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For half an hour or so, Susan Etra told me what she knew. Her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Etra, had never been in any trouble before. As far as she knew, he’d never been intolerant of gays, men or women. And yet he had supposedly gone to the home of two gay enlisted men and shot them dead in bed. At the murder trial, it was alleged that he was hopelessly in love with the younger of the two men.
“The murder weapon was an army service revolver. It was found in your home? It belonged to your husband?” I asked.
“Jim had noticed that the revolver was missing a couple of days before the murder. He was very organized and meticulous, especially when it came to his guns. Then suddenly, the gun was conveniently back in our house for the police to find.”
Lawyer Fischer apparently decided I was harmless enough and left before I did. After he was gone, I asked Mrs. Etra if I could take a look at her husband’s belongings.
Mrs. Etra said, “You’re lucky that Jim’s things are even here. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about bringing his clothes to a local charity group like Goodwill. I moved them into a spare bedroom. Far as I’ve gotten.”
I followed her down the hall to the room. Then she left me alone. Everything was neat and in its place, and I had the impression this was how Susan and James Etra had lived before murder and chaos had destroyed their lives. The furniture was an odd mix of blond wood and darker antiques. A war table against one wall was covered with collectible pewter models of cannons, tanks, and soldiers from various wars. Next to the models were a lot of guns in a locked display case. They were all labeled.
1860 COLT ARMY REVOLVER, .44 CALIBER, 8-INCH BARREL.
SPRINGFIELD TRAPDOOR RIFLE, CARTRIDGE, USED IN THE U.S. INDIAN WARS. HAS ORIGINAL BAYONET AND LEATHER SLING.
MARLIN RIFLE, CIRCA 1893, BLACK POWDER ONLY.
I opened the closet next. Lieutenant Colonel Etra’s clothes were divided between his civvies and army uniforms. I moved on, checking the various cabinets.
I was rummaging through the drawers of a highboy when I came upon the straw doll.
My stomach tightened. The creepy doll was the same kind I’d found at Ellis Cooper’s place outside Fort Bragg. Exactly the same — as if they’d been bought at the same place. By the same person? The killer?
Then I found the watchful, lidless eye in another drawer of the highboy. It seemed to be watching me. Vigilant, keeping its own nasty secrets.
I took a deep breath, then went outside and asked Mrs. Etra to come to the room. I showed her the straw doll and the all-seeing eye. She shook her head and swore she’d never seen either before. Her eyes revealed her confusion, and fear.
“Who was in my house? I’m sure that doll wasn’t here when I moved Jim’s things,” she insisted. “I’m positive. How could they have gotten here? Who put those dreadful things in my house, Detective Cross?”
She let me take the doll and the eye with me. She didn’t want them around, and I couldn’t blame her.
Chapter 49
MEANWHILE, THE MURDER investigation continued on another front. John Sampson turned his black Mercury Cougar off Route 35 in Mantoloking on the Jersey Shore and headed in the general direction of the ocean. Point Pleasant, Bay Head, and Mantoloking were connecting beach communities, and since it was October, they were fairly deserted.
He parked on East Avenue and decided to stretch his legs after the drive up from Washington.
“Jesus, what a beach,” Sampson muttered under his breath as he walked up a public access stairway and reached the crest of the dunes. The ocean was right there, less than forty yards away, if that.
The day was just about perfect. Low seventies, sunny, cloudless blue sky, the air unbelievably clear and clean. Actually, he thought, it was a better beach day than people got for most of the summer, when all these shore towns were probably jammed full of beachgoers and their transportation.
He liked the scene stretching out before him a lot. The quiet, pretty beach town made him feel relaxed. Hard to explain, but recently his days on the job in D.C. seemed tougher and more gruesome than usual. He was obsessing about Ellis Cooper’s death, his murder. His head was in a real bad place lately. That wasn’t true here, and it had happened instantly. He felt that he could hear and see things with unusual clarity.
He figured he’d better get to work, though. It was almost three-thirty, and he had promised to meet Billie Houston at her house then. Mrs. Houston’s husband had allegedly killed another soldier at nearby Fort Monmouth. The victim’s face had been painted white and blue.
Let’s do it, he told himself as he opened a slatted gate and walked toward a large, brown-shingled house on a path strewn with seashells. The beach house and the setting seemed almost too good to be true. He even liked the sign: PARADISE FOUND.
Mrs. Houston must have been watching for him from inside the beach house. As soon as his foot touched down on the stairs, the screen door swung open and she stepped outside to meet him.
She was a small African American woman, and more attractive than he’d expected. Not movie-star beautiful, but there was something about her that drew his attention and held it. She was wearing baggy khaki shorts with a black T-shirt and was barefoot.
“Well, you certainly picked a nice day for a visit,” she said, and smiled. Nice smile too. She was tiny, though — probably only five feet tall — and he doubted that she weighed much more than a hundred pounds.
“Oh, it isn’t like this every day?” Sampson asked, and managed a smile himself. He was still recovering from being surprised by Mrs. Houston as he mounted her creaking, wooden porch steps.
“Actually,” she said, “there are a lot of days like this one here. I’m Billie Houston. But, of course, you knew that.” She put out her hand. It was warm and soft in his, and small.
He held her hand a little longer than he’d meant to. Now why had he done that? He supposed it was partly because of what she’d been through. Mrs. Houston’s husband had been executed nearly two years earlier, and she’d proclaimed his innocence loudly and clearly until the end, and then some. The story felt familiar. Or maybe it was because there was something about the woman’s ready smile that made him feel comfortable. She impressed him about as much as the town and the fine weather had. He liked her immediately. Nothing not to like. Not so far, anyway.
