The Detective Sam Lagarde Mysteries: The Complete Series

The Detective Sam Lagarde Mysteries

The Complete Series

Ginny Fite

Cromwell’s Folly

A Detective Sam Lagarde Mystery

Ginny Fite

For my sons

Honi soit qui mal y pense.

(Shamed be he who thinks evil of it.)

Chapter One

March 29, 2014

Ben Cromwell was murdered in the narrow alley between the casino parking garage and the ramp to the stables behind the Charles Town racetrack. Murdered is the nice word for it. Slaughtered is more apt. Eviscerated. Chopped into pieces scattered in a ten-mile radius from the murder scene that had been carelessly scuffed over with dirt, straw and cedar chips before anyone realized that spot might be critical to an investigation.

It looked like someone really hated Cromwell; maybe several someones. It looked like they didn’t care if anyone knew about Cromwell’s murder. Most of the body parts were found within a week of the police realizing that he’d been murdered, and not just disappeared on a betting binge into a casino so dark and smoky that individual faces couldn’t be made out on the omnipresent camera monitors.

Cromwell had been reported missing by his grandmother, who waited the required thirty-six hours from the evening she became anxious about him to report it. She knew from experience the police would tell her to wait. Even when she reported him missing, she knew the police weren’t going to jump on it. Ben Cromwell’s absence just meant this time local deputies weren’t going to have to pull him out of a bar where he’d started a fight, arrest him for dealing, or haul him off a street corner where he had collapsed in a drunken stupor. To the police, Cromwell was a nuisance arrest, an annoying liar they’d have to cuff and interrogate and transport; more trouble than he was worth. He had been in the regional jail so often the guards who drew duty in the visitors’ area knew his grandmother on sight. His grandmother was so accustomed to the visitor’s drill that she simply stored her things in the assigned locker, looped the key around her finger, walked into the glass enclosed box, put her feet in the outline on the floor and raised her arms for the ritual wanding and pat down without being told.

Detective Sam Lagarde, who spent much breath telling folks who’d just met him that his last name wasn’t laggard, dug around in the dirt with the toe of his shoe at the location where the sheriff had said the murder occurred. It didn’t matter that he was messing up the crime scene. It had been driven on and walked on by hundreds of people, a few dogs, as many cats and some horses before local deputies from the county sheriff’s office figured out this was the spot where the head they found in a dumpster behind the spa on Charles Street came off a body. That was some pretty good detecting. There wasn’t any blood trail. Any drops of blood right here were contaminated or could have come from a hundred other sources. The Sheriff would never have found this spot if a stable hand hadn’t accidentally dropped her glove here. She stooped to pick it up and found the guy’s right pinky sporting an emerald and gold ring engraved: Forever Yours.

Strange that the murderer didn’t notice the finger with the ring was missing. The murder must not have been about robbery or even money. What robber would have left a ring that looked like it was worth a grand? Lagarde imagined a large box of heavy-duty contractor clean-up plastic bags brought to the butchering. It was an organized project. Well planned. Nothing spontaneous about it. Pieces of Cromwell must have been carted away in all directions at the same time. Lagarde could imagine body parts flung into dark green bags being tossed into dumpsters all over the county. Something was bound to get lost in the flurry. They were still missing his left foot, his left ring finger, and the rest of his right hand. Maybe someone was keeping souvenirs. Maybe they needed to widen their search of dumpsters.

First the county sheriff’s office had been called in to help the Charles Town police department that was flagged by the 911 dispatcher who took the shaken spa owner’s call. Charles Town, a city of slightly more than five-thousand people, was not ready for a crime like this. Laid out on eighty acres by George’s younger brother Charles Washington in the late eighteenth century, there were sleepy days when the town often seemed as if it hadn’t changed since Jefferson County was still part of Virginia before the Civil War. To compensate for local inexperience, the state police were added to the murder investigation team, as if they were any better at reading drops of blood like tea leaves.

Truth be told, local police did not want this job. Their hard-pressed staff had enough to do with small time thieves, shoplifters, and drug dealers. The state had the forensic lab and it was clear they were going to need all the pieces they could uncover to solve this crime. The DNA work alone to match the body parts so they could be sure they had only one victim was making the FBI lab in Maryland to which they sent the samples work overtime. The Bureau of Criminal Investigations, part of WV State Police operations where Lagarde was assigned, took charge of the case.

Lagarde caught the case because it was his turn, pure and simple. Nobody in their right mind would have volunteered for this. There wasn’t a great deal of pressure to find Cromwell’s killer, or killers, but the Captain made it crystal clear to Lagarde that he had to solve the case. He was the right guy for that. He had a reputation for being dogged, if not particularly brilliant. Dogged was okay with Lagarde. Dogged got you to retirement, which at sixty, he was definitely looking forward to enjoying very soon.

Lagarde squatted, turned his eyes away from his feet, and looked slowly around the area. The stables were low, narrow fifty-foot long clapboard structures painted a light yellow with simple gabled roofs hanging out beyond the walls of the stable. Wooden awnings that were propped up at an angle, if a horse was stabled there, covered the windows every fifteen feet; a few were open today. There were several alleyways, one between the two sets of eight stables on each side, and one on either end of the series of buildings, which were wide enough for two horses being led by grooms to pass each other without touching. The entire area was fenced in and a cement ramp led from the casino parking lot into the enclosed area. The stables supported year-round thoroughbred racing on the track at night. Most horses came for a race or two and the next morning were walked into their trailers and hauled out to the next track or back to the farm. A few owners stabled several horses here for longer periods. The purses at this track weren’t big, but gamblers could still lose their shirts and owners could lose their horses. Only seventy-five miles from Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland, the Charles Town racetrack was a place visiting gamblers put their money down on a horse every night. Not for nothing, there was a pawn shop right across the street from the track.

