The Treacherous Teddy

by John J. Lamb

  I chuckled and said, “Apparently, great minds think alike. But please don’t tell Ash about this. She likes to surprise me on Christmas morning and I don’t want to spoil it for her.”

  MaryAnn winked. “It’ll be our secret.”

  Nineteen

  Although the sun was shining brightly and the air was as cool and crisp as a freshly picked apple, Rawlins’s farm felt gloomy. Maybe it was the deathly stillness; maybe it was the closed-up house; maybe it was just my imagination. Some strands of crime scene tape dangled limply from a couple of tree trunks, and it irrationally reminded me of Tony Orlando and his sappy hit song from so long ago. Nowadays, when you tie a yellow ribbon around a tree, it’s usually to seal off a homicide scene.

  I knew that I needed to view the homicide scene with fresh eyes, so I decided not to retrace my search path from Thursday night. I still had the evidence camera with me from that morning, so I slipped the camera’s strap over my shoulder and limped toward the barn. I was examining one of the building’s wooden exterior walls when my cell phone rang. Squinting at the screen, I saw it was Linny calling.

  The security director sounded exuberant. “Sherri Driggs was lying to you and I can prove it! She didn’t come back here at six o’clock. In fact, she left the lodge at exactly six thirty-two P.M.”

  “And you have this on video?” I asked.

  “I do.”

  “Excellent work. I knew you’d come through. Was Mr. Hauck with her when she left?”

  “No, she was alone. He didn’t leave until seven twenty-six, and it looked like he was in a hurry. Then they came back to the lodge together at exactly nine fifty-eight P.M.”

  “Linny, would you please save all that video footage to CD-ROM? We’re going to need it as evidence.”

  “I’ve already done that. You can pick it up whenever you’re ready. Now, can I ask a question?”

  “Sure, so long as you won’t be offended if I can’t answer it.”

  “I won’t. Do you think they killed Mr. Rawlins? The only reason I’m asking is if they hurt another guest, there might be an implied liability issue that could turn into a lawsuit.”

  Filing lawsuits against deep-pocket businesses is one of the most popular hobbies in America, so Linny had a valid concern. I replied, “There is no evidence that would lead a reasonable person to conclude that they committed a murder. However, that could change. If it does, I’ll notify you. I don’t want your other guests exposed to risk any more than you do.”

  “Thanks, Brad. I can’t ask for anything more than that.”

  “Now if I recall correctly, Ms. Driggs and Mr. Hauck are scheduled to check out on Monday morning.”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’ll need to know if they decide to check out early. Is that a problem?”

  “Not at all. I’ll contact hotel registration right now and they’ll alert me. But there’s nothing to stop them from simply leaving. Do you want me to assign someone to watch them?”

  “No,” I said hurriedly. The very last thing we needed was one of Linny’s overeager rent-a-cops screwing the pooch as a consequence of trying to play the role of a secret agent. “If they make your stakeout guy, Sherri and Jesse will bail, and we want them to stay here.”

  “I understand, Brad. But when this is all over, can I tell my uncle?” Linny asked imploringly.

  “Why don’t you just invite him to the award ceremony? After I tell Sheriff Barron how much you helped, I’m certain she’ll want to give you an official commendation for the great job you did.”

  I wasn’t being patronizing. Linny may have been pretty much clueless, but his heart was in the right place, which is more than you can say for a lot of folks. He deserved to be recognized for his efforts. He’d delivered the goods, which—again—is more than you can say for a lot of folks.

  “An official commendation?” Linny sounded almost reverent. “I owe you one, Brad.”

  “Nonsense. You’ve earned it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to work.”

  Once I’d disconnected from the call, I resumed my visual search of the barn and carport, but came up empty. I next headed toward the house. On Thursday night, Ash and I had made a counterclockwise orbit of the residence. Today, I’d circle it by traveling in the opposite direction, which would force me to view the setting differently. I walked around to the east side of the house and stopped so suddenly that I had to catch myself with my cane.

