“Yes,” Doc said. “They’re perimortem, moments before or coincidental with the time of death, but with most of them, I can’t tell if they’re from a struggle or from the fall into the water and the body sinking down to the rocky bottom.”
“What then?” I demanded. I had little patience, it seemed.
“Clara, Doc’s trying to explain,” Max said. “Give him a chance.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to…” I took a deep breath and pulled myself together. It wasn’t just Max and the memories of my father that had resurfaced—the dream had stayed with me. I felt as if I’d brought Anna and Laurel, the children, with me, and that there were things that they needed to explain to me. But they had no means, other than Myles Thompkins’ dead body.
Doc went silent, and I prodded, “Doc, just tell us what you think happened here. Okay?”
He gave me a worried frown. “This isn’t like you to be so impatient, Clara. It’s been a long couple of days. Are you okay?”
I almost didn’t admit it, but I suspected we all felt the same way. “Again, I’m sorry. This case is getting to me. Whenever I think of those two women, those two little kids, I want to…” Overcome by emotion, not trusting my voice, I couldn’t finish.
The two men nodded. They understood. Max cast his eyes down, as if upset by the memory. Doc cleared his throat.
“Looking over the body, it’s these bruises right here that are important,” he said, pointing at the tops of Myles’s shoulders, where contusions stood out in stark contrast to the pale, lifeless skin surrounding them.
“Why those?” Max asked.
“They suggested something to me, but I wasn’t sure,” Doc explained. “That’s an unlikely place for bruises, and for there to be similar discolorations on the tops of both shoulders? That struck me as very odd.”
“What does it mean?” Max asked.
“Well, I had a theory, but I wasn’t sure,” Doc said. “Like I said yesterday, I don’t see a lot of drownings. Unsure of my hypothesis, I decided to look for an expert. That’s how I found the physician in Nebraska, sent him everything I have on the case, and he got back with me this morning. He concurred with my suspicions.”
“Good. What’s the verdict here?” I coaxed.
Doc shook his head, as if he hated to deliver the news. “We both believe that these particular bruises occurred when Myles was pushed on both shoulders to force his body underwater.”
We were silent, digesting the news, when Max spoke up. “Just to be clear—you’re saying Myles Thompkins didn’t commit suicide.”
“Yes. That’s what we’re saying,” Doc said, looking from Max to me. “The autopsy will read homicide.”
Stunned, I sat down in a chair at the table. I’d of course considered this outcome, thought it probable, but hearing it made it real. Another murder. “You okay?” Max asked.
“Sure,” I said, although I felt my mind spinning. Nothing was as it should be in this case. Nothing seemed clear-cut. “Just thinking.”
“Considering who we look at for this?” Max suggested, and I nodded. “I’ve been going over the same question. I’ve only come up with one name.”
“Carl Shipley,” I said. “He has the motive. Carl had a thing for Laurel. He knew of Myles and Laurel’s relationship, that they’d been in love. Carl was jealous.”
“Yes,” Max said. “That’s my best guess, too.”
“Max, when we searched Carl’s trailer, did we take his computer?” I asked.
“No. We weren’t authorized to do that. It wasn’t covered by the warrant,” he said. “All we were allowed to take was anything that appeared to have blood on it, that was tied to the crime scene, Jacob Johansson or his family.”
The room grew quiet, the only sound Doc shuffling through the photos, putting them back in the file. When he finished, Max and I thanked Doc, and he hurried out the door to attend to the patients he had waiting in his office.
Once we were alone, I said to Max, “What have we got to justify a warrant to get Carl’s computer?”
In the conference room, Max and I laid out all the files, everything we had. “I don’t think there’s enough here,” Max said. “I don’t think the judge will buy it.”
“He has to,” I said. “Not getting Carl’s computer isn’t an option. We have to find out if Myles’s suicide note is on it.”
