McPherson shifted in her seat uncomfortably. Her boy hadn’t run away, and her belief in him was perfectly justified, but she still hadn’t accepted the fact that her boy was dead. Better get on with it, she thought; the woman needed to see a doctor.
“So you didn’t hear anything during the evening? No scuffle or anything out of place?”
“Of course not.” She looked at McPherson like she was one of her children asking her foolish questions. “The neighborhood is always quiet, so what would there be to hear?”
She was beginning to lose ground, and like most seasoned campaigners, she knew when to draw back. Then too, the mother apparently had nothing to say that hadn’t already been said.
There was no point in carrying on the questioning, so she rose to her feet.
“If I need anything else, I’ll call you, but for now you should both try to get some sleep. Perhaps your doctor can prescribe something to help.”
“Thank you, but I think I’ll stay up waiting a little longer for Charlie,” the mother replied with complete conviction.
A glance passed between McPherson and Mrs. Shepherd. Somehow she felt that Mrs. Turner was in good hands. Lord knew she needed help. She bid them goodnight, then left through the front door. Turner followed her out to the car, and though he was obviously still in a state of shock, managed to remain rational and composed.
“We didn’t hear anything strange or out of the ordinary. If someone had taken him by force, I’m certain we would have heard something. The house isn’t that big.”
“No,” McPherson agreed, “there’s no sign of forced entry at the window, or that anyone but Charlie had been walking around out there. He must have left of his own free will.”
“Yes, but why?” The father’s voice was hoarse, as he asked again. “That’s the part I don’t understand. Why?”
“That’s a question everyone’s going to be asking soon enough,” McPherson observed mildly. “For now, though, I think we’ve done all there is to be done. You go ahead and get back to your wife. She needs you. And if I were in your shoes I’d call a doctor. She’s in an anxious state.”
“Dr. Blackwell stops by from time to time. Most likely Mrs. Shepherd called him as soon as she learned Charlie was found.
“You’ll let me know what you find out? I don’t seem to be comprehending all that well tonight, but I think I’ll be better in the morning.”
“I’ll get back in touch with you as soon as there’s anything to report,” McPherson said, placing a friendly hand on Dan’s arm, “and tonight you better have the doctor prescribe you something too. Staying up all night won’t help anything.”
“Sure, Lieutenant,” Dan agreed, and with a small wave of his hand walked slowly back to his devastated home.
McPherson’s mood was one of deep depression as she returned to her patrol car. There was something defenseless and pathetic about people like the Turners when a tragedy like this struck. A fatal accident was relatively easy to accept, but a murder was beyond most people’s powers of conception. Murder was something that only happened in fiction. Something that gave them something to watch or read about at night, or something vaguely typed out in headlines. Never something that happened to them and theirs.
Taylor was just finishing a radio report when McPherson slid into the front seat. “I’d like to go back and see if the lab boys stumbled on anything else,” she said abruptly.
“O.K.,” was all Taylor said in reply. He had long since learned to know when the lieutenant wasn’t in the mood for conversation, so they drove on the rest of the way in silence.
The floodlights were still flashing through the swaying trees, and once the car had rolled to a stop the two officers stepped out and started down the narrow path toward the activity.
The body had been removed, but the coroner was still there. The lab men were packing up their equipment and carefully packaging the casts they had made of the footprints.
“Anything else?” McPherson asked to everyone in the vicinity.
“Nothing you don’t already know about,” someone answered.
“How about you, Doc? Have anything for me?”
Dr. Phillips shifted his bag from one hand to another. “Nothing much. Cause of death appears to be strangulation, or suffocation, perhaps a bit of both. I found bruises on the lips and nose, and a few on the throat. They don’t appear to be particularly penetrating. In fact, they were so superficial that they could have been made by a young person. Perhaps someone was trying to keep him quiet and overdid it.”
McPherson thought this over as she flicked the butt of her cigarette to the ground and crushed it with the heel of her shoe.
“What about his fingernails? Any signs that he scratched his attacker, or pulled out any hair?”
“We’ll take a closer look when we get him downtown,” the doctor answered, “but his fingernails appeared to be too short to scratch. There may be hairs, but the lab will have to look for those. There’s one funny thing I should mention, though. The fingers on his left hand were thick with calluses, but there weren’t any on the right.”
“He played violin,” McPherson stated absently. “Other than the bruises, you didn’t find anything?”
“No. We might have more to tell you once we’ve completed the examination.”
McPherson rubbed her shoulder and said, more to herself than to anyone else, “What I can’t seem to figure out is why he snuck out in the first place. It seems out of character, from everything we’ve learned about him so far.”
Taylor roused himself and offered an idea. “What if he got mixed up with some pedo, then backed out as soon as he learned the score?”
“I suppose it’s possible,” McPherson said slowly, “but for Christ sake don’t say that kind of thing where anyone around can hear you. The last thing we need right now is neighborhood