  On Thursday night, I’d noticed some minor damage to the vinyl siding about six-and-a-half feet above the ground. I’d assumed this marked the spot where high winds had torn a flag bracket from the wall, but now I had the unpleasant feeling that I’d been wrong. Retrieving a kitchen chair from the house, I cautiously climbed up on it to get a better look. I could now see that directly beneath the fractured siding was a cross-shaped pair of notches punched into the plywood. It occurred to me that I had no business thinking Linny clueless when I could so blithely overlook the spot where the arrow that killed Rawlins had originally struck.

  I took several photographs of the damage and reflected that this discovery didn’t merely explain the particles of plastic and plywood found on the blades. It also accounted for the slight bend in the shaft, the impossible ballistics of shooting a bent arrow, and why the projectile hadn’t produced a through-and-through wound in Rawlins’s abdomen. None of it had made any sense. But now I realized that I’d committed a fundamental error by assuming a bowshot had killed Rawlins. It hadn’t. The damage seemed to indicate that someone had yanked the arrow from the wall and used it as an impromptu dagger.

  Unfortunately, evidence that answers one question often spawns a host of fresh puzzles: For instance, who’d fired the arrow into the wall? When did it happen? Was it just ahead of the murder or hours or days beforehand? What caused the archer to miss so badly? Who yanked the arrow out of the wall? How did the suspect gain possession of it? And which suspect? All of them, including Roger, could have had access to the yard.

  Carefully climbing down from the chair, I telephoned Tina’s office and left a voice-mail message telling her what I’d found. I also suggested that she contact the crime lab and request that they come to the farm to seize the evidence. It was too big a job for me, because it would require the removal and collection of the fractured slats of vinyl siding and then cutting out a decent-sized hole in the plywood around the place where the arrow strike had left the scar.

  I didn’t want to be around when Kurt Rawlins found the hole hacked into his folks’ home. He’d undoubtedly blow a gasket and scream that the damage was unnecessary, but he’d be wrong. Merely photographing where the arrow had struck wasn’t enough. There was a chance that trace evidence could be recovered from the plywood and vinyl, and the best place to perform that work was in a crime lab, not outside on a ladder.

  As I carried the chair around to the front of the house, a red Lexus coupe rolled down the driveway and came to a halt behind my SUV. I thought, Speak of the devil. It was Kurt Rawlins’s automobile. He got out of the car and walked over to me.

  I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Rawlins, but you’re going to have to leave. This is still an active crime scene.”

  Kurt glowered at me. “I thought you people were finished here.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Nobody. But you’ve had almost two days to do whatever it is you do, which is nothing, from the look of it.”

  I gave him a bland smile. “Processing a murder scene is a little more complicated than assembling combo meals for the lunch rush. We take as much time as we need to get it right.”

  “My crews work fast and get it right.”

  I was becoming weary of his obsessive need to always be correct. Furthermore, if he’d been anyone but the victim’s son, I’d have wisecracked, Yeah, but they’re just cooking hamburger patties. We’re working with a much bigger piece of meat. Instead, I said, “Then help me get it right. I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Rawlins. This is a very complicate
d case, and we have several potential suspects. That’s why we’re proceeding so cautiously.”

  Kurt seemed to deflate a bit and nodded in acceptance. “Then I guess I appreciate that, and I’d better let you get back to work. When can I go in the house? I’m not looking forward to it, but I need to start going through his paperwork.”

  “We’re working as fast as possible,” I said, electing not to tell him that we’d already seized several boxes of documents from his father’s office. There was no point in firing him up again. “Sheriff Barron will notify you the moment we’ve released the crime scene.”

  “And she’ll call me when you’ve found out who killed Dad?”

  “Count on it.”

  I waited until Kurt drove off before I took the chair back into the house. Then I returned to the SUV and headed back to the sheriff’s office to upload the new crime scene photos. As I pulled into the parking lot, I saw Tina and Game Warden Randy Kent leading a handcuffed Chet Lincoln from a patrol car toward the building. The only way Lincoln could have looked glummer was if the sign above the door read FORD’S THEATER.

