A Fever In The Heart

by Rule, Ann

  Reconstructing the scenario of the crime, the investigating team could almost hear Bryson’s ragged breath and smell the fear in his sweat. He would have been terrified that he would be discovered on the high school campus with Vicki Brown’s body in the bed of his pickup truck. He had to get her away, and he had to cover his own trail.

  Police were convinced that Bryson had picked up the Presto Logs from his mother—just as he had called her at precise times, making sure that he commented on the time so that she could, albeit unaware of the truth, substantiate an alibi he was constructing.

  The Oregon State Police investigators, the sheriff’s detectives, and the district attorney’s staff believed they now knew what had happened to Vicki Brown, but they were no closer to finding her than they had been the first night. Perhaps Bryson had left her body somewhere while he went about his errands and his cover-ups. He might well have returned later to dispose of it. But, in the meantime, he had been busy. He contacted his brother, his best friend, his boss—all to set up his red herring story about the mysterious white truck behind his mobile home, and the open doors at the bus barn. He had even made a casual comment that Vicki’s car was still parked near the barn.

  It would have been feasible for Bryson to hide Vicki’s corpse in the dark woods behind the bus barn. That would allow him to return at his leisure to bury it or hide it somewhere where it would never be found.

  The question of whether he had enough to charge Dexter Bryson still sat heavily on D.A. Marty Sells’s mind. “Can you charge a man with murder when you have no body?” If he went ahead, Sells knew he would be fighting heavy odds. He had checked the law books and he knew that there had been no successful prosecutions in similar cases in Oregon in seventy-two years. The defense would be sure to suggest that Vicki Brown had had her own reasons to disappear.

  Still, Sells was morally certain he had his man, and so were Renfrow, Winterfeld, Oester, and Phil Jackson. If Sells didn’t risk losing in court, he would be betraying every lawman in the county who had worked so long and so hard gathering information.

  With all the negatives he was facing, Sells nevertheless had an ace in the hole: He had Herb McDonnell as a prosecution witness. Sells was convinced that McDonnell’s testimony would blast any defense case right out of the water.

  When Sells called in the investigative crew and handed out the arrest warrant, there were satisfied grins all around. The time had come to jar Bryson’s self-confidence. He was shocked when he was arrested on April 6, 1976. Vicki Brown had been missing for eight weeks and three days and no one expected that her remains would ever be found. Even so, her suspected killer was going to go on trial.

  Dexter Bryson’s trial began on September 8 in Judge Donald L. Kalberer’s courtroom in St. Helens, Oregon. As expected, the courtroom was jammed with spectators. Bryson had been given a choice of facing a jury or letting Judge Kalberer decide his fate. He waived the jury. Judge Kalberer would make the final decision.

  District Attorney Marty Sells had scores of potential witnesses, but he chose only thirty local ones, the most convincing, to build his case: the students who had been on the school grounds on February 9, the teacher who heard the shot, the state police criminal investigators, and, finally, Vicki Brown’s own little daughter, who made a good, strong, credible—if tragic—witness.

  Herbert McDonnell, the criminalist from Elmira, New York, was the key witness even though he had never been in Columbia County, Oregon, before, even though McDonnell had never seen Vicki Brown in life, and had certainly never had occasion to see her body. McDonnell’s special expertise allowed him to describe what had happened seven months before in the high school bus barn as accurately as if he had been hiding in the shadows and watching. It was eerie to comprehend the true meaning of “Blood will tell.”

  Professor McDonnell first held a pointer to blown-up photographs of the distinctive spray pattern of blood on the corner of the bus barn. This was the blood that looked as if someone had aimed an aerosol can full of red paint at the wood. McDonnell said that the diffuse specks indicated that they were “high velocity impact blood.” This blood could only have resulted from a gunshot wound. He estimated that the gun had probably been held less than three inches and probably closer to one inch from the victim. The bullet had probably penetrated the victim’s head.

