A Death in Canaan by Joan; Barthel Read Free Book Online Page A

house. I then went to the driveway and waited for the police or ambulance. While I was waiting, Geoffrey Madow came and we both went in and looked at my mother. Then we went back outside to wait.
    I have read the above and it is the truth.
    Each of the four pages was signed Peter A. Reilly and witnessed by Trooper Bruce McCafferty, badge number 723.
    At 11:10, Lieutenant Shay arrived, tall and square-jawed, the very image of a flinty detective on the trail of murder. Lieutenant Shay had worked out of Hartford in the detective division for nearly a dozen years and had been promoted to command Troop B in Canaan just four months before Barbara died. Since he’d taken over the Canaan command, this was his first homicide. He walked over to the cruiser and spoke to Peter. “Let me see your hands,” the detective said. Peter held out his hands. The detective looked at them closely, then walked away from the cruiser, back toward the house.
    Lieutenant Shay was not in uniform, and when he walked away, Peter turned to McCafferty, sitting behind the wheel.
    â€œWho’s that?” Peter asked. McCafferty told him that was the commander, Lieutenant Shay. “I’d like to become a state trooper,” Peter told McCafferty. “I wonder what kind of marks you need to get in high school for that job?”
    It was about 11:30 when McCafferty finished taking Peter’s statement, and the scene, by now, was bustling. A police van had pulled up in front of the house, one of a line of police cars that rimmed the highway. Mickey could see that they didn’t need the ambulance, so he drove it back to Geer, picked up the car, and drove back. Lieutenant Shay was annoyed that Mickey had covered Barbara with a blanket and told him so.
    Other troopers had awakened the Kruses, in the big house next door, and told them about Barbara.
    â€œShe’s a mess,” one of them said to old Mr. Kruse, who stood in the back doorway. The Kruses said they had gone to bed around ten, as usual, after their usual hot cocoa. They’d seen Barbara outdoors reading, sometime during the evening, but after that they’d seen nothing, heard nothing.
    Lieutenant Shay came back to the car and told Peter to come along with him. He took Peter to the back door of the Kruses’ house, and into the kitchen, and told him to take off all his clothes.
    â€œI have to go to the bathroom,” Peter said. Lieutenant Shay waited in the kitchen while another trooper went into the bathroom with Peter.
    Back in the kitchen, Lieutenant Shay again told Peter to strip, and when Peter had taken off all his clothes—the brown shirt, the Landlubber jeans with the brown braided leather belt, his shoes and socks and underwear and was standing naked in the big, bright, chilly kitchen, Lieutenant Shay searched his body. The officer asked Peter to tell him briefly what had happened; Peter told him what he’d told Bruce McCafferty. Lieutenant Shay asked him about the rear door to the house; Peter told him that the door was generally kept closed. When Shay searched Peter, he found that one of his knuckles was red, but there was nothing else. After the search Peter was taken back to the cruiser.
    Jim Mulhern got a call to report early for duty; there’d been a homicide. He had been here before, when Barbara had complained that she was getting harassing phone calls. Shay now gave him the job of visiting all the houses on the south end of Route 63. Mulhern started on his rounds, but first he went over to the cruiser and spoke to Peter. “If there’s anything I can do, let me know,” Jim Mulhern said.
    Dr. Ernest Izumi, the county’s assistant medical examiner, was in bed when he got the call at 11:15, but he dressed quickly and was at the house at 11:40. Dr. Izumi had a habit of blinking often, with a half-smile on his round face. He said hello to Mickey when he saw him. Dr. Izumi said he would prefer to wait for Dr. Gross, the