Death at the Door Page 11

  They discussed the Larsen case until Joel pulled into the nearly empty emergency-room parking lot at the hospital. The ER waiting room was quiet with only two elderly people sitting in front of a television. The patient care area was a beehive of activity and noise. They could hear Gene’s voice shouting for a fourteen-gauge needle and they saw a nurse run to the supply cart, grab something, and run back behind the curtain. They introduced themselves to the clerk sitting at the desk, and she got up and went behind the curtain.

  “Tell them I’ll be out to talk with them as soon as I get her out of here,” Gene yelled.

  They sat down in the ER waiting room and watched the last half of an old Rockford Files. As James Garner faded into the sunset, they heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter.

  They were drawn to the ER entrance to watch it land. The crew climbed out of the helicopter while the rotors were still working and pulled the stretcher out onto the landing pad. They watched the crew trot into the ambulance entrance with a stretcher. Ten minutes later they watched as Daisy was loaded on the helicopter. Just as the helicopter took off, Gene yelled for them to come on back to the treatment room.

  Blood was everywhere. The linens that had been thrown in a tripod hamper were soaked with blood and the floor around the cart was strewn with bloody gauze dressings. Bloody footprints ran in helter-skelter patterns around the room. Gene was sitting on a stool bent over a counter. He had a telephone tucked under his ear and was riffling through a sea of papers. His shoes, scrubs, and lab coat were splotched with blood.

  “Let me finish dictating and I’ll fill you in.” He turned away from them and began mumbling into the phone. It seemed like minutes but it was only seconds before he was done.

  He headed down the ER back hall and motioned for them to follow. They ended up in a small room that had been turned into a combination sleeping room and lounge to give the ER physicians some respite time during their twenty-four hour shifts. Gene motioned them to sit down. He pulled a fresh lab coat out of a locker and threw his old one in a hamper. He sat down at the table and passed around a stack of foam cups and the coffeepot. They all poured themselves a cup even though the thick black coffee looked as if it had been there for hours.

  “Your victim was unconscious and shocky when she came in. She was shot three times. One shot went clear through her back. It’s a miracle that it didn’t hit anything vital. Another shot nicked her lung. We put in a chest tube to get her lung expanded and two more tubes to keep her chest drained. Both entrance wounds were posterior.” He took a sip of coffee and gave Lacey a tentative smile. It wasn’t returned. “From the scene the paramedics described she must have been running from whoever shot her. She also had a lot of blood on her knees, as if she had crawled after she had been shot.”

  “We’ll need her clothing,” Lacey said.

  “The nurses saved it.” Gene shot her another smile. It turned to a frown when Lacey ignored it.

  “We heard she was also shot in the head,” Joel said.

  “She was and she must be the luckiest woman alive. The bullet entered the left parietal area and fractured her skull, but it didn’t go through the bone.” He looked at their puzzled faces and got up from the table. “Let me go get her films. It’s much easier to understand if you look at them while I’m trying to explain. I’ll be right back.” He left the room.

  Lacey got up to make another pot of coffee. Lark and Joel sat staring down at the table, thinking their own thoughts about this latest development. They didn’t have a clue about who had murdered Paul Larsen or who was committing the summerhouse robberies. They both wondered if this new shooting was an isolated incident or related to one or both of the other crimes.

  “Joel, what else did the sheriff tell you about the scene?” Lacey asked, once the coffee was under control.

  “He said the place was trashed and there’s blood everywhere. He says it’s the most grisly scene he’s seen in years. Even worse than some MVAs.”

  “Wonder why someone would want to kill Daisy DuBois?” Lacey asked as she refilled everyone’s mug.

  “Who the hell knows? At least we’ve got a theory on Paul Larsen.”

  “What is it?” Lark asked.

  “What’s what?” Joel jerked around and looked at Lark.

  “What’s your theory on why someone murdered Paul?”

  “Paul crossed someone who wanted to develop their land,” Joel said.