For no one to have seen the attack, Lagarde reasoned, it must have been night, late at night, well past the time horses were put up in their stalls, after night racing and trainers and stable hands had gone home. It would have been darker in this area, a spot that didn’t benefit from either the casino parking garage lights or the quieter lights around the stables. Someone would have had to wait near the closest stable, flush up against the wall, watching for the guy to walk down the ramp into the fence-enclosed area to jump him. Or maybe someone lured Cromwell to the spot. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he just go to his car in the garage? Maybe he parked in the stable employee parking lot because he was cheap. Maybe he was meeting someone here. A car parked in the area would not have aroused any suspicion. The police had yet to find a cell phone or Cromwell’s clothes, or a wallet. If someone took his clothes, why not the expensive pinky ring? Was it a drug buy gone bad? Some kind of mob hit? Not the kind of crime they were accustomed to in this town. He added to the list of his questions. There were no bullets in the pieces of the victim they had located so far.  That meant the murder was up close and personal. Someone had been covered in Cromwell’s blood. What did the killer do with his own clothes, the weapon? The medical examiner said there were no signs that Cromwell had been strangled before being carved up. And the carving had been precise, done by someone who knew their way around the right tools. When they found the trunk of his body, all his internal organs were missing; had been gutted like a hunter would gut a deer after a kill. Cromwell was surprised, overcome, knocked down. There might have been a scuffle. It happened somewhere between 3 a.m. when the casino night shift went off duty and 5 a.m. for there to have been enough dark to cover the butchering and to cut down on the possibility of witnesses for the open air murder. It would have taken a while for one person to completely dismember Cromwell.

Lagarde was glad they’d found the head, though he was sorry for the young woman who found it in the dumpster when she took out the spa’s trash. She apparently screamed for an hour, and was still shaking when he talked to her three days later. They had been able to run the dead guy’s head shot and find him on the motor vehicle database. The address on Cromwell’s driver’s license was no good. The sheriff had a deputy run up there to notify next of kin. Some family named Goode lived in that trailer up on the mountain, and they had no idea who Ben Cromwell was. But they were renters, and it was likely Cromwell had stayed in the trailer before they moved into it. A quick check of criminal records showed that Cromwell had been picked up for possession with intent to sell a few times and did a two-year stint for burglary at the state pen. He’d been a regular at the regional jail, six months at a time on and off for violating his various probations. It was likely he had gotten away with a few other bad acts that no one could pin on him. None of the many addresses on his sheet panned out. The guy must have been shacking up with someone.

It was two weeks before they put the grandmother’s missing report together with the murder victim. The deputy who did the notification told Lagarde that Cromwell’s grandmother had put her hand to her chest, exhaled quickly, and said, So that’s that. I knew it would come to something like this. She didn’t shed a tear, the deputy said.

Sam Lagarde stirred the dirt with the tip of his latex-gloved finger, more to help him think than to find anything. He touched something hard, metal. He looked down, carefully cleared the area the way an archaeologist might clear dirt from an ancient pot shard at a dig, and saw an earring, a gold hoop with a self-closing back. His first thought was that a woman lost it in some passionate clinch in the dark. Then he thought again. Maybe what he had on his hands was a crime of passion. He held the earring up to the light. Sun glinted off a beveled surface. The earring had a certain heft. It’s expensive, solid gold. Not exactly the kind of jewelry a lady would wear to a murder. Unless she was so rich that this was her weekend warrior accessory. He would have to conjugate a whole other set of verbs. This murder was not about a gambling debt or drugs.

Chapter Two

April 2013

Ben Cromwell was the kind of handsome that made women stop in their tracks and emit a sound from deep in their diaphragms, something like, Woof. They watched him from the corners of their eyes. They watched as he walked by them. They watched his tight, high, round ass as he walked away. Transfixed. Transported to the state of yes, take me, whatever you want in spite of the loud shrieking warning in their heads from the part of the brain that put two-and-two together when the so-called conscious mind wasn’t paying attention.

When Cromwell smiled, perfectly formed lips revealing perfect white teeth, women waited, their breath held, to get a glimpse of his tongue. His green eyes seemed to shimmer when he smiled. Women thought it a privilege to be on the runway of that smile, at least for their first few months, at least until they’d bought him a television, Xbox, thousand-dollar bike, leased an apartment or car, or bought him some other bauble he had to have and then discovered he’d pawned it for cash he said he needed for something they didn’t need to know about. Until he threw them out of the double-wide they’d paid for, drove off in the car they bought him and hung up on them when they called to confront him … they usually stopped paying for his phone service after that.

But for the brief few months of bliss, until he told them to kiss off and leave him alone, they thought they’d died and gone to heaven. He interrupted their work with his calls, Hey, there, sweet thing, thinking of me? he’d say. I’ve been thinking about you. They’d leave wherever they were, in the middle of a shift, mid-brief, with a backlog of patients waiting, and run to meet him wherever he wanted—parking lot of the hospital, in the custodian closet at a hotel, the bathroom behind the bar—and breathlessly shimmy out of their panties, wet with longing for his mouth and breath and unsheathed dick. He stayed with no woman longer than six months; most for far less. Later, after abandonment, or after the test, his women hated themselves. The smart ones hated themselves earlier, around the second time he hit them up for cash, because he was a little short and wanted to buy his grandmother some roses for her birthday. Some still thought they could tame him, given more time. Some, years later, were still waiting for him to come back.

