Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [17]
Lynn Meyer-Murphy was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, wearing the same track pants and sweater she had on since Day One, surrounded by pots and everything else she had taken out of the lower cabinets. Grocery bags were stuffed with mismatched plastic containers and grimy shelf paper.
“Good morning, ma’am.”
She turned and I almost flinched. Bright half-moons of scaly pink skin had popped up at the sides of her mouth like a horrible clown grin.
“Any news?”
I shook my head. “But we need to talk. I asked Special Agent Shaw to get your husband.”
Eunice Shaw was one of the most grounded people I have known. She had a light about her and spoke and moved in her own time. She was a churchgoing Baptist from Georgia, and even though her hair was straightened and rolled under, circa the civil rights movement, and even though she always wore a dress, even the bad guys wouldn’t dis Miss Eunice. She had iron poise. Because of this, she was a born negotiator and an almost religious presence for those, like the Meyer-Murphys, whose suffering had brought them to their knees.
Lynn’s fingers were massaging the inflammation. It looked itchy and mean. “Stress,” she explained. “Last time I had it this bad was my wedding day. What does that tell you?”
I smiled empathetically while rehearsing how to best inform the parents that they were now under suspicion in the disappearance of their child. Juliana had vanished too completely, with too few leads, for too long a time not to suspect foul play close to home; to consider the case a possible homicide.
“Why do I need this?” Lynn pushed a muffin tin into one of the garbage bags. “But Juliana likes popovers.” She pulled it out again. “Not that I ever make popovers.”
She sat there with the muffin tin on her lap.
Eunice appeared in the doorway with Ross Murphy. He looked like an eighty-year-old man who just had open-heart surgery.
“Did you get that bastard David Yi?”
“I told you, Mr. Yi is no longer a suspect.”
“He has friends,” Ross insisted. “Friends in prison, have you ever heard of that? It’s that bastard Yi. He calls again, you better not let me on the phone!”
An eighty-year-old man waving small weak fists. All puffed up because he was helpless.
I took a breath. “Folks, my supervisor has asked me to bring you in for a polygraph today.” When they looked blank I added, “A lie detector test.”
“Us?”
Eunice left the room to answer her Nextel.
“Standard operating procedure for anyone who might have come in contact with Juliana in the days before she went missing.”
“Bullshit,” said Ross, “and I resent the implication.”
“Oh Ross,” snapped his wife, “it’s the real world.”
“Don’t I know it. Doesn’t get realer than this. We’re her parents,” he exploded. “We love her! Okay, yes, people chop up their children and put them in concrete. Did we? No. Are we dying here? What the hell do you think?”
Lynn was staring at the muffin tin.
“I know you’ve been through it. But we have to ask the tough questions and there is no question we will not ask, and nobody who will not be scrutinized.”
“We have no problemo taking your test,” Ross hissed, “because we have nothing to hide, but what really pisses me off is the fact that I gave you the guy. David Yi. Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?”
“You’re a broken record,” murmured his wife in a monotone.
“Hold it,” I said. “Everybody take a deep breath.”
Lynn had covered her ears with her hands. They were trembling. Then, in slow motion, she keeled over.
“Lynn?”
Sitting cross-legged, she had folded forward until her forehead pressed the floor, as if assuming some kind of yoga position.
Her husband said, “Are you all right?”
“No test.”
“What?”
“No reason,” she mumbled.
I had to get down on my hands and knees to hear. We looked like two mental patients with ears to the ground,