“Brett, what the hell?” she hurried toward him.
Brett held one hand up to slow her progress. “Hang on. Just a word of warning…”
“Come on, Brett, I’m not a cream-filled puffball I won’t deflate or collapse. What’s going on?” Sarah demanded impatiently. “You found Rodney?”
“Yes, well, some hikers did. They’re over there, by the first car. They are staying in a camper on some relatives’ ground, other side of the lake, for a week of vacation. They decided to putt around the lake in a little pontoon boat. They wanted to pull into the bay that runs parallel to this road and as they passed the tip, there’s a break in the trees where this road ends, just where the truck is parked, and they saw…it from there.”
“It? Saw what?”
“Come on, I’ll just show you.” Brett spun on his heel and headed away from Sarah, hurrying down the road.
As they swiftly paced down the road, Sarah could see the side of a tow truck. The truck was parked almost exactly crossways in the road, as though in the midst of turning around. As she got closer, Sarah could see the lettering on the door, ‘Rooster’s Towing – You Crow We Tow.” She winced. Rodney’s truck. The low-hanging tree limbs on the left side of the road, where the winch was located, hid the end of the truck from Sarah’s side, but it would have been visible from the water. Brett looked back at her over his shoulder and pointed toward the rear of the vehicle. “Over here.”
Sarah ducked under the foliage and raised her gaze, she stopped. “Oh, God.”
“Yeah.”
The boom was elevated from its horizontal position. The metal winch cable, used to pull disabled cars onto the flatbed, encircled Rodney’s neck at least three times, serving as a noose. The cable continued down and was wrapped around his arms, pulling them so tightly behind his back that his elbows were touching.”
Sarah stood at the edge of the bumper and looked up. The position of the cable behind Rodney’s head tilted his head forward slightly. The neck was elongated, his normally ruddy complexion was pale just around the lips, which were tinged blue, and the rest of his face was florid. His jaws seemed puffed out slightly, his eyes were milky. There was a fog of flies buzzing around the entire back half of the wrecker; one crawled across a dry, hazy cornea.
Sarah walked to the side of the wrecker facing the lake and looked behind the body. The fists were dusky. “We need to get him down from there. Where is that photographer? And where is the Coroner?” Sarah asked the few officers standing near the wrecker. They all shook their heads. “Get them here now.”
“I’m sure they are on the way, Sarah.” Brett shifted uncomfortably. “Mike said he’d grab the camera and ride out with Joe. The Coroner was at his home but said he’d be here in twenty minutes. Would you like me to call them again?”
“I’m sorry, no, I’m sure they are on the way.” Sarah motioned for Brett to follow her a few yards away from the truck. “Anyone have a look through the cab yet?”
“No. We waited for you…and we didn’t want to touch the door or handle, or anything, even with gloves, until Ted had a chance to go over it. Don’t want to smear any prints that might be there. It’s pretty high off the ground; if we have to grab hold of the handle to get to the cab, so did the person who did this, if that person got in the cab at all.”
Sarah nodded thoughtfully, “Of course.” She looked into the distance and saw clouds of dust rising in a line toward their location. “Looks like the troops are arriving. I want to talk to the people who found him.”
Brett led Sarah back toward the line of police cars. On the opposite side of the first car was a group of five people, two adults, a teenage boy who looked about 14 or 15, and two younger children, somewhere around 8 and 10. As Sarah approached, the adults turned their distressed faces in her direction with relief. “Hello, I’m Detective Sarah Vines. I would like to ask you a few questions and then we’ll let you get out of here.”
“Please do,” rushed the response from the woman, “we need to get the kids away from this. I just can’t believe…” she swallowed hard and looked at the man, who extended his hand and spoke.
“I’m Andrew Miller and this is my wife, Rosy.”
Sarah shook his hand, nodded at his wife. “Officer Maddux says you are vacationing here and found the body while out on the lake?”