  McDonnell explained that if the blood had been the result of bludgeoning, it would have left an entirely different kind of pattern. A club or hammer would have “cast off” blood in much larger drops with “tails” that showed the direction of force. Cast-off blood is nothing like the pinpoints of sprayed blood. There was no question in McDonnell’s mind that whoever had been injured in the bus barn had been shot.

  McDonnell then addressed himself to the .22 caliber Ruger gun found in Bryson’s trailer. There had been blood on the exterior of the gun when it was found. The surface of the weapon had been “tacky” with it. Blood had also been found inside the muzzle and the cylinder wall. This, McDonnell explained, was entirely in keeping with his findings after examining the two-by-six beam. High-velocity blood is drawn back into the cylinder of the gun. The terrific energy released from the gun breaks the blood down and it speckles the surrounding area. Herb McDonnell said that the high-velocity blood hit the beam and the interior of the muzzle at the same time. As the hot gases from firing the gun begin to cool almost instantly, the victim’s blood was pulled back into the barrel of the gun. The blood inside the gun was what led McDonnell to deduce that the gun had been held less than three inches away from the victim.

  Dexter Bryson shifted uncomfortably in his chair at the defense table. He had had no idea that his victim had connected him and his weapon to her murder, even as she died. She had marked his gun with her blood!

  Through Herb McDonnell’s expertise, the method of murder was exposed. By itself, the testimony of the teacher who heard the loud report would not have been enough to prove absolutely that a gun had been fired in the bus barn, had hit a human being, and that that human being had been severely injured—perhaps killed.

  The sheer amount of blood at the crime scene had been measured and a careful comparison with its percentage of Vicki Brown’s entire blood supply had told the investigators that she could not have survived long.

  Herb McDonnell’s testimony was electrifying. Anyone listening could almost see the awful struggle in the darkened barn. As Dexter Bryson realized that he could not overcome Vicki with his strength and that rape was out of the question, he also must have realized that she would report him. He had turned to the gun he carried—just in case. Vicki Brown had been trapped in the corner with nowhere left to run when he held the gun against her head and fired. Then she had slid down the wall, either dead or dying. From there, the defendant had carried or dragged her body along that wall.

  The inexorable parade of physical evidence continued: Vicki’s hair samples and the hair found on Bryson’s truck, her blood type, her dental bridge, Bryson’s bloodied clothing, Vicki’s stolen strawberry panties, Bryson’s bloody shovel.

  And then Marty Sells pointed out the many disparities in Bryson’s story. The clock in Bryson’s trailer was not broken; it was an efficiently working pendulum type clock, which incidentally, Bryson could have seen from his phone. No one other than the defendant had seen the “phantom white truck” whose occupants had allegedly tried to break into his trailer. Another woman bus driver had seen Bryson in town at nine P. M., the time he said he had been at Rex Simcox’s house. Finally, Rex Simcox himself testified that he had called Bryson back after he had checked the bus barn that night. And Bryson had not been at his mobile home. No one knew where he had been on the night Vicki Brown vanished. Marty Sells presented other possible “suspects” before the defense could bring them up. Myron Wicks fulfilled his promise to testify to his brief affair with Vicki and, predictably, the gallery gasped at his frank testimony about his impotency. No defense attorney was going to touch that. Vicki’s former husband was mentioned
as a suspect in her disappearance, but Marty Sells quashed that. Vicki’s ex could not have murdered her, even if he had had a motive. He had been in a hospital miles away from Rainier on the night of February 9.

  Investigator Renfrow testified that he had been discussing Vicki Brown’s disappearance with Dexter Bryson and his wife when Bryson suggested that whatever had happened to Vicki “had to have been an accident.” How could he possibly have known that, if he himself had not been there when she died?

