Bitter Blood by Jerry Bledsoe Read Free Book Online Page B

called. Her car had broken down. She’d had a big fight with the man at the Boy Scout camp, who’d pushed the car out of the entrance. She was alone and upset and didn’t know what to do. Vicky saw that Delores was pulling the old guilt trip, and it worked, as always. Shortly afterward, Janie left to return to her mother and the big house on Covered Bridge Road.
    Three days later, on Wednesday, Janie wrote to Phil for the first time in two weeks. When she had told him earlier that she wouldn’t be coming to New York after all, Phil, sensitive to any perceived slight, had hurt feelings. He didn’t write or call for a week. When he did write, it was only a short, meaningless note that he signed “Thank you, Phil.”
    His hope was that she would realize his pain and, if not change her mind about the trip, at least rush to comfort him with affection.
    “Dear Phil,” she wrote. “Hope your summer has been a good one. It has gone really fast and will soon be over.
    “Thought you might be interested in your fall semester book list—each year the book list, fortunately, gets smaller and smaller.
    “Have a good rest of the summer. Sincerely, Janie.”
    It was the only letter she wrote to him that she didn’t sign with love—and it was the last letter she would ever write.
    After removing all of her belongings from her apartment on Thursday, Janie returned to the dental school on Friday to say her good-byes. Denise Payne ran into her and got the impression that Janie was having a hard time separating herself from this place that had consumed so much of her energies for the past four years.
    The next day, Saturday, July 21, Delores and Janie remained home all morning. That afternoon they drove into Crestwood to drop off some small appliances to be repaired at Stoess Hardware. Delores looked at holsters. She wanted one for her revolver, she said, a .32, but she put off the purchase until Monday. That night, Janie went with her mother to the Little Colonel Theater to see the summer student production “Aunt Abby Answers an Ad.”
    Delores went backstage after the show to congratulate the cast and director Bill Aiken, to whom she gave a big hug, but Janie lingered in the background, as she usually did in her mother’s presence, smiling but saying little.
    The next morning, while her mother was at church, Janie did not go out for doughnuts as usual. Nobody would ever know why.
    5
    Delores was sprawled on her left side by the garage, her knees sticking up, legs apart. The top of her head and the left side of her face were gone. The hot sun had blackened the remains of her head, which squirmed with maggots and was swarmed by flies and ants, the most grotesque sight Police Chief Steve Nobles and Detective Tom Swinney had ever seen.
    The officers moved past the body, holding their breath against the stench, and headed toward the back of the house, where a stone wall rose to the backyard. The second floor of the house was on the same level as the backyard, and stone steps at the back of the house led to it.
    As Nobles and Swinney were climbing the steps, Officer Steve Sparrow announced by radio his arrival at the front of the house.
    “Don’t let anybody come up here,” Nobles told him over his hand radio.
    But Sparrow misunderstood him to say “Come up here,” and he got out of his car and started for the back of the house.
    He called to Nobles and Swinney as he topped the steps and saw them on a small concrete patio checking a locked sliding glass door. Both jittery officers whirled on him with their revolvers drawn.
    Sparrow returned to secure the front of the house, and Swinney made his way to another door near the far end. He saw that the glass storm door was closed, but the inner door stood open. As he was about to open the storm door, he noticed what appeared to be a bullet hole in the gutter drain at the end of the house and silently pointed it out to Nobles.
    Both officers were anxious about what they might find