"My father"s not there. Nana Mama"s ex-husband, my grandfather, is, and his parents. I must have been named for my great-grandfather Alexander, who was a blacksmith."
"You never knew that?"
I shook my head.
"Maybe there"s another Cross plot up here," Bree said.
"Maybe," I said, and I put the car in gear.
Nine rows up I spotted the pale white monument that said parks below a carved American flag. It was closer to the cemetery lane, four graves in, and well tended, with fresh flowers in a vase. Like the Cross plot lower on the hill, there were smaller stones, two of them, separated by a gap of several feet. They were inscribed B.W.P. and C.P.C.
Brock William Parks and Christina Parks Cross.
The grief swept over me like a chill fog thick with regret and loss. Tears began to dribble down my cheeks as I whispered, "I"m sorry I"ve never been here before, Mom. I"m sorry about ... everything."
I stood there trying to remember the last time I"d seen my mother, and I couldn"t. She"d been dying in the house. I was sure of that because my aunts were there a lot, caring for her. But I couldn"t conjure her up.
Disturbed by that, I wiped at my tears, walked around the back, and looked at the inscriptions.
BROCK WILLIAM PARKS.
GREEN BERET.
HERO TO HIS NATION.
CHRISTINA PARKS CROSS.
LOVING MOTHER.
I was flooded with emotions and images of my mother on her best days, when she was loving, caring, and so much fun to be around. I could have sworn I heard her singing then, and it took everything I had to make it back to the car.
Bree watched me with tear-filled eyes. "She"s there?"
I nodded, and then broke down sobbing. "She"s been there for all these years, Bree. And I"ve ... never ... been here. Not once. In all this time, I never even wondered where she was buried. I mean, my G.o.d, who does that? What kind of son am I?"
CHAPTER 26.
Palm Beach, Florida
AT NOON THAT same Sat.u.r.day, Palm Beach County Sheriff"s Office Detectives Peter Drummond and Richard S. Johnson were dispatched to a mansion on North Ocean Boulevard.
Detective Johnson was in his early thirties, a big athletic guy, ex-Marine, and a recent hire from Dade County. Detective Sergeant Drummond was in his sixties, a big, robust black man with a face almost devoid of expression due to nerve damage a.s.sociated with a large burn scar that began beneath his right eye and spread over much of his cheek to his jaw.
Johnson knew he was lucky to have Drummond as his partner. The sergeant was a legend in the department, one of those men who had a knack for figuring out how criminals, especially murderers, thought.
Sergeant Drummond took a left off North Ocean Boulevard and pulled through open gates into an Italianate manor"s courtyard where two cruisers, a medical examiner"s van, and a midnight-blue Rolls-Royce were parked.
"Who the h.e.l.l can afford to live like this?" Johnson asked.
"Around here," Drummond said, "lots of folks. And definitely Dr. Stanley Abrams. He owns a big plastic-surgery clinic. They call him the b.o.o.b King."
They climbed out of the unmarked cruiser into heat that was unG.o.dly despite the proximity to the ocean.
"I thought most of the super-rich along Ocean Boulevard headed north for the summer," the younger detective said.
"Most do," the sergeant replied. "But guys like Abrams stay around no matter how hot it gets."
One of the uniformed deputies showed them into the house-a castle, really, with so many hallways and rooms that Detective Johnson was soon lost. They climbed a grand staircase, pa.s.sing an oil painting of a pretty woman in a ball gown, and heard the sound of a man crying.
They entered a bedroom suite and found a slight man in a hall off the bedroom sitting on a padded bench, head down.
"Dr. Abrams?" Drummond said.
The plastic surgeon looked up, revealing a smooth-featured face and a full head of hair that spoke to Johnson of multiple procedures, including hair plugs.
Drummond identified himself, told Abrams he was sorry for his loss.
"I don"t get it," Abrams said, composing himself. "Ruth was the happiest person I know. Why would she do this to herself?"
"No inkling that she might have been thinking of suicide?" Drummond asked.
"None," the doctor said.
"Nothing that had upset her lately?" Johnson asked.
The plastic surgeon started to shake his head, but then stopped. "Well, Lisa Martin"s death last week. They were close, ran in the same circles."
Both detectives nodded. They"d caught that case too. But the death of Lisa Martin, another Ocean Boulevard resident, had been ruled accidental. She"d knocked a plugged-in Bose radio into the tub while she was taking a bath.
"So your wife was sad about Mrs. Martin"s death?" Drummond said.
"Yes, sad and upset," Abrams said. "But not enough to ... Ruth had everything to live for, and she loved life. My G.o.d, she"s the only person in this town, including me, who"s never been on antidepressants!"
"You found her, sir?" Johnson asked.
The surgeon"s eyes watered, and he nodded. "Ruth had given the staff the weekend off. I flew in overnight from Zurich."
"We"re going to take a look," Drummond said. "You touch anything?"
"I wanted to cut her down," Abrams said, looking into his hands. "But I didn"t. I just ... called you."
He sounded lost and alone. Johnson said, "You got family, sir?"
Abrams nodded. "My daughters. Sara"s in London, and Judy"s in New York. They"re going to be ..." He sighed and started to cry again.
Drummond went into the bedroom, Johnson trailing him. The detective sergeant stopped, studying the corpse in situ.
