The Judas Murders

by Ken Oder

  Cole explained the photograph’s history. “Can you track down the photographer?”

  “Fingerprints from fifteen years ago are long gone,” Frank said. “Color photographs were more rare back then than today. That might help us narrow down where it came from.” He squinted at it. “Faded with age. Poor quality. Background is browned out in the upper right corner.” He withdrew a magnifying glass from his desk drawer and held it over the photo. “There’s a bedpost to her left. A door on the wall behind her. Looks like a closet door.” He put the glass down. “The picture’s so old I doubt we can identify the photographer, but maybe we can find that bedroom. We’ll need to make an enlargement. How about I ask Rupert Dilbey to help me?”

  Dilbey owned a camera shop in Jeetersburg. “Good idea,” Cole said.

  Frank scooped the photograph and envelope into the pouch. “I’ll get on it.”

  * * *

  Cole’s office was on the second floor directly above the lobby. A square blond-oak desk sat in front of file cabinets along one wall across from a conference table and floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of Beacon Hill, a rocky knoll that rose up out of the flatlands around Jeetersburg.

  At noon, Mabel Lucas, Cole’s secretary, sat across the desk from him, her legs crossed, a yellow pad in her lap, her pen poised over it. Forty years old, as tall as Cole, big-boned with a round face, black eyes, and coal-black hair gathered into a tight bun on top of her head, she wore a shapeless high-necked black dress that fell to midcalf, white socks, and black and white saddle shoes. With a photographic memory and an IQ Cole guessed was higher than any two of his deputies put together, Mabel was one of Cole’s best resources. He had offered her a promotion to deputy four times in the five years she’d worked for him. She’d turned him down each time, saying she had enough on her plate with seven children, thank you very much, so he’d done the best he could to tap into her outsized talent by loading her up with assignments far beyond normal secretarial duties and paying her way above scale.

  She told him about Chase’s discovery of the corpse on Bobcat Mountain.

  Cole was surprised. “Any connection to Betty Lou?”

  “Chase said he doesn’t know yet.”

  Cole looked out the window. A cluster of billowy clouds floated across the sun, casting a shadow over Beacon Hill. He thought the man’s murder was almost certainly related to Betty Lou’s killing and the attack on him. All three took place over a short span of time in a remote, sparsely populated, generally peaceful area.

  “Frank is headed up there now,” Mabel said. “Shirley West is on her way from Roanoke.” She flipped a page on her yellow pad. “I checked with Dolley Madison about Bessie Tilden. The nurse said she’s dehydrated and exhausted, but she should recover in a day or two. I sent her flowers with a card from you.”

  Mabel turned another page and tapped her pen on the pad. “I went through the files you gave me.” Cole had asked her to review Leland’s plumbing company records. “Found something interesting. Leland started a big plumbing job in Greene County for Carter’s Construction Company on May twenty-eight, 1965. He worked on it through the end of September. Receipts from a motel in Stanardsville show he stayed up there every weeknight that summer. That job caught my attention because he started it close to the date he bought the murder weapon. Jenkins Gun Shop’s record of the sale of the Baby Browning to Leland is dated June third, 1965. I’d been puzzled about his purchase of that little gun before I looked at his business records. He owned a Winchester rifle, a double-barrel twelve-gauge shotgun, and a .357 Smith and Wesson handgun. Seems clear he favored powerful weapons, but Jenkins’s sales clerk told Chase he asked for the smallest revolver they had in stock.”

  It only took Cole a moment to pick up Mabel’s line of reasoning. “You think he bought it for Betty Lou?”

  “The timing fits. He bought it five days after he started a job that required him to be away from home weeknights. They lived way out there by the park with no one nearby who could help Betty Lou if someone took after her. I figure Leland gave her the Baby Browning for protection because she wasn’t comfortable handling his guns.”

  Cole stared out the window. A shaft of sunlight pierced the clouds. A dozen crows flew in a line across the face of Beacon Hill, their wings glistening like black jewels as they passed through the wedge of gold.