“Yes. We, my family and I, are staying at my brother-in-law’s place across the lake. We come down here every other summer for a week’s vacation and to visit my wife’s family. We live in Colorado.”
“You just happened to see the body as you were cruising by in a pontoon boat? Is that right?”
“Well, yes, in a way. I mean, we were just about past the point when we decided to go up the bay we had just passed. We had to turn back a little and as we faced the shore, it was directly in front of us. We weren’t that far from shore. It was in plain view. I called the police on my cell phone immediately. They asked us to pull up to shore, away from the area, and wait for them, which we did.”
“Did you see anyone moving around the truck or in the woods near it?”
“No,” Andrew looked at each of his family members, who all shook their heads.
“Did you hear anything? Anything at all?” They shook their heads again, Sarah pressed, “Nothing? No sounds of another vehicle engine, tires on the road? See any dust rising?”
“No, nothing.” Andrew looked pained, “Can we please go?”
“Will you be here until the end of this week?” asked Sarah.
“Yes, until Saturday, when my wife’s brother will drive us back to Nashville to catch our flight back to Colorado. I gave our address here and cell phone numbers to one of the officers.”
“Ok, thank you very much. If you don’t mind, I’d also like you to give this officer your address in Colorado. I’m sorry to prolong this for you.”
Sarah crossed the road and walked back to the wrecker. An officer was busy taking photos of the body and the Coroner was unpacking his kit in preparation for on-site examination before transport. The late afternoon sun was slanting across the lake, the water sparkling like gems. Cicadas sang their raspy tunes from the trees surrounding the road. A mosquito made a high-pitched whine in Sarah’s ear and she swatted it away.
***
“Brett, why don’t you ride back to town with me? Officer Carmichael can take your car.”
“Ok, sure.” Brett tossed his keys to the other officer and followed Sarah to her Subaru. He slid into the passenger seat.
“I would like you to go with me to make the notification to Milton Sauer.”
“I thought you might. That’s fine. I dread this though. It’s a bad enough job, but with Milton, it could be hairy.”
“Exactly. I do feel for him though. No matter what a child is like, it is still losing a child.”
“Right.” Brett watched the fields pass by as they wound through the roads back to the highway. “Do you have any idea what is happening here?”
Sarah measured her words, “Well, the pieces of this mess are starting to at least seem to have some relationship to each other, I just don’t know why.”
“What do you mean?”
Sarah stopped at the stop sign then pulled out on the highway. During the fifteen-minute drive back to town, she explained to Brett what she had learned that morning from Perri and Nina.
“Did you ask those two where they were Saturday night? I know they had a couple of altercations with Rodney.”
“I did. They were at their hotel. We’ll verify it, but I don’t think they did this.” She reasoned, “It seems likely that the person who killed Amy also killed Rodney. Rodney was killed to ensure silence, not sure about Amy yet, but it appears to be for something that she knew.”
Brett smirked, “I am sure the man who hired Rodney to quietly dispose of the car had no idea what he was getting into, because Rodney was probably the last choice for discretionary work.”
Sarah frowned and wanted to rebuke Brett for making the
joke, but couldn’t help smiling. “I know. Good grief.” After a couple of minutes of quiet contemplation, Sarah adjusted the a/c directly to her face and said, “What is starting to bother me, and I don’t want to make this into a bigger problem than it is, is the fact that Patricia died not long before Amy.” Brett turned in the seat to face Sarah, his face shadowed with the dawning realization of what she was saying. “So, if Amy was killed for finding out something by helping Patricia, and Rodney was killed because he disposed of the car used when Amy was killed…” she trailed off.
“Oh, say it isn’t so.” Brett puffed out a breath and let his head fall back on the headrest.
Chapter 24
“That’s it. There is nothing else to find here that I can tell,” said Perri as she stacked the last file folder at the end of the table. “I’m beat. Let’s call it a night.”
Nina stood and stretched, “So, tomorrow we go to Todd County? Where do we have to go to look for records there?”
