by A M Ialacci
“All units, calling all units, we have an unidentified male body in the woods south of town, I repeat, an unidentified male body in the woods. Please respond.”
“Car Four heading that way.”
“All units, Car Four is responding, and backup may be necessary. Standby.”
A body in the woods? Maybe the curse is real.
In a second, Cleo had her Docs in hand and laced them up. So much for staying inside, but she had to find out what was going on. She patted Oliver on the head, stuck her tongue out again at the cat who was still hissing, threw her pea coat on, and grabbed her camera.
“Be back I don’t know when. Behave,” she said and left.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cleo parked her Mini on the street about twenty yards in front of the police cruiser. She had a flashlight she could use but wanted to be inconspicuous in case any bad guys were lurking nearby in this crazy, cursed town. Her boots made enough racket to scare away all the small animals within a square mile radius as she crunched through the undergrowth looking for a path. Finally, her feet found some ground that had been trampled on by more than a few people in the past, and she followed it into the darkening woods.
After a few minutes on the path, Cleo stopped to listen and heard the unmistakable crackle of a two-way radio. She looked around and wondered how she might approach the scene without surprising the cop and getting shot.
“Hellooooo?” she called out.
No answer. The cop must have been trying to decide how he was going to respond.
“Mr. Friendly Police Officer, I’m just a citizen. I’m not a criminal, okay? Don’t shoot me.” Cleo raised her arms and began crashing through the undergrowth to make her presence known. Sure enough, when she reached the small clearing, the cop had his gun drawn. Then she saw who it was.
“Well, hello, Ms. Kemp,” Will Truman said, wincing as he tried to re-holster his gun with his bum hand.
“How long did it take you to draw that thing, I wonder.” Cleo snorted.
“Is there something I can help you with?” Will asked, a definite edge to his voice.
“I’m a freelance photographer who takes pictures for the local citizenry so that they can know about and understand what’s happening in the community.”
A bark of laughter escaped Will’s throat. “And?”
“What do we have here, Officer Truman?” Cleo asked, on her tiptoes, trying to see around Will to the body propped against a tree.
“What are you, an ambulance-chaser or something? What kind of person races to a crime scene to take pictures?” Will asked, grimacing.
Cleo sighed. “Look, Will. I’ve only just learned about how dangerous this week seems to be in this hell-scape of a small town. I just…I want to know what’s going on.” When he didn’t respond, she continued. “I thought I was safe here, but this is some seriously messed-up shit. I have a camera and an eye for detail, and your forensic unit is leagues away. I could help.” She looked him in the eye.
He glanced away, unsure, and then returned her gaze. “All right, but don’t touch anything. And I mean anything. A leaf out of place, and any chance we have of prosecution is over.”
“Prosecution,” Cleo said, wary. “So…it’s a murder?”
“No, I don’t know.” Will was flustered now. “I’m saying, just in case.”
“Okay, boss man. I won’t touch any leaves.”
“And you are not to tell a soul. And you do exactly as I say. Take pictures only of what I tell you to.”
“Yep, got it.” Cleo saluted.
“Those boots are going to tear up my scene,” Will said, shaking his head. “Don’t move.”
Cleo held up her hands and waited as Will went to a small toolbox closer to the body. When he bent down, she could see the form against the tree more clearly.
It was Nicholas Stubbs.
Cleo’s legs buckled, and she staggered and then caught herself. Putting her head between her legs, she retched onto the ground in front of her. She felt Will’s hand on her back. “Are you okay?” he asked, real concern in his voice.
“It’s Nicholas…” she said, putting her hands on her knees to steady herself, unable to look at the body.
“It is.”
“But, he was at my house today. And I saw him downtown.” She rose slowly, Will grasping her elbow.
“Yes,” Will said. “Dead people are often alive before they die.”
Cleo punched his arm. “Ass.” She took a deep breath. She could do this. Another deep breath. Treat it like just another story.
“Put these on.” He handed her a pair of thin blue booties to put over her boots.