Evelyn Foster met Ben Cromwell in the hospital when he was recovering from pneumonia he contracted during the induced coma the resident put him in to get him through detox. Evelyn knew all of this when she approached his room. She had checked his electronic patient files. She had all the facts of his life in a nutshell right in front of her. This was his fourth admission to this hospital in two years. Overdosed, AIDs crisis, Detox—those were the admitting causes. His records said everything about this patient. Her only purpose in going into his room was to get his signature on a Medicaid application, since he had told admitting, between long lapses of consciousness, that he had no residence, no job, and no family locally. He said his parents were dead and he had no siblings or other living relatives.

There was some light coming in through the curtains, but the private room was dark. The beige walls and white linoleum floors seemed to disappear in the dusk. Cromwell was lying back on the pillows, his eyes closed, breathing calmly. Evelyn noted how long his black eyelashes seemed against his pale cheeks. He opened his eyes and looked straight into hers. He smiled slowly. It seemed to Evelyn, absurd as it was, that the light came on in the room.

What’s your name, pretty lady, Cromwell asked, and where have they been hiding you?

Evelyn looked down at her chart. Her cheeks pinked. She shouldn’t be so easy. She fumbled for the pen she kept under the clip on the board. Mr. Cromwell, I’ve brought you the Medicaid paperwork. It’s all filled out. You just need to sign right here by the X.

She turned the clipboard toward him, pushed the bed tray closer to his chest so he could rest the document on the tray to sign it and offered him her pen. He slid his finger over hers as he accepted the pen.

You smell good, he said. In fact, you are the best thing I’ve smelled in two weeks. He smiled again then looked down to sign the paper.

His signature’s large and looping, like the signature of someone with great confidence. It’s Chanel. He looked confused. The perfume, she said, it’s Chanel. Chance, it’s called.

I’ll take that chance, he said and grinned at her. You’re the kind of woman that makes me want to get out of bed and take a shower, he said. The comment didn’t make any sense but somehow Evelyn’s heart missed a beat. Was he saying that she alone could save him, restore him to life? Of course, that was absurd.

Thank you, Mr. Cromwell, she said, hugging the clipboard to her chest. If you want, I can help you find resources you’ll need when you are ready to leave the hospital, connect you to DHHS. She was rushing through her usual spiel. That’s part of my duties as the social worker here. You can come down to my office on the first floor when you’re ambulatory and we’ll talk about what you are going to do next. She backed out of the room.

Evelyn leaned against the wall in the corridor. She seemed to be out of breath. Her cheeks were hot. Her hands trembled. Nurse Evans looked up from the desk and said, You’ll want to use that antibiotic cleaner on the wall right there.

Evelyn looked down at her hands. What was Evans talking about? She hadn’t given Cromwell any care. Then she noticed the sign on the door that indicated that anyone dealing with this patient should wear a mask and gloves. She shrugged and walked slowly through the double doors at the end of the corridor. She was likely never going to see this patient again. There was no reason to worry about contagion of any sort. After all, no bodily fluids had been exchanged. The thought made her flush again. She took the stairs down to her office to work out the sudden surge of energy that coursed through her limbs.

Chapter Three

March 30, 2014, 10 a.m.

Sam Lagarde believed he should get better acquainted with Ben Cromwell’s grandmother. Remote as it seemed, she might know something, have a name on a piece of paper, have met someone recently who threatened Cromwell. Maybe the guy borrowed money from someone he shouldn’t have, someone who had now approached his grandmother. All Lagarde was looking for was a lead. It wasn’t his intention to make friends.

He pulled into the parking space marked Visitor in front of a row of relatively new townhouses north of Martinsburg. Falling Waters was the name of the unincorporated area. Close enough to I-70, Hagerstown and Frederick to attract young professionals at the start of their careers as well as retired transplants not yet ready to give up their favorite shopping haunts in suburban Maryland. Lagarde surveyed the area around the grandmother’s end unit. These weren’t the cheap tin-box-looking row houses gobbled up by the new slum lords looking to turn them into instant rentals. This was a nice solid house, three-stories, brick, with a one-car garage and neatly trimmed boxwood and azalea bushes. There were sheer curtains in the front bay window. Lagarde wasn’t sure what he expected, but it wasn’t this middle-class abode. Again, he found himself recalibrating his view of Cromwell, as if by association the victim’s own personality had changed. Based on this neighborhood, Ben Cromwell was an innocent victim felled by bloodthirsty villains. If Lagarde was starting from square one on his victim, he’d be looking for motive.

Lagarde had to admit he belonged to the tribe of police officers who thought that low-life criminals came from low-life criminal families, setting aside for a minute the ultra-rich, one-percenter criminals whose ability to avoid capture and prosecution was completely different from regular folks. Whether it was nature or nurture, rich or poor, crime seemed to run in families. At least, that’s what he believed, what his experience taught him. Sure, there was the occasional rich kid with an aberrant psychosis, a sense of entitlement, and powerful parents who kept his misdeeds covered up for as long as they could, but for your everyday crime, you could often look at the parents and see the seeds of the deed. He could be wrong, but he didn’t think so. It remained to be seen which kind of criminal did this murder. He rang the door bell and stepped back to look around the neighborhood. Very quiet. No one hanging around outside. No garbage piling up in front of anyone’s house. No rusting cars up on blocks in the front yard. ‘These were people who kept themselves to themselves,’ as his own grandmother used to say.