To work through it, we started debating it all. I took one side. He played the judge. I argued for the warrant, and he assessed the evidence as the judge would. “Based on the autopsy, we have reason to believe Myles Thompkins was murdered—forcibly submerged in the river,” I explained to Judge Max. “We have a suicide note that was not typed on Thompkins’ computer. We checked with the lab this morning, and it was also not printed on his printer. We’re looking for the computer and printer where the note was generated.”
“But what evidence do you have that it was Shipley who wrote the note and murdered the guy?” Max as the judge asked.
“We have motive. Carl Shipley was stalking one of the Johansson murder victims,” I explained. “Myles was Laurel’s true love. They’d continued to be close after the marriage to Jacob Johansson. But Carl Shipley had a thing for Laurel.”
Max paused, then he frowned. “This isn’t enough, Clara. The judge won’t go for it.”
“Jeez, Max!” I said it so loud I figured everyone in the sheriff’s offices could hear me, so I lowered my voice. “Ease up here. Don’t make this hard.”
“This is hard. We don’t have a lot but conjecture going for us. We need enough justification or Judge Crockett will turn us down,” Max countered. “What else do we have?”
“I don’t know, you tell me,” I snapped. Max shot me an irritated frown, and I backed off a bit. Not an excuse, but my mood wasn’t improving; I was on edge and frustrated. “We have to think of something. There has to be a way to get that warrant!”
“We need to look at all of this again,” Max said. “There must be something we know that the judge would accept as sufficient probable cause. We need to find it and bring it to him. We need that warrant.”
For half an hour we threw out idea after idea, batting around possibilities but getting pretty much nowhere. In a last-ditch effort, I called the lab, hoping they had more of our test results and that there was something there that we could use. Some things were still missing, mainly the fiber and hair evidence. They said that they were backlogged and it could be days for some of it, another week if we were lucky for the DNA.
“That’s not fast enough,” I shouted into the phone. “Come on. You can turn it around faster than that. We’ve got a killer out there somewhere.”
“Chief Jefferies,” the clerk started, as Max put his hand on my arm to try to calm me. “We are doing the best we can. We have cases in the lab from all over the state.”
I hung up in a snit. Max looked like he was trying to come up with something to say, but hadn’t settled on anything before my phone rang. “I hear Myles didn’t kill himself. He was murdered,” Mullins said, his voice whisky rough. He sounded like he was burning fumes, as if he hadn’t slept in a week.
“Who told you?” I asked, irritated. We’d only gotten the autopsy results a little more than an hour earlier. Who else would have known? I doubted that Doc would have told Mullins. Maybe someone at the office heard and let it slip?
“I have sources,” Mullins said. “I’ve worked law enforcement for a long time, Chief. I don’t need to hear it from you, although I’d hoped to.”
My pulse speeding, I was irritated beyond words. I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Jeff, but this isn’t your case. Unfortunately, this time around you’re the victim’s family, not the investigator,” I reminded him yet again, my voice leaving no room for argument. “You’ve got to back off.”
“That sounds like what we told you last summer when your sister was missing. It didn’t stop you, and it’s a good thing, or that case might never have been cracked,” Mullins pointed out. I didn’t an
swer. It did no good to bring up the past, plus he was right. Mullins didn’t wait for my response, but said, “I figure Carl killed Myles. It’s gotta be him. He knew Myles and Laurel still had feelings for one another, and he couldn’t abide that. He’s behind all of this. All of the murders.”
“Jeff, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I said. “We can’t assume—”
“Don’t tell me what I can or can’t assume. What I do or don’t know. I’ve known from the beginning that Carl is the killer, and I just hung up with that SOB and told him so,” Mullins railed, spitting mad. “I told him we knew Myles didn’t commit suicide, that he was murdered. And I told that piece of human debris that we’re gunning for him. Told him it’s only a matter of time before we slip the cuffs on and make an arrest.”
“You told him all that? Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve warned him!” I shouted, unsuccessfully trying to dial down my own anger. “Jeff, you’re tired and grieving. I understand that. But you’re not thinking clearly. You just told our main suspect that we’re focusing on him. I wanted Carl Shipley calm and collected, not worrying that we’d knock on his door. That’s not good. You know better than that.”
