Dead Fall Back

by Tony Masero

  DEAD FALL BACK

  TONY MASERO

  Writing as Michael D’Asti

  A Hand Painted Publication

  Copyright © 2012 Tony Masero

  First Published 2012 Solstice Publishing

  Editor: Jim Griffin

  Smashwords Edition

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  Publishers Note: This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events other than historical are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real person, places, or events is coincidental.

  Dedication

  This one is for Diana – ma wee bijou

  Chapter One

  They called it Dead Fall Back.

  A single straight strip of West Virginia blacktop with steeply forested sides that appeared shaded and gloomy in the late afternoon of this overcast fall day. There was an ominous threat of rain approaching over the treetops and as the dark nimbus clouds boiled they gathered momentum along with a stiff breeze that pushed its way in amongst the forest trees. On the hillcrests, the sugar maples were turning the picturesque multicolored shades of crimson and gold that creates a magical quilt of brilliance across the Mountain State at this time of year. Their beauty though was making a lie of everything that was happening beneath them on the dark slopes of the country road.

  But long ago, even before the terrible event that was in progress it had been a sad place.

  Way back in July of 1863, the Confederates stacked their dead there. Barefoot boys in shabby butternut and whatever hand-me-downs they could find. They laid them up against the rough split pole fence that skirted the dusty track during the Battle of Gettysburg. Sat them down in long rows, like old men taking their ease in the sun. General Longstreet decided it would fool the Federal troops, like there was a whole mess of reserves casually resting there in a fall back position, waiting ready to come into the fight. The old photos show them sagging sleepily against each other or laid back, arms spread wide over the fence poles, mouths agape and bellies swelling up in the heat with the spilled blood from their wounds turning dark on their skin.

  In all, a sorry place that people avoided. The dogwood and hickory on each side had been left to go wild and their crooked branches were overhung with soft foliage that draped like seaweed and moved as if underwater in an unseen current. It had a lost air about it. That highway. A coldness, even in the height of summer. It was as if a hundred and forty one years later in this fall of 2004 it still carried a silent memory of that earlier abattoir scene. As if the remembrance were recorded in every shadowy leaf and twisted root of the solitary place.

  Low lying mists came here too, trapped by the high-sided banks. Gentle vapors that seeped up from the moist undergrowth and took long hours to dissipate in the cool under the trees. The more superstitious locals believed the ground itself was tainted, that ghosts still walked.

  And that’s where they found her. Amongst the lost ghosts of a lost war.

  Lying all a-tangle head down on the sloping side. Legs crooked one under the other and her hands up beside her face as if asleep. But she was dead. The little black shepherdess. Her white petticoat dress and hand-stitched pinafore a pristine splash of brightness on the gloomy forest floor. She still wore the pale blonde dress-up wig, askew now but coiled in a shining pile of luminous curlicues and to one side lay her be-ribboned shepherd’s crook lovingly hand carved from a branch of hornbeam.

  The death brought the haunted place back to life for a while.

  With their harsh beacon lights flashing Chelan County law enforcement vehicles blocked the road in a haphazard fashion and yellow crime scene ribbons flickered like neon in the breeze amongst the pooled shadows. Men in khaki uniforms moved purposefully through the trees, hunting unsuccessfully in the brambles and undergrowth for some sign of the perpetrator. The twisting plastic strips below them fencing in the small crumpled human form, isolating and setting it apart from the activity.

  Chief of Police, Paul Stoeffel, a burly man in his early fifties, wore a somber expression on his face that had become an almost permanent feature. He leaned back against his vehicle, brawny arms folded across his chest while he waited patiently for the coroner to arrive. His radio beeped in the background, babbling disregarded messages of traffic control and the delayed ambulance.

  It was rush hour in Lodrun, so said the police report. Rush hour. A five-car hold up in a one-horse town. It defeated Stoeffel. He took off his round brimmed hat and scratched at the short stubble of white hair that crested his skull. He was worried. He knew this death meant problems. The colored folks would not take kindly to this. Especially not a child.

