The Dead of Night

by Jean Rabe

  Oren brought his light closer. “Barbed wire. I’d wait on Annie before you start pulling anything out. It would be bad if—”

  “I’m not touching anything.” Piper almost said, Of course we’ll wait for the coroner. I’m not an idiot. But she kept the words in. She’d woken Oren, and he’d been good about coming out here on his day off without a grumble. Night off, she corrected. He’d dressed in his uniform, always everything proper. He had forty more years of law enforcement experience than she did, twenty with the Rockport police, twenty with the Spencer County Sheriff’s Department. She’d called him not because she needed his experience here—though it would be useful—but because she knew he’d be pissed that something out of the ordinary had happened and he wasn’t a part of it. She was making strides in getting along with him.

  “Rockport might make a claim for this,” Oren said, seemingly needing to cut the silence. “They have to be notified.”

  “Yeah. But I found him.”

  “Or her.”

  “I want this,” Piper admitted. DUI reports, reading the resumes for the open deputy position, handling Mark the Shark’s claim…a cold case would be more intriguing than all of that. “I found the bones,” she repeated. “This is our case.” She had stopped herself from saying my case.

  “Chief Hugh might disagree with you, just to give you a hard time. It’s in the city.”

  Yeah, I know it’s in the friggin’ itty bitty city.

  Piper nearly argued that the sheriff held jurisdiction anywhere in the county. But she knew the default comes when a crime occurs in a city’s limits and there is a city police department; then that department gets the case—unless it is not equipped to handle it. The Rockport Police Department was equipped. Or unless for whatever reason a police department decides to defer to the sheriff. Piper hoped for the “decides to defer.”

  “We handled the last body in Rockport. Hugh didn’t want the roofer.” Piper referred to one of the targets of the serial killer who’d slain and artfully posed his victims throughout the county around the holidays.

  “That body was black and swollen,” Oren said. “And it stunk so bad I had to toss my clothes. Couldn’t get the smell out of them. Of course he didn’t want that one. Nobody would’ve wanted that one. This? This is just bones.”

  “Of maybe a child.”

  Oren let out a hissing breath. “You want me to call Curtis, deal with jurisdiction issue? I’ve known him for—”

  —longer than I’ve been alive.

  “Yeah,” Piper said. “I’d like you to call Chief Hugh.” That was the main reason she’d summoned Oren, though she’d never admit it. All Oren’s years with the city police, and the fact that he was boating buddies with Chief Curtis Hugh. Oren would have a much better chance at winning the jurisdiction issue. She really wanted this; something different to tackle.

  “I’ll invite him out here, have to do that. But I’ll suggest the victim might have been killed outside the city. If that’s barbed wire, the victim could have been tied up, killed elsewhere—”

  “—has to be murder,” Piper repeated flatly. “No other reason to bury a body on the bluff.”

  “—could have been killed elsewhere in the county and brought here. Maybe for the view. Maybe because the bluff meant something to the killer or the victim. That’d make it our jurisdiction if the murder took place outside the city. That this spot was just the disposal site; I’ll bring that possibility up.”

  “Think he’ll accept that?”

  “We’re friends.” Oren shrugged. “It’s eleven. I’m thinking Curtis will say it’s ours, to keep him posted, and will roll over and go back to sleep. Besides, it’s a cold case. A cold case? If it goes unsolved it won’t be a good mark for Curtis. Could influence his personal review by the mayor and city council. I might mention that, too.”

  Piper tipped her head so Oren wouldn’t see her smile.

  “Wonder who’d go and bury a kid in the park,” he mused again as he pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll give Curtis a call now, then wait for Annie. A cold case. It’s ours.”

  4

  Four

  Tuesday, May 1st

  •a ten-inch section of rusted barbed wire

  •four marbles

  •two pieces of a thin black leather belt

  •a curl of brown leather

  •five copper rivets

  •a handful of coins

  •seven small black buttons

  •three slightly larger brown buttons

  •and a brass belt buckle

  Those items had been culled from the bluff after the bones were removed and were now set out on a sheet of butcher block paper on a table in the department’s all-purpose room.