“Chief, I…” he started, but then he grew quiet. “Shit. I didn’t think—”
“It’s like I said, your judgment isn’t good right now, Mullins,” I said, softer. “Your instincts are off because Laurel’s one of the victims. Your love for her is making you—”
“A liability,” Mullins said, and I didn’t contradict him. Silence, until he said, “Chief, you’re right. I shouldn’t have tipped him off.”
“It’s okay, Jeff. I understand,” I said, thinking back to those days a few months earlier when I crossed the line more often than I liked to admit while searching for my sister. “But you’re out of this. We can’t have you interfering. Be with your family and make arrangements to bury your daughter tomorrow. Leave the investigation to us.”
Silence again, then a grudging agreement.
As I hung up the phone, I griped, “Damn it.”
Max had heard my half of the conversation, enough to understand our predicament. “If Carl knows we’re coming, we need to act fast,” he said. “We don’t have any time to waste.”
Judge Alec Crockett had his full robe on and was seated behind the bench when we walked into the courtroom. Max whispered in the ear of the coordinator, who was in the process of calling the cases. She wrote a short note that she put in the judge’s hand. The old man shot us an irritated gaze and ordered: “My office. Now.”
Once we got there, the judge lit a cigarette, the tip glowing bright red. He had an overflowing ashtray next to him, despite the fact that the laws banned smoking in any public building. He didn’t look happy. Max and I detailed the evidence, went over a bullet list of the murders, Myles’s supposed suicide letter, the results of Doc’s autopsy, and explained why we needed Carl’s computer. We laid out our theory that Carl had staged Myles’s suicide and written the note, most likely on his desktop computer.
The judge looked from Max to me and back again, clearly disappointed, and said, “You need more evidence.”
“This is what we’ve got. We know it’s a little sketchy,” Max explained. “But Judge, we need the warrant now. This minute. We can’t wait.”
“And why is that?” he said, giving us a suspicious eye.
This time I answered: “Carl Shipley knows we’re coming for him. He’s been told that the autopsy will read murder as Myles Thompkins’ manner of death. If we don’t act quickly, he’ll destroy any evidence on that computer.”
“Who warned him?” the judge bellowed. Known for having something of a short temper, the judge got red-faced and sputtered, “Chief Jefferies, goddamn it, why haven’t you got control of your department?”
I’d never seen him so angry. “It doesn’t help to go into who talked. There was a mistake made,” I admitted. “But we need that warrant.”
“Just the computer equipment, Judge. That’s all we want,” Max said. “We’re requesting a really limited warrant. Any computers and printers. That’s it.”
When the judge frowned, his unruly white eyebrows peaked in the center and twisted into a question mark. He sighed, but his face was still as flushed as an overripe peach. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll sign your blasted warrant. But if this goes to trial and you lose the evidence on appeal because we didn’t have enough probable cause to justify this damn warrant, you’re going to have to live with it. Because you’re on thin ice here, I want you to know.”
“Absolutely,” I said, putting the typed warrant down on the judge’s cluttered desk. We watched as he signed it, then he picked it up and handed it to me.
“Now get out of here,” he said. “I’ve got a courtroom to get back to.”
Thirty-Four
Twenty minutes later, we were at Carl Shipley’s trailer, loaded with a list of questions for him and the warrant for the computer equipment. The CSI folks were on their way, but Max and I had a head start. I didn’t see Carl outside, but this time the trailer’s front door stood open. “Carl, it’s Chief Jefferies and Chief Deputy Anderson,” I shouted. “We need to talk.”
Silence. Max stayed back, but I saw him pull out his handgun. I was surprised, but then thought maybe he sensed something. I grabbed mine out of my holster. We waited. We heard insects chirping and buzzing in the woods around us, nothing out of place. That said, it felt strange, unsettling, and, I can’t explain why, but my nerves bristled. I walked up, peeked inside the trailer and saw that it looked as we had left it after the last search, disheveled but not in bad condition. “No Carl,” I said to Max. “What do you think?”
