Presumed Dead

by Mason Cross

  “Both of them got themselves killed, as I think you well know.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “Where’s Deputy Green?”

  His eyes narrowed and I could see my continued interest in Green’s whereabouts was irritating him. “She’s outside of this little room, and therefore that’s my business. Your business is what happens in here.”

  I sighed. “Aren’t you going to ask me some questions? Establish if I have an alibi, that sort of thing? I know you haven’t had many murders here lately, but presumably you’ve seen the process on TV.”

  He didn’t blink at the barb. “If you want to waive your right to representation and proceed to formal questioning, that can be arranged.”

  I thought about it. The smart play is, always ask for a lawyer. If anyone else was in this situation asking me for advice, that’s the first thing I would tell them to do.

  But in my exact situation, I wasn’t sure. McGregor really seemed to believe he had his man. The simplest explanation strikes again. A pair of strangers and a lone stranger come into town on the same day. They have a fight. A day later, the pair are dead. He had no idea that somebody else with a connection to Bethany might be in a mood for killing.

  I thought about it for a minute. I knew I could call a firm in New York I had dealt with in the past, and assuming someone was available, an attorney could be here within hours. But that would mean wasting a lot of time. I made my mind up. There was no way they could pin the murders on me without evidence, and I knew there would be no evidence, because I was innocent. I didn’t plan on being influenced by McGregor’s no doubt formidable interrogation techniques to the point where I would sign a false confession, and if it came to it, I could always make my phone call later on.

  “I don’t need a lawyer. Show me where to sign,” I said.

  40

  Isabella Green

  The bodies of the two hunters were laid out ten yards apart in front of their black Toyota. At the precise midpoint between them, were two rifles, two wallets, a wristwatch, a baseball cap, and two cell phones. It was orderly, thoughtful: a neat little pile of the dead men’s personal effects, as though they had been sorted and were awaiting return to the owners who would never again need them. Isabella was staring at the pile, her mind full of competing emotions. She was so lost in thought that she started when Sam Dentz patted her on the upper arm.

  “Sorry Isabella. First homicide, right?”

  Dentz was a little shorter than she was, and stocky in build. He had dark hair that was starting to recede a little. He had less time in the department than she did, but he seemed to feel some need to protect her from the nastier parts of the job.

  She shook her head. “Just thinking.”

  “It gets easier. If you want you can go sit in the car. Get a deep breath and so forth.”

  Isabella shot him a sidelong glare, knowing he probably wouldn’t get that message either. “I’m fine,” she said flatly.

  The rain started to fall harder and Dentz pulled up the hood on his raincoat. Isabella didn’t bother. Her hair was already wet.

  Bethany wasn’t a big enough town to have its own forensic or autopsy facilities, of course, so they had waited for the coroner investigator from Blairsville. He had gotten delayed thanks to his van failing to start, but had arrived now, and was processing the bodies before transport to the morgue. He’d already been able to estimate a narrower-than-usual time of death, because it hadn’t rained until eleven o’clock last night, and the ground beneath the bodies was bone dry.

  The two men were dressed in hunting gear. IDs said they were Jeffrey J. Friedrickson and Thomas Allen Leonard, both of New Jersey. Friedrickson was dressed in woodland army fatigues, and a canvas baseball cap with the word “Jeff” stitched into it. Leonard wore jeans and an expensive-looking outdoorsman jacket. Both were wearing the recommended safety gear for hunting: orange hi-vis vests, to make it real easy not to mistake them for a deer. A preliminary check on the system threw up a ten-year-old assault conviction for Friedrickson and a couple of DUIs for Leonard, nothing that warranted the death penalty. And that was definitely what this was. Somebody had hunted these men down and executed them. Just like …

  Isabella shivered. She put the thought back in the locked box and turned the key.

  She tried to blank her mind entirely, as she went down on one knee to examine the wounds. Both men had been killed with gunshots to the head. Double-tap in both cases, just like Walter Wheeler in Atlanta. Friedrickson had been shot in the back of the skull. The middle finger on his left hand was missing, which suggested one of the bullets had passed through on its way in. She stood up and looked over at Leonard’s body, ten feet away. Two in the head for him, too, although only one of them looked close range. While Friedrickson’s body was slumped over, his was sprawled face down, as though he had been upright when he was killed.

  “Fella did this doesn’t screw around,” Dentz said, looking down at the first corpse. “How do you suppose it went down?”

  Isabella closed her eyes. Saw the scene as clearly as a movie. It wasn’t difficult to do; the hard part was switching it off. Two kneeling figures, trembling, maybe begging. Bang. One down. The second reacts predictably. Bang. Two down. Bang. Bang. Just to make sure. She opened her eyes.

  “This guy died first,” she said, indicating Friedrickson. “The perp made them kneel. I guess up until the point he pulled the trigger, they were still kidding themselves that they had a way out of this. When this one saw his friend’s brains in the dirt, he tried to run. Too late.”

  Dentz smirked, but looked impressed. “You’re a little too good at this stuff.”

