No Good Deed Left Undone, page 1
No Good Deed Left Undone
A Detective Sam Lagarde Mystery
Ginny Fite
To my husband, David, who taught me what was important.
All suffering comes from the wish for ourselves to be happy, and all happiness comes from the wish for others to be happy
—Eighth Century Buddhist Monk Shantideva
October 12, 8:15 a.m.
By the time Detective Sam Lagarde got to the body, the horses were long out of the barn. Grant Wodehouse, the dead guy, was pinned to his barn wall by a pitchfork. The cement floor all around him was awash in blood. Lagarde’s first assessment was that this murder was a crime of passion with an available weapon. The victim had been skewered in a single powerful lunge and driven back to the wooden wall behind him with such force that his boots dragged on the cement barn floor, leaving little piles of straw behind his heels.
There were no tentative holes in the man’s clothing. The murderer didn’t hesitate, didn’t test out his weapon, didn’t taunt his victim, just went straight for the kill. And yet, the murder had the look of the unexpected, as if it might have surprised even the killer. There’d been no attempt to hide the body, to conceal the crime or delay detection. Lagarde thought the murder might be a one-off killing by someone who’d never killed before and had no plans to continue. On the other hand, the killer could be so depraved that he left bodies as gifts for the police to find, the way cats left dead mice for their owners. Lagarde knew from long experience that there was no telling what he might uncover about the killer.
Four neighbors, including two teenagers, one toddler and her mother, three sheriff’s deputies, the new widow and perhaps a few horses had trampled through the crime scene, obliterating any small clues that might have led to the immediate identification of the murderer. Not that Lagarde expected such a miracle, but he could always hope.
He took off his hat, a tan felt Stetson Outback that he wore in all seasons, pushed back hair now more gray than blonde from his receding hairline, put his hat back on, squeezed the top of his nose, as if that gesture would improve his eyesight, and looked around at the scene in front of him.
There were too many people for him to expect a pristine crime scene. Everyone had their excuses for being there. The wife came out to the barn to see what was taking her husband so long with his morning chores. The boys said they were there to feed the horses and let them out into the pasture. The toddler’s mother said she came outside after her child and ran down toward the barn when she heard Mrs. Wodehouse screaming. The deputies were first on the scene in response to the 9-1-1 call, and, of course, they had to walk through the barn to see what was going on. The stories rolled over each other, small whirlwinds of fallen leaves in an autumn storm, more reasons for being there than there were witnesses.
The deputy pointed out the boy who had called emergency dispatch on his cell phone.
Lagarde told Deputy Sheriff Dennis Harbaugh to move everyone away from the area, corralling them twenty feet from the barn, where they huddled fearfully together waiting to be questioned. Their horror hung in the air above them, their own personal weather system. The next-door neighbor had her arm around the newly-made widow, who stared stone-faced at the barn, her arms wrapped around her body. She shivered in her sweater, although this October morning had begun at sixty degrees and was headed higher. Around the property, the dense woods were acquiring the yellows, reds and orange colors of autumn.
If this weren’t a murder scene, it would be very pretty here, Lagarde mused.
“The wife stopped screaming, thank God,” Deputy Harbaugh said, interrupting Lagarde’s surveillance of the site. “She was loud. Now she’s calm as death.”
Lagarde looked the man over carefully. Short, out of shape, unable to run further than forty feet, probably balding under that black baseball cap with the sheriff’s department insignia emblazoned on the crown, with heavy bags under his eyes, the deputy didn’t immediately fill Lagarde with confidence. His callous comment made him wonder about the accuracy of anything else the deputy might say.
The widow was clearly in shock. At least she had company almost immediately after finding her husband impaled like an insect on exhibit. More people contaminated the whole area, but it was better for Mrs. Wodehouse. At least he assumed it was, even when he knew he shouldn’t assume anything. She might be the kind of woman who’d rather be left alone. For that matter, she might be the kind of woman who kills her husband.
Lagarde walked up and down the barn’s center aisle between the stalls trying to get his bearings, to sort out what had been added with all those footfalls and what had been subtracted—a dropped glove or a dirty tissue that had fallen out of a pocket in the struggle and from which they could have DNA extracted. There might even have been clues on the horses themselves or the gates to their stalls. The whole damn barn would have to be dusted for the hundreds of fingerprints, the floor in every stall swept for physical evidence. They would have to comb through every stalk of bedding straw and feed hay. Talk about trying to find a needle.
The cadaver was located near the sliding barn door. It was easier for Lagarde if he didn’t call the deceased by name. Blood ran down the body and was splashed across the wall in a way remarkably similar to paint spatters on a Jackson Pollock painting. The minute Lagarde made that connection in his mind, he realized he would always look at Pollock’s paintings that way, as blood spray. The victim was stabbed from the front. Wodehouse had seen his killer, perhaps confronted him. The body was not yet in rigor. His head drooped, and his eyes and mouth were open, as if to express his deep astonishment at having been killed in this manner. Someone had flipped on the barn lights, maybe the deputies, but maybe Mr. Wodehouse in the normal course of morning chores. The murder scene was also illuminated by sheaves of morning light coming through the roof skylight. Barn swallows, completely impervious to the human turmoil below, performed their acrobatic flights above Lagarde’s head.