  “And they murdered him?” Lark narrowed his eyes, considering Joel’s response.

  “You got a better idea?” Joel snapped. “If you do, let’s hear it.”

  Lark threw his hands up. “I don’t know enough about the case to begin to have a theory. I’m just skeptical that someone would risk stabbing and shoving someone off a cliff on a golf course on a busy Sunday morning over land rezoning.” Lark shrugged his shoulders. “What if he didn’t die? What if someone saw him? That golf course was very busy. I still can’t believe no one saw a thing. Why not just try and bribe someone on the zoning commission rather than take the risk of going to prison for murder or attempted murder?”

  Gene walked in the room with the X-ray films, cutting off their discussion. “Sorry it took me so long. We just got a kid who’s being worked up for appendicitis.” He mounted the films on the light box on the wall. “The bullet entered here.” He pointed to the left side of the Daisy’s skull film. “It hit the skull and created a slightly depressed skull fracture, but then deflected around her skull.” He moved his finger around her head and then moved to another film. “It came out here, just above her left eyebrow. It never entered her brain. You can’t get much luckier than that.” He smiled at them.

  “Only a doctor would be this thrilled over someone getting three gunshot wounds including one to the head,” Lacey said.

  All three men glanced at her, saw the angry expression on her face, and looked away hoping that her mood would go away if they ignored her.

  “I do think she’s lucky. There’s a good chance she won’t have any brain damage from a gunshot wound that could have killed her or made her a vegetable. The exit wound is very near her left eye, but as far as we can tell, her eye’s unharmed. Her pupils are equal and they react to light the way they should. She’s going to need a lot of plastic surgery but she will probably be okay.” He pulled the films down and slid them into a large yellow folder.

  “Where did you send her?” Joel asked. “We need to talk with her ASAP.”

  “I sent her down to the trauma unit at University Hospital in Madison. They’ll be able to deal with her medical issues and do an immediate assessment of her plastic surgery needs. One of the other gunshot wounds exited through her left breast. She’s going to need reconstructive surgery there as well.”

  “When can we talk to her?” Joel repeated.

  “Not for a while. She’s intubated.” Gene noticed Joel’s puzzled look. “She’s got a breathing tube down her throat and she’s hooked up to a ventilator that’s helping her breathe, so she can’t talk. I gave her medication to paralyze her so she won’t thrash around and hurt herself or use too much energy to breathe. She’s on a continuous IV morphine drip for pain and another IV drip of medication to relax her. She’s lost a lot of blood so she’s also getting blood and IV fluids to keep her from going deeper into shock. She isn’t going to be talking to anyone for several days. The goal right now is to make sure she lives.” Gene asked Lacey to stay behind and walked Lark and Joel out to the ER waiting room.

  He returned to the lounge, poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat down at the table across from Lacey. “I want to apologize for what happened last night.” He tried to catch her eye but she looked away. “I never meant to hurt you.”

  “You could have fooled me.” She got up from the table and paced around the room.

  “Part of it was the alcohol.”

  She walked over and slammed her hands down on the table, finally looking him in the eye. “I told you then and I’m telling you now: I kn
ow you didn’t have that much to drink. What was the other part?”

  It was his turn to look away. “I hate to admit it but you’re right. I see a beautiful woman and I immediately want to go to bed with her.”

  “You think you’re the only one? Everyone has occasional attractions. What separates them from you is a little thing called impulse control.” Lacey threw up her hands, walked away from the table, and paced the room.

  He watched her, a great deal of pain in his eyes. “Lacey, how can I make this up to you? I don’t want to ruin what we have.”

  She whirled around to stare at him. “You really don’t get it, do you? You’ve already ruined it. If you wanted to be with someone else, all you had to do was tell me that you wanted to take a break. You could have told me you wanted us to see each other casually. Or, hell, why not try the truth for a change and just tell me that you found someone else you were interested in? I would have understood and respected that. You can’t fix this because you’ve been dishonest and now I don’t trust you.”