  And then there was the toy lamb. What on God´s earth was an almost beheaded fluffy lamb doing laid out beside the body? Something sacrificial about it. Throat cut and all. Just like the little girl. Almost Biblical. Stoeffel pondered on the possibility of some Pentecostal lunatic going Old Testament out here in the woods. Could happen. He had known worse. Thirteen years in the DC police had taught him that. It had given him more. A face like a boxer. Busted nose and thickened forehead with ears that were crinkled at the edges. His eyes were his saving grace. A deep aquamarine blue when he felt contented but they could change, as they had now, to the palest of washed out blue when he was troubled.

  He turned and unlatched the mike from the dashboard.

  “Dispatch, you there?” He listened to nothing but electric hiss for a few seconds. “Ayleen, where the hell are you? Come in Dispatch.”

  A crackle of static. “I´m here, Chief. Loud and strong. Sorry about that, had to go to the little girl´s room.”

  Stoeffel frowned knowing exactly what she had been doing. Layering on another coat of makeup. Ayleen Czowski, one time prom queen was spreading sideways into the down side of middle age and constantly felt the need for an enhancing gilt of white nail polish and gloss lipstick. Sadly, she was badly misleading herself as to their effectiveness. Time is a remorseless agent and digs its paths deep.

  “S´okay. Listen, Ayleen, we got a bad situation up here. Hurry that coroner along will you and get in touch with Reverend Clitus, we´ll need him here for sure.”

  “The minister from Holy Christ Church! What the devil´s going on, Chief?”

  Stoeffel well knew the propensity for locals to listen in on police wavebands and didn´t want to advertise what he had here yet awhile. It was possible that the murderer had ears too.

  “Just do like I say, Ayleen. Okay....”

  There was a hoot behind him and Stoeffel turned to see the coroner, Jimmy Luke Lethers, who doubled as the town´s funeral director, angling his panel van between the parked police cars.

  “Forget the coroner, Ayleen. He just got here.”

  “Okay, Chief. Reverend Clitus. I´m on it. What do you want me to tell him, he´ll ask?”

  “Just tell him it´s one of his parishioners had an accident.”

  “Will do. Out.”

  Jimmy Luke Lethers sidled slowly up carrying his forensic suitcase in one hand and a half eaten BLT in the other.

  “Chief,” he nodded a curt greeting. “What we got here?”

  A thin man, short and stoop shouldered. He wore a straggly beard, an unbuttoned bright Aloha shirt over a threadbare sweater and a battered fishing hat, complete with feathered lures. Jimmy Luke was not a man to give a damn about how he appeared. He had seen too many people laid out stiff and cold to be worried about what they thought whilst still warm.

  Stoeffel sighed as the co
roner stuffed the rest of the sandwich unevenly into his mouth. He nodded towards the forest edge.

  “Over there. Little colored girl. Throat´s cut. It ain´t nice.” Stoeffel still found it hard. He had tried to adjust to the backwoods style but deep down it grated, the lackadaisical attitudes and inefficiency, everything taking twice as long as it should. Six years he had been here and the locals must like him, after all they had re-elected him. Least that’s what his wife Leonora used to say. But then maybe, he reasoned, it was just that the heavy hand of the law came easier from an outsider.

  Jimmy Luke grimaced and brushed crumbs from his beard.

  “Aw hell! I hate it when it´s a kid.” He looked far away, unfocused into the sky where the rain clouds were looming closer. Then with a shrug. “I´ll go take a look.”

  “Give me a ball park on the time of death, will you?”

  Jimmy Luke grunted without turning as he made his way towards the square of yellow ribbon.

  “Chief!” It was Ayleen. “Minister´s on his way. I got him on his cell phone, he´s out at the Jobin place, it ain´t but ten minutes away so he´ll be there directly.”