It was a good stable, Lagarde observed, neatly organized with halters, bridles, bits and reins on hooks, with saddle pads and blankets on racks for each animal set out against the front wall between each of the stalls. The old bank barn—part stone, part timber frame, about the same age as the nineteenth century stone house up the hill—had been handsomely refurbished with electricity, running water and roomy stalls with wrought iron gates. There were stalls for eight horses, four on each side of the alley, a grooming area, a tack room off the lower entrance and ladder stairs to the hay loft, which could also be accessed from the outside via the drive-up door a level above. A graveled lane, about one hundred yards from the primary driveway that led from Ridge Road to the house, ran behind the house and up to the hayloft entrance. It wouldn’t be hard to enter the barn through the outside hay door on the upper level, come down the stairs and surprise someone who was occupied with leading a horse out of its stall. Lagarde couldn’t help comparing the elegance and organization of this barn with his own more slap-dash way of stabling his horses.
Well, whatever works. He immediately forgave himself all kinds of sins.
The detective walked into the tack room, checking the area to see if it would yield any clues. The room had six tall cubbies with shelves and hooks that held helmets, boots, crops, barn jackets, riding and work gloves and other sundry equipment a rider might store there if they rode frequently. Only three of the cubbies had rider’s equipment in them. Saddle racks holding English saddles of varying quality, some for every day work and some for showing, racing, or hunting, occupied the center of the room. Lagarde counted five saddles. A portable tack box for the horseman to take with him to events was against the wall under the window, its lid open. It had the appearance of having been rifled through. Someone in a hurry was looking for something, and they were pretty serious about it.
Could the murder have been in pursuance of a theft? What on earth could be so valuable in a barn that someone would kill for it?
Wodehouse’s silks for steeplechase racing were thrown on top of other supplies in the box. Did Wodehouse ride in the races himself or did he have a rider who took the risk of galloping at full speed over bushes, stone walls and water trenches? Wodehouse obviously thought a lot of himself. He had invented a crest for the rider’s shirt that included a griffin and a peacock; his colors were purple and blue. Maybe that told Lagarde all he needed to know about the man. An old leather couch, a low stool where riders could put on boots, two boot jacks for removing tight boots—one modern wood, the other an antique brass—and an antique chest of drawers, which had been pulled out and not closed completely, and had a jumble of grooming equipment piled on the top of it, completed his quick inventory of the space.
This was not a huge operation, but it was expensive nonetheless.
There were only four horses in the paddock next to the barn. A large, fenced, four-acre pasture with two run-in sheds stretched out behind the barn. Perhaps there were more horses there. Or, maybe Wodehouse leased out space in the barn from time to time. He would have been able to make a couple hundred bucks extra each month boarding horses. People would pay at least four hundred dollars a month to have their horse boarded in this grand style, particularly some of the former city-dwellers who now made rural Jefferson County, West Virginia their home and commuted on the train every day to Washington, D.C. It was clear that Wodehouse made his money some other way than raising, training and selling horses. You had horses for the love of it
The barn had that deeply satisfying smell of sweet hay, animals and manure. Wodehouse must have just finished his morning routine when he was attacked. The stalls had not yet been mucked out. That would be what those youngsters were for, Lagarde figured. Low-lying fog, typical in early fall, would have been clinging to the fields, the dew sparkling in the early morning light when Wodehouse walked the two hundred yards from his house to the barn. I bet Wodehouse enjoyed that time of the morning, just like I do.
With much left to learn, if he wanted to find the killer, he needed to know why this particular man had been the target. According to Lagarde, the only way of accomplishing this task was to ask questions, follow the clues and keep his eyes open. He preferred hunches to science. It helped that his partner, Sergeant Lawrence Black, knew how to use all the twenty-first century technology available. At twenty-seven, Black had told him he was now thinking about applying to the FBI, but Lagarde didn’t hold Black’s ambitions against him. The man was smart, quiet when he was supposed to be, and could put two-and-two together and get four when it was required. Those were the essential characteristics of a good detective, as far as Lagarde was concerned. They had been working together for two years and had developed a certain rhythm that helped them to solve crimes too complicated, or too messy, for local sheriff’s departments. They had a system that worked.
Thanks to Black, even before they arrived on the scene, they had learned some interesting facts. While Lagarde drove their unmarked State Trooper vehicle, Sergeant Black typed “Grant Wodehouse Jefferson County WV” into the Google app on his smart phone and read out loud the information he found on the Internet. “Wodehouse belonged to every hunt club in the three-state area. He must have been busy every weekend of the year. If he wasn’t riding to hounds,” Black put on his best posh British accent, “he had horses entered in events like point-to-point and cross country racing.” He paused and scrolled through the information with his thumb. “It says here that Grant Wodehouse raised and rode only hunters.” He looked over at Lagarde. “That means the horses, right? A quarter horse, a thoroughbred? It’s not talking about people.”