  By the time I parked and limped into sheriff’s head-quarters, the three had already gone inside the department’s only interview room. Tina and Randy emerged a moment later, shutting the door behind them. Both law officers looked tired but cheerful.

  I waited until they were far enough away from the interview room door so that we wouldn’t be overheard and said, “See what you can accomplish if you don’t take an Old English sheepdog with an undersized bladder to a stakeout? Where did you find Chet?”

  “We grabbed him coming out of the ABC outlet in Elkton,” said Tina. ABC stood for Alcoholic Beverage Control. In Virginia, as in many other states, the only place you can purchase hard liquor is at government-operated stores.

  “Yeah, and he was so focused on opening his bottle of Yukon Jack that he never saw us,” Randy added, referring to an insipidly sweet and potent liqueur made from honey.

  “Breakfast of champions,” I said.

  Tina asked, “What the heck are you doing here?”

  I held up the camera. “I’m just getting back from the Rawlins farm. I have to upload these pictures.” I went on to explain how I’d come to the worrying conclusion that I’d overlooked something at the crime scene and what had subsequently happened when I went back there for a second look.

  Tina said, “Let me get this straight. The arrow hit the side of the house and then someone pulled it out and used it to stab Rawlins?”

  “That’s the only explanation I can come up with to account for the debris on the arrowhead and the bend in the shaft.”

  “And for all we know, those two events might have been weeks apart.”

  “Maybe, but I think the events were relatively contemporaneous.”

  “How can you tell that?” Tina sounded doubtful.

  “Patterns of past behavior. We know that Everett wasn’t reluctant about calling the game warden to report poachers.” I glanced at Randy, who rolled his eyes and nodded wearily. “In fact, he’d called earlier that evening. So, it’s fairly safe to assume that he would have made a 911 call to the sheriff’s office if someone had sniped at his house with an arrow.”

  “Unless things went downhill so quickly that he never had the opportunity to call,” said the game warden.

  “Which might mean that whoever shot the arrow came into the yard to finish the job, up close and personal,” Tina said.

  “And the fact that the attack occurred at such close quarters suggests that Rawlins knew his assailant. If it was a stranger, wouldn’t it have been natural for him to retreat to the house to grab his shotgun and let Longstreet out?” I asked.

  “But if that’s true, doesn’t it also tend to rule Mr. Lincoln out as a suspect?” Tina nodded in the direction of the interview room door. “They knew each other, but there’d already been one previous violent encounter. I can’t see Mr. Rawlins just standing there, waiting for Mr. Lincoln to stab him with an arrow.”

  Randy said, “Ev may not have known he was in the yard. Remember, Chet makes his living prowling around in the dark and not being seen.”

  ‘That’s true, too,” said Tina. “So I guess he stays in the suspect pool.”

  “Did you find anything in his truck?” I asked.

  “No bow and arrows, if that’s what you’re asking. I figured we’d need a warrant, so I’m having it towed to the station.”

  “Yeah, it’s more prudent to do it that way. But it seems to me that you’re also going to need a search warrant to toss his trailer.”

  “Which means writing two lengthy affidavits. Meanwhile, in my spare time I can interview Mr. Lincoln, then call the crime lab about the new evidence they’ll have to collect at the Rawlins place once they finish at the arson scene, and then I can run over to the judge’s house for him to issue the search warrants.” Tina threw her hands skyward in frustration. “Oh, and since I’ve run out of deputies and the state police don’t have any spare troopers, I’ll also have to figure out some way I can be in two places at once, so that I can guard the new evidence at the Rawlins farm while also freezing the scene at Mr. Lincoln’s trailer until we can search it, and—”

  I held my hands up signaling her to stop. “Tina, let me help. I can interview Chet.”

  Randy nodded vigorously. “And I can sit on Chet’s trailer until you get there with the warrant.”