The door was opened by a slender white-haired woman wearing jeans, a long green sweater, and a yellow silk scarf looped twice around her slender neck. She wore yellow socks, no shoes. Her ears were not pierced. She wore no jewelry of any kind, Lagarde noticed, not even a watch. If she was wearing makeup, it was very subtly applied. If Lagarde had a notion that a family member was involved in the murder, this woman was not the one. Lagarde guessed that she could not be Cromwell’s biological grandmother. Even if she had her own child at twelve, she wouldn’t be old enough to have a thirty-year-old grandson. At least, that’s how he figured it. Lagarde doubted the woman standing in front of him had reached what he liked to call his own ‘heavy middle age.’ Her hair must have turned white prematurely. He introduced himself.

Mrs. Wilson? Beverly Wilson? I’m Detective Sam Lagarde. He held out his credentials to her. She looked down at the photo and badge he presented and nodded. I’m investigating the murder of your grandson, Ben Cromwell.

Lagarde had learned a long time ago not to beat around the bush. People would deal with their emotions and there was always something to be learned by watching them react to the facts. He did not hold out his hand for a shake, but rather inclined slightly, something like a bow but not quite.

Oh, yes, she said. Come inside. Would you like a cup of tea? I was just going to have one.

She stepped aside, held the door open for him and closed it behind him. She gestured to the stairs, indicating he should go up. It seemed almost as if she expected him. On the main level, she pointed to the flowered chintz-covered chairs near the green velvet sofa in the living room. Lagarde selected one, surprisingly comfortable. She walked into the adjacent kitchen, opened a cabinet and took out a red mug to match the one already on the counter. Lagarde noted that the counter was black granite. The cabinets appeared to be hardwood, not composite. The house was very clean.

Are you particular about your tea or will black tea do for you? she asked.

Whatever you have is fine, Lagarde said. He noted hardwood floors covered with colorful wool rugs both in the living room and dining room that opened on the other side of the kitchen. Looked like the dining room might have been an add-on, what the builders called a bump out. The living room was uncluttered. A few original paintings hung on each wall. There were few knickknacks and no personal photographs in the space. On the coffee table was a red blown glass vase with glass stems and leaves snaking out of it. The piece looked like it came from an old Star Trek set of an alien planet populated with oddly shaped, brightly colored succulents and tropical flowers. An image of Captain Kirk embracing an alien beauty in a skimpy garment rose in his mind. He quickly dismissed it. Stick to your inventory, he scolded himself. A quilt hung on the wall going up the stairs. The house looked like a model home to him, or as if someone lived here only temporarily.

Cream or lemon? she asked.

Nothing in it, he said.

Beverly Wilson brought out the mugs on a teak tray with a plate of delicious looking chocolate covered cookies. There was no way she actually ate cookies like this, Lagarde’s mind wandered, looking at her slender legs as she sat down on the sofa and crossed them.

These are the cookies that Ben liked, she said, as if she had heard his comment. Might as well use them up.

Lagarde marveled at how little emotion she showed as she said that. He took a sip of his tea and lowered the mug to a coaster on the glass coffee table centered between the two chairs and the sofa.

Ben was living with you? he asked. Are his parents dead?

Oh, no, they’re alive, she said. They live in Maryland. Ben just used to tell everyone they were dead to get the attention, or get something, or maybe get even with them. They are just dead to him. When they stopped giving him money and cars, he started saying they were dead.

Lagarde began to wonder if there was something clinically wrong with Mrs. Wilson. Maybe she was sedated. She was too unemotional. It was as if she were talking about someone who wasn’t remotely related to her, someone she had read about in a newspaper.

After you’ve been hurt a lot, Mr. Lagarde, you learn how to keep your feelings to yourself, she said. This time, there was a slight tremor in her hand as she put her mug down on the table.

Lagarde was becoming accustomed to the idea that she could read his mind. Was he living here with you? he asked again.

Well, I wouldn’t call it living here. He usually called me once a week. Sometimes he came for a few days when he couldn’t find anyone else to impose on. He ran out of friends’ couches a few years ago. I keep, kept, a room for him.

Lagarde watched her face as she seemed to think about whether to say more. People had difficulty with silence, he knew. They would fill it with chatter that sometimes was useful.

He doesn’t have a key to the house though, she continued. He has to, had to, call me and ask first, and I have to be here the entire time he’s here. This was just a failsafe, so he wouldn’t freeze to death sleeping on the street. You can look at the room, if you want. I did have it cleaned recently, including the carpet. You can look through whatever he left, though, if it will help you. I haven’t done anything with his stuff.

She stood and led the way up the second set of stairs. On the landing she pointed to the room and stood by the door as Lagarde went into the bedroom. There was a double bed, stripped down to the mattress, a small dresser, a night stand with a lamp, and a closet. The walls were painted a muted platinum color; the trim a creamy white. As she had said, the room was cleaned. Even the white blinds on the two windows that faced the townhouse backyard were sparkling. Lagarde wondered how dirty it had been, what the cleaning removed. He opened the closet.

Chapter Four

December 1999

It was one in the morning a few weeks before Christmas when Ben Cromwell, at age fifteen, decided to rob his parents. It was the first time he had thought of it that way. Before this moment, he had only thought he was taking what he needed. He needed money, some for dope and some to buy that heavy silver chain he’d seen at the pawn shop the other day when he took in his father’s video camera to get a few bucks. Man, he would look so cool in that chain. He looked in the mirror over his dresser just to verify that the chain would enhance his handsome looks. Yeah. That was the thing. He needed it. That was all.