Lagarde nodded. “Yes, horses.” He had always admired the twelve-hundred-pound, seventeen-hand horses bred for looks, speed and strength that could jump a six-foot stone wall without breaking a sweat, but they were too much horse for him. He’d stick to his easy going American Quarter Horse and his Paint. His horses weren’t chic enough for the hunt club crowd, but they were reliable and didn’t give him a lot of attitude. When all else failed him, when he couldn’t get the grisly images out of his mind, Lagarde got on his horse and rode out. After a few miles, all there was in the world was the easy movement of his body synchronized with the horse’s canter across the open fields. Even in the winter with snow crunching under his horse’s hooves, riding at night to the top of a hill from which he could see lights, jewels on black velvet, from the far town laid out in the valley, Lagarde found solace in quiet companionship with his horse. Horses, he had found after several failed marriages, were better companions than women. They didn’t talk back.
“Wodehouse should have been dead three times over before this. He fell from his horse on two hunts, then on one cross-country race when he nearly got trampled, but only broke his hip or got a concussion. The man was living on borrowed time.” Black scrolled through more information on the phone screen. “Oh, here’s something you’ll be interested in. The couple was known for their after-hunt parties during which everyone got drunk and slept with everyone else’s wife.”
Lagarde, navigating the many complicated turns up and down the hilly country on the back roads to the Wodehouse property, quickly looked over at Black. “Wait. What? It actually said that on Google?”
“Facebook, man, the view into people’s very souls, the personal diaries of a billion people, with pictures.”
Lagarde looked blank. He had never been on Facebook. He couldn’t imagine why anyone would put their personal diary where everyone in the world could see it. Wasn’t the point of a diary that it was secret? When had the world decided that hanging their dirty laundry out in public was better? Lagarde shook his head. ‘Going to hell in a hand basket,’ Mom would have said.
Black explained that he was looking at Wodehouse’s Facebook profile and extrapolating from the photographs about the man’s party behavior. “These people look pretty blotto to me; all those low-cut dresses, people with their arms around each other, men leering at cleavage, lots of booze to loosen social conventions. Draw your own conclusions.”
Women who rode to the hounds were not known to be shy, Lagarde knew. He had met a few of them at horse auctions—and briefly bedded a few. The phenomenon of bold horsewomen had something to do with being the master of a giant animal. Being in command gave women a sense of power, which they extrapolated to other areas of their lives. They knew how to use a crop, when to dig in their heels and how to dismount in a hurry. All of them were predators as far as Sam Lagarde was concerned. Of course, he was a tad gun shy since his fourth divorce. He was off women for a while and that was a good thing, Lagarde told himself. As far as members of hunt clubs were concerned, he considered them to be spoiled brats who complained bitterly that they weren’t allowed to ride over their neighbors’ land at a gallop, horses’ hooves flipping up clods of soil as they pounded across the fields after a tiny red animal fleeing for its life. The era of lords of the manor was over, as Lagarde saw it, and one of the last of them had been killed in a decidedly eighteenth century way.
Shaking off his prejudices, he realized there really were only four questions: who committed this heinous crime, why, how and when. If he could answer those questions, find evidence that proved the answers and locate the perpetrator, he could make an arrest and pass the case to the county prosecutor. That was his whole job. People had been killing each other even before someone wrote down the story of Cain and Abel. It was a grim thought that even in the twenty-first century so-called civilized nations expected people to kill each other. The whole point of police departments was the expectation of crime, and that the people who were guilty should be found and punished. Sometimes it seemed as if he was engaged in a hopeless exercise, sticking his thumb in the dike against an increasing wave of violence that was threatening to flood the world. Nevertheless, this was the career he had chosen and he was determined to see it through to the end, which every day he hoped would come sooner than the day before.
In the Wodehouse murder case, the “how” of the killing looked pretty obvious, although it was possible they’d hear from the medical examiner that Grant Wodehouse had been poisoned first, or drugged to slow him down, or hit on the head with a shovel and then run through with a handy, sharp object. On the other hand, Lagarde had learned long ago, nothing was what it seemed.
Lagarde walked out of the barn and over to the gaggle of witnesses. He took Black aside. “The first thing we’re going to need is a clear timeline. After that, we’ll need a few good clues and a lot of luck.”
Black nodded. “The killer in this case has to be a man, and not a small man, to ram an old iron pitchfork through Wodehouse’s body with such force that the tines entered the barn wall.”
“Right. He’d have to be taller than Wodehouse, to have the weapon enter the body at the angle they did, and take Wodehouse by surprise. Otherwise, why hadn’t Wodehouse turned around and run back to the house, or picked up the shovel leaning against the opposite wall to defend himself, or try to jump out of the way?”
Did Wodehouse yell for help? The murder method suggested a crime of passion and random opportunity. Wodehouse couldn’t have been holding a horse’s halter to lead him out to the paddock. A horse would have spooked, whinnied, warned Wodehouse in some way about an intruder running at him. The horse could easily have gotten in the way, or given Wodehouse an opportunity to mount and ride out of the barn. If he’d been leading a horse out of the barn, Wodehouse would have been facing the barn door, not have his back to the wall. Unless the killer was known to Wodehouse, was helping him with the horses, and then something went hideously awry. Sam’s mind was racing with scenarios.
