicked off. Mary’s temper had regularly stoppered her husband, even when he’d had a few, but it had been a while since Tom had been so close to a blast. When he thought about it at all, he had assumed that his were a kid’s memories exaggerated by size and distance. They didn’t seem exaggerated now.
He took Joe’s truck and drove it to the Coldwater Senior Center, muttering thanks to Mrs. Ryan along the way and vowing to find an opportune means of returning the favor. The voice on the phone had sounded stoked on more than just Geritol. Tom found himself recalling the bromide “my country right or wrong,” and the wag who’d compared it to “my mother, drunk or sober” and opining that no son or patriot would utter such words except in a desperate case. This was surely one.
The sound of screaming came through the door, but only one voice. The knob turned easily in his hand and he pushed it open. Glass in one fist and phone flattened against an ear, Mary whirled at the sound. “He’s here!” She tossed the phone onto a cushion and closed the distance between them like a wolf on a kill. He reached to give her a kiss and his mother met him halfway with a roundhouse slap that made him hear tones.
“You idiot! You Ivy League numbskull! What right do you think you have to poke your nose into my marriage?”
CRACK! She slapped him again.
“Enough, Mom.”
She raised her hand to strike a third time and he backed away.
“You’re acting like a Heller, Mom.”
CRACK!
He retreated behind a chair, but held her gaze. His mother spat more choice words and then left the room. A door slammed. Tom picked up the phone and pressed the redial button. “It’s me,” he said. “No, she’s gone to her room. Why would she have a gun?” Tom held the phone away from his ear and grimaced. “Okay, I should have talked to you first. Stuff it, brother, you were the one who decided to go camping.” He threw down the phone and went to his mother’s bedroom. The door was locked. “Mom?”
