by Ken Oder
Reba stubbed out her cigarette in the car’s ashtray. “Leland didn’t kill Betty Lou.”
“How do you know?”
“He was in bed with me when she was shot.”
“He told me he parked at the dam and drank all night.”
“He was with me. He showed up at my trailer Saturday night at supper time, bout eight o’clock. I fried him a steak. We drank whiskey and watched TV. Went to bed bout ten. He didn’t leave my place till six thirty the next mornin. People in the know tell me Betty Lou was shot sometime between four and six. If that’s true, Leland couldn’t have killed her.”
People in the know. Walt Ballard, Cole thought, one of Cole’s deputies and Reba’s third ex-husband. When he applied for a job with the sheriff’s office, people warned Cole that he talked too much, especially with a snoot full of shine, but Cole sensed an undercurrent of untapped talent in the man, so he took a chance on him. He panned out to be an average deputy, but when Reba left him last year, his job performance took a nosedive. Cole guessed he’d told Reba about the Mundy case to curry favor with her.
“You sure it was six thirty when Leland left your place?” Cole asked.
“I’m sure.”
“Any chance he left during the night and came back while you were asleep?”
Reba gave Cole a wry look. “I didn’t sleep. Neither did he.”
Cole chewed on that for a while. Then, “How long you and Leland been carrying on?”
“Since last summer.”
“How did it get started?”
“I was sittin at the bar in Carter’s Tavern on a Saturday night. He come in by himself. We talked and I let him know I was interested. He followed me home. After that, we hooked up off and on till the night Betty Lou was shot.”
“What does off and on mean?”
She lit another Kool and pulled so hard on it she burned down half an inch of ash. “Means he came to see me when he couldn’t stand it no longer. In what they call ‘moments of weakness.’”
He heard the bitterness in her voice. She had wanted more from Leland, he guessed. “One-night stands?” he said, to see how she’d react.
She glared at him, but the anger died quickly and resignation took its place. “Leland saw it that way, I reckon. Bout once a month he’d show up at my door lookin hangdog.” She blew out a stream of smoke. “He’d leave in the mornin and I wouldn’t hear from him till the next time he came along.”
“Anyone see you with him?”
“People saw us at Carter’s Tavern that first time, but I never heard no talk about it. The other nights, he came to my trailer and we didn’t go out.”
“If he parked at your trailer, someone should have seen his truck.”
“My lot has a shed around back. He parked in it so no one would see. He always came after dark and left before dawn. He didn’t want anyone to know about us.”
“Did Betty Lou know?”
“He didn’t want her to know.” She put the cigarette out in the ashtray and put the pack of Kools in her purse. “Said he didn’t want to hurt her feelins.” She bit off the words.
Cole looked across the road at Leland’s grave, wondering if Reba’s story was a lie concocted to exonerate him.
When they hauled Cole away in the ambulance the morning of the murder, he left Chase Dooley in charge of the investigation. With the help of Shirley West, a state medical examiner, Chase gathered a lot of evidence that pointed to Leland as the murderer.
Shirley determined the cause of death to be a .25-caliber bullet that pierced an aorta. Ballistics tests established that the gun Cole tried to take away from Leland that morning was the murder weapon, a .25-caliber Browning pistol commonly known as a Baby Browning, four inches long, ten ounces in weight. Chase traced the pistol to Jenkins Gun Shop in Jeetersburg where Leland purchased it two years before the murder. The pistol bore Leland’s fingerprints on its ivory handle, a partial print from Cole’s index finger on the barrel, and no one else’s prints.
Bloodstains on the cuff and chest of Leland’s shirt matched Betty Lou’s blood type.
As Walt had apparently told Reba, Shirley pegged the time of death as between four and six Sunday morning. Bessie Tilden, the widow who lived next door, told Chase she heard a lone gunshot shortly before five. Although Leland told Cole he parked at the dam that night and drank until dawn, Chase found no tire tracks or any other sign that Leland had been there.