The parents were fast asleep; their bedroom door locked. Even if they heard him moving around the house, they would think he got up to get a drink of water. They are unbelievably ‘slow.’ He’d been pulling dollars out of his father’s wallet and his stepmother’s purse for years and they never noticed. They had no clue. Well, maybe his stepmother had a clue, but his dad never believed her. He overheard his dad telling her she was psychotic. He knew they were talking about him. His stepmother’s voice had that low, intense, shaky quality to it, as if she were spitting out bullets. He had no compunctions about taking their cash, but tonight he had need for more cash than they carried; he had an itch he just had to scratch. He was headed to Baltimore, to a part of the city called Mondawmin Mall; heard they had the best deal on crack there, guys just standing on street corners handing it out to whoever drove up. He and his posse were going. They figured they would get enough to party and then sell the rest around town. Make back their outlay. It would be an adventure, like his father was always telling him he should have, just not in a canoe carrying a backpack and going miles into nowhere where nothing ever happened.

He grabbed his back pack and walked up the darkened stairs from his bedroom in the finished basement to the living room. He grabbed all the CDs in the rack by the player. His stepmother had all this classical music, folk singers, blues and jazz crap. Some yuppies would want that. He opened the closet in the hall and took his father’s Minolta camera and long zoom lens. His father got this camera when he was young. There were dozens of boxes of photographs taken with it. Time to get a new one, Dad. Cromwell’s pack was now heavy. He heard his friend Carl’s car idling next to the house. He walked through the kitchen, opened the side door, threw his pack in the back of the car, and whispered to Carl, Hey, man, give me a hand in here. Got a few things that won’t fit in my pack.

Together they took the computer off the desk in the office, the television in the living room, and the turntable. Cromwell looked around. Too bad the bitch kept her jewelry in the bedroom. I’ll have to come back for that. Next time. He’d need to stay away long enough for his father to get frantic about his being missing and then the guy would practically beg him on bended knee to come home. He could count on that. One thing he had learned: the suckers always beg.

Chapter Five

August 2013

The first time Violet Gold ever set eyes on Ben Cromwell was when he sauntered up to her desk in the Legal Aid office. He was wearing a worn leather jacket, his checked shirt outside his pants, over-sized chinos, and some very fancy red leather shoes. His dark hair was buzz-cut short and she saw the tattoo on his left ring finger, a Chinese symbol he later told her meant love. Much later, when she looked it up, she discovered the symbol stood for chaos.

He sat down in the plastic chair in front of her desk, handed her the intake form he’d filled out, and without introduction said, I want to sue my parents.

Violet leaned back in her chair, a movement she forced herself to execute because she wanted to lean forward. Sitting in the chair opposite her was the handsomest man she had ever seen in her life. Her brain, synthesizing quickly the way she was trained to do in law school, took in classic features and model-thin body … and a spark of something else more dangerous. Those eyes. She looked down at the paperwork to regain her composure. On the form, Cromwell had written that he was twenty-nine, lived alone, had no job and no means of support. His last job was as a waiter at a local restaurant two years earlier. He was not in school and apparently had no education beyond high school and a few classes at the community college. She wondered if he was claiming his parents had abused him when he was young. Perhaps he’d been in therapy and had what psychologists called recovered memories.

Violet said, Why do you want to sue your parents?

Failure to support me, he said flatly.

She had to hold back an inclination to laugh. She looked at the piece of paper. You are twenty-nine, right? she asked.

Well, yeah, that was the age I was when I got this idea. I just turned thirty a month ago, he said.

So you’re thirty-years-old.

Yeah, yes. thirty.

Violet amended the paperwork with his correct age. She didn’t let herself notice that the man in front of her lied and didn’t flinch when caught. When did they stop supporting you?

Maybe a year ago, a little longer, I think. My stepmom is the one who talked Dad into it. Someone told me I could sue her for alienation of affection. He was sending me regular money every month before then and paying for my rent, phone, electric, clothing and food. You know, all the necessities, and now he’s not giving me anything. I mean, he’s responsible for me, isn’t he?

Violet leaned forward across the desk and looked at Cromwell carefully. She needed to ask the next question gently. She didn’t want to upset him. Have you been declared incompetent or unable to care for yourself by a doctor or a court?

She wasn’t sure she had worded that question simply or clearly enough. She felt a great rush of sympathy for him. A young man who was developmentally disabled thrown out by his parents with no support, no provisions made for his care, it was beyond cruel.

No, nothing like that, Cromwell said, seeming angry at being asked the question. His green eyes flashed at her. I graduated from regular high school—I wasn’t in the class with droolers—and I got good grades in those classes I took in community college. There’s nothing wrong with my brain. But they’re my folks. They have an obligation to take care of me, don’t they? Like, all of my life, right?

Violet sighed and sat up straight. I’ll have to research this, she said. Off the top of my head, if you are not physically or mentally disabled, I’m not sure that your parents are legally required to support you once you’re an adult.

Cromwell seemed crestfallen. He looked down at his hands, looked up at her like a puppy dog that had just been shamed by its master. I am sick, he said, his voice tightened as if the admission cost him something. I’m trying to get disability from social services. Tears welled in his eyes. His lower lip quivered. It was all Violet could do to not reach out and stroke his cheek. I don’t know what I’m going to do, then. Where am I going to sleep tonight?

You mean you don’t have anywhere to sleep tonight?

No. I’m totally out of cash, and not a single one of my friends has any place for me. I’ve already been on the phone to everyone. He put his hand, with its long fingers, over his face.

Violet looked around the office, trying to put together a plan for this man who was only a few years older than she was, for whom life just hadn’t worked out right.

Okay, I’m going to call Cheryl Sykes at the Rescue Mission and get you a bed for tonight. They have some rules, but I don’t think you’ll have a problem with them. The mission is only a few blocks from here. You can walk there and get yourself situated.

No, I can’t go to the mission, he said.

Of course you can. It’s clean. There are people there. You’ll get a meal and a place to sleep and Cheryl will put you together with social services. They can help you get a job. You can stay at the mission for six months while you work and put aside money for a room of your own.