“You know these won’t do a thing, right?”
Will shrugged. “I gotta follow protocol.”
She put the booties over her Docs and snorted. “Okay. Now what?” She braced herself as she looked again at Nicholas’s body. It was easier but not by much.
“Come on over. I need close-ups of the wound in his abdomen, and this other one on his forearm. Then some of the other parts of his body, then the area around the body…”
“Got it. From the center out.”
“Exactly,” Will said with a nod. “I’m going to check out the deer blind up here.” He pointed to the lean-to constructed from old boards in the crook of the branch above them. “If you need anything, let me know.”
Cleo got to work, taking multiple shots of each location, sometimes adjusting the angle to ensure everything could be seen. The portable light Will had set up before she arrived wasn’t ideal, but she wasn’t taking beauty shots, either. The thick scent of decaying leaves mixed with the tang of iron as she maneuvered around Nicholas’s bloody body. Nicholas had been shot with a crossbow bolt in the gut. He seemed to have propped himself up on the tree, but Cleo couldn’t be sure that someone else hadn’t moved him. His left sleeve had been rolled up, and he had used a penknife, discarded near his right hand, to carve what looked like a letter ‘M’ or ‘W’ onto his own arm. Or had someone else done that? Not for me to assume, she supposed. Just document.
Continuing to take deep breaths through her mouth, she photographed the blood on Nicholas’s hands and thought about their last encounter. He had seemed like such a gentle soul. Remembering what Imani said about his supposed cocaine use, she took a few extra shots of his face and arms but saw none of the telltale signs of hard drug use. Just hard physical labor.
The area around the body was unremarkable, but she photographed it anyway. The ground, the bushes nearby, the tree trunk itself. She stepped back and studied the bolt protruding from Nicholas’s abdomen, and looked around, trying to judge where it might have been fired. She crouched and turned her head her head sideways, considering. Finally, she stood and turned her back to the body and then began taking tentative steps into the enfolding darkness outside the boundary of the portable lamp.
“Where are you going?” Will asked from above.
“Just checking something…” she answered.
“Don’t—”
“Shh. Give me a minute.” She crouched again, looking at a patch of leaves on the ground and then turned to face the body. “Yep.”
“Yep, what?” Will asked, getting frustrated.
“Here.” She pointed to the ground in front of her.
“What’s there?” he asked, climbing down from the blind and approaching her.
“The killer shot him from here.”
“How do you know?”
Her camera flashed, and Will squinted at the sudden brightness. He rubbed his eyes and when he opened them, Cleo was showing him the image on the screen of her camera. “Is that…”
“Blood.” She nodded, crouching again. This time, he followed suit, pulling his flashlight from his pants pocket. After switching it on, he swept the ground until Cleo found his hand and guided it to the spot where she had seen the dark red splotches on the leaves. Neither of them said anything for a minute, staring at the blood.
“That can’t
be from his body,” Will said.
“It’s not,” Cleo said, confident. “It’s from the killer’s.”
“Or it might be from an animal. Or some hunter that used this spot a week ago.”
“It wouldn’t still be wet and dark red.”
“Fine. I’ll bag it and run it. But there’s nothing else to suggest it’s related.”
“Yes, there is! Look at the angle of entry of the wound. It was from below. The killer was on the ground. And look at this area. Someone was lying here. The leaves are disturbed.”
Will nodded. “Maybe. I’ll move the lamp so you can take some shots. Backup should be here soon. When they arrive, let me do the talking.”
Cleo took as many shots of the blood drops on the leaves as she dared, from all angles. She nodded to Will when she was finished and he secured them in an evidence container. “Will you send that for DNA?”
“Yes, first to determine if it’s human blood, and then to see if there’s a match in any databases, but it’s a long shot,” Will said. Random flashes of light accompanied by men’s voices were heading their way. Will looked Cleo in the eye and motioned for her to stand back.
“Will, what do we have?” Chief Chapman asked, glancing at Cleo only for a moment before turning his full attention to Will.