  She looked back down at the wounds. Classic double-tap. Military style. And familiar in more ways than one. But Isabella knew it couldn’t be. She looked over at Dentz and realized that he hadn’t used the name yet. He hadn’t mentioned anything about it. The Devil Mountain Killer had been before his time, but it wasn’t like he was unaware of the killings, or their MO. Surely it couldn’t be that he hadn’t drawn the connection.

  He must have seen something in the way she was looking at him and read her mind.

  “Just like before, isn’t it?”

  He didn’t seem to find that too disturbing, and Isabella wondered why. “You think we have a copycat?” she asked.

  He looked confused. “No, I mean I guess it’s just coincidence that he killed them that way. Maybe he didn’t know.”

  “Maybe who didn’t know?”

  “The perp. That Blake guy.”

  Her brain took a second to process what Dentz had just said. “What?”

  “I thought you knew. Feldman didn’t tell you?”

  Feldman had told her nothing, only that there were two dead men up in the hills, and could she take over the scene until the CI got here. He didn’t say anything about a suspect, let alone that it was Blake.

  “Where is he?”

  “Take it easy. I don’t know, down at the station, I guess. You don’t know about this? Feldman broke up a fight between Blake and these two Saturday night. Looks like he decided to finish it off later.”

  Isabella looked at the dry grass beneath where Friedrickson had lain. “You sure about that TOD?” she asked the coroner investigator.

  He took a couple of seconds to respond, taking his time to finish a note he was writing down. Eventually he looked up. “Normally we would have a wider window, but because of the rainfall, we know it had to have happened before eleven o’clock, which means between nine and eleven last night.”

  “What gives?”

  She ignored Dentz’s question and walked to the pile of personal effects. “Okay if I go ahead and bag the phones?” she asked the CI.

  He shrugged. “As long as you’re careful. I don’t think these guys will mind.”

 
Isabella stretched on a pair of surgical gloves and took a couple of small, clear plastic evidence bags from her pack. She lifted the nearest cell phone by the top corner, careful not to smudge any prints. The screen awoke. No pin. Sloppy, but maybe it could give them a head start. She held it by the top corner, hovering just above the second bag, and then asked it a question.

  “Okay Google … where have I been today?”

  Dentz looked at Isabella as though she was in the initial stages of a nervous breakdown, but the coroner investigator gave her a sly grin as he realized what she was doing.

  Google thought about it for a couple of seconds, and then came back with a map listing the locations the phone had been over the last twenty-four hours. It looked like the owner had been pretty active until ten-twenty-six last night, when he reached this spot, and never moved again.

  “McGregor’s got the wrong guy,” she said.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because Blake has an alibi.”

  41

  Isabella Green

  The sheriff folded his arms and sat back in his chair, looking back at Isabella through half-lidded eyes.

  “What can I do for you, Isabella?”

  With an effort, she suppressed the urge to ask why the hell no one had told her Blake was in custody. She suspected she would be better off asking Feldman, in any case. He was the one who had called her without divulging that particular piece of information, after all.

  “Dentz said you’re holding Blake for the murders.”

  “He’s correct.”

  “Any particular reason, other than what happened on Saturday?”

  “Do you have a better suspect?”

  “Did you find a weapon on him?”

  “No, but I’m sure he would have been careful to hide it somewhere. It’ll turn up.”

  “GSR on his hands?”

  “He had plenty of time to wash them.”

  “Did you ask him where he was last night?”

  McGregor sighed, as though he had been expecting this. “He said he wanted to talk to you before he answered that one. Why would that be, Isabella?”

  “You can wipe that look off your face, Jim. You’re right, I’m his alibi. We had dinner with my mom. She can alibi him too, if you catch her in a lucid moment.”

  He shook his head. “Are you saying you can alibi him …” he paused meaningfully before the last two words, “… all night?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but that’s not what I’m saying. I drove him back to the cabins after dinner, got there about eleven-thirty.”

  “Then he had plenty of time to go back out there, find those two men and shoot them.”

  She shook her head. “Look at the preliminary scene report from the coroner. The rain started at around eleven o’clock. The grass was dry underneath those two bodies, which means they had to have been killed before that. Nine at the earliest, he says. And that would be an outside possibility. I was with Blake from eight. That’s consistent with the data from their cell phones – they were moving around until just before ten-thirty, and then they stayed put. That’s your time of death, at which point Carter Blake was five miles away helping me stack the dishwasher.”

  McGregor’s face lost the knowing look. Isabella was grateful for that. She knew that with anyone else, he would have maintained the poker face.

  “You’ve seen the PSR already?”

  “And got it from the horse’s mouth. The CI said there’s no way those men died before nine. Blake couldn’t have done it.”

  McGregor pinched his chin between the thumb and index finger of his right hand. It was a tick he always had when considering new information. If Isabella was reading him right, it didn’t look like this information had come as a complete shock. She wondered if Blake had halfway convinced him of his innocence already, even without telling him who he had been with.

