by Tony Masero
Light bloomed suddenly in a flash from inside the plastic tent and Stoeffel realized Jimmy Luke was taking his photographs of the body. The hanging sheet was swept briskly aside as Clitus Mummers came out in a rush.
“Lord help us, Chief,” he cried loudly, like a drowning man breaking surface. “What manner of evil can have done such a thing? I do despair. I do despair of the works of men. Sometimes, God forgive me, I do despair.”
Stoeffel watched him silently through the curtain of rain dripping from the edge of his poncho hood. There was nothing he could tell the man. He himself had seen it all too often and he knew there were no words adequate or soothing enough to replace a flame snuffed by such a callous breath.
“I know the child, Chief. She is the daughter of parishioners of mine, Reason and Ruth Links. Her name is Epsie. Little Epsie Links. She was just nine years old a month ago. I know that for a fact as I was invited to her birthday party.” Mummers shook his head sorrowfully.
“Do know why she´s dressed like that, Reverend?”
Mummers looked up at him distantly for a moment, the rainwater running freely over the skin of his bald head as if it were oiled.
“Why yes, Chief, I do,” he said, recovering himself. “We have a rehearsal at the church this evening, in preparation for our Christmas Nativity Play. Epsie was to be one of the little shepherdesses.”
“And that toy lamb there. Was that a part of her costume?”
Mummers sagged visibly; oblivious of the soaking he was receiving.
“I believe so,” he said numbly. “How can I tell her people this, Chief? It will break them, I know it will.”
Stoeffel handed the Reverend back his umbrella. “I´ll do it for you if you’d rather.”
Mummers clutched the handle of the umbrella two handed as a gust swept through the dripping trees.
“No, Chief. Kind of you to offer but this is my task. They are good church going folk. It might be I can offer them some small modicum of solace during this dreadful hour of darkness.”
The Reverend turned to leave but Stoeffel called him back.
“One thing, Reverend. This Jobin place you just came from. They must be the nearest property around here. Could be they´ve seen something?”
Mummers turned back thoughtfully.
“Certainly it is the only place close by. But I doubt if old Mother Jobin will have seen much. She is mighty infirm now. An old lady, you understand, well into her nineties.”
“Still, I´d better check it out.”
“As you say, Chief. As you say.”
Stoeffel watched the disconsolate figure wend his way back to the parked cars through the hissing rain.
“Jason, Get those other two out working the highway. George can take Mr. Griss home first. Tell them to keep an eye out for any drifters. Anyone who would have used this road today. Deliveries, transport, that kind of thing. And check out that gas station up the road, they´ll have seen who went through.”
“Will do. What’s our time frame though?”
Stoeffel shrugged. “Had to have been this morning sometime. The kid was dressed up for her rehearsal today so it won´t have been earlier.”
“You got it,” agreed Jimmy Luke, coming up behind them. “I reckon four, maybe five hours max. Going by body temperature. State of the blood coagulation and so on. Round lunch time I´d say.”
Stoeffel lifted back his hood to hear better. “Give me what you´ve got, Jimmy Luke.”
“Okay. Very sharp implement. Wide blade I´d say, like a hunting or gutting knife. No fumbling, this one was quick and to the point. One cut, clean, deep and instant. Right through the left jugular and windpipe. No other signs of damage, no bruising or abrasions. In all probability the perp was right handed, that is if he came at her from behind. Looking at the angle of cut I´d say that was how it was. There´s blood on the toy thing as well, so the knife was used to slash that right after the kid´s throat was cut.”
“Strange there´s no indication of struggle, wouldn´t you say?” mused Stoeffel. “Might be she knew her doer.”
The other two nodded agreement.
“Anything sexual?” asked Stoeffel.
“No indications as yet, none of her underwear appears to have been messed with. I´ll need to do a full examination when I do the autopsy back in town though.”
“You think it happened here or she was dumped afterwards?”
