Code 61 - Donald Harstad [95]
“Pardon?”
“I hope he's not here hunting,” she said, a little louder.
“Yeah.”
Just as I was about to mention Alicia Meyer taking off, we were interrupted by one of Edie's three classmates.
“Excuse me, are you Deputy Houseman?” She was about five-ten, slender, brown hair and eyes, maybe twenty-five or so.
“Yes.”
“Hello, I'm sorry to bother you, but my name is Darcy Becker, and I knew Edie, and the sheriff just said that I should be talking with you.” She seemed very confident, self-assured, and sophisticated. Polished. As Old Knockle would have said, you could tell she'd been away.
Since Lamar had handed her off, I was fairly certain that she'd approached him with something important about the case. Something he thought we should hear, and something he figured he shouldn't.
“Nice to meet you. This,” I said, gesturing toward Hester, “is Special Agent Gorse of the Iowa DCI.”
“Hello,” said Hester.
“Oh. Are you, well, working together? About this?”
“I'd suggest,” said Hester, “that we might step outside.”
The media were out there. We ended up moving out through the kitchen, past the preparation and, if necessary, autopsy room; and ended up in the garage between two parked hearses. It was a little gloomy, but it was private as hell.
“So, Lamar said you should talk to me?”
“Yes,” she said. “He said that this … well, I thought that since Edie had, well, taken her own life … I thought I might know why. The sheriff said I should talk to you right away.”
“Why did you think she might have killed herself?” asked Hester.
“Well, I know she's been kind of down. Lately. Well, for a while, really. But lately, things had taken a turn, I think…. ” She looked at us beseechingly. “I don't really know, but she had gotten mixed up with some older man. I think.”
Hester and I exchanged looks.
“It's possible,” I said. “Why do you think that?”
“Well, we tried to get together, and we talked on e-mail, and I couldn't make it, and she called me, because it was going to be her daughter's birthday, and she was worried, it seemed to me. No. Well. No, no, she was frightened. Scared. Worried and scared, I guess.”
“About … ” I prompted.
She sighed. “Well, I called her, I mean when I couldn't make it. And we talked on the phone.”
You have to be so careful not to spook somebody, but at the same time, you sometimes just about have to drag the simplest stuff out of them.
“About some older man?” Hester, this time. Gently, not wanting to stress her.
“Yes. I think she was, well, involved. Pretty far, I think. And I think he was either married, from what she said, or at least there was another woman in the picture, and she was afraid to let him go, and afraid to stay.” She looked at Hester. “You know?”
“I think so,” said Hester.
It struck me then. “You wouldn't be 'DarcyB2' would you? Your e-mail address?”
“I … Yes, I am.” She looked at me and thrust her head forward slightly. “How on earth do you know that?”
“Let's back up a bit,” I said. “There are a couple of things you apparently haven't heard about this.”
As it turned out, on Sunday she and her two friends had heard Edie was dead, that it was suicide, and they had scurried around and gotten away from Iowa City and Marengo, where they worked, and headed up after lunch. Darcy's only solid news was from her mother, who was the one who originally called on Sunday.
“In the first place,” I said, “Edie didn't commit suicide.”
“You mean it was an accident?” She looked surprised.
“No, I'm afraid not. Edie was murdered.” Boy, if I thought she'd looked surprised before …
There was a sort of gasp, her chin quivered a little, and then instant tears. No real crying. Just tears.
“Like to sit down?” I offered.
“No, no, that's fine.” Darcy had come equipped with a pocket full of tissues. She blew her nose. “Oh, God. The poor kid. The poor, poor kid.”
We couldn't have agreed more.
In the next few minutes, we got an encapsulated life story of Edith Younger. It was kind of interesting, because it was as close to being from Edie's perspective