The House

By Dawn Natelle

Chapter 35 – Love and Murder

It had been 10 weeks since Belle had come back from London – late July – and Grey decided that it was time. At breakfast he asked Tanya if she would look after the babies, and for Dary to come with him, bringing the robe she made for Belle.

“It’s time,” Grey told Belle. “We are going for a walk today.”

“No,” Belle said. “I doan wanna.”

“I don’t care,” Grey said, “Dary made this beautiful robe for you and I want to see it on you.” For the last 10 weeks Belle had been largely naked on the bed, with only a thin sheet over her while Grey and Billy were healing her. She reluctantly let Grey help her turn sideways, and then let Dary help her into the robe, which was difficult as her whole left side was still badly scarred and it was difficult for her to raise her arm. It took nearly 15 minutes to get the robe on and several times Grey had to sing to her and go in and ease the pain.

“Dary, go get Billy and send him in,” Grey said. “You can stay with the babies if you wish.”

Billy tapped on the door, and came in when Grey called. “Mommy looks pretty,” the young boy said as he saw his mother dressed for the first time in months.

“I think she looks pretty too. We are going to take her for a walk,” Grey said. I want you to take her good hand.” Billy knew this was the right hand. And when he put his little hands around it, Belle was flooded with love from her son. Grey took the left hand, still scarred but no longer painful.

The pain came when Belle took her first step. Her left leg was still badly scarred, and she nearly cried at the pain she felt from the stiff leg joint.

“It hurts too much,” Belle cried.

“Momma’s booboo still hurts?” Billy asked.

Grey started to sing, and take the pain away. «You need to do this or you will never be able to walk again. Let’s try again, and I will try to keep the pain down.»

«That’s better,» she said. «It still hurts, but I can bear it.»

«Tell Billy to lead us down to the end of the hall, and back,» Grey ordered, and the three left the room.

At the end of the hall Daisy appeared, to Belle’s consternation. “Do you mind if I join you,” the older woman asked. “You are looking so much better today, my dear.”

Belle wanted so much to say no, but she knew Daisy was the owner of the house and you couldn’t be rude to the person who had allowed you to live in her home for several months. “Thanks,” Belle said. “Dary made it for me. There is a hood: can you pull it up over my face? I am so ugly.”

“Why on earth would you do that?” Daisy said. “Your face is not entirely healed, but we can all see the beauty that lurks below. That is what is important. You know that when she first came here Sun was like you, not wanting people to see her.”

“But Sun is beautiful,” Belle said.

“It was her height that bothered her,” Daisy said. “She wouldn’t leave the house, even to go to the store – until she learned they had the old truck for sale. Now she walks freely about in Tweed and Madoc, and even in Peterborough where she sees her doctor. She ignores the people who stare at her. She knows that people who know her accept her and that is all that is important.”

“I don’t think I will ever be able to do that,” Belle said.

“Not all at once,” Daisy said. “But with the nice summer weather you will be walking on the verandah before you know it, and perhaps more.”

“This was enough for me,” Belle said as they returned to her door. “It hurts a lot just walking.”

“It will hurt less and less,” Grey said as he came forth, knowing that the deadened nerves would allow her to get back to her bed. “I will ease the pain this week, but by next week you should be able to do it on your own.”

Belle made it to her bed, and winced as she lay down again. Grey had not deadened the nerves on her back. Daisy took Billy, and Grey sang his way inside of her to check that everything was all right.

“You will be joining us for supper soon,” he said. “The soup Dary feeds you every noon, and the excess weight you once held has kept you going, but soon you will need more. You were quite chubby when you left Billy with us, but now you are getting very thin.”

“It is not a weight-loss program I would recommend,” Belle joked. “And I don’t want to go to the dinner table, as good as it smells most evenings. So many people staring at me.”

“No one is going to stare at you,” Grey said. “And I won’t let them feed you in the room. But I want you walking better before we worry about that. One thing at a time. And I will keep working on your face during that time.”

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The next morning Dan led his visibly pregnant wife to his truck. She had been working in Belleville at the OPP regional office for several months now, going through the ‘cold case’ files of the region. It was mind-numbingly boring work. Every week or so she would find something: often an exhibit that might have DNA evidence that could be tested. But once she had gotten a match, the case went to the detectives, who would investigate further.

Today, once they got into the truck, Dan froze and seemed to be in a trance for a few seconds.

“I just got a message from Flint,” Dan said. “We have to make a stop on the way.” Rather than turning south to Belleville, he continued east towards Ottawa, slowing and turning into a farm about 20 miles from Actinolite.