Jimmy Luke lifted his fishing hat and scratched at his head. “Hard to say for sure. If it was done here then the blood´s soaked away into the leaves and soil under her. No sure way to make out a spray pattern either. We´ll need to keep things covered up until I can check that out. If it was done elsewhere then there will be a whole mess of blood somewhere. My guess is though that it was done right here.”
Stoeffel shook himself, shaking a spray of rain from the slicker.
“Right, let’s move on this then. The scene is fresh and our best chance of nailing her killer is to get on it fast. There´ll be a whole mess of nonsense once word gets out. We´ll have Press and irate families all over the place, so let’s get to it pronto.”
The men hesitated as a sudden burst of thunder rolled ominously over the mountains and down towards them.
“Move it!” snapped Stoeffel, suddenly irritated by their slowness. “Get on out of here, you´ve all seen what a stroke of lightning´ll do amongst these trees.”
Stoeffel helped Jimmy Luke with the body bag. The other three left with Leban Griss in a swirl of spray and flashing lights and the two men were alone in the dripping forest with only the body. It was a sad bundle they made of her. The small little girl, lost inside the adult sized black plastic bag and as Jimmy Luke zippered the bag closed Stoeffel felt a long forgotten stirring of something akin to pity rise in his breast. There in the deepness of himself. In the darkness of his battle hardened soul it rose. A glimmer of feeling. And for an instant Stoeffel wondered at the intangible sensation as he watched the dead child slide into the darkness of the van interior.
Jimmy Luke evidence-bagged the fluffy lamb toy as Stoeffel picked up the forgotten homemade shepherd’s crook and, covering it with his cape against the rain, transferred it to the back of the vehicle. After he had waved Jimmy Luke off, he stood there alone for a while at the roadside. The rain falling in sheets now as lightning cracked open the inky clouds over the mountaintops. Rain bounced off Stoeffel´s cape with a continuous rattle and beat down on the tarmac at his feet, sliding in racing rivulets to the forest edge.
37,000 miles of this black stuff with another 34,000 of State Highway stretching out away from here. Impossible to cover if the murderer had headed straight out. Stoeffel though, was half thinking of something else. Had he truly sensed that glimmer of emotion lurking inside himself or was it only the memory of a thousand other body bags from another time he wondered.
Lost ghosts in a lost war.
Chapter Two
Lodrun was built on wood.
The town began its life early in the 1800´s as a logging camp with only a few cabins built to house the loggers. A steep sloping place surrounded by mountains, far back in the high sided valleys of the forests.
Those early settlers had been far removed from the main haulage routes. Logs had to be cut, stripped and dragged or slid down from higher up in the tree line along a wide path cleared from surrounding lush forestry. From there it was carted on long, big-wheeled wagons hauled by teams of bullocks further on down to the river. In the late 19th century a railroad spur was built up to the camp and the town started to grow. A meandering growth centered on the sloping log run which later became the town’s main street.
In those days it was a rough township and Log Run, as it came to be called, was notorious for the whorehouses, saloons and gambling dens that fringed its margins. All of them catering to the lumber workers who toiled in the timber yards and sawmills. Haphazard streets and narrow alleys mapped out a township without a plan. It just grew, as wildly as the people who inhabited it. By
the early twentieth century civilization began at last to touch the town. The year of 1919 saw the arrival of a State Police Force and slowly the outlying township developed into a more stable settlement. Even the name itself altered, due to a mixture of indigenous slur and immigrant language corruption. It changed over time from Log Run to Lodrun.
Now it held a population of a little over two thousand and sprawled up the hillside away from the quaint maze of streets at the center. The old broad cut of the log run had been renamed Main Street and the Reverend Clitus´ tall church with its spire and bell tower marked a barrier half way across the original run effectively marking the end of the street.