“Elkton,” responded Perri with a tired sigh.
“How far is that? Will it take us long to get there?” asked Nina in a weary tone.
“No, not at all. Our hotel is a little bit closer to Elkton than it is to Russellville.”
“That’s handy.”
“That’s one reason I picked the Crow’s Rest though, because it was kind of in the middle. The second cemetery we went to on Saturday was in Todd County.”
Perri and Nina left the files in place and gathered their belongings from the table outside the door of the document room. Cora was at her desk near the front door as they walked toward the exit. “We’re done here, Cora. We left the files on the table,” Perri hooked her thumb back toward the document room, “and we are headed out.”
“Alright-y. You going over to Todd’s clerk’s office tomorrow? I heard Sarah talking to you about it.”
Perri nodded, “We’ll go see what we can find there, if anything.”
“Well, you girls be careful, ok? I hope you find something. I’ll be glad when all this business is over.” Cora shook her head slowly back and forth.
“Thank you, we will.” Perri and Nina each pushed open one of the doors and stepped out into the warm evening.
The parking lot was in shade and the lowering sun reached its beams along the top and edges of the building. Perri said, “What do you say we pick up something, a pizza maybe, and take it back to eat in the room. I’m done for the day.”
“Me too. I don’t want to read anything more complicated than a menu the rest of the night. Pizza it is.”
Perri realized how hungry she was and looked forward to a pizza, or two. “There’s a pizza place on 68; we’ll stop there.”
They had just gotten back into the Cooper, Nina balancing two hot pizzas straight out of the oven on her purse in her lap, when Perri’s phone buzzed. “Hello?”
“Hi Perri, this is Sarah Vines. I’m sorry to bother you, I know it’s been a long day.”
“Yes, it has. I didn’t find anything else in the files today. Sorry, I was going to call you later. Nina and I just picked up a pizza and are headed back to the hotel. We’re toast.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, no problem at all. Trust me, I would be worn out if I had to look through as many documents as you have today,” reassured Sarah. “I wanted to touch base with you about going over to Todd County tomorrow, that still ok with you both?”
“Yes, we were planning on it. That’s one reason we wanted to make an earlier night of it tonight, get some rest and head over there in the morning. What time do you want us to be there?”
“I’ll call them first thing, around 8 o’clock and ask them to go ahead and start pulling files with the Blackwell’s names, in any category. If you can be there at 9 o’clock, I hope that isn’t too early, that should give you time to search through the records.”
“Do you want us to copy everything?” asked Perri.
“If possible. If there turns out to be a glut of information on Isaiah, give me a call. I’m more interested in Jonathan. We may be able to pick and choose if there are a lot of documents on Isaiah.”
“Ok, thanks. That will help. Most of the time I would feel I was being overly ambitious if I was afraid of too many documents, but this would be the one time there might be a cartload.” Perri breathed a sigh of relief.
Sarah laughed, “I understand.” She paused, “And Perri, there’s something else.”
“Ok, what?”
“I wanted you to be aware that Rodney Sauer’s body was found this afternoon. I know there was an incident where he threatened you following your encounter with his father.”
“Oh, my gosh! I see.” Perri’s face blanched a little bit. She turned to look at Nina with wide eyes and a startled expression.
“What? What is it?” asked Nina. Perri held up one forefinger.
Nina whispered, “What?” and Perri shook her head.
Sarah continued, “I wanted to let you know because he didn’t die in an accident. He was killed, um, murdered, and we are concerned that his death is connected to Amy’s.” She paused and heard only silence. “I can’t give details, but I want you to know we feel strongly the deaths are related and if you don’t want to continue with the document search, I will understand completely. I don’t want you to do anything you aren’t comfortable doing.”
“Uh, yeah, I thank you for that. I can only speak for myself, but I definitely want to continue. I feel vested in solving this mystery, at least the historical part of it, if I can. But, I can only speak for myself. Can I call you back after I talk to Nina? Just a few minutes?”