  Cole thought about the little revolver and Betty Lou. Bessie’s theory that an illicit lover murdered Betty Lou might make more sense than he’d originally believed. “Bessie says Betty Lou’s been cheating on Leland for years. She thinks we should look for one of the men she took up with.”

  Mabel’s black caterpillar eyebrows came together. “I see what you’re thinking. The Baby Browning was small enough to fit in her purse. If she was promiscuous, she would have been smart to carry it with her in case one of her boyfriends turned bad on her. And if one of them turned real bad, he could have taken her gun away from her and killed her with it.”

  Cole adjusted his lumbar pillow and leaned back into it. “Leland told me he heard she was seeing a man in Jeetersburg. We need to know who that man is.”

  “Chase has been trying to identify him. He talked to Lee Beaumont yesterday. He’s the contractor Leland worked for the week before Betty Lou’s murder. He said he saw Betty Lou carousing with a man he didn’t know in Kelly’s Place on a Saturday night in January. Chase talked to Kelly McNiel. She said she’d talk to the staff and check her records. She called this morning and asked to meet with Chase to tell him what she found out. Chase’ll be on Bobcat the rest of the day, so I told her you’d come by her office at two this afternoon.” Mabel placed a manila folder on Cole’s desk. “Chase’s notes about his talk with Lee Beaumont.”

  Cole rolled the boyfriend theory around in his mind. It didn’t feel right to him. “We may be sliding off track. The evidence against Leland is powerful: Betty Lou’s blood on his shirt, his prints on the Baby Browning, the fact that he had it in his pocket when I found him on the porch. Reba’s story that he was with her at the time of the murder could be a lie.”

  Mabel swept threads of hair that had broken loose from her bun away from her face. “Could be, but there’s evidence that points away from Leland, too. The tire track near the gate, the headlights Bessie saw after she heard a gunshot, and the big dark car she saw driving away. If Leland killed Betty Lou, who drove that car and what was he doing at the gate at the time of the kill shot?”

  Cole tried to adjust his thinking. “Maybe a boyfriend followed her home that night. Called her out to the gate. They argued. She pulled the gun. They struggled for control. He shot her, accidently or in a fit of anger.” Cole pondered the razor-thin foundation supporting such speculation. “I don’t like it. A string of maybes with no proof backing it up.”

  “No proof yet. Like you said, we need to find the man she was seeing.” Mabel looked at her watch. “It’s almost one. I’ll leave you alone so you can prepare for your meeting with Kelly.” She went to the door, stopped, and looked back at him. “Any idea who attacked you?”

  “All we know so far is he fired a scoped thirty-aught-six rifle.”

  Mabel looked concerned. “We know more than that. No one knew you were headed to Bessie Tilden’s place yesterday except the dispatcher, so we know your attacker had to be watching you. He followed you to Bessie’s house, climbed a steep mountain carrying a heavy firearm, and lay in wait. He invested substantial time and energy in trying to kill you. He’ll likely try again.”

  “I hope he does. I’ll be ready for him.”

  She pursed her lips. “Be careful, Cole.” She lingered in the doorway and then walked away.

  Cole stared after her. He looked up at a large, framed photograph of his predecessor, Sheriff Robey Musgrove. His jowly face sagged and dark bags drooped under his bone-tired eyes. He’d been a hard charger all his life, but when his wife died of a heart attack, he faltered. About six months before his term expired, Robey announced that he would not stand for r
eelection in the fall. He endorsed Cole as his successor, and because of that, no one ran against him. Robey died in his sleep of a brain aneurysm the following year. He was sixty-three.

  Cole was thirty-two when Robey stepped down, young and energetic, his potential as yet unrealized, his life filled with promise. Robey’s rapid decline had puzzled him back then. Now he understood it. Carrie had been dead three years, and the pain of her loss had not diminished.

  Now, in his eighth term as sheriff, Cole was sixty-two, and Chase was almost ready to take the baton. A more experienced deputy like Karson Deford could handle the job, too, but Mabel might be the best of the three. She was doing half Cole’s job now. If he could convince her to take a job in the field, she’d be more than ready in a year or two.