  Piper sat in front of them, staring.

  JJ—Jeri Jones—the department’s sole detective, stood across from her. Piper had promoted JJ three months past after the previous detective became a victim of the Christmas Card Killer, as the county’s serial slayer had been dubbed.

  “So?” Piper asked.

  “Won’t have the coroner’s report for a while—” JJ began.

  “I’m well aware. Oren left at seven for Evansville.”

  “—and so we don’t know for certain how old he was.”

  “Or she,” Piper said.

  JJ shook her head, her curls shining in the fluorescent light. “He. And I can tell you that he probably died fifty to sixty-some years ago and wasn’t from around here.”

  “Go on.” JJ, known for being a thorough investigator, had been a good choice for detective. Piper hadn’t needed to advertise outside the department, she’d simply “promoted from within,” even though that had caused considerable hard feelings from the other in-house applicants.

  “The four marbles. I found an online catalog of vintage marbles and matched them up. These three are common machine-made from the late forties, worth maybe three or four bucks each to a collector. The larger one.” She whistled. “Agate lemonade with oxblood-red swirls from the late thirties. It’d go for several hundred. Maybe as much as seven.”

  “Now it would,” Piper said. “Decades ago? Probably not so much.”

  “Marbles were more of a boy-thing back then. Part of the reason I say the victim was a boy.”

  “Maybe,” Piper said. “Go on.”

  “The twist of barbed wire, no idea about that. Haven’t really looked into that piece yet, or this strip of brown leather, other than to notice it has holes at each end. Maybe it was tied together or it connected something. I’ll get digging into them next. It’s the other stuff.”

  “Go on,” Piper repeated.

  “The coins.” JJ pointed. “This is a farthing, British, dated 1940. This one’s also dated 1940, twenty francs, Liberte Egalite Fraternite it says on the back. It means freedom, equality, and fraternity. The one with the hen and the chicks on it, the other side has a raised harp and reads Eire 1943. Despite being buried, those three coins are in remarkable condition and don’t look like they were circulated, likely from someone’s coin collection. The U.S. nickels and pennies—forty-eight cents worth—range in dates from 1942 to 1949 and are beat to hell, definitely circulated. Nothing more recent than 1949, so I’d say the bones have been there maybe six decades.”

  “Good work,” Piper said.

  “Took me half an hour on the coins. Google is my friend.” JJ had long blonde hair reminiscent of Dolly Parton, was pencil thin, and had been with the department ten years. She was the only other woman in the ranks, and she and Piper had established a solid rapport. She pulled out a chair and sat.

  “But coins, JJ? That’s why you think the bones are from a boy based on—”

  “Not based on the coins. But I had to mention them, the dates and such. If you pull coins out of your pocket, you’ll find a mix of recent and old stuff. So I’m just guessing the 1949 coin might have been fairly recent at the time. The belt buckle is pretty convincing, too, on the ‘boy’ front. That took some digging, and I f
inally thought to look on eBay of all places. Should’ve started there. Two and a half inches by an inch and three-quarters is pretty small and would have worked with the belt. We got two pieces of the belt. The brass patina’s long gone, but you can see the detail in the buckle, the ‘Merit Award’ at the top, ‘The Arizona Republic’ at the bottom. The boy in a suit delivering newspapers in the center, and on the newspaper bag it says ‘busy boys…better boys’ all in caps. The Arizona Republic still publishes, out of Phoenix, a Gannett paper now. Began in 1890, called The Arizona Republican then. Switched to the Republic in 1930. In 1952 they gave out these belt buckles to their carriers. In the fifties most carriers were boys. Oh, and the image on the belt buckle? That’s based on the 1952 three-cent postage stamp called ‘Newspaper Boys.’ I suppose a newspaper girl could have been given the buckle, could have had all those coins and the marbles, still it’s unlikely especially since—”

  Piper raised an eyebrow and waited.