As a seasonal tourist township, almost sixty percent of the houses in Lodrun were empty. They were fancy holiday homes and out-of-town residences maintained by the wealthy who lived and worked as far afield as Washington or New York City and only appeared intermittently when the fancy arose. Most of the storefronts along Main Street were boarded up now for the winter. When the snow came it often buried the place and shut down the roads in and out. Lumberjack Slim´s Bar stayed open for a few remaining locals. So did Hobart´s Clean and Fresh Drycleaners. There were a couple of law offices that had just enough business to keep going over the winter but the more genteel shop owners, like the gay couple Cy and Lester, who ran the Lodrun Tea and Cake Shoppe moved off to warmer Miami until spring.
Deputy George Carter dropped Leban Griss off at his run-down house in the outskirts of Lodrun and decided on a hot coffee before he headed out again on the chill highway. He was a latecomer to the Police Chief´s team, having arrived as a football star from the local high school. Not quite good enough at the game to earn himself a college scholarship or a place in the majors his size alone bought him a place in the Chelan County police squad.
A lumbering, big shouldered pale skinned young man with lank, washed out fair hair shaved high on his neck, he wore about him an immature and pugnacious attitude. Stoeffel did not like the boy much and would rather not have him but come the summer months when the population of the town quadrupled with the intake of hunters, white water rafters, cyclists and tourists he needed everyone he could get. Even a kid with attitude.
The Low Down Coffee Shop was situated at the lower end of Main Street, set beside a crossroads and railroad crossing. The main entrance and exit out of the small town cut across here and then ran alongside the railway track heading north through Dead Fall Back towards I-64.
The coffee shop windows were steamy with the damp cool air outside and the lights inside showed as a warm welcoming glow to George in the gathering gloom. George hurried across Main Street, shielding his face against the still falling rain, and slammed open the glass paneled door.
Joe Barker the owner looked up from his counter, startled as the glass rattled in its frame.
“Hey, hey!” he called irritably, which was his normal response to the world anyway. “Steady on there, George. Them windows don´t come cheap you know.”
Joe was astigmatic, a physical disability he had never sought to have fixed. It added to the uneasiness his scratchy attitude also encouraged. The unknowing customer listening to Joe´s bitching never knew if those disconcerting eyes were looking at him directly or at some point way over his shoulder.
George swept off his hat, shaking out the rain and running stubby fingers through his hair. He grinned with the shy schoolboy amiability he used to disguise his more bullish nature.
“Sorry Joe, just glad to get in here, I guess.”
Mollified, Joe swept a dishcloth distractedly over the counter and grunted.
“Sure is cats and dogs out there. What´ll it be?”
“Just coffee.”
As Joe turned to the dispenser, George seated himself at the bar counter and glanced around the coffee shop. After the Town Council building it was the town´s main meetinghouse and gossip center. The place was styled as an old fashioned diner in keeping with the tourist attraction of the town. Hanging lights from the low cream-colored ceiling, with checkered tablecloths on sectioned banquettes at the restaurant end.
Stuffed fish and birds decorated the embossed wallpaper, mounted between old sepia prints of the town´s early days. A fake Bakelite radio over the cash register was tuned to a local hillbilly music station. A few customers littered the place. Mostly locals on their way home after work. Single men in the main as the main source of trade here being the cleaning and maintenance of the empty properties and gardens. However, one couple sat apart at the rear.
George recognized the girl with a smug grin. She had been a football groupie, one of the team of young girls who followed the high school team avidly and thought it their prime duty to service the jocks on a game-by-game basis. He had balled her once in the back seat of his car after a varsity match. Looked like she was still playing the field.
George took his coffee and turned towards his favorite front window seat and saw a stranger seated there hunched over his plate. George turned back to Joe and jerked his chin questioningly in the direction of the man. Joe shrugged indifferently and raised his eyebrows unknowingly.
A young man, maybe thirty years or so. Stubble starting on his chin, shoulder length black hair and the dried blood of a gash on his forehead. He was dressed in a ripped and muddied biker’s leather jacket. Looked like he had taken a soaking too. Sorry looking fellow. For no good reason other than willful perversity George took an instant disliking to the man.
Still watching the stranger, George spoke over his shoulder to Joe.
“Iris been in?” His latest regular squeeze worked as a part time waitress in the cafe.