The morning of the murder, Leland told Cole he’d heard Betty Lou was seeing another man, so he had motive, and discounting his unverified story about drinking all night, he had opportunity. The case against him was rock solid.
Cole studied Reba. The sun was setting on her side of the car. A soft orange light limned her dark hair. He saw no signs of dissemblance in her demeanor, but a woman who carried on a secret affair with her sister’s husband had to be capable of telling lies with a straight face, and the way she laid out her story, there was no witness or independent fact that could corroborate it.
And yet he could think of no reason for Reba to lie. Leland was dead. Her alibi would do him no good.
“You believe me, don’t you?” she said.
Cole looked down at her hands folded in her lap, small with delicate fingers tipped with red acrylic nails. The last wisps of cigarette smoke drifted out Cole’s window, and the fragrance of her perfume took over. He breathed it in, a flowery scent, sweet but earthy. His strong sense that he’d encountered it before returned, and a sudden recollection of the morning of the murder swept over him in a rush. Standing in the little enclosed space of the screen porch, he’d picked up a sweet floral scent coming off Leland, memorable because it didn’t fit for a rough-as-a-cob working man.
“What’s the perfume you’re wearing?”
Reba looked puzzled. “It’s French.” She withdrew a little bottle of cut glass from her purse and handed it to him. “Leland liked it. I wore it whenever we got together. It seemed right to wear it this afternoon when I come to see his grave.”
“Jolie Madame by Balmain” was scrolled across the label over an ink-black sketch of a smiling woman with long curly hair. Cole pulled the stopper and held the bottle to his nose. He recognized it as the scent he’d smelled on Leland the morning of the murder. Jolie Madame must have rubbed off on him when Reba held him in her arms that night and lingered on him through the morning.
Cole thought through the perfume’s implications. It supported Reba’s claim that Leland spent the night with her, but it didn’t prove he was with her when Betty Lou was killed. Reba’s trailer was a forty-five-minute drive from Leland’s house. He could have slept with her that night but left her trailer earlier than she claimed.
Cole handed the bottle back to Reba. “Come down to headquarters in the morning. Meet with me and Chase Dooley. We’ll go over everything in detail. Take your statement.”
She clenched her jaw and looked out the window at the schoolhouse.
“What’s wrong?”
“I need to get me a lawyer first.”
“Why?”
“There’s more to the story than I told you. Some people might take it the wrong way.”
“You’ll have to tell us everything. Lawyer or no lawyer.”
“Could be. We’ll see, I reckon.”
“If you’re worried about your own neck, why did you come forward in the first place?”
“I heard y’all were about to close the case and put the killin on Leland.”
“Walt Ballard.”
“Don’t matter where I heard it. The point is I know Leland didn’t kill Betty Lou.” Her eyes were full. “I won’t let Leland go down as a murderer. I don’t want him to be remembered that way.”
This relationship was much more than an illicit affair, Cole thought. She was in love with Leland. All the way. Head over heels. Which gave her a powerful motive to kill the woman who stood between them.
“I’ll get me a lawyer tomorrow,” Reba said. “If he says I can give you a state
ment, I will.” She got out of the patrol car, rounded the Impala, and climbed inside. The engine roared and she spun out of the schoolyard kicking up a trail of dust, sped up the road, and disappeared around a turn, tires squealing.
Cole looked at the red mound over Leland’s grave. There was a lot more to learn. Pursuit of the truth required energy and will, which were once Cole’s dominant traits, but no longer. He was lonely; he was old and tired; and his body was failing. He stared at the pines that blocked his view of Carrie’s grave. After a long while, he started the car and drove out of the schoolyard.
Chapter Four
The Medical Examiner
March 1, 1967, Wednesday evening
Cole left the schoolhouse and headed home, stopping at Kirby’s Store in Fox Run to buy a couple of Moon Pies and a Brownie, a makeshift supper. By the time he left there and drove into Whippoorwill Hollow, night had fallen and a crest of maroon, violet, and purple clouds colored the western horizon, the last remnants of the sunset.