  “It’s the copper rivets that cements it for me. They’re from blue jeans, and in the early fifties young girls weren’t likely to wear them. Oh, some did, but most girls wore skirts, dresses, capris, slacks. So, the jeans coupled with the belt buckle—I’m saying the skeleton belongs to a boy. These two brown buttons? I emailed pictures to a big online vintage clothing collector in New York, and she got back to me in minutes. Says they’re definitely from jeans. She sent me a few links with more information. Turns out that back in the day jeans had a button fly. Levi Strauss started using some zippers in 1947, and that was to appeal to women. Our boy easily could have been wearing hand-me-down jeans, and so they could have come from the 1940s, before the zippers. Clothes can last a long time. The little black buttons? They had to have come from a shirt, she says. And all the buttons are Bakelite, an early plastic, molded resin.”

  Piper whistled. “Nice. I agree, a boy. Maybe a teenager, at best, definitely not an adult.” She rocked back in the chair, wishing she would have gone to the coroner’s, as she was curious about the bones. But she could not be in two cities at the same time. Besides, Oren got on well with Dr. Annie Neufeld; they traced their friendship back to childhood. And Piper had Mark the Shark to deal with in a little while. A glance at the clock—9 a.m.—the banks should be open now. She’d call Mark and they’d go over to his—

  “High school graduation is on the nineteenth,” JJ said.

  JJ didn’t have kids, Piper knew. But maybe a niece or nephew was graduating.

  “Are you scheduled that day and need off?” Piper would rather talk about the items in front of her than schedules.

  “No.” JJ pushed away from the table, stood, walked behind the chair, and wrapped her fingers around the top rail. “I— I know this isn’t the best time for me to bring this up, but it’s just you and me here, and I owe you for the promotion, for believing in me. I like working for you. A lot.”

  “What’s going on JJ?” When Piper scooted back, her chair made a screeching sound across the tile; one of the legs was missing its rubber end cap. The department could use new furniture. “What’s high school graduation got to do with—”

  “You know my husband’s the athletic director, right? He’s been there a dozen years, and the past six basketball teams have been amazing. Took state in its division four of those, placed this year with no seniors on the squad. A few of his former players are in the NBA, and they credit him with getting them there.” She shifted from one foot to the other. “I like working here. I like it a lot. But Andy’s been offered a college position. He’d been casting a net every once in a while. And—and—he’s taking this incredible job as head basketball coach at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington. They want him out there for the summer athletic program. That’s why this is such a rush, our moving. I probably should have said something before now, that we’d been looking. We’ve just been thinking about living in a bigger place. And Wilmington alone has five times as many people as this whole county. It’s on the coast, nice climate, and—”

  “Shit,” Piper whispered. And two is four and four is eight. The rest of JJ’s one-sided conversation drifted to the back of her mind. Words like “beaches,” “Riverwalk,” and “historic places,” trickled in.

  Piper was supposed to have fourteen deputies—and one detective—to cover the county in three shifts, working four days on, two off, rotating schedules so no one was stuck on the night tour forever. She had thirteen deputies at the moment because one retired a few weeks ago, a fifty-three-year-old with twenty-five years in the department. And now she’d also be down her detective. The youngest deputy in the Spencer County Sheriff’s Department was two years older than Piper, the oldest was Oren, three were in their fifties, and the only other woman—her detective—was leaving. One more shred of diversity gone, in this case to the east coast. All but one of Piper’s deputies was white. Diego, the twenty-five-year old, just into his second year with the department, was a fair-skinned Hispanic with an associate degree in law enforcement. It all fit the demographics of the county. According to the latest census, only fifty or so of the county’s whopping twenty-thousand people were Hispanic, and about one hundred were black. But it didn’t sit right with Piper. And JJ leaving… that sat worse.