  Stoeffel acknowledged as he felt the first spots of drizzle blow against his face. Jimmy Luke waved from the edge of the trees and caught Stoeffel´s eye. He circled a pointing finger at the sky and Stoeffel nodded in reply as he hiked the two-way from his belt harness.

  “Jason, you there?”

  Deputy Jason Legrand was half way up the hillside, struggling to get his boot out of a rabbit hole. He fumbled his angular frame, one-legged on the steep slope until he had his two-way out and buttoned the communicator.

  “Gotcha, Chief.”

  “We got rain coming here. Arrange some cover for the body, can you? Jimmy Luke needs a plastic sheet or something over him. Damn fool´s got nothing on `cept a Hawaiian holiday shirt.”

  Jason chuckled, tugging at his trapped foot. “He´s too used to that fuggy little mortuary office of his. Don´t know the sun don’t always shine out here in the real world.”

  “You got that right. You find anything yet?”

  “Nada, Chief. Not even disturbed leaves. Whoever did this, they didn´t come from up here.”

  “Maybe it’s a drive-by. Just pulled in and threw the kid over.”

  “Looks that way. I´ll come on down, do you want Leroy and George to keep looking?”

  Stoeffel grunted. “We´ll do it by the book. Keep them at it.”

  His two other deputies were not candidates for winners in any smarts contest and it was better to keep them busy in the woods than stomping over any evidence down by the roadside. Slipping the two-way back in its holster, Stoeffel saw the movement in the shadows behind the wire grill in the back of his cruiser. He had almost forgotten. He leaned over and opened the car door.

  “How´re you doing back there, sir?”

  The elderly black man inside leaned forward and glanced up at the sky.

  “Gonna rain,” he observed.

  “Already is. Can I have your name again, sir?”

  “Leban, Leban Griss, Chief.”

  “And you found the victim, is that correct, Mr. Griss?”

  “Deed it is. Found that poor chile, right there where she´s lying now. Went on up the road apiece to the gas station and made the call.”

  Stoeffel formed a quick appraisal of the man. Unshaven and lean, maybe fifty/sixty years old, could be older, hard to tell. Clothes seen better days but that was not unusual in these parts, there were plenty poor people in the state. There was mud on his elbow and along the hem of the long raggedy coat he wore.

  “And can I ask you what you were doing out here on foot?”

  “Why, sir. I ain´t got no car and that’s the simple truth.”

  “I understand. But what was your purpose?”

  “Firewood. Sump´n to eat if I could catch him.”

  “With what, you have a firearm?” Stoeffel cursed himself for not searching the old man. He was getting sloppy out here in the boondocks.

  “No, sir. I use this,” he tugged at his frayed pocket and pulled out a metal hunting catapult and a fistful of ball bearing shot. “Just for bird or squirrel.”

  “I see,” said Stoeffel. “Where´s your house at?”

  “Down in Lodrun, I live at my daughter´s place. Out on Eli Street, t´aint much but it’s a roof.”

  Stoeffel lifted a clipboard and report sheet from the passenger seat and jotted down the man´s details.

  “Got a number there on Eli Street?”

  “Sure. Number 192.”

  “And do you know the victim?”

  The old man shook his head negatively.

  “Un-huh. Don´t know the chile. I sure wondered where she was a-going way out here dressed like an angel and all. Man, I don´t know, I seen some things in my time, I tell you, Chief. I was over there in Nam back in `74. I seen bad things that’s the Lord´s truth but this here, this is just plain stone cold cruel.”

  Stoeffel nodded agreement.

  “That’s an affirmative. I´ll need you to stay on here awhile, that okay with you?”

  The old man spread work worn hands. “Got nothin´ better to do an´ it’s dry and warm in here.”

  “Okay, you just set there and enjoy it `til we´re done here.”