Twelve miles from the store, he turned onto his gravel driveway. Thirty years ago, he and Carrie had built a little cottage halfway up the slope of Butter Ridge on a flat ledge over Little Bear River. He still rented the bottomland pasture to a neighbor for grazing, and tonight as he drove past the cattle gathered under spreading oaks along the riverbank, moonlight paled their black backs to gray.
When he crested the steep slope to his house, his headlights washed over a midnight blue Cadillac in front of his car shed. Cole pulled up beside it and got out of his car. On the front porch, a mane of snow-white hair and a full beard were rocking back and forth, disembodied in the dark.
The pain in Cole’s lower back graduated from dull to bothersome as he limped across the yard to the foot of the steps.
“About time you showed up.” Randall Hotchkiss was wearing a three-piece tweed suit. “I’ve been sitting here for the better part of an hour.”
“Why didn’t you call and tell me you were coming?”
“I didn’t know I was coming till I came.”
Cole grasped the railing, pulled himself up the steps, crossed the porch to the front door and unlocked it. “Let’s go inside.”
“Not worth the trouble.”
“It’s cold.”
“I’d rather sit out here. I won’t keep you long.”
Cole knew why Randy had come to see him. If the roles were reversed, Cole wouldn’t want to go inside and visit either, so he relented and took a seat in the rocker next to Randy.
Randy was cradling a gallon mason jar in his lap like a precious treasure. The tangy scent of his preferred poison, a strong screwdriver mix, wafted up from the jar’s open top.
“That won’t help,” Cole said.
“Nothing helps.” Randy raised the jar to his lips and took a long pull. He set it back on his meaty thigh and swiped his sleeve across his mouth. His chest rose and fell in labored wheezing breaths, his huge belly straining against his vest. “I suppose Shirley West told you. The state let me go.”
As the state’s assistant chief medical examiner, Shirley made recommendations for the appointment and removal of examiners in the western district, and her recommendations were always approved. She had called Cole that morning to notify him that the state had terminated Randy’s thirty-year tenure as Selk County’s local medical examiner. “I’m sorry,” Cole said to Randy.
“No, you’re not.”
Cole let that stand. It was true.
Randy took another swig and was quiet for a while. Then, “Shirley said she found strands of my hair and fibers from my suit on Betty Lou Mundy’s corpse. She asked me how they got there. I told her I was so drunk I don’t remember what I did that morning. That seemed to be the last straw. She said she had no choice but to fire me.”
Cole looked out at the cattle standing under the oaks. A light breeze carried the river’s faint hum up to the porch.
“I told her the truth,” Randy said. “I don’t know what happened. I want you to tell me what I did.”
“I wasn’t there. I was down with my bad back.”
“You left Dooley in charge. He’s like a son to you. He tells you everything.”
“I don’t see what good it does—”
“We go back a long way, Cole. When I was on my game, we were best friends. Tell me what I did.”
Cole rubbed his palms on his pants legs. “Dispatch couldn’t find you for hours. When you finally showed up at the Mundys’ house, you were drunk.” Cole fell silent, hoping Randy wouldn’t push it.
“Tell me the rest of it. Tell me what I did when I got there.”
Cole took in a breath and let it out. “Chase said you were talking nonsense. Crying and blubbering. Didn’t seem to know where you were. You fell on your face. Crawled over to Betty Lou on your hands and knees.” Cole hesitated and then said, “You passed out on top of her.”
Randy took a big swallow from the jar. “I don’t remember any of it.” He ran a trembling hand across his mouth. “What did I say when I was crying?”
“Chase said it was gibberish. He couldn’t make any sense of it.”
Randy seemed to think about that. Then he said, “Is Dooley the one who ratted me out?”
“He told Shirley you were down with a cold. She didn’t believe him. She called me. I told her the truth. You want to blame someone, blame me.”
A tear rolled out of Randy’s eye and disappeared in his beard. He lifted the jar, but Cole put his hand on it and pushed it down.