“Later tonight,” answered Joe, his gaze loosely wandering somewhere over George´s head. “`Bout suppertime. When it gets busy.”
George nodded and got up from his stool and crossed over to the man.
“`Scuse me, sir.” He stressed the sir with an approach to politeness that some arrogant police officers have, somehow making it sound as if the last thing possible was that the creature in front of him could be anything but the lowest form of pond life possible. “You have any identification?”
The stranger looked up from his plate.
“Evening, officer.” He pushed the empty dish away from himself casually. “How can I help you?”
“I said,” George stressed the words as if dealing with the hard of hearing. “Do you have any ID?”
The man leant back in his chair. “`Fraid I don´t just now. My bike was totaled about ten miles back up the mountain road there. Took a slide on some wet leaves I guess and ended up in a flooded culvert. The bike went underwater and everything was in the panniers.”
“I see,” said George, doubtfully. “You reported this?”
“Just about to.”
George was irritated by the man´s indifferent attitude. By rights he should be demonstrating some respect in front of a uniformed officer of the law and not leaning back as if he had not a care in the world.
George backed away, carefully replacing his coffee cup on the bar.
“Now why would you be waiting around before reporting such a thing?”
“Because,” said the stranger slowly, obviously catching the drift of the way things were going. “I had to walk ten miles in piss awful rain. Bumped my head, ripped my best bike jacket, got soaked through and was feeling kind of peckish. Let alone a little peeved at the loss of my goddamned Harley.”
George unlatched the pistol at his belt. “No need for that kind of talk. Hands on the table.”
The stranger smiled. “Aw, come on, get outa here, trooper. It´s been a long day, you´re not going to pull me in are you?”
“Just put your hands on the table!” George was snarling now, the nine-millimeter in his hand.
At sight of the weapon the man slowly obliged, shaking his head and turning to Joe with raised eyebrows. “Hey, what is his problem?”
“Steady on there, George,” said Joe, a frown creasing his brow. “It´s what the guy said to me when he came
in here. I told him you fellows were all out on some call. Said he should eat first then report it in. You can see the fellow’s all tuckered out.”
With a sidelong glance, George took up a firing position.
“We got a situation here, Joe. Out there on Dead Fall Back. Chief told me to watch out for any drifters and this guy certainly looks like he fits the bill.”
The man nodded with understanding, raising his hands in the air.
“Okay, I get it, you got a problem and I admit it looks suspicious. But man, I took a tumble, that’s why I´m all messed up. My name is Alex Summersby. You´ll find everything....”
“Okay, okay. Enough!” George wagged the pistol point. “Just get up slow and turn and face the window.”
“If you check....”
“UP and TURN!” George shouted.
Quiet descended over the coffee shop as the other customers turned with tense curiosity to watch. The only sound in the silent room was the muted radio and the scrape of Summersby´s chair as he stood up. He turned away from the counter and faced the street-side window, hands raised at shoulder height. George lunged forward suddenly, ramming his Glock into the back of Summersby´s neck.
“Okay, asshole. Forward, hands on the table.”
Summersby obliged stiffly with undisguised irritation and George ran his hands inside the leather jacket. “You got anything in here. Eh?”
He was whispering now, hissing through his teeth as he ran his hands around the back of the man´s jeans and over his pockets. “What you got. Drugs? Concealed weapon?”
Summersby sighed in exasperation and mumbled disgustedly.
“What a jerk.”
“What d´you say?”
George lost it then, his pale skin flushing in anger as his aggression got the better of him. He elbowed Summersby hard in the back throwing the man forcibly across the table in front of him. The customers would later wonder at what happened next. It was so fast and fluid they barely had time to see the action unfold. In a second Summersby had spun around and turned George´s gun hand in a twisting lock that freed the weapon from his fingers. Summersby caught the falling Glock one handed, whilst chopping briefly at George´s throat between thumb and forefinger of the other. George staggered back clutching at his throat and gasping. Summersby cocked the weapon and holding it high, pointed it at the trooper´s forehead.