  “I understand that I broke your trust, but how do I get it back?” A hint of irritation had entered his voice.

  Before she could respond, an RN from the ER stuck her head in the door. “We’re calling the surgery crew back in. This kid’s white count is sky-high and his CT scan is positive. He needs surgery.”

  Gene glanced down at his watch and back up at Lacey. “Can we talk about this later?”

  Lacey stopped pacing. “I’ll make this quick and easy. We may be friends in the future when I get over being angry, but not now. I’ll try and drive over today to get my stuff. I’ll leave my key on your kitchen counter.” She walked out the door, not giving him a chance to respond.

  She met Lark and Joel in the lobby. They could tell by her face that they would be taking a big risk if they asked any questions about her discussion with Gene. Neither of them brought it up. They decided it was pointless to drive to Madison now to try to interview Daisy. Joel called the state police office in Madison and asked them to work with the University of Wisconsin police to have a guard with Daisy at all times and to limit visitors to her immediate family.

  They decided that their best course of action was to drive up to Ellison Bay and go over the scene. Joel had received a call from the evidence technicians when they’d got to the house. They’d confirmed that the place was a mess and they had called for another team to come up and help them. Joel sped north up the peninsula at a record pace since there wasn’t any traffic on the roads. The only sign of life could be found in the lighted dairy barns they passed.

  Between Ellison Bay and Gills Rock, Joel turned west off Highway 42 onto a blacktop road called Highland Drive. It wound through a dense forest of pines into a clearing that overlooked the lake. They turned onto a gravel road and pulled into a circular drive in front of a two-story stone house perched on a steep cliff overhanging Lake Michigan. The gables and rooflines of the house made Lacey think Hansel and Gretel might have lived there.

  They threaded their way past three police cars and parked in front of the house. Joel passed around a box of surgeon’s gloves. They got out of the car and pulled on their gloves.

  “The scene is probably so contaminated we won’t get a thing here,” Lark said, just before they entered the house.

  The rugs and the hardwood floors in the living and dining rooms glistened as if they were covered with diamonds instead of thousands of tiny pieces of glass. Two of the dining room chairs and a wingback chair in the living room were overturned. The dining room table was covered with glass shards. Some of the larger pieces of glass had gouged the top of the table. A smeared trail of blood lead from the tiled kitchen floor around the corner into the laundry room. A cordless phone lay on the floor in the kitchen surrounded by pools and smears of blood. The telephone charger and the counter around it were also smeared with blood.

  Lark almost threw up when he walked into the laundry room. Despite his years as a Chicago homicide detective, he had never got used to the carnage at a murder scene. Rivulets of dark red blood ran down the wall and seeped behind the baseboard. The doorknob to the garage was covered with smudges of dried blood. The wall beside the door held a bloody palm print streaked with light red trails made by Daisy’s fingers as they had slid down the wall to the tile floor. One strappy, stiletto sandal lay on its side in a corner of the laundry room, its Manolo Blahnik label displayed like an expensive prize. Its mate was under the cabinet overhang in the kitchen as if someone had thrown it there.

  It appeared that Daisy had run through the house to get away from her assailant and had been shot and left for dead in the utility room. At some point she had crawled into the kitchen and called 911 before collapsing on the kitchen floor.

  “This doesn’t fit the MO for the other burglaries.” Lacey stared at the carnage, her face registering the shock they all felt.

  “This is the first time someone’s walked in on the burglar. Maybe everyone else has just been lucky,” Joel said.

  “I don’t think so.” Lark left the laundry room and walked back through the kitchen to the dining room. He stared at the overturned chairs and the carpet covered with glass. “The other scenes were very neat and clean. Some of them even had vacuum marks in the carpet in front of where the glass was stolen. Our burglar would never have done this unless he’s trying to throw us off. The china cabinet is empty.” He pointed to the large mahogany breakfront with open doors and empty shelves. “It was probably full of some sort of clear glass that is now smashed to smithereens all over the floor. Our burglar wouldn’t do that.”