He stopped the car in the laneway and went to help his pregnant wife from the passenger seat. As they arrived a three-legged dog ran up to them barking, and then turned and ran to the open barn door in his funny, hopping manner.

“I think he wants us to follow,” Cindy said. She was in full uniform, and radioed in her position, noting she would be late into the office. She was still on the radio when she neared the barn door, and saw the crumpled pile of rags lying there. Dan had rushed ahead and felt the cold wrist of the man. “He’s dead,” he said. Cindy then changed the call and asked for homicide detectives.

“Don’t touch anything,” she warned Dan. The man had fallen onto his back, and it was clear that he had died from a blow to the head that had crushed into his skull. Dan pointed to an old crescent wrench lying on the ground. “That is the murder weapon,” Dan said. There was a .22 rifle lying next to the man on his right side.

“How do you know?” Cindy asked.

“Flint saw it all. The man who did it was a native, about 6’2” tall, age 24, wearing glasses and a tan t-shirt with jeans and a jean jacket. He killed this man, and then went into the house, came out and fled in a white pickup that was in the yard.

Cindy was about to write down the description, and then realized that she couldn’t provide an acceptable explanation for how she had learned this. She couldn’t tell people that her husband had a spirit in his head.

She looked into the yard, and saw where a pickup had sat. It had peeled out at some speed, and the tracks could easily be followed out to the highway. She sent Dan out to follow the tracks and find out which direction they went on the highway.

“He went to Ottawa,” Dan said.

“Good, but we need some way of showing that without involving spirits in your head,” Cindy said. “Follow the tracks. In a few minutes dozens of police cars will be tearing into this place, and the tracks will be obliterated. Please follow them, and take a picture on your phone of the tracks as they approach the highway.”

Dan trotted off. It had rained two nights ago, and the only marks on the lane were from his own truck, coming in, and the suspect’s car going out. Before he got back from taking his picture, the first patrol car arrived. It was from Madoc, and the officers knew Dan, and opened the rear door to allow him a ride back to the farmstead, which was a good 200 yards from the highway.

Meanwhile, Cindy had entered the house. The only room that seemed disturbed was the kitchen. The fridge door was open and one of those pre-baked chickens from a grocery store deli was there. On the counter a loaf of bread sat, the end neither secured or folded under as most people did to prevent the bread from staling. There was also a quart of milk sitting on the counter. Either the dead man was making a snack when he was alerted to the intruder on his property or the killer had come into the house after the crime and sought food. Cindy was betting on the latter.

She noticed a slip of paper sticking out of one of the drawers, and she used a pencil to open the drawer without leaving prints. The drawer was filled with papers, and looked as though it had been rifled through. The top of the pile of papers was a tax bill, which included a name and the address of the farm.

“Sam, can you take this information and find out what vehicles are registered to this address. Use the address, since the vehicles could be registered to a farm name instead of the personal name,” Cindy said to one of the officers who had come in from Madoc.

She then went into the living room, where she saw an open and unlocked gun case with a .303 inside. There was also a spot for the .22 that was next to the man. She headed outside again, approaching her husband and her colleague from Madoc who were standing over the body. The three-legged dog sat nearby, not understanding why his master wouldn’t get up.

Cindy looked at the body. There was a wrapped cough drop lying next to his left pocket, and a store receipt next to the right one. She also noticed a crumb of chicken a bit further away.

“The killer went into the house and got some food,” she said. “He then came out and went through the man’s pockets, possibly taking his wallet and keys. A few other things came out of the pockets. The bit of chicken there is probably from a bird that is in the house, in the kitchen. “Skipes, can you check that rifle? Bending over is not easy for me at this time.”

“It was fired once. Too long ago to smell the powder, but it doesn’t look like it was cleaned since firing,” the officer said.

The next car to arrive was from the House. It was Sun’s truck and she had Nora with her. Dan realized that Nora was an assistant coroner, and would have been called in shortly after Cindy had made her call out. She knelt next to the body, and quickly pronounced the man dead: killed instantly by a blunt object striking the head. She told the police that they should send the body to Tweed hospital where she would do an autopsy in the tiny morgue in the basement. It was the first time that room would be used since she had started working at the hospital.

After getting the coroner’s report, the Madoc officers covered the body with a sheet, while Cindy went into the barn. She noticed a little nest of straw that was facing the barn door. There were scuffs on the ground in front and at the side. It looked like the killer had slept or lain there before the incident. There was what looked like a bullet hole in the beam near the nest. There were also two broken chicken eggs on the ground a few feet away. Cindy had one of the officers dig out the bullet hole.