“You wanted to hear the truth. Crawl out of that jar and face up to it.”
“Facing the truth isn’t my strong suit.”
“It used to be.”
Randy blew out a short, heavy breath and leaned back in the rocker. “I was a good doctor in my day.”
“One of the best.”
“If I could just go back to the time . . .” His voice broke. He tucked his chin and squeezed his eyes shut, his shoulders shaking.
Cole took the jar from Randy, stepped over to the porch railing, poured the yellow mix onto the ground, and threw the jar into the night. It thudded on the turf and skidded across the yard to come to rest under a tree by the driveway. With the twist of the throw, a needle of pain pricked Cole’s lower back. He limped back to the rocker and sat down.
Randy’s wheezing came on strong and then tailed off. A chill wind blew across the porch. Cole zipped up his jacket.
Randy struggled to button his suit jacket, but it wouldn’t reach around his girth so he abandoned the effort. “How did you get past it?”
“What?”
“Carrie’s murder. How did you get over it?”
Cole paused for a long moment. “I didn’t get over it. I never will.”
Randy gave Cole a baleful look. “How do you go on?”
“I get up in the morning. I put on the uniform. I go to work.”
Randy looked off at the night. “Hardly seems worth it.” He grasped the arms of the rocking chair and pushed his heavy frame up to stand. He walked unsteadily across the porch to the top of the steps.
“Randy.”
Randy stopped and looked back at Cole.
“I can’t bring Carrie back, but you’ve still got a chance. Samantha left you because you’re a drunk. Sober up and beg her to come home.”
“Samantha,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Seems like so long ago.” He descended the steps and weaved across the yard to his Cadillac. The headlights came on and the engine fired up. The big car made a wide circle in the driveway, almost colliding with the corner of the car shed, and headed down the hill.
Cole went inside and limped across the parlor and down the hall to a little home office. He sat down at his desk and grabbed the radio transmitter. “County One to dispatch.”
“Hey, Cole.” The grainy voice of Molly Ruebush, the county’s most experienced dispatcher.
“Who’s on patrol in Whippoorwill Hollow?”
“Chase is on till midnight.”
“Randy H
otchkiss just left my house. Tell Chase to pull him over. Take him home and put him to bed.”
“Will do.”
Cole hung up and took off his jacket. He pulled out his shirttail and unhooked his back brace so he could massage a spot high on his right hip, over the bone his doctor referred to as the iliac crest.
Carrie’s image came to his mind’s eye as it always did in idle moments. He saw her as clearly as the last night her head rested on the pillow beside him, her brown eyes, the splash of freckles over her cheeks and nose, her dimples when she smiled, her red hair streaked with gray. His perfect recall of her aspect apparently wasn’t typical of widowers three years gone. Cole’s neighbor, Joe Willis, said his wife’s face faded away a few weeks after she died. He carried her photograph in his wallet to remember what she looked like. Cole wondered who experienced more pain, Joe because he couldn’t recall his wife’s image or Cole because he couldn’t forget.
He got up and walked slowly down the hall to the kitchen. When he opened the cabinet above the sink and withdrew the bottle of pain pills, he stared at the wall phone for a few moments, thinking about calling his son, Peter, a doctor at Philadelphia General Hospital. Probably busy, he thought, and he had nothing new to say to him. He’d call some other time, he told himself. He took two pills and limped down the hall toward the bedroom.
Chapter Five
The Widower
Three years before Betty Lou Mundy’s murder, in 1964, Sheriff Grundy’s wife came home from grocery shopping on a warm sunny afternoon in June. Just as she reached the top of the porch steps with a bag of groceries in one hand and her house key in the other, a man opened the front door and fired one round into her chest. The force of the blow threw her off the porch and Carrie landed on her back on the flagstones at the foot of the steps, her heels on the bottom step, her arms above her head. Her groceries fell in the crotch of a big boxwood bush by the porch. Her keys landed on the lawn to her right.