“The deceased is Nicholas Stubbs, killed with a crossbow bolt to the abdomen,” Will began.
“Accident, you think?” Chapman crouched down next to the body to get a closer look.
“Hard to say without forensic analysis, sir.”
“No hunting vest. Could have been an accident,” Chapman said, smoothing his gray mustache with his fingers.
“But—” Cleo began before getting a stern look from Will.
Chapman turned his gaze on her, and then said, “And why exactly is she here?”
“She is an excellent photographer—”
“Will, I don’t need to explain to you the chain of evidence, do I?”
“No, sir. I thought in the interests of time, we might be able to use her expertise before our forensic data disappeared. As you know, the body does funny things while in the process of decay, and evidence on or near the body can be carried away by wind, rain, animals… I thought the pros outweighed the cons at the time, sir.”
“And now? Do they still?”
Will looked at Cleo, then back at Chapman. “I do, sir.”
“All right then. I trust your judgment. Walk me through what we have here.”
Will motioned for her to head out, so she did, smiling at the other officers on the scene before finding the path back to the street and tugging off the blue booties. She had just pulled the handle on her car door when she heard steps behind her.
“Cleo, wait.” It was Will.
“Jesus, Will. You can’t come running upon a woman in the dark in Murder Town!”
“Sorry,” he panted. “Thank you. For following protocol. For listening to me.”
“I’m nothing if not professional,” she said, leaning back on the Mini.
Will smiled, still trying to catch his breath. “I’ll drop by sometime tomorrow to get a copy of all of those.” He pointed to the camera.
“All right. Thanks for letting me help. And I won’t say a word to anyone. Scout’s honor,” she said, holding up three fingers.
“See you tomorrow, then,” Will said, stepping back. He gave her a half wave of his hand, and then he disappeared back into the woods.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cleo resisted the call of the recliner when she came in the door. She crouched to nuzzle Oliver’s head for a moment and then took her camera into the dining room. Attaching the camera’s cord to her laptop, she started the upload process with a few keystrokes. While the computer did its thing, she walked into the kitchen to pour herself some bourbon and throw Oliver a treat, which he gulped down whole. She sneered at the cat but gave him a scoop of food in his bowl and put a finger through Oliver’s collar to get him to come back to the dining room with her rather than bully the cat out of his food.
Thumbnails of the photos she had taken were rifling by, one after another, as they uploaded to her hard drive. Nicholas’s lifeless face, eyes open, the gore of his abdomen looking like a poorly executed Halloween costume that was a couple of weeks too early. But it had been real—she remembered the smell of iron, fear, and decay, and felt her gorge rising again. This “curse” or whatever it was had now affected her, and for the first time since Greg had turned nasty, a gnawing ball of fear sat in the pit of her stomach. She took a large swallow of bourbon, which seemed to help, and she took another.
When the upload was finished, she took an extra couple of minutes to back them up to her external drive and to the cloud, even though her head was bobbing with exhaustion already. Finally, the green checkmark appeared on the screen, indicating she was good to go. She closed the lid of the laptop, dragged herself to the recliner, and fell asleep with her boots on.
CHAPTER NINE
Buttons the cat made sure to let Cleo know it was well past time to wake up by jumping onto her face and then from her face to the top of the recliner.
“Damn cat!” Cleo mumbled, touching her face and then looking at her fingers to see if Buttons’s wakeup call had resulted in any bloody wounds. Not this time. She stretched and slowly got to her feet, feeling every inch of her day-old clothes on her skin. As she shuffled into the kitchen, the animals followed her, reminding her that they were hungry.
“Damn. Out of cat food,” Cleo said, reaching into the bag under the counter and finding the bottom. “Dammitall!” she said when she realized she was out of coffee, too.
Stretching her neck from side to side, she was thankful not to have to get dressed again. She grabbed her pea coat on the way out the front door and shrugged it on as she crossed her lawn to the sidewalk.