  “Could someone have messed with the data on the phones?”

  “I called in a request to AT&T on my way down here. They’ll tell me if their records match. I think they will.”

  He nodded, pleased at her thoroughness, if not her conclusion. She pressed him.

  “So you have no gun. You have no GSR on your suspect’s hands, and you have a circumstantial motive at best. Now you have an alibi that shows he couldn’t have killed these men. That is, if my word is good enough for you.”

  “Shit,” he said after a moment.

  “Shit indeed. Because whoever did this is still out there.”

  Isabella didn’t add what else she was thinking. This guy still being on the loose was just the start of their problems. Blake wasn’t the killer, and therefore this crime did not have the easily explainable motive of a bar fight escalating into murder. The two men had been killed out in the woods, with two shots to the head, and now there was no apparent motive. That meant Dentz’s theory was a live possibility.

  If the ballistics came back showing a .38 was used, then there was a good chance they had a Devil Mountain copycat on their hands.

  42

  Carter Blake

  I guessed I had been sitting in the cell for a couple of hours when I heard the footsteps approaching. The door opened and I looked up, expecting to see McGregor. It wasn’t him.

  “I thought I warned you to stay out of trouble.”

  Isabella Green’s expression was neutral, but there was just enough wry amusement in her voice to tell me that my situation was improving.

  “Did you talk to McGregor?”

  She nodded. “Lucky for you it didn’t start raining until after those two men were killed last night. Otherwise you would be sitting in here until a better suspect came along. And sometimes, one never does.”

  McGregor and Feldman joined her at the door, both giving me matching hard stares.

  “You’re letting me go?” I asked. It was almost a rhetorical question. It sounded like Green had given me my alibi, and in any case the evidence against me was so thin it could barely even be called circumstantial. You could just about make the case for motive, and that would be it. A half-decent lawyer would have had me out on the street within hours, but I could see that cooperating, along with Deputy Green’s help, had very probably saved us all those hours.

  He nodded reluctantly. “You can go.”

  I stayed put, because the way he delivered those three words had me expecting a “but”.

  “But I’d like you to stay around town for the next few days. Or at least be contactable.”

  “That’s a switch,” I said, glancing at Green. She didn’t smile.

  “Come on, McGregor. You never thought I did it, did you?”

  McGregor shifted uncomfortably. Beside him, Feldman glared at me. I got the feeling at least one of them had been pretty sure I was guilty. Or at least really wanted me to be.

  “I’d like to keep you around,” McGregor continued, without answering my question, “because whatever happened to those men, you were the last man to see them alive that we know of. Aside from their killer.”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “Deputy Feldman here saw them at the same time. The bartender, too.”

  “Neither of us got into a fight with them,” Feldman said. Then, addressing McGregor, “No need to be hasty here, we can keep this prick until tomorrow morning.”

  McGregor’s eyes shifted away from mine for the first time, and the look he gave Feldman was a wordless rebuke. It said, If I want your advice, I’ll ask for it. Green diplomatically examined her shoes. I cleared my throat and spoke.

  “I’d like to help.”

  All three looked back at me again. McGregor looked curious. Feldman’s mouth opened, and then he thought better and closed it again.

  “That’s good to hear, Blake,” McGregor said. “Leave your number. We’ll be in touch.”

  “That
’s not what I meant. I have some expertise in this area and I’d like to offer it.”

  Green looked back down at the ground. I understood. She had already positioned herself a little too close to me. She wanted us to argue this out with no input from her, whatever her opinion on it.

  “Your … ‘expertise’ is in missing persons, Blake. That right?” McGregor said. “These two men are a lot of things, but they ain’t missing. We know exactly where they are: on a slab waiting for the cutter.”

  “Sometimes missing means dead,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Green flinch at that, and remembered there was a missing person still to be accounted for: Deputy Haycox. I ignored that for the moment and kept speaking. “If I can take a look at the crime scene, maybe I’ll think of something helpful. Besides, this way you get to keep an eye on me.”

  McGregor considered it. I could tell Feldman wasn’t happy, but he had shot his bolt too early. After a few seconds, McGregor turned to Green. “Speak to you for a moment?”

  The two of them stepped outside the cell, leaving Feldman and me alone. He waited a moment, and then stepped in front of the door and closed it behind him, keeping his eyes on me all the while.

  “Looks like you’ll be leaving us a little earlier than planned,” he said.

  “No need to apologize. Could have happened to anyone.”

  He stepped forward and I wondered what he was going to do. Provoke me into doing something that would extend my stay, perhaps. I stood up and crossed my arms.

  “I want you out of town, today,” he said.

  “The sheriff doesn’t seem to agree.”

  “We’ll find you if we need to, trust me,” he said, bringing his face to within six inches of mine. He was so close I could hazard a guess at his brand of toothpaste.

  “How about we wait until the boss comes back?” I said.

  Feldman took a second to think about that, and then he raised his hand and slammed it hard against the wall, right beside my head. With an effort, I didn’t blink.