  “It was full of her grandmother’s cut glass,” Joel said, remembering how it had flashed in the sunlight when he had interviewed Daisy.

  Lark stuffed his hands in his pockets and surveyed the room. “Someone either staged a robbery to kill Daisy or they broke in here thinking they would make a little dough by stealing her glass and blame it on our burglar. Daisy caught them and they shot her. Either way, why would they break all this valuable glass?”

  Lark wandered into the living room. “He either chased her through the house or knocked down the chairs to make us think he did.” Lark studied the wingback chair on its side and wandered back to the dining room, studying the carpet and the two overturned side chairs. He noted the other eight dining room chairs neatly pushed right up to the edge of the table. “Lacey, if you were running for your life through the house, would you take the time to turn over a heavy wingback chair and pull out two dining room chairs and turn them over?”

  “I don’t know.” Lacey surveyed the scene, mentally running through the room. “Once they wrap up the crime scene, we can go through here and check it out.”

  “All this glass on top of these dark Oriental carpets could cover up a multitude of sins. Even bloody footprints.” Lark studied the carpet but couldn’t see a trace of what he suspected the evidence technicians would find.

  Sheriff Skewski came through the door, trailed by a tall, lanky, red-haired guy in khakis, a white, open-necked shirt, and a navy jacket. “What else can happen?” Skewski asked. “This is worse than a set of brass knuckles to the balls.” He nodded at Lacey. “ ’Scuse me, ma’am. I’ve known Daisy since she was a tiny thing. I can’t believe this is happening in Door County. We’ve got to get this SOB. It’s one thing to steal. It’s another thing to kill people. This bastard’s going to rot in hell if I have to go down there myself and see that it happens.”

  The guy in the navy jacket surveyed the scene, his hands in his pockets. His eyes settled on Lark with a nod of recognition.

  “Russ.” Lark nodded back at him. “Did the FBI decide they want a piece of this? We’ve already got the county sheriff and the state police involved.”

  “I’m not FBI anymore. Five of the insurance companies hired me to try and recover for them. Sorry about your wife. Heard you left Chicago, but I didn’t know you were in Door County.”

  “I’m the sheriff of Big Oak County, in northern Wisconsin. I’
m working for the state police on this one.”

  Russ introduced himself to Lacey. He handed Lark and Lacey business cards that said Russell O’Flaherty Investigations and listed a Chicago address and phone number in sedate black ink.

  They were saved from making a comment by the arrival of additional evidence techs. Simon and Rose Gradoute were right on their heels. Despite their warnings, Rose insisted on going through the house. She went from mad as hell to crumpled into tears when she was told she would have to wait until the evidence techs processed the house. Simon carried her back to their car and then came back to the house to talk with the police.

  “I pleaded with Rose not to come here, but she said she needed to see what happened to Daisy. Do you know who did this?” Simon asked Skewski. The sheriff noted that Simon’s hands shook as he ran them through his hair.

  “We hope to know a little more after we go through the scene,” Skewski said, patting Simon’s shoulder.

  “I can’t believe anyone would want to hurt Daisy,” Simon said, tears standing in the corners of his eyes. “She’s such a gentle soul. Rose and I just ate dinner with her last night.”

  “What time was that?” Joel flipped open his notebook to take notes.

  “Daisy left the restaurant a little after midnight. She would have been home by twelve-thirty at the latest.” Simon swiped his hand under his eyes. “Rose and Daisy and I went to an opening at the Hardy Gallery. We met there about eight-thirty. I left at nine to help out at the restaurant, and Daisy and Rose showed up half an hour later.”

  “Did Daisy and Rose leave at the same time?” Joel asked.

  “Rose left right after Daisy. She wanted us to leave together, but Rosemary’s was very busy and the staff asked me to help close.” Simon watched Joel write in his notebook.

  “Do you know where your wife went when she left?” Joel asked.

  “Home, she went home. I talked with her just before I left the restaurant.”