  He looked at the doorway. The familiar dull ache pulsed in his lower back. He pulled out his shirttail and rubbed the sore spot. Mabel cared more about his safety than he did, he thought.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Actor

  March 3, 1967, Friday afternoon

  After Cole reviewed the notes Mabel gave him about Chase’s search for the man Betty Lou was seeing before her murder, he drove into Jeetersburg to Kelly’s Place, the most popular restaurant/bar in southwestern Virginia. He had known the owner, Kelly McNiel, all his life. Carrie and Cole and Kelly and her husband, Charley Hix, were good friends until Charley walked out on Kelly and their daughter without warning twenty-five years ago.

  When Charley disappeared, Cole couldn’t square the abandonment with the man he knew. He’d thought he could talk some sense into him, but no one knew where he’d gone. Cole put out a statewide alert with instructions not to approach and to report his whereabouts to the Selk County sheriff’s office. Three days later, a state trooper spotted Charley’s car at a motel in Danville a hundred miles southeast of Selk County.

  It was almost midnight when Cole got there. Charley’s green Oldsmobile had paled to the color of pea soup under a yellow floodlight perched on a telephone pole at the end of a rundown motel’s long row of rooms. Cole walked across the lot, the gravel crunching under his boots. He stopped in front of the last metal door, whose number 30 hung upside down from a loose rivet. Its dull pink paint was pocked at the base like someone had tried to kick it in with steel-toed boots.

  He rapped on the door. A light came on inside. The door opened an inch, and Charley peered at Cole through the slit.

  “You and me need to talk,” Cole said.

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “I’m not leaving here until we talk.”

  Charley stared at him for a few moments and then shut the door. Cole heard him moving around inside the room. A minute later the chain lock rattled and the door opened. Charley stood in the doorway in an undershirt and wrinkled black slacks, barefooted, his curly black hair pressed down on one side and sticking up on the other, his face flushed. “What do you want?”

  “You owe a good friend an explanation for what you’ve done to your family.”

  “What I do with my life is none of your business,” Charley said angrily.

  Cole dug in. “I’m not going away until we talk.”

  Charley looked back inside the room and then at Cole.

  “Give me five minutes,” Cole said. “If I can’t talk some sense into you by then, I’ll leave you alone.”

  Charley gave Cole an aggravated look. “Five minutes,” he said. He crossed the room, sat on the edge of the bed, and lit a cigarette. “Not a second longer.”

  Cole stepped inside. The room smelled like a wet dog. A bedside table lamp cast it in dim light. Twisted and tangled sheets lay on the bed. The bedspread and blanket had been thrown on the floor. Brown spots stained the paper-thin carpet. The paint above the bathroom door was peeling.

  Cole sat in a chair to the right of the front door.

  A rip in the lampshade painted Charley’s face with a vertical yellow stripe. “Say your piece and get out,” he said.

  “Jerry Beesecker told me he offered to buy your business last winter. You turned him down and said you’d never sell out. Monday morning you showed up in his office unannounced and said you’d take his best offer if he cut you a cashier’s check that day. He asked why you changed your mind. You gave him no answer.”

  Cole paused, hoping Charley would engage, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Kelly told Carrie she woke up Tuesday morning to find your note on the kitchen table. All it said was you didn’t love her anymore. She said you took all the proceeds from the sale of your business and left her with nothing.”

  “I inherited my business from my father,” Charley said. “Kelly had no ownership interest in it. Besides, I gave her the house. I left the deed on the kitchen table with my note. I guess she forgot to tell Carrie about that.” Charley inhaled and blew out a stream of smoke. “How is this any of your concern? It’s not a crime to quit your business and leave your family.”

  “It’s not against the law. That doesn’t make it right.”

  Charley scowled. “Right? I don’t know what’s right. More to the point, I don’t care what’s right.”

  Cole searched Charley’s face for some remnant of the man he knew, but the man sitting before him was a stranger.