The farm was a small operation, with a half-dozen hens and seven cattle, Angus beef cows. There were also five calves. Cindy heard whimpering, and came upon a nest of six German Shepherd puppies, huddled beneath their mother. Tripod, as Cindy had mentally named the three-legged dog, stood protectively beside them.

“Sun?” Cindy called out. “There are some cattle out there that need food and water. Can you throw out a few baled of hay for them, and fill the water trough? Walk around on the left so you don’t make a mess of the scene.” Sun did so, carrying out one bale of hay in each hand from the pile in the barn. She also threw out some chicken feed, and made sure the birds had water.

About a half hour from the time Cindy and Dan arrived, the investigators from Belleville pulled in. Inspector Riley was in charge, and Cindy had worked with him for the past two months on cold cases she had uncovered. Cindy went to him immediately and updated him on everything she had found.

“How is it you are not a detective?” Riley asked. “You have done a wonderful job here. I agree with all your surmises. We need to get an APB out on the farm pickup. You said he was headed to Ottawa?”

“Definitely, unless he turned around on the highway. And I don’t think that is likely. We already posted the APB,” Cindy said. “If there was money in the wallet there is a good chance that he will stop for food again. We should get the Ottawa regional police involved to check out restaurants in the west end of the city.”

She knew exactly where the suspect was. Just prior to the Belleville OPP arriving, Dan had told her that the man was now at a Macdonald’s in a mall near Kanata. But she couldn’t say that to the detective: not without explaining how she knew. She just hoped that a cruiser would spot the pickup before he left.

Cindy spent the rest of the day at the farm. Once the fingerprinting crew had finished in the kitchen, she got three cans of dog food out and used a can opener to open them. Sun then took them out to the hungry dogs and fed the two adult animals, who immediately decided that they liked her. So when she and Nora left the site, soon after, following an ambulance containing the body, there was a cardboard box containing the mother and pups, with Tripod standing watch in the box of the truck, trying to balance in the moving vehicle on three legs. He eventually lay down to combat the jostling of the truck.

Sun dropped Nora at the hospital, and then headed back to the House where Dary was first to meet her, squealing with joy at finding the pups and their Mom. Sun carried the box to the stable, where Rabbit was quite happy to welcome his company in. Tripod followed with Dary: the young girl unable to stop laughing at his three-legged motion. Rabbit and Tripod faced off in the stable. Tripod was a bit bigger, but knew that his lack of a leg meant he could not be the dominant animal, and knelt submissively in front of Rabbit. There were four females in the litter, so that meant that Rabbit would have his choice of girlfriends.

It was eight when Cindy left the scene, just after the Belleville crew. A radio message had reported the capture of a 6’2” First Nations man wearing glasses, a tan t-shirt and a denim jacket and jeans. He was taken to Belleville jail where his fingerprints matched those found on the scene.

It looked like an open and shut case.

Nora didn’t get back until after Cindy and Dan, after her autopsy was completed and the cause of death determined to be caused by a blunt instrument breaking the man’s skull. Death was probably instantaneous. Nora went immediately to John’s computer and wrote her report, emailing it to the Belleville office of the OPP.

That evening in the Great Hall after dinner, Dary had brought in two of the puppies, along with Tripod to the delight of the babies and Billy. Grey lured Tripod off to his room, once the dog was contented that his babies were safe with Dary and Sun.

“What is that?” Belle said as Grey came into the room with the dog.

“A friend for you,” Grey told her, as the dog immediately came up to her and stood on his two hind legs. The sole front paw pressed against Belle’s good hand.

“He is a darling. How did he lose the other leg?” Belle asked.

“We don’t know,” Grey said. “But I wanted you to meet him. Something terrible happened to him and he has carried on. He has six puppies, two of which are out entrancing Billy in the Great Room. He faced peril, but fought through it. With three legs he runs almost as fast as rabbit.”

“So he is a lesson to me,” Belle said softly as she stroked Tripod’s head. “I need to follow his example. To fight and not give up.”

“And to not worry about looking different,” Grey said. “I am your doctor. I know that you are capable of having more children.”

“Hah,” Belle snorted. “Who would have someone like me?”

“I would,” Grey said softly. “I think you are beautiful.”

Belle gasped. “Really? I think I have been in love with you almost from the start. But I never dreamed you would want to be more than my doctor.”

“There is a little boy out there that needs a real Dad,” Grey said. “I love him dearly, and did since before you came back. And as I’ve seen you fight through everything, I’ve grown to love you too.”

With that he reached over and kissed her deeply, with the kiss only breaking when Tripod started to lick Grey’s cheek.