Ruth Abrams hung by a drapery cord that was suspended from a chandelier above the bed and cinched tight around her neck. She was a small-framed woman, no more than one hundred and ten pounds, and wore a black nightgown. Her face was swollen and mottled purple. Her legs and feet were a darker maroon because of the blood that had settled.
"You have a time of death?" Drummond asked the medical examiner, a young Asian woman who was making notes.
"Eighteen to twenty hours is the best I can do for now," the ME said. "The air-conditioning throws things a bit, but it looks straightforward to me. She hung herself."
Drummond nodded without comment, eyes on the body. He walked over to the bed and stopped about a foot away from it. Johnson did the same on the opposite side.
It looked straightforward to Johnson too. She"d apparently put an upside-down wastebasket on the bed to stand on while she got the noose around her neck and then she"d kicked it away. There it was, on the rug to the right of the bed. She"d hung herself. End of story.
But the sergeant had put on reading gla.s.ses and was studying the bedspread, which was bunched to the left side of the bed. He peered at the woman"s neck, livid and abraded from the cord, and then removed his gla.s.ses to study the knots that held the cord to the chandelier.
"Seal the house, Johnson," Drummond said at last. "This was no suicide."
"What?" the young detective said. "How can you tell that?"
The sergeant gestured to the bedspread and around the bed. "This looks like a struggle to me."
"People struggle when they hang themselves."
"True, but the sheets are all dragged to the left, meaning that the body was dragged up the right side, and the wastebasket was then placed on the right to suggest suicide," Drummond said.
Johnson saw what the sergeant was talking about but wasn"t convinced. Drummond pointed to her hands.
"Broken and torn fingernails," he said. "There"s a chip of the polish in the braids of the drapery cord. That and the vertical scratches above the neck suggests she was tearing at the cord during the initial struggle, which took place at ground level. And see how the livid lines are crisscrossed above and below the cord?"
Johnson frowned. "Yes."
"They shouldn"t be there," the sergeant said. "If she"d kicked the wastebasket, the cord would have caught all her weight almost immediately. There"d be one line behind and along the cord, and we might see some evidence of the cord abrading the skin as it slid into position.
"But these two clear lines suggest that the killer flipped the cord over Mrs. Abrams"s head from behind and throttled her. She fought, tore at her throat with her fingers, and maybe kicked at her killer. In any case, she created slack in the noose. The cord slipped, and the killer had to set it tight again, here. She was dead before she was hung up there. See the grooves along the cord where it"s tied to the chandelier? That"s from the killer hauling the body up."
The young detective shook his head in admiration. Drummond"s legend was real, and the evidence was so clear once you heard him explain it.
"You want me to call in a full forensics team?" Johnson asked.
"I think that would be a very good idea."
CHAPTER 27.
Starksville, North Carolina
THE WOODS ACROSS the street from the church were thick with mosquitoes and biting flies that swarmed around me and Bree as we made the hike into the old quarry. Though it was muggy and hot, we were glad we"d taken Naomi"s advice and put on long pants and long-sleeved shirts and doused ourselves with bug repellent.
We each carried a knapsack, and between the two we had several water bottles, a measuring tape, a camera, zip-lock bags, files with pictures of the crime scene, police diagrams, and copies of the notes Detectives Frost and Carmichael had taken when Rashawn Turnbull"s body was found.
The overgrown trail wound through stands of stinging nettles and brush choked with kudzu. There was no wind. The air was oppressively humid, and the whine of insects was enough to drive us crazy by the time we crossed the stream. The path followed the waterway through a shaded, man-made gap in the limestone wall, ten, maybe fifteen feet wide and forty feet high. The creek spilled over its banks pa.s.sing through the gap, making a large section of the ground mossy and slippery, and we had to support each other until we were out the other side and into the sunbaked quarry.
Bree looked back through the gap. "The killer supposedly brought Rashawn through there, but I can"t see him dragging the boy in."
I nodded. "He"d have fallen. They both would have fallen."
"Any notes about that moss and slime in there being torn up?"
"Not that I saw. Then again, it rained late that night. Hard."
"It wouldn"t matter," Bree insisted. "I don"t think Rashawn was dragged in. He went along, which means he knew his killer."
The police thought so too. It was in the indictment.
"I"ll buy it," I said. "What else?"
Bree smiled. "I"ll let you know when I see it."
We moved closer to the stack of rock slabs, stopped where we had perspective. I got out the crime scene photographs, glanced at the sky for strength, and then divorced myself from being a father, a husband, a human being. It"s the only way I can get beyond the things I have to witness and do my job.
But when I saw the first picture, a shudder went through me. The small, almost naked body lay facedown, straddling the top stone, wrists bound behind his back with a canvas belt. The arms appeared dislocated. His jeans were bunched around his right ankle, and jagged bone stuck out of the skin of the lower left leg. The head was so battered and swollen it was unrecognizable as a boy"s.
"G.o.d help me," Bree said, and she looked away. "Who does something like this to a poor little guy like that?"
"Someone with a lot of pent-up rage," I said, looking toward the stack of rocks.
"Which the prosecution says was Stefan"s reaction to Rashawn rejecting him," Bree said.
"I don"t buy that," I said. "This level of viciousness suggests pathological hatred or s.a.d.i.s.tic insanity, not a fit of revenge."
We stood there forty feet from the stack and forced ourselves to go through the photographs. They ran the gamut from close-ups of various pieces of evidence in the order they were discovered to a dozen photos of Rashawn"s brutalized body, including his sawed neck.