Siren Call
by Paul Lonardo
part 1
It was agreed upon by the six retired Rhode Island State Police detectives at the Westerly Nursing Home for Men that the most savage and cunning of murders are committed within the sanctity of marriage. And while most cases are transparent enough and solved quickly, others take a little more time in bringing the guilty to justice. But then, every once in a while, one of these cases will go unsolved, with the killer managing to evade the law altogether. Each man wagered twenty dollars, with the pot going to the man who told the most intriguing story involving a case he had investigated in which a spouse got away with murder.
The sitting room in which the men were gathered was spacious and functional. Most of the other rooms in the private facility were equally expansive, but to these former Troopers, the nursing home remained nothing more than a glorified prison. Despite the Georgian architecture, magnificent seaside location, friendly attendants, and other amenities, they were prisoners of their deteriorating bodies.
The room would have been entirely in darkness if not for the stealthy glow of pipe tobacco embers and the yellow light from the “honey moon” coursing in through the large bay window. June’s full moon got this name because, when considering all the full moons each year, this is the one most likely to glow yellow throughout the night due to the sun being positioned at its highest point in the sky that month, while simultaneously the moon is at its lowest position of the year.
The men’s little after-hours gathering was strictly forbidden by Rebecca, the nurse practitioner and the facility’s chief administrator, so the men spoke in hushed tones. While each of the other men in turn spun some time-bloated tale of their bygone gumshoe days, pensioned-off Captain Richard Cahill just sat back and waited for his turn, knowing that none could be more diabolical than the murder account that he was about relate.
Only Samuel Hawes remained silent. While he had recovered physically from the stroke he’d suffered several years earlier, his mental faculties continued slowly to erode.
“Congressman Deavers would have preferred being killed by any of the methods you good men just mentioned instead of the way his life ended,” Cahill said as he combed his smoky gray mustache with his fingers. His face was bullish, almost unsightly, but his jowls were taut, and he was the only one in the room who boasted a full head of hair.
“Are you suggesting that Congressman Deavers didn’t die by his own hand?” Brian Marion spoke loudly from outside the circle of men to avoid the second-hand pipe smoke that “Buzzy” Tomasso and Sid Katz were producing in thick plumes.
“Will you keep it down, you old piker,” Buzzy said in an exasperated whisper. “Do you want Rebecca to hear us? Either join us in the circle or adjust your hearing aid, but keep your whiny voice down.” Concluded, he deliberately blew a contrail of smoke in Marion’s direction.
“There is no suggestion about it,” Cahill insisted. “His wife arranged his murder.”
“Elizabeth?” Harlan Phahler scoffed. “I don’t believe it.”
“The press would have had a field day if there was the least bit of suspicion leveled against her,” Marion stated. “You headed that investigation. Why was there no mention of her involvement in your report?”
“After what I saw that night on the jetty out behind the Deavers’ estate in Newport, I swore for the sake of my own sanity that I’d never tell a living soul about it,” Cahill explained. “Besides, if I spoke one word about it, they would have put me into a place exactly like this one, only with padded walls. So, suicide the report reads, and suicide it will stay.
“But I don’t have to convince any of you that a man does not kill himself by pulling out his insides and having them spill out onto the floor, and then slit his own throat. Puzzling enough was why a powerful man like Deavers, a respected attorney and politician, and likely future Governor, would choose to end his own life.”
“I don’t believe it,” Phahler said again. The 80-year old ex-police chief was a tall man, though his spine was severely bowed from scoliosis. “There’s nothing you say that will convince me otherwise. Elizabeth Deavers was surely not a woman capable of such treachery, even if her husband’s perpetual philandering might have warranted it. Such a lovely, refined woman. Impossible, I say.”
“I never said she was the murderer,” Cahill exclaimed. “I said she arranged it.”
“She hired a hit man?” Buzzy put forth.
“Not exactly. It was no man.”
The all too obvious solution to this riddle hung in the air for a moment. No one spoke until Cahill dismissed what everyone was thinking. “Nor woman, either.”
Cahill was amused by the reaction of the other men. Their expressions of puzzlement were cloaked by their wrinkled faces. Samuel Hawes, while listening intently to the story, raised to his lips a leather-bound hip flask that his son had smuggled in on his last visit. After taking a sip, he held it out, offering to share the brandy with the others, but there were no takers.
“What exactly did you see that night?” Sid Katz was speaking for everyone. As usual, his words were few, but carefully chosen and explicit. Precision marked the man like feathers on a duck.
“First, let me explain a few things about Elizabeth Deavers,” Cahill began. “I agree with Lieutenant Phahler, this was a woman beyond reproach, as sophisticated and genteel a woman as any you would ever encounter. She was someone who took her marriage vows very seriously. She proved that time and time again, standing by her husband through each subsequent affair, sordid as they may have been. For Elizabeth Deavers, her marriage ended the only way she believed one ever should: in death.
Cahill let his prefatory comments percolate a while before he continued. “That said, the moment I viewed her husband’s remains, I knew it was no simple suicide, even though it was apparent that the coup de grâce was the throat wound, which was, indeed, self-inflicted. He had damn near decapitated himself in the process.
“Shockingly, the disembowelment came before. And, I might add, the means by which this mutilation had occurred, I could not even fathom a guess upon initial investigation. It looked to me like his abdomen had split open by itself.”