No. I’m not going to the mission, he said. He stood up, and turned away as if to walk out of the office. If that’s all you can do, then we’re done.

Why can’t you go to the mission?

They steal your stuff there. They have fights. I’ve been there before. It’s bad.

Violet thought she would weep. In her short time at Legal Aid since graduating from law school and passing the bar, she thought she had been told every kind of problem caused by poverty, ignorance or intentional harm. Obviously not. How could his parents just abandon him? What sickness did he have? Didn’t they care what happened to him? Somehow, now, she felt personally responsible for him. His plight stirred something in her she had never felt before.

Tell you what, she said. Go wait in the public library until 5 p.m. and then come back here to meet me. We’ll figure this out together. She felt better immediately. His face had brightened at her words. He smiled at her as if she were the best thing since sliced bread and he knew which side to butter.

Chapter Six

March 30, 2014, 10:30 a.m.

Sam Lagarde pulled the duffel bag off the floor inside Ben Cromwell’s bedroom closet. There were four clean, ironed shirts on hangers in the closet. On the shelf above the shirts were several shoe boxes. Giuseppe Zanotti was one of the brand names printed on a box. Another box had the name Wings + Horns on it. Armando Cabral was stamped on another. No Nikes for this guy. He would have to research those brands but he was pretty sure that there was no way a guy like Cromwell, who had no job or evidence of a trust fund, could afford them. Cromwell had either stolen the shoes, someone’s credit cards, or made very bad use of large sums of money—possibly from drug sales—money that could have paid a few months rent somewhere instead of scrounging off his grandmother. The boxes did give Lagarde another lead, though. He should show the guy’s photo around some high end shoe stores and see if anything popped up. Like a murderer or two. Would someone kill for a pair of shoes?

Lagarde looked over at Mrs. Wilson. She seemed to be lost in her own thoughts, and a little sad. But maybe he was just reading into her quiet composure. She didn’t say anything. She had stopped reading his mind.

Did you buy him these shoes? he asked.

Me? No. I have no idea where he got them, she said.

Do you mind if I look through this bag? Lagarde asked.

No. Go ahead. It’s just his junk. The things were in the dresser. He brought the bag in the last time I saw him. I was going to give everything to Goodwill when I was ready. I only got as far as putting it all in the duffel bag.

This was the first time Lagarde sensed that she might be grieving for her grandson. Lagarde spilled the contents of the bag out onto the bare mattress. It would be easier to look through the stuff that way and there would be fewer surprises, just in case Cromwell kept pet snakes. Lagarde pulled a pair of light blue Nitrile gloves from his pocket and put them on. He quickly itemized the most obvious items: an iPod, a cell phone, three thumb drives in an unopened package, a Samsung tablet, three different chargers, the remote from a television not in evidence in the room, one of those Playstation game devices, four rolled up t-shirts, two pairs of jeans, a very fancy bottle labeled No. 1 by Clive Christian in London, an expensive perfume. Lagarde flashed on the expensive gold earring he had found at the site. He had to find that person. He had sent the earring to the lab to see if there was anything they could pick up from it.

Tumbled out onto the bed with everything else was a heavy watch with the name Breitling engraved on the back along with words in French saying it was made in Switzerland. Either Cromwell was an accomplished shoplifter or someone had been very nice to him. Probably the latter. Shoplifting was work and he was beginning to get the idea that Cromwell did not like work. There also were no stores in Martinsburg that carried these items, Lagarde would bet on it. Maybe someone took Cromwell on a little trip to New York City, or they were comfortable with online shopping. Maybe that someone had texted or emailed Cromwell and could be found on the cell phone. He hoped the data on the phone could be recovered and that the SIM card was still in place. The state forensics lab might be able to pull useful information from it, like the last person Cromwell talked to. The other thing that was interesting about this loot, and that was how Lagarde was now regarding it, was that Cromwell had not been wearing or carrying any of it. He was storing it here in his grandmother’s house; the way someone else might store important documents or cash in a safe deposit box. This was his safe house in more ways than one. Lagarde had a feeling Cromwell never told anyone about his grandmother.

Lagarde picked up a pair of DIESEL stone-washed jeans from the bed and somewhat reluctantly put his hand in the front right pocket. Nothing. Left pocket. Nothing. Might as well go for broke, he thought, and put his hand in the back pocket. There was a key. He pulled out the key and examined it; looked like a standard issue post office box key. But which post office? There were several USPS branches between Martinsburg and Charles Town and a few private mail box store front businesses.

Did Ben have a post office box?

I don’t know, Beverly Wilson said. Maybe. He didn’t get any mail here.

I’m going to take this key, Lagarde said. I’ll find the box, if there is one. I’ll let you know what I find.

She nodded.

He dropped the key into a small baggie he drew from his pocket and jotted the date, location found, and Cromwell’s name on the bag with a pen he carried in his inside breast pocket.

Do you mind if I take the bag and the things that are in it? There may be more information here that will help me find who committed the murder. He looked at her carefully. I’ll bring it all back.

It’s okay, she said. I don’t need any of it. You can dispose of it. I don’t need souvenirs. That last comment sounded bitter to Lagarde. She looked over the things scattered on the bed. How did he afford those things? He never had any money. He was always asking for fifty dollars. She shook her head. We didn’t give him any cash because he would just get in trouble with drugs … Her voice trailed off.

Thanks, Mrs. Wilson. I won’t bother you anymore right now. I’ll call you if I need something else.

As Lagarde added the first shoe box to the duffel bag, the top came off. Inside the box, neatly stacked in rows, were hundred dollar bills. Lagarde opened the other two boxes. More stacks of hundreds. He looked over at Mrs. Wilson. Is this your money? he said.