  “I’ve known you all my life,” Cole said. “The man I know couldn’t break Kelly’s heart and leave his little girl without a daddy. What’s going on, Charley? What happened to make you run off like this?”

  A thump came from inside the bathroom, followed by a murmur. A line of light came through the crack at the base of the bathroom door. Charley glanced at Cole and then looked away.

  “I see we’re not alone,” Cole said.

  Charley put his cigarette out in a tray on the bedside table and leaned forward, his forearms on his knees, his hands clasped together. “It’s why I left,” he said in a gravelly voice.

  “You’re throwing your life away,” Cole said. “Is she worth it?”

  “I’m not throwing my life away. I’m taking control of it.”

  They were quiet for a long while, Cole staring at Charley, Charley looking down at his clasped hands.

  Charley came out of his thoughts and stood up. “Your five minutes is up, Cole. Don’t come looking for me again. I’m through with Kelly and Rachel and you and everybody else I knew. I don’t want to see or hear from any of you again.”

  Cole had his explanation, and Charley’s tone left no room for argument. There was nothing more Cole could do. He went to the door, then looked back at Charley. “You’re not the man I thought you were,” he said. He gave Charley a long last look and left the room.

  * * *

  At the time Charley left Kelly, Cole didn’t think she could survive his betrayal, but she’d done much more than that. She filed for divorce, reclaimed her maiden name, and gave it to Rachel. She made barely enough to support them by waiting tables at Bodine’s Bar, but when the owner drove the business into the ground, Kelly somehow convinced First Virginia Bank to loan her the funds to buy it out of bankruptcy. She renamed it Kelly’s Place, built it up into a thriving business, and parlayed the profits into a network of valuable holdings that included controlling interests in a construction company, a real estate firm, a mortgage company, a furniture store, and a portfolio of distressed properties she remodeled and sold. Now sixty years old, Kelly was by far the most successful businesswoman in southwestern Virginia, and arguably the most successful businessperson, period.

  Kelly’s Place was a long, low white-brick structure sandwiched between a storage facility and a garden-office complex. Cole drove down the paved alley behind the buildings and parked in an asphalt lot behind the restaurant.

  Pausing at the back door, he tried to recall when he’d seen Kelly last. She undoubtedly came to Carrie’s funeral, but he was in shock that day and didn’t remember much about it. He searched his memory. Her daughter’s graduation ceremony at Jefferson State University Law School, he thought. Eight years ago he and Carrie sat wi
th Kelly in an outdoor amphitheater and watched Rachel cross a stage in a cap and gown. He didn’t remember much about Rachel or Kelly that day. He remembered only Carrie. He could still see the sunlight kissing her red hair and her dimpled smile as the law school dean boomed out, “Rachel Devon McNiel, summa cum laude.”

  Cole swallowed hard and went inside.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kelly’s Place

  March 3, 1967, Friday afternoon

  Kelly McNiel was at her desk looking at the file she had prepared for Cole. His knock came at two o’clock sharp. She called out, “Come in.”

  Her office was in the rear corner of the building. A maple secretary and matching chairs sat on a cardinal and green oriental rug. French doors opened onto a small courtyard with a copper birdbath and a yellow wooden bench shaded by a walnut tree, all enclosed by a grape-stake fence that butted up against the brick wall of the building next door.

  Cole stepped into the room, took off his hat, and came around the desk. She stood and they hugged. She stepped back and smiled at him. “It’s been too long.”

  “For sure.” He looked her up and down. “You look the same.”

  “I am the same. Out of sorts and ornery.” She laughed.

  “I don’t know about that,” he said with a shy smile.

  She pointed to the chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat.”

  He sat down.

  She did, too, and looked him over. He was a good-looking man, big shoulders, deep chest, strong arms, one of those rare men whose baldness improved his looks. His broad forehead drew attention to his warm brown eyes, square jaw, and strong chin, but he didn’t look well. He’d gained weight. His face was pale and drawn; his eyes sunken and dark.