Deadly Grace

“Humph.”

“So can you tell me exactly what happened here?”

Berglund threw open his hands in a “why not” gesture. “Tuesday night, we got a call about a fire out at Grace Meade’s place. I was the first to arrive on the scene, ahead of the fire trucks. The fire was going strong by then. I found Mrs. Meade and Jillian still inside the house, although Grace was already dead. I got Jillian out, but then the fire spread so fast we couldn’t get her mother’s body out till yesterday.”

“The Chief said you examined Mrs. Meade’s body at the scene before you took the daughter out.”

“Uh-huh. I found it lying in the hall, just outside the kitchen.”

“What did you see as far as signs of trauma, anything like that?”

“There was a fair amount of blood on the front of her sweater, but that was about it. No bruising or any other sign of battery that I could see, although it was pretty dark in there, so I wouldn’t swear to anything. The only light I had to go by was the fire burning in the living room, which was pretty much out of control by then.”

“What was the source of the blood?”

“It looked like she’d taken a wound to the chest. Like I say, it was dark, so I was going half by feel. I noticed her sweater had a tear in it, just here.” Berglund put his fingertips to his furnacesized chest, high and just off-center. “The tear was right in the middle of the blood stain, which I could see clearly because she had on a light-colored sweater and the blood showed up dark.”

“So she was down for pretty much the whole time she bled,” Cruz said, thinking aloud. “If she’d been upright, the entry wound, if that’s what it was, would have been at the top of the stain and the blood would have run down. Was it an entry wound, by the way? Did you turn her over?”

Berglund nodded. “Sort of. The fire was spreading fast, and I knew I needed to get her out of there, so I picked her up and put her over my shoulder to carry her out. Her back was soaked with blood, and when I put my hand there to steady the body, it felt pretty pulpy. Her sweater back was also shredded.” Berglund seemed to shudder at the memory.

Poor guy, Cruz thought. His actions had been pretty heroic, when you came down to it, going into the burning house like that to rescue the women. Like most heroes, he’d probably acted on sheer instinct and adrenaline, revulsion at the ugliness of what he’d found only hitting him afterward, when the initial shock wore off.

“Chief Lunders told me you weren’t able to get the body out, in the end, though.”

“No. I’d already left Jill on the porch when I went back inside to look for Grace. I was trying to get a closer look at the wound when I realized Jill was back and standing right behind me. I didn’t want her to see her mother like that.” Cruz was startled by Berglund’s fist suddenly smacking his thigh. “I had her, dammit! I’d picked her up and I had her. She was sixty-years old, for chrissake, and just a little thing. Even with Jillian to worry about, I could have gotten her out. I could have managed them both.”

Cruz had no doubt the deputy could have easily carried two women out of a burning building. “So what happened?”

“Jillian wouldn’t leave! I tried to drag her out with my free hand, but she kept fighting me. She was disoriented—she’d taken a blow to the head herself, we found out later. And she was half crazy with panic and grief, screaming for her mother.”

“But the mother was definitely dead?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure she was. I didn’t have time to try for a pulse before Jill came back in and flipped out on me, but by the way Grace looked…” His cropped blond head gave a grim shake. “As it was, I had to put her down again and leave her there while I dragged Jillian out a second time. By the time I handed her off to the paramedics, the fire had gotten out of control and I couldn’t get back inside the house. It was only when the ashes finally cooled down that we were able to get in and locate the body. It was in the rubble just off the kitchen, right where I’d left her.”

“Chief Lunders said there was going to be an autopsy.”

Berglund nodded. “It was this morning. County coroner took the body over to Montrose yesterday, but given how badly charred it was, he decided to call in a medical examiner from the State Bureau of Investigation. They’ve got more experience dealing with cases like this.”

“Were they able to determine a cause of death?”

Berglund shook his head. “Not with any degree of certainty. All the flesh and most of the organs were toast.”

“What about all the blood you’d found, and the entry and exit wounds? That would suggest a gunshot wound, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, although, like I said, the body was burned beyond recognition, and they couldn’t find much trajectory evidence. A couple of the interior organs were partly intact—the collapse of the roof eventually smothered some of the fire—but it wasn’t enough to get a clear picture of whether or not she’d been shot. We haven’t found any bullets or spent cartridges at the scene, although your arson guys are keeping an eye out for them. The ME did find a fracture on the breastbone, though, and taken together with what I was able to tell them about the holes in her sweater, he thought it was consistent with the theory that she’d been shot, probably with a fairly large caliber weapon.”

“That would also explain the injury on her back, larger than the entry, which is what you’d expect to find with an exit wound,” Cruz pointed out.