No, I have no idea where he got it, Beverly Wilson said. Her hand was on her chest, as if she was having a pain. Her face paled. Where would he get all that money? She sat down on the edge of the bed. I’ve never known him to have money and not spend it immediately. She shook her head.

I’m going to take it as evidence, Mrs. Wilson, Lagarde said. Maybe this is what his killer was after.

She nodded, stood and walked out of the bedroom as if Lagarde wasn’t there. He heard her start down the steps.

Lagarde put the tops back on the shoeboxes, put the boxes in the duffel bag and walked down the two flights of stairs carrying it. At the front door on the bottom level, he stopped in front of Beverly Wilson who was standing there holding the door open and thanked her again. Oh, one more thing, he said. What’s the name of Ben’s parents?

Cromwell, she said. Robert and Sarah Cromwell. Sarah, Ben’s stepmother, is my daughter. They live in Columbia, Maryland. Do you want their phone number?

Good idea, Lagarde said. Would you write it down for me?

Beverly Wilson walked over to a table in the foyer, pulled the pad she kept by the phone there closer to her and wrote her daughter’s phone number. She tore the piece of paper from the pad and walked back to Lagarde at the front door. Handing him the paper, her hand shook just a little. Lagarde took the piece of paper, gave a little nod and walked toward his car. He put the duffel bag in the trunk of his car and put the piece of paper with the Cromwell’s phone number in a small plastic bag. He now had her prints to run, just in case there was something in her past he needed to know. He took off his gloves, opened the car door and looked back at the house to see if she was watching him. The door was closed and she wasn’t watching him from the window. He felt a twinge of disappointment and shrugged it off.

Chapter Seven

March 30, 2014, 11 a.m.

Beverly Wilson closed the door behind Detective Lagarde and walked up the stairs to the living room. She had a brightly lit studio with comfortable chairs on the bottom level, but somehow she didn’t want to be where Lagarde had last stood. She needed to shake him off. She went upstairs and sat on the living room sofa and put her hands over her face. A few moments passed as she gathered herself together. Her mind re-ran the interview with the detective. He was a relatively small man, not taller than five-feet-eight, was very trim and had thinning hair that must have been blonde once, piercing blue eyes—pleasant features that would have been called handsome when he was young. His face had worn well and his clothes seemed unusual to her for a detective, more like the horsey set’s attire: corduroy slacks, knitted vest, blue work shirt, tan barn jacket with a corduroy collar, and brown work boots. I wonder if he has horses.

She had liked having horses on the Burkittsville farm she shared with her husband Tom. Known only in the wider world because of the Blair Witch movie, Burkittsville’s quaint eighteenth century obscurity had been their haven for decades. Tom farmed and she was a farmer’s wife. She had loved that life, everything about it—being a wife and friend to a tinkerer, someone who would wake up at 5 a.m. with a solution to a problem in his head, throw on his clothes and head out to his workshop to put pieces of metal, wood or leather together in a way that would make a broken thing work, whether it was a broken tractor, a disintegrating lock on the gate or the furnace. She loved the freedom of having hundreds of acres of her own land to roam and to do whatever she wanted inside their house and in her own kitchen garden. She loved cooking, cleaning and gardening; the chores other women groused about made up the structure of her life. She loved bringing up her children in that home, even though she could see that by the time they were fifteen, both her son and daughter were itching to be somewhere else, anywhere else.

Being with Tom on the farm was the life she craved. It was everything to her and it was all gone. His long, agonizing sickness and death took that life away from her. She could not work the farm alone and she didn’t want to bring in some stranger as a partner. It was best to sell it all and move on. At least, that’s how it seemed to her three years ago. Now she had a sense that Sam Lagarde could give her a glimpse of what she’d lost.

She knew she was thinking about Lagarde as a way to delay doing what she should do. This would be the second sad call to her daughter in as many days. The first was yesterday when the deputy notified her about Ben’s death. She had to tell Sarah and Robert right away, but it was the last thing she wanted to do. She had paced her house for a while trying to figure out how to do it. She debated getting in her car and driving to their home in Maryland. She wished she had someone to ask. If only her husband were alive. In the end, she dialed Sarah’s landline and just blurted out what she had been told when her daughter answered the phone. In the middle of her third sentence, Sarah had begun sobbing uncontrollably.

Robert had taken the phone from Sarah and said, Beverly, are you ok? I can’t understand anything Sarah is saying. Is something wrong? Can you tell me again?

Beverly had tried to be very calm. The police have just informed me that Ben is dead, she said. The sheriff’s deputy said he was murdered at the race track. In Charles Town … two weeks ago. He apologized for not telling me sooner. They had trouble identifying him. The deputy showed me a photograph. It was Ben. She paused, exhausted from saying all that.

There was a long silence. Robert said, God. No. God, and dropped the phone.

It was some time before Sarah came back on the line. Beverly could hear what could only be called howling in the background. Mom, Sarah said in a barely audible whisper, I’ll have to call you back later.

No wonder Beverly was delaying. She walked into the kitchen, picked up the phone and dialed. Hey, sweetie, she said into the receiver, the detective was here. About Ben. Do you want to know anything?

She listened to her daughter Sarah say no, she didn’t want to know anything. Beverly waited a few seconds, in case Sarah wanted to say something else. She had learned how to wait a long time ago, to rein in her desire to fix people’s problems.

What did you tell him? Sarah asked.

Nothing, Beverly said. I answered his very simple questions. I think he was inspecting my house, and me. He seemed to think Ben was living with me. I did tell him that you and Robert are alive. He thought you were dead, for some reason. His name is Sam Lagarde. He asked for your phone number. He will probably visit you.