  “Thanks, Randy. I’ll take you up on that.” Tina turned to me. “You really wouldn’t mind interviewing him?”

  “Tina, at the risk of ruining my reputation as a manly man, I like teddy bears. But I like catching murderers even more. Did Chet agree to talk when you read him his rights?”

  “He said we could ask him whatever we wanted. He had nothing to hide.”

  “In fact, he swore on his mama’s grave,” said Randy.

  “When a crook says something like that, it’s always wise to demand to see the grave and then dig it up to make sure his mama is actually there,” I said with a nasty chuckle. “So, let the digging begin.”

  Twenty

  I’ve heard that some hunters deliberately avoid taking showers. Their theory is that when wild animals detect the faint scent of soap and deodorant they recognize it as belonging to a predator—man—and flee the area. Obviously, Chet Lincoln had embraced that concept and taken it to a smelly extreme. The interview room stank so badly of unwashed clothing and flesh that my eyes almost began to water.

  Chet was wearing the same attire I’d seen him in yesterday morning . . . and likely the same clothing he’d been wearing last week, and the week before that. He sat at the table looking bored while he cleaned his left ear with his little finger. Removing the digit, he examined the debris he’d pulled from his ear, flicked the stuff onto the table, and then looked up at me.

  I set the recorder on the table and leaned over to plug the cord into the electrical socket. Turning the device on and sitting down, I said, “Good morning, Mr. Lincoln. My name is Brad Lyon and I work for Sheriff Barron.”

  “You’re Lolly’s son-in-law. You used to be a cop in California.” Chet’s voice was a gravelly baritone.

  “That’s true. It’s nice to see you again.”

  “Sorry, mister, but we ain’t ever met.” He gave me an innocent smile and I suppressed a shudder. His teeth reminded me of the double-decker portion of the Nimitz Freeway after the big San Francisco earthquake of 1989; they were gray, broken, and entirely gone in places.

  I said, “Technically, that’s true. We’ve never actually talked, but we did see each other yesterday at the Massanutten Crest Lodge right before you took off like a bat out of hell.”

  He shrugged slightly. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was at the lodge yesterday, but I never seen you.”

  It was a fairly clever lie. No one else had witnessed our brief encounter, and even if the security cameras had been working, it was unlikely that we’d both have been in the camera’s fiel
d of vision. Unwashed obviously didn’t mean unintelligent.

  I said, “So you don’t remember me yelling at you to stop, even though I was less than thirty feet away?”

  “You might have yelled, but I didn’t hear anything.” He pointed at his right ear. “I got hearing loss in both ears from all the shooting I’ve done over the years.”

  Or from all the rubbish impacted in your ears, I thought. It was another falsehood disguised as a plausible excuse. Chet gave me a placid smile, and I think he was waiting for me to explode and call him a liar, which might be what many cops would do, but I actually prefer a suspect to fib early and often during an interview. Lying during the course of a police interrogation is like getting rid of the old stuff in your refrigerator’s vegetable drawer by running it down the garbage disposal all at once. It’s convenient for the moment, but sooner or later you’re going to gum up the works.

  I asked, “Why were you at the lodge?”

  “I was looking to apply for a job.”

  I sat back in the chair and studied him. “No offense, but you and I both know that the hotel management wouldn’t let someone like you within a half mile of their snobby guests.”

  “And I don’t want to be around none of them rich people. It’s a part-time gamekeeper job. They have problems with deer eating stuff from the gardens and groundhogs messing up the golf course.”

  Again, the answer was reasonable and likely bogus. I suspected that Thalia Grady had told Chet about the vacant gamekeeper position so that he could use the information as an alibi to explain his problematic presence at the lodge. What’s more, I noticed that Chet appeared to be growing progressively more relaxed. He seemed to think that he was in control of the interview, which is exactly what I wanted.

  I said, “Interesting. However, I noticed that you didn’t come out of the employee services office.”

  “I know. I went in the other door by accident. They told me where to go.”

  “But you didn’t go to employee services after that. You drove off.”