Nina plucked at Perri’s sleeve again, “What, what?”
“Certainly. I’ll wait to hear from you.”
Perri ended the call. “That was Detective Vines. She said that Rodney Sauer was found dead today...murdered.” Nina let her mouth fall open, said nothing, “…and that they feel pretty sure his and Amy’s death are related. She said we don’t have to continue the research if we feel uncomfortable. So, well, you heard the rest.”
“Yeah. Yeah, ok. I don’t know. I mean, do you think it’s dangerous for us?”
“I have no idea. I want to continue, but Nina, if you don’t, I get that. You have a family.”
“Uhhhh. I want to, but, you’re right. But I don’t want to miss out.” Nina thought, then said, “Look, tomorrow is my last day to stay here. We’re going to another county and will be in a government building all day, right?” Perri nodded affirmatively. “I want to go tomorrow but no more cemeteries or weird abandoned places, ok?”
“No, definitely not! We’ll only go the Clerk’s office and back here, and we’ll get drive through for food rather than go in somewhere, or even ask someone to get it for us, ok? After that, unless there is something else I can do, we’ll both be going home Wednesday morning and leaving this behind. Deal?”
Nina nodded, “Deal.”
“Alright, I’ll call Sarah back and let her know we’ll be there.”
Chapter 25
Sarah was trying to quietly finish brushing her teeth while she listened to the Coroner’s post-mortem examination of Rodney Sauer. When the Coroner was finished, she thanked him and hung up. Based on significant engorgement of the head, it was determined Rodney would have been alive but unconscious when he was hung by the winch cable, his knees bent and the dorsal surface of the feet in contact with the bed of the wrecker. He had first received a strike to the back of the head with a heavy, blunt weapon, the swing progressing from lower to higher, crushing the occipital bone, rendering him unconscious and resulting in a subdural hematoma. The ligature, in this case the winch cable, had been placed high on the neck restricting the flow of blood away from the head while still allowing flow of blood into the head from the deeper placed arteries. The body was no longer in rigor and rigidity had completely subsided; time of death was placed between ten o’clock p.m. Saturday night and two o’clock a.m. Sunday morning. He certainly never regained consciousness, which
was a small mercy. It explained how the murderer had been able to wrap Rodney’s hands and neck with the cable without resistance, although it wouldn’t have been an easy job even with the help of the electric winch. Rodney wasn’t a slender guy, which indicated strongly for a male assailant.
***
Perri and Nina were settled at a conference style table behind filing cabinets in the Todd County Clerk’s Office. There were two short stacks of files on the table in front of them.
“This isn’t too bad. You ready to get started?” Perri asked Nina.
“Bring it on!”
***
They worked through the records in three hours. While many of these documents were quite early, they were not as closely written, making reading easier and quicker.
Nina slumped down in her chair and stretched her legs and arms out in front of her, rotating her ankles and wrists. “Should we call Sarah and see what she wants us to do now?”
“Yes. I think we made some progress.” Perri pulled out her cell phone and hit redial from Sarah’s call the night before.
“Sarah Vines,” came the clipped answer.
“Hi Sarah, this is Perri Seamore. We have finished going through the records here. I’m just wondering where you’d like to meet, and when, to go over the findings.”
“Ok, great. You found something?”
“We found a couple of items that shed more light on Jonathan Blackwell, although I think it might bring up more questions,” replied Perri.
“Did you get copies of those documents?”
“Yes, we did.”
“Ok, fantastic. Can you meet me in Russellville at the police station, at, say, 2 o’clock?”
“Will do. See you then.” Perri disconnected. “What do you say we drive through somewhere and eat lunch in the car on the way back to Russellville?”
“Sounds good to me, I’m starving.” Nina gathered her purse and notebook.
Perri put the copies in her satchel and her purse on her shoulder. “Let’s hit the road.”
Poison Branches Page 13