Berglund nodded. “The medical examiner said the position of the fracture on her breastbone was such that the bullet probably hit her left lung, maybe even the heart, although I doubt it, personally.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because there was a hell of a lot of blood. I would have thought that if she’d taken it in the heart, it would have stopped pumping and she wouldn’t have bled out like she did.”

“Not necessarily,” Cruz said. “It would depend on the damage. It might take a few seconds or even minutes for her heart to stop beating completely. And if a bullet’s large caliber, it’ll often make a bloody mess regardless of whether or not the victim dies instantly.” He watched Berglund’s dour expression as the deputy scraped a smear of mud off his pant leg. “Are you beating yourself up here because you think you could have saved Mrs. Meade?” Cruz asked him.

Berglund looked up, then away, self-consciously. “Yeah, maybe, although I guess I knew there wasn’t really a hope in hell. At the autopsy, the ME found that part of the right lung was more or less intact, and he said there was no sign of smoke inhalation in the air sacs.”

“All right then, that’s something, isn’t it? It means Grace Meade had drawn her last breath before the fire even started.”

Berglund frowned. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“And that being the case, it wouldn’t have made any difference whether or not you’d gotten her out.”

Berglund seemed unconvinced. “Maybe. But there’s no saying how long she’d been down. Maybe she could’ve been revived…or something. I don’t know. It just feels like I could’ve handled it better.”

Cruz shifted forward in his seat, elbows on his knees. “Look, Deputy, it seems to me you did plenty. You went into that house and you saved Jillian Meade’s life—not once, but twice. I think you should let yourself off the hook and just focus on your investigation. If Grace Meade was dead before the fire broke out, it means she was murdered and the fire was probably set to cover tracks. I imagine this has to be tough on a lot of people around here, but the evidence is what you need to be focusing on. And it’s your investigation, obviously. I don’t mean to come riding in like some bounty hunter, okay? I asked for the arson team to look things over to make sure there was no confusion about what went down, but I’m not here to step on your toes. All I really want to do is speak to Jillian Meade and clear up some questions about what happened while she was over in England. She gives me her statement, I’m outta here. I’ll send it off to the Brits and that’ll probably be that. Is that okay with you?”

Berglund nodded wearily, like a man who was both exhausted and in over his head. How many murder investigations had he even handled? Cruz wondered. In a town this size, it was a distinct possibility this was his first.

“Talking to Jillian, though,” Berglund said, “that could be a problem.”

“How so? She’s in the hospital here in town, right?”

“Not anymore. They moved her to the regional hospital over in Montrose. The local clinic isn’t equipped to handle a case like hers.”

“I thought she wasn’t that badly hurt.”

“She had a concussion, like I said, but it wasn’t too bad. Mostly it was smoke inhalation they were worried about, but they figured she’d recover fully from that, too. Her mental state is something else, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“She tried to kill herself in the ER in Havenwood.”

Cruz pulled up short. “Chief Lunders never mentioned that.”

“He hadn’t heard about it yet when you talked to him yesterday. Happened early Wednesday morning. The chief was under the weather, and he didn’t get in till after noon. Jill had spent the night in the ER here so they could keep an eye on her breathing. I was there myself till around four in the morning, but she seemed to be resting comfortably. Sometime around dawn, though, when nobody was watching, she apparently woke up and found a syringe in a drawer or something. They said she had it in an artery with her thumb on the plunger when an orderly happened to walk by and spot her. The guy thought fast, luckily. If he hadn’t tackled her, she’d be dead.”

“And now?” Cruz asked.

Berglund’s big hands rubbed his face wearily. “Now they’ve got her locked down on twenty-four-hour suicide watch in the psych ward at Montrose. They kept her heavily sedated for the first twenty-four hours, but they’re trying to back her off the meds now. We can go over later, after we check back with the arson guys, but I wouldn’t count on getting much out of her today if I were you. They say she hasn’t said a word since all this happened.”

Evil never sleeps. It creeps in the night, appearing where it’s least expected, Cruz thought. There’s no sanctuary behind locked doors or the solid edifice of the law. Sooner or later, it finds the vulnerability in any hiding place and worms its way in. All it takes is a small point of weakness, a tiny chink in the wall of social order, a minuscule tear in the fabric of human decency. Even in a small prairie town that dared to tempt the gods and call itself Havenwood, there was no refuge.

“This is it.” Berglund rolled the police cruiser to a stop before the blackened remains of what must have been, if neighboring houses were any indication, a pleasant family home in an pretty neighborhood before it had been put to the torch two nights earlier. Another black-and-white cruiser and a beige Ford Fairlane with the Minnesota state crest on the door were parked in the wide, sweeping driveway.

“I don’t know as you’ll see much,” Berglund said. “Things are pretty raked over by now, but this gives you an idea of how bad the fire was.”