  “I know I should have said something earlier, that he was looking, that we were thinking about going somewhere else. But he only got the offer last week, and we kept things quiet for a few days, then word leaked out at school. This county is one big game of telephone. You’re going through that stack of applications now for the open deputy spot. Maybe there’s someone in there good for detective. Maybe somebody else in the department could get promoted. Maybe—”

  JJ clearly paused for Piper to say something. When she didn’t, JJ finally continued. “So we’re putting our place up for sale right away, signed papers with a realtor yesterday, and have been looking at houses online. There’s this gorgeous two-story Andy’s going to see when he’s out on the weekend. Two hundred thousand is all, three beds, three baths, only twenty years old. I looked at all the pictures. It could be perfect. A whirlpool tub in the master bath, fenced backyard so we can get a dog or two. It doesn’t have a basement. But he’s going to look at others with basements, get it narrowed down before I go out and—”

  “—and when are you going out? To look at houses?”

  “Right after high school graduation. The day after. Andy and all the other teachers always go to graduation. So he wants to go. That night some of the guys are throwing us a farewell party. This is my notice. More than two weeks I’m giving you, less than three. My last day will be the eighteenth. But I figure you’re already going through applications and—” JJ looked at Piper expectantly.

  Piper crossed her arms and waited.

  “—and I was wondering if you would give me a letter of recommendation because the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Department has an opening in the detective division and the Wilmington Police Department has two vacancies. I figure I could land one of them. I’ve updated my resume and—”

  “I’ll get you a letter of recommendation by the end of today,” Piper interrupted.

  JJ let out a big breath. “Thanks, and—”

  “—and I hope that you’ll devote your full attention to this department while you’re still here,” Piper said, knowing that JJ would be distracted with the upcoming move.

  “Oh, yeah. Yes. You bet I will. I’ll holler as soon as I figure out something on the brown leather and the barbed wire.” JJ sat again and let out another big breath. “And we want you to come to the going away party.”

  “I’m very happy for you,” Piper lied.

  “I’m very happy, too.” JJ beamed. “Okay, back to all of this.” She waved her hand across the items like a model displaying prizes on The Price is Right. Jake and Diego are still out at the bluff, combing through the mud like archeologists at a dig site. I called the parks department to go out and pull up the birch trees. But it looks like what we found last night is it. Just this st
uff. The jeans would have been made of denim, cotton, the shirt probably cotton, too. And that disintegrates when a body does. It’s the polyesters and leathers and stuff that sticks around a while. I’m thinking he wasn’t from around here because of the buckle. Maybe got dumped here as the doer was driving through. I’ll call out to Phoenix police, give them a head’s up and mention the newspaper boy bit.”

  Piper leaned forward. “Wait on that. I want to get the coroner’s report first. Confirm it was a boy, get a good estimate on age, a better guess on how long ago he was buried, and cause of death. Get a dental. Then we’ll have more for the Phoenix police to go on. I want our records checked, too, missing persons forty to sixty-some years ago.”

  “That’s not all on the computer, those records. A lot of the old stuff’s still in boxes and files.”

  “I know.” Piper had moved stacks of those boxes into her office, intending to go through all of them, looking for puzzle pieces to connect.

  JJ nodded. “Strange thing, huh, bones on the bluff? I only got a couple hours sleep after we left the park. Kept thinking about who’d bury someone up there. Bothered me, you know.”

  “I know.” It had dominated Piper’s dreams, too.

  “Does your dad got a clue who—”

  “His house was dark when I pulled in the drive, and I left to come here at six. Saw his kitchen light come on—” And she almost stopped and went in for a cup of his good coffee, but she had this puzzle festering and didn’t want to spare the minutes. “Haven’t talked to him about it yet. Can’t talk to him about it, actually. An open case and all. But I have looked through one of the boxes of old files, got a start on them. I found two kids, both twelve, initially reported as missing, but were later determined runaways who returned to their parents.” Piper liked talking to JJ. She was really going to miss that.