Flashes of the scene in the woods the previous night interrupted her thoughts, and a wave of sadness rushed through her. What a terrible way to die. She had heard somewhere along the line, while watching old Westerns with Greg maybe, that gut wounds took the longest to bleed out and were therefore one of the most painful ways to die.
The grocery store was closer, but they didn’t carry her favorite brand of coffee. A longer walk to the general store was required. Luckily, it was a mostly clear day with plentiful sunshine, but that also meant it was cold. Cleo wished she had brought her knit cap, because pixie cuts and exposed ears were not a pleasant experience in this kind of cold. She quickened her pace.
When she reached the general store, she waited for an elderly woman to toddle out before hustling into the warmth inside. A group of townies was gathered around the coffee urn, each with a Styrofoam cup in hand. Some leaned against the wall, and others stood on both feet with a hand stuffed into a pants pocket. They had been meeting here like this every morning for so long, it was a wonder they didn’t bring their own chairs. As it was, the help had to politely shoo them out after a couple of hours.
Berta Hardy was holding court, the only woman in the group, but Cleo was sure none of the others even registered her gender. She was a retired postal employee who was renowned as an expert shot, and one of the best hunters in the county. Sure that the whole town would know by now who it was they had found in the woods the previous night, Cleo busied herself nearby to overhear what Berta might have to say.
“How often have I said it? You all know,” Berta said to several nodding heads. “He was a waste of space, not worth the air he breathed. And if he had used my blind one more time without asking me, I might have done it myself.”
Chuckles met her statement, but Cleo stilled, heart pounding.
“Not really, you know. I only hunt things that I can eat and use the pelts of.” A smile spread across her wide face.
More laughter.
“You shoot birds, too, though, Berta!” one of the townies added.
Cleo watched from behind the nearest shelf as Berta’s head snapped back and her mouth turned into a thin line.
“You can eat birds, Earl.” Her plump body seemed to puff up more at the affront.
“Them big ones you shoot? I don’t think so,” Earl continued, oblivious to the daggers Berta was shooting his way with her eyes.
“It’s pretty rare when I shoot a turkey these days,” she countered.
“Turkey? That’s not what I heard—”
“Shut up, Earl. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Berta hissed. Turning to the others with a smile, she asked. “Enough about me. Whatchy’all been bagging out there?”
A deft change of subject, Cleo thought. She definitely has a temper, and she said it very well could have been her if she found Nicholas in her blind again. I wonder what he was doing out in the woods last night anyway.
Cleo ducked back down the aisle, grabbed a bag of cat food and her favorite brand of coffee, and headed to the checkout. Two women behind her in line were gossiping.
“You know he was seeing a lot of that Shelley Mills at the library. Maybe her boyfriend had enough of that going on behind his back?” Mouse-face said.
“Travis Brenner is a lot of things, but I don’t think he’s as into Shelley as he pretends to be. I heard he has someone on the side,” Big Ears replied.
“Wouldn’t surprise me. But he still might have gotten mad at Nicholas Stubbs.”
“He might have. I wonder just how close Nicholas and Shelley were?”
“Ew, gross. He was like fifty!”
“It happens! It happens all the time. Look at Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart!”
“True, true,” Mouse-face conceded.
Cleo checked out, went out onto the sidewalk, and made a detour.
CHAPTER TEN
I stink, I’m wearing day-old clothes, I haven’t had coffee, and my cat is probably pissing on the furniture because I haven’t fed him yet. But I have to follow up on this, Cleo thought. She cut down Mulberry Street, which went by the park in the center of town. Older folks were walking dogs and sitting on the park benches, while a few younger folks were jogging. It was picturesque, and for a moment, Cleo forgot this place was home to kidnappings, rapes, disappearances, and most recently, an apparent murder. She turned left when she reached Old School Road and saw the flat-roofed brick building she sought sandwiched between the high school and the elementary school. A wall of stained glass greeted her as she approached, and when Cleo was a few feet from the door, it flew open. Travis Brenner stormed out, almost bumping into Cleo as he marched past, color high in his cheeks. Cleo watched him go and then pulled the front door open herself.