“His pickup’s here. He must be somewhere nearby,” Max said. “Let’s look.”
I nodded.
“Carl Shipley!” Max shouted, as loud as his lungs would allow, toward the woods. “It’s Chief Deputy Max Anderson. Chief Jefferies is with me. We need to talk to you. This minute. Come out!”
Again, silence.
“Damn,” I whispered. “Where the hell is he?”
Max tucked his mouth into a nub, then unfolded it and suggested, “Let’s spread out.” He nodded toward the woods past the trailer indicating I should take that direction, and he began easing off onto an opposite track. It was 11 a.m., and although the air felt fall-crisp, the sun was high, beaming down on us. I didn’t much like walking into the woods alone, weaving through the brush with no one to cover our backs, but we needed to find Carl. As I trekked in, I speculated about whether or not he’d lawyer up like he’d threatened to, or if we could coax him to talk.
Mostly, I wondered what we’d find on his computer’s hard drive.
Keeping my focus on the area surrounding me, I wove between the trees on the path where the grass was worn down. I stared off as far into the distance as I could and saw nothing but trees and brush, slivers of sunlight beaming between them. The trail before me clear, I moved forward, thinking about the Day of the Dead tree we’d seen last time we searched these woods. I worked my way in that direction, passing Carl’s horse in the corral. I wondered if Carl might be at the oak tree, perhaps taking down his decorations or sitting around eating lunch and drinking a beer while he enjoyed the view, but as I approached, I stopped. Even from a distance, I knew that the tree wasn’t as I’d last seen it.
“Max, can you hear me?” I shouted. When he didn’t answer, I tried again, calling out, “Max, I need you here.”
“Coming!” he answered.
I picked my way forward, still scanning the woods, but with my attention increasingly drawn straight ahead. By the time Max arrived, I stood at the base of the tree, looking up, my stomach roiling. Max moved in beside me, and we said nothing until he got on his phone and asked for his boss. A black-winged vulture swooped overhead, circling above us. As Max talked, another arrived, mimicking the first. It reminded me of our arrival at the ranch two days earlier, the vultures in the trees staring at the bodies under the bloodstained
sheet.
“I need to talk to Sheriff Holmes,” Max said into his phone. A moment passed, and I assumed the sheriff responded. “Sheriff, Lieutenant Mueller is already on his way with the CSI folks, but we need Doc Wiley again, this time out at Carl Shipley’s trailer, past Old Sawyer Creek. You know where it is?”
Silence while I assumed the sheriff said that he did. The vultures were gathering, more coming, and the sight of them repulsed me. I aimed my gun, took a shot toward one, not really wanting to hit it. The gunshot rang through the woods, and the scavengers scattered.
“That was nothing,” Max said. “Chief Jefferies just discharged her weapon to scare the buzzards away.”
A brief silence, and then Max explained to the sheriff: “It’s a bizarre turn of events to be sure.” Max hesitated and cleared his throat. This was sticking in his gullet, too. “You know that tree I told you about, the one that’s all trussed up with string and covered with skulls and skeletons?” Max cleared his throat a second time. “Well, Carl Shipley is hanging from it.”
Thirty-Five
The others arrived quickly. Lieutenant Mueller, Doc, Max, and I examined the route from the house to the tree for footprints and saw some, but Mueller thought they’d all come from Carl’s boots. Still, he snapped a bunch of photos. One of his team taped off the area with the prints and mixed up materials for castings to preserve them. Meanwhile the rest of us kept working our way toward the body hanging in the tree. We were trying to determine if anyone else had walked on that path that day besides Max, me, and Carl.
“This looks interesting,” Max said, pointing out a place where a patch of grass had been uprooted. It wasn’t large, just a couple of inches wide and a few inches long. “That could be from something or someone being dragged. Don’t you think?”
Her Final Prayer: A totally gripping and heart-stopping crime thriller (Detective Clara Jefferies Book 2) Page 25