Dana Stabenow - Better To Rest

Diana Prince caught a call just as she was headed out the door at the end of the day. Someone had made a charge of child abuse against Bernadette Kusegta, who ran a small day-care center out of her home. The complainant, one Gloria Crow, accused Bernadette of interfering with her three-year-old daughter, Tammie. Kusegta, plump and attractive, with her black hair permed into a mass of large curls, looked white beneath her brown skin. She sat, unmoving, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond the large room decorated in primary colors. It was heaped with toys and books, and a small inflatable swimming pool filled with about four inches of water sat on the floor, one lone rubber duck floating in the middle of it.

“Well, go on, arrest her!” Crow said. “What are you waiting for?” She was slender and sharp-featured and vibrating with rage.

“When did you see the marks, ma’am?” Prince said.

“Tonight! When my baby came home! She was crying and holding her bottom!”

“Did she say that Ms. Kusegta had hurt her?”

“No, but who else could have done it? Go on, arrest her! She hurt my baby!”

“You said, ‘When your baby came home,’ ma’am. From that, I’m guessing you didn’t go get her.”

“No! So what?”

“Who did bring your daughter home, Ms. Crow?”

“Leslie did; he picked her up on his way home.”

“Is Leslie your husband?”

“He’s my roommate.”

“What’s his full name?”

“Leslie Clark.”

“And when he brought your daughter home, she was crying and holding her bottom.”

“Yes!”

“And then you looked and found the marks.”

“Yes! I know she did it; she was the only one who could have! Arrest her right now!”

“Where is your daughter now, ma’am?”

“She’s home, of course! I came here as soon as I saw what that bitch did to her!”

“Is Leslie there with her?”

“Of course! Did you think I’d leave my baby all alone?”

Diana flipped her notebook closed. “I’ll need to talk to your daughter, ma’am. Right now.”

They made it in the door before the boyfriend started beating on the little girl again, but only just. He was now in the lockup, protesting his innocence in spite of the similarity in size and shape between his hands and the marks on Tammie’s defenseless little bottom. Bernadette Kusegta’s face had regained some of its natural color, and Gloria Crow was still insisting that Leslie could never have done such a thing, that she would have known if he could, that she would never have let him in her house or left her daughter with him if she’d known. Diana took statements and called Bill Billington for an arraignment at tenA.M. the next morning. It was almost ten before she was through, and she was tired and heartsick and wanted nothing so much as a long, hot bath. Preferably with bubbles, but if no bubbles were to be had she might pour in a bottle of Lysol.

She had her hand on the knob of the door when the phone rang. It would have forwarded to Liam’s cell after the second ring, but she seemed to be constitutionally incapable of walking out on a ringing phone. Cursing herself, she snatched it up. “Alaska State Troopers, Newenham post.”

The voice was loud enough to make her wince away from the receiver. “Ma’am! Ma’am! Please, calm down, I can’t understand a word!”

There was a gulping kind of sob. “Please help me; I think my sister’s dead.”

“What happened to her?”

“Oh, God, Karen, please, Karen, don’t do this, please don’t do this!”

“Ma’am? Where are you?”

“We’re at my mother’s. Please help us, please!”

“Where is your mother’s house, ma’am? Ma’am?”

“Oh, God, I think she’s dead.” The voice dulled and flattened. “Oh, Karen. Oh, Karen.”

“Ma’am?” Diana clenched the phone so hard her arm ached. “I need you to tell me where you are. Ma’am?”

After a long, silent moment, when she thought the caller might have hung up, the woman told her. Diana told her she was coming, called Liam, and called Joe Gould.

She got to Lydia’s house five minutes after Joe and a split second before Liam. The three of them stood once again in Lydia’s kitchen, looking at another body on the same floor.

“Strangled, this time,” Joe said.

“What was your first clue?” Diana said, her voice hollow. Karen’s eyes were open and bulging, her tongue protruded from her mouth, and her throat was one livid bruise.

To Liam’s everlasting shame, his first reaction at the sight was relief. Now Wy would never know what had happened in Lydia’s bedroom.

Joe did not change expression.

This time there had been a fight. The kitchen table and chairs were knocked over, drawers had been pulled out and dumped, cupboards opened and emptied on the floor. Broken dishes and spilled rice crunched underfoot, and the body was coated with powdered chocolate. “Let’s check the rest of the house,” Liam said.

It was trashed. The bed had been ripped apart and the mattress dumped to the floor. The drawers to the filing cabinet had been opened and dumped. The shelves in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom had been swept clean, bottles of Bayer and boxes of Band-Aids and bars of scented soap winding up in the sink or toilet and all over the floor. Betsy Amakuk sat on the couch in the living room, where all the books had been pulled from the shelves. She was weeping into Stan Jr.’s shoulder. Stan Jr. patted her awkwardly. He looked angry. Jerry wasn’t there.

“Somebody was looking for something,” Diana said.

“No shit,” Liam said, and returned to the kitchen. Joe Gould was zipping Karen into a black plastic body bag. “To the airport, Joe, straight to the airport and no stopping.” He dialed Wy’s number on his cell phone. When she answered, he said, “I need you to take the Cessna to Anchorage tonight. Right now, in fact. Can do?”

“Are you coming?”

“Yes. You’ll be transporting a body.” Silence. “Wy?”

“Whose body?” she said, but he got the feeling she was only killing time.

“Karen Tompkins.”

“What?”

“Karen Tompkins, Lydia’s daughter. We just found her. I need to get her body to the ME in Anchorage tonight. Can you take it?”

Another silence. “I- All right. I’ll call Bill to stay with Tim and head for the airport to start pulling seats.”

“Meet you there.” He hung up and looked at Prince. “You know the drill.”

“I do.”

“We’ll do a turnaround and come straight back.”

“Okay.” She was straining toward the door, eager to start questioning the neighbors.

“Go,” he said, and she bolted for the door like the starter pistol had been fired.

“Give me a hand,” Joe said, and Liam went to Karen Tompkins’ black plastic-clad feet. They lifted her easily and bore her from the room. Liam glanced back at the isolated island of faded linoleum in a sea of broken crockery, spilled flatware and a layer of white flour, an eerie reverse print of the dead woman’s body.

They were in the air half an hour later, the second and third rows of seats pulled and stacked in the shed next to the tie-down. “Karen Tompkins?”

“Yeah.”

“Lydia Tompkins’ daughter?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“It looks like somebody strangled her.”

She made a noise of distress. “Why?”

“I don’t know yet.”

The night was clear and calm, and the moon rose in time to light their way through Lake Clark Pass, a narrow gorge hedged about on all sides by very tall, very steep mountains already covered with snow. They landed at Merrill seventy minutes later, to be met by the meat wagon. Brillo Pad was driving.