  There was more than enough testimony to titillate the courtroom watchers. In an effort to show that Vicki Brown had vanished of her own volition, the defense tried to show that Vicki was lonesome for her boyfriend in Alaska, that she had disliked her job, and that she had been unpopular with the other female bus drivers. They even brought in an interesting witness, one—“Skip Tracy”—the alias of a private detective who said he was an expert witness on people who simply chose to run out on their responsibilities for their own reasons.

  Tracy cut a rather bizarre figure as he entered the courtroom, dressed immaculately in suit, tie, and high-top tennis shoes. He regaled listeners with tales of adults who simply took off, stepping out of one life and into another where no one knew them. He recalled that he had located one woman whose apartment was found soaked with blood. “She wasn’t dead at all,” he finished firmly. “We found her in Las Vegas.”

  When Marty Sells cross-examined Skip Tracy, he asked, “Have you read this case? Do you know anything at all about Vicki Brown? Do you know if she is dead or alive?”

  “No, sir, I do not,” Skip Tracy admitted.

  It was a long trial, seventeen days. On September 25, Sells rose to make his final arguments. “Mr. Bryson—” he began. “When he went out there that night, he took away from Vicki Brown the most important thing that any human being can possess, the most important right that any human being can possess, and that is the right to be, the right to exist, to live. He took that away from her and he did it intentionally, and he did it unlawfully, and we ask the court to find him guilty.”

  Judge Kalberer did not deliberate long. When he returned to confront Dexter Bryson, he explained that he had three factors to consider in his decision. “I must decide if Vicki Brown is dead, if she has been murdered, and if you did it. I am satisfied beyond any doubt, Mr. Bryson—beyond all possible doubt—that she is dead, (that) she was murdered, and that you did it.”

  Dexter Bryson stared back at Judge Kalberer. His expression did not change, his posture was erect, and he did not tremble. It was almost as if he hadn’t heard at all.

  Bryson was sentenced to life in prison. He appealed his life sentence and lost. Under Oregon law at the time, he was technically eligible to ask for a parole hearing after serving six months in prison. He served more than six months, of course, but he did not serve life. “Life in prison” is a deceptive term. In most states, it means anywhere from ten years to eighteen years—unless the sentence is mandatory. Even then, new administrations, new governors, and new laws can mitigate the length of what seemed at the time to be endless years in prison.

  Dexter Bryson has been a free man for some years now. Vicki Brown has never been found and quite possibly Bryson is the only one who knows where she is. And he will not say.

  Perhaps one day a camper will find a skeleton or a fisherman in the Columbia River will discover some small fragment of bone or clothing. It is no longer likely that that will happen. But time reveals all things in one way or another.

  Vicki Brown’s murderer was convicted even though her body was never found. And there is a kind of poetic as well as legal justice in that. Vicki was a good mother, good daughter, dependable on her job, and she had every reason to look forward to many years ahead. That ended for her in a darkened bus barn when a rejected would-be lover’s frustration and rage exploded.

  As Marty Sells pointed out in his final argument, Dexter Bryson had made one clumsy mistake after another when he murdered Vicki. “The only clever thing he did was to hide the body.”

  And because of the silent testimony of Vicki Brown’s own blood, that just wasn’t enough.

  THE END

  ***

  I’LL LOVE YOU FOREVER

  I learned about this story of ultimate betrayal long after it was too late to save the victim. Ruth Logg’s daughters and other relatives could not save her either, but they prevailed and saw a certain kind of justice done in a landmark court decision.

  This is the kind of nightmare case that haunts every woman on her own. Each of us can identify with Ruth Logg. Each of us would like to think that we would never fall for the blandishments of a man like Ruth’s “Tony.” And yet, inside, I think we must admit that any woman who hopes to find permanent love risks meeting the perfect liar instead of the perfect lover.

  When I researched this case many years ago, I found Ruth Logg’s “perfect lover” so sinister that I actually changed my usual pen name to a completely different pseudonym so that he wouldn’t be able to find me.

  I think you will see why as the story of the man who promised to love Ruth “forever” unfolds.