  Oh yes. Stoeffel had seen it too. He had been there, down in the mud of the Delta. It had changed his life that was for sure. They had not managed to take his soul or his heart in that misguided war but he had lost something else there. Stoeffel always thought of it as an obscure thing he could only bring himself to call The Promise. The prospect of all his youthful hopes. It had molded him, that loss. Given him an objectivity that was understood by civilians back in the real world only as isolation. An eye that he had seen in other vets, they could look at you, be as pleasant as the day is long and yet leave you feeling as if they did not care whether you lived or died. It was some protective inner defense that had been forged in a battle zone where life expectancy was on a limited scale and the end of any fellowship could happen in a microsecond.

  He saw it all now with the more able realizations of his maturity. The Promise. His younger expectations had been perhaps too unrealistic but that awareness had not changed the sense of loss for him. Until Leonora. She had been the one to save him from complete despair.

  It had been a late affair in both their lives. A break-in call out. Leonora´s apartment house had suffered a burglary and Stoeffel had been routinely questioning residents. She had a cold that day he remembered. Sniffling and red eyed. It was the thing that had kept her off work and at home. Something had happened between them. A glance, a look in the eye. Somehow they had both known.

  Crazy really, Stoeffel would never have believed it could be like that. Love at first sight. He, a hardened, perhaps even a bitter cop and she a cool-headed state senator´s community relations representative. But it did happen.

  Their marriage had been a joyous affair and had reconstituted some of Stoeffel´s lost aspirations. For a while hope had lived again in Stoeffel´s heart and they moved away from the city for a better quality of life in the country. But then, she too had gone. Swept away to the shades by an invasive leukemiac illness that had slowly destroyed her blood cells. That had been three years ago and Stoeffel still felt her loss deeply. That and his earlier more youthful sense of being cheated left him with nothing more than a black hole of loneliness that he filled now with only the duties of his chosen profession.

  The rain was beginning to fall heavier and Stoeffel unlocked the trunk and brought out his slicker. He tossed his Smokey Bear hat in the back and promised himself a new Stetson instead of that damned Boy Scout looking thing as he shrugged into the plastic poncho.

  A battered Lincoln hissed through the rainfall and pulled up beyond the barrier of police vehicles. A tall bald headed black man climbed out and Stoeffel recognized him immediately as the minister. Reverend Clitus Mummers. A sharp eyed man in his early sixties, he leaned over and fumbled in
the back seat, pulling out an old fashioned cane handled black umbrella and opening it up against the rain. He moved with a grace and agility that belied his years as he came over towards Stoeffel.

  “Chief Stoeffel, not a great day,” he greeted with a frown that creased his otherwise smooth brow.

  “We got a little dead black girl here, Reverend. Might be you can recognize her?”

  Mummers hunched against the lashing rain.

  “Oh Lord. Was it a car accident?” he asked.

  “No, sir. This was murder I´m afraid. So you better steel yourself as it ain´t pleasant to see.”

  Mummers nodded grimly and Stoeffel took his arm to guide him over to the murder scene. Jason Legrand was tying a pale sheet of restless plastic over a hastily fashioned tent of branch supports as they arrived and the misty figure of Jimmy Luke could be seen crouched beneath.

  “She´s down there, Reverend. Can you take a look, see if you know her?”

  Mummers heaved a heavy sigh as he handed his umbrella to Stoeffel.

  “It saddens my heart but I fear it must be done.”

  He lifted a corner of the flapping plastic, upsetting a pool that had formed, and dousing himself in the process with the outfall. Stoeffel observed that as sometimes happened with men of the cloth, even though he could normally move with fluid ease, Mummers had a vagueness about him that often caused a clumsiness in his activities which seemed unnatural in such a physically capable man. Stoeffel put it down to a consideration of higher and more esoteric things than the usual worldly aspects of daily reality.

  The Chief waited as he saw the two figures inside combine and fade into a single blur under the sheeting. Legrand looked up at him from his fastening, loose nylon twine bunched in his hand.

  “Ain´t the best. But it´ll hold for a while, I guess.”

  Stoeffel flicked his eye over the makeshift covering and nodded approval.

  “Get those other two down from the hill and see they stay near the cars will you? I don´t want them lumbering around here.”