Her daughter said nothing.

How is Robert? Beverly asked.

Stricken.

Beverly heard her daughter choke back a sob.

He blames himself. He blames me, Sarah whispered.

I’m sorry, sweetheart, so sorry. What can I do for you?

Beverly remembered her daughter’s wedding day, her girl’s radiance and joy, how handsome Robert had been standing at the front of an old stone chapel in front of solid wooden pews decorated by flowers, light streaming in through the stained glass windows. And then she remembered how his ten-year-old son Ben had walked away from the wedding the minute the vows were finished, simply walked out of the chapel. How Robert ran after the boy leaving his bride standing there alone at the chapel door accepting congratulations from friends and family as if they planned it that way, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her new husband to be standing on the lawn fifty feet away from her holding onto his son. To Beverly, a malevolent spirit darkened the day for a few minutes. She hoped her daughter had the strength and grace for what would inevitably follow, but never had she imagined the many ways Ben would invent to torture his parents.

Nothing, Mom, Sarah said, breaking into Beverly’s thoughts. There’s nothing to do. We’ve been waiting for some horrible telephone call for years. Now it’s come. Sarah was quiet again for a while. Did the detective say when they would release the body for burial? Her voice shook.

Oh, no, I didn’t even think to ask. But he’ll be back, he said. He took the things that Ben left here.

I have to go, Mom, Sarah said suddenly.

Beverly hoped that talking to her mother was not seen as treachery these days by Sarah’s husband. Okay, sweetie. I love you.

Me, too, Mom, Sarah whispered.

Beverly waited for the click on the other end and hung up.

She stood in the kitchen looking out the window over the sink. The end unit townhouse gave her more windows. That’s why she chose it when she downsized from her cherished, Victorian farmhouse. In the far distance she could see the undulating ridge of the mountains, dark blue at this time of day. She would have to draw comfort from that.

Chapter Eight

February 2013

Ilise Vander stood outside her parent’s modest house on Kentucky Avenue, her phone at her ear. This was her fifth call to that bastard. He was an hour late and hadn’t even texted. It was cold out; she was dressed for a rave. There were goose bumps on her belly. The gel on her spiked up hair was turning to icicles and her thong was jammed up her ass from pacing. She was typing her tenth text, when there he was, getting out of someone’s car, walking over to her like he was prince charming or something coming up in a chariot.

Hey there, pretty girl, Ben Cromwell leaned down, put his arm behind her back, and scooped her up toward him. He kissed her, gave her a little tongue, pulled back and looked her up and down. You are definitely the best thing I have seen all day.

You are an hour late, Ilise yelled at him, shaking him off, backing up, stamping her foot. Her large hoop rhinestone earrings shook for emphasis. Where have you been? I’ve been freezing my ass off out here waiting for you.

Aw, c’mon, don’t be like that, girl. I’ve had a day you wouldn’t believe. Got me some dough now, though, and we are going to party. Ryan’s gonna drive us over to the warehouse.

I don’t want to go anymore. And wait, is that glitter eye shadow you have on your cheek? Have you been smooching some other girl?

No, nothing like that. I just stopped off at my cousin’s. It’s her birthday. I just gave her a hug with her present.

You have a cousin in Martinsburg?

Nah, down in Maryland. You don’t know her. That’s why I’m late. You know me, driving sixty miles like a crazy-assed fool to get here so you wouldn’t be mad at me; keep my word and all that. Cromwell reached out and took her hand, lifted her fingers to his mouth and kissed each one.

You know my mother has been watching me out the window. You know she hates you. Now I’m going to have to listen to weeks of her telling me what a creep you are cuz you kept me waiting all this time. She was running out of objections. I’ve got to work tomorrow. My shift starts at eleven in the morning. I’ll be on my feet all day cutting hair. I can’t be out all night.

No problem, no problem little girl, Cromwell crooned. I’ll get you home in time to take a shower and change your clothes. He put his hand on her ass and steered her toward the car.

Ilise had a bad feeling she would be better off going back inside the house and never seeing him again, but she just couldn’t help herself. This was the man of her dreams, after all.

Chapter Nine

March 31, 2014

Every once in a while there’s a little break in a case that makes the bread crumbs up ahead a little easier to spot. The post office box key he found in the back pocket of Ben Cromwell’s expensive jeans came from a Mailboxes Etc. store on Queen Street in Martinsburg. It was the kind of business that gave you a street address even though you only had a box. Lagarde discovered it using old-fashioned shoe leather detecting, which is to say he spotted it by accident driving across town, pulled over, parked and went inside.

Martinsburg’s downtown was four blocks long and two blocks deep of brick and stone façade buildings no taller than three stories with many store fronts empty. Some had been turned over into tattoo parlors or bodegas, alongside the courthouse, some federal offices, and a few brave entrepreneurs trying to survive with boutique enterprises like candy, art, pottery and restaurants. More than three times larger than Charles Town, and the largest city in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle, Martinsburg still didn’t register as a blip on the list of small cities in the U.S. A thriving mill town in the nineteenth century, Martinsburg was a city in its last death throes, or at the beginning of a revival. Lagarde wouldn’t hazard a guess which way the town was going, but there were streets where he made sure his vehicle was locked when he drove on them.

The Mailboxes Etc. store front looked more like a failing business than a prosperous one. Windows and floors almost always gave away whether a place was well managed or not. The front window hadn’t been cleaned in a long time and the floor looked like no one had done anything about it since the building was built. Lagarde held up the key he found in Cromwell’s pants pocket. Will this key work here? he