  ***

  When her life was viewed in terms of worldly goods, Ruth Logg had everything. The lovely blond widow had been well provided for by her late husband, Les. She lived alone for several years after Les’s death in her sprawling house in Auburn, Washington. The grounds were impeccably maintained and there was even a huge swimming pool. Ruth’s home was valued in the early seventies at $85,000. Today, it would be worth well over a million dollars. Les Logg’s business holdings had amounted to something over a quarter of a million dollars at the time of his death. Again, that $250,000 would be worth ten times as much in the economy of the nineties. Ruth herself had a good business head. She had moved smoothly into her new place as owner of a business.

  Unlike many women who are suddenly widowed, Ruth Logg was able to manage. Her two pretty teenage daughters, Kathleen and Susan, lived with her and she loved them devotedly. But Ruth was only in her early forties, and she sometimes dreamed of finding a man to share her life. She was lonely and the years ahead often seemed to stretch out bleakly.

  Ruth knew that her girls would soon be moving away to start their own lives, and that was as it should be. She accepted that. But she couldn’t bear the thought of rattling around her huge house alone once Kathleen and Susan were gone.

  In March of 1971, she put the house on the market: Perhaps she would buy a condominium or take an apartment where she wouldn’t have to worry about yard work. Her personal safety was on her mind too. A woman in a house alone wasn’t as safe as one who lived close to other people in a security building.

  Most single women hold on to a romantic dream that a special man will come along one day and change their lives. Ruth Logg was no exception. She was far too young to give up on love, even though her prospects looked slim. She hated the idea of dating services or Parents Without Partners, or blind dates set up by well-meaning friends. She sometimes wondered why it had to be so difficult to meet someone.

  And then Ruth Logg did meet someone in such an unexpected way. It was a blustery March afternoon when she first encountered the man who would suddenly launch her world in exciting new directions. A sleek luxury car pulled up in front of her home and a compactly muscled, impeccably dressed man emerged and knocked at her door. He had a great voice. He introduced himself as “Dr. Anthony Fernandez.”

  No one would have described Dr. Fernandez as handsome, and yet he had an undeniably charismatic quality. He had wide shoulders and thickly muscled arms and wrists, and he looked at Ruth with warm dark eyes under thick brows. Ruth could sense that he was gentle. His manners were wonderful; he was almost apologetic for interrupting her schedule, but he did want to see her home. Ruth assured him that she would be delighted to show him through the house.

  Dr. Fernandez explained that he was forty-eight years old and divorced. He said he had just opened a family counseling clinic in the Tacoma area and that he was hoping
to buy a house within easy commuting distance to his business.

  Ruth Logg was quite taken with Dr. Fernandez, who urged her to call him “Tony.” They talked as she led him through her home and he seemed impressed with the floor plan, the way she had decorated the rooms, and with the lawn and gardens. It wasn’t long before they stopped talking about the house; they discovered that they shared many interests. Dr. Anthony Fernandez asked Ruth Logg if she would join him for dinner and she accepted, a little surprised at herself for agreeing to a date with someone she really didn’t know.

  Tony and Ruth had such a good time on their first evening that they both knew they would see more of each other. More dates followed and Ruth suddenly found herself caught up in a whirlwind courtship. After so many years at the edge of other people’s lives, she found it incredibly exciting to have this fascinating man pursuing her. And Tony Fernandez was pursuing her. At first, Ruth questioned her great good fortune, but then she accepted it. She was, after all, a good-looking woman with a lush figure and a pretty face. She had forgotten that in her years as a widow. Now, Ruth became even prettier with her newfound happiness.

  It never occurred to Ruth that Tony might be interested in her because she was wealthy. In fact, she believed that what she had was chicken feed compared to what he owned; Tony had told her that he was a man with substantial assets. He spoke of timber holdings and real estate, and, of course, he had his counseling practice. He didn’t need her money.