“How aggressively did you interrogate Elizabeth?” Buzzy inquired around a mouth full of pipe smoke. “She clearly had a motive.”
“Doubtless, there would be myriad suspects,” Sid Katz said. “Any number of scornful boyfriends and vengeful husbands, even overprotective brothers or fathers, may have been driven to commit such a crime of passion or retribution.”
“Like all of you, I never suspected Elizabeth. I didn’t know who did it, and to be honest, I didn’t care. Truth be told, I was far from enthusiastic about finding the perpetrator. Had I discovered a man responsible, I may have been tempted to shake the bastard’s hand. Jonathon Deavers was a complete and total slimeball, but it was still my job to see that justice was served, even for someone so deplorable.”
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Marion muttered from behind the group of men. “With such a grievous injury as you described to his abdomen, why would Deavers slit his own throat?”
“I’m getting to that. Bear with me.” Cahill sat back, observing each of the captivated. “As you all know, Elizabeth Deavers was born into wealth, and spend much of her time in philanthropic pursuits. She was very active in the community, involving herself with numerous charities. Not being able to have children herself, she gave back to others in many ways.
“She also worked as a researcher with the Newport Oceanographic Institute; a factor most important in this case, as it turned out. At the time of her husband’s demise, she was away on some expedition at sea, so her alibi was rock-solid. Thus, if it is hard evidence of guilt you require, I can only provide circumstance.
“What I do know is, if you had been at the murder scene, your own professional instincts would have told you that the whole thing smacked of something sinister, like something unnatural had taken place there.”
“I never knew you to have such a flare for the dramatic, Captain,” said Buzzy with a wry grin.
“I also thought myself immune to such theater...until this case,” Cahill conceded. “I retired immediately after the medical examiner confirmed my conclusion that the death of Jonathon Deavers was a result of suicide.”
There was a sudden noise upstairs. The men all started and looked up, half expecting to see Rebecca come fluttering down the stairs in her purple robe that was missing its top button. That sight would have been followed by the sound of her fuzzy gorilla-feet slippers dragging across the rug on the landing as she made her way to the study to harangue them about the facility’s policy forbidding unsupervised assemblies after hours. But no such sound came and, after several uncertain moments, Cahill proceeded.
“In Deavers’ kitchen bin that night, I discovered an empty wine bottle and a tray of partially eaten caviar. On the kitchen counter were two used long-stem wine glasses.”
“Ah-ha, there was a woman with the congressman,” Phahler exclaimed.
“If you had dusted the glasses for prints, you might have gotten lucky, identifying the woman he was with and the likely killer,” Marion proposed.
“One of the very first things I did was see to it that the glasses, and everything else in the room, were dusted for prints. Later, I destroyed all the physical evidence uncovered that night because I didn’t want to leave behind any proof of what I came to learn about the congressman’s death.”
“Which was what?” Sid Katz goaded.
“I will relate all the facts as they were revealed to me, and I will allow each of you to come to your own conclusions. If I am crazy, let the sane man among you condemn me.” Cahill settled back in his chair and began to twirl one corner of his mustache with the index finger and thumb of his right hand.
“I once knew a girl from Kennebunkport who could shoot an Old Fashioned though a straw,” Hawes suddenly blurted out, apropos of nothing. His voice was slurred, and the lids of his eyes were three-quarters closed.
“Yes, well,” Cahill said by way of acknowledgment. “It is probably apparent to most of you, that Jonathan Deavers was not alone the night he was killed. Forensics confirmed this. All indication was that Deavers was not expecting company that night, judging by his attire as well as the condition of his study, where legal briefs from a case he was working on were spread across his desk.
“I must also note that only the basement door leading directly out to the beach was unlocked, so it was likely that the uninvited caller appeared from that location upon entering, and later exiting the estate.”
“I fail to see the significance the visitor’s means of entry would have on the case, Richard,” Marion said. “Or are you set on diverting us?”
“These are merely my observations. Make of them what you will. But remember, they are facts and should not be overlooked, no matter how inconspicuous.”
“Touché,” Sid Katz said.
“Go on, Captain,” a captivated Phahler prodded.
Cahill adjusted himself in the stiff wing chair once again. When he was comfortable, he focused his gaze out the wide picture window as if it reflected the past. “Deavers’ study contained thousands of volumes,” he explained. “One unusual volume had been removed from the shelves. A medical journal. It was prominently laid out on the desk atop his work papers, open to an entry under OBSTETRICS.”
“Had a pregnant concubine showed up at his door claiming he was the father?” Marion offered.
Cahill slowly shook his head.
“He had found out that his wife was pregnant, but he was not the father,” Marion began, changing directions. “What a turn of fate! Deavers couldn’t bear to live with that knowledge, and he did himself in.”
Cahill never stopped shaking his head as he listened to Marion’s explanations. In the silence that followed, he plucked at the whiskers above his lip. He knew he had all of them in the palm of his hand. “While Elizabeth wasn’t due back from her three-week excursion at sea for several days yet,” he began, “that night Deavers made a frantic call to a doctor friend, arranging to be seen first thing the next morning. He was very vague about the purpose of the visit, but he made it clear to Dr. Schuler that it was an emergency. He never made it to the appointment.”
Copyright © 2022 by Paul Lonardo
