by CJ Birch
The ring from his cell phone made him jump, sloshing water onto his pants and white undershirt.
“Want me to answer that?”
“No, Ma. I got it.”
The ringing stopped.
“Hello?” she asked in a cautious voice. “This is Stanley’s phone.”
Stan clambered from under the sink, knocking the bowl of water to the kitchen floor. He grabbed the phone.
“This is Deputy Carrick.” He dabbed at the water on his pants with a dish cloth. A quick smile grew across his face, his hollowed cheeks becoming more pronounced. “Great. I’ll be there in under thirty.” He paused. “Okay, I’ll stop by the station on my way over.”
His mother watched from the corner. Her milky blue eyes matched her oversized dressing gown and slippers. Disease had eaten away at a once beautiful face and left behind the bones and gristle of a satisfying meal.
Stan took her hand and placed the ring in the palm. “Remember to take it off before doing dishes. I make a lousy plumber.”
She nodded, returning the ring to its place of prominence on her left ring finger, eyes downcast.
“I’ll try to be home later to feed Missy. Do you need anything from the store?” he asked as he scrambled into his uniform shirt.
“We need milk.” She stooped to pick up the fallen bowl.
“Okay.” He kissed her on the cheek and ran to the front door, not even bothering to button his shirt.
A large golden retriever lay blocking his way. Her head rested on her paws, and an oversized diaper was secured around her backside. Stan grabbed hold of her front legs and pulled her out of the way. Her back legs were prone. A surgery on her hips when she was still a pup had taken its toll. Her bones had become arthritic as she aged, making it impossible for her now to do much more than lie about. As a result, she gained weight. Stan knew she wouldn’t be around much longer. He didn’t want to be the one to make the decision to put her down.
“C’mon, Missy.” She let him pull her into the living room without even a whimper. “God, you’re getting heavy.” He dashed out the front door.
* * *
Elle sifted through the objects in her trunk. It overflowed with assorted tools and equipment, some pertaining to her job as sheriff, others not. There was a box labeled Goodwill from three Christmases ago. A pair of garden shears. A squashed box of blue latex gloves. There was a windbreaker with the word Sheriff printed on the back, and several other things that had nothing to do with processing a crime scene.
Her hands shook as she shifted everything to one side, then back again. Her throat hurt, constricted by the effort of maintaining her composure. She placed her palms on the lip of the trunk. Her fingers felt numb. Her head was bobbing on her shoulders, light and surreal, making the forest surrounding her appear far off and close up at the same time.
Elle wasn’t sure if she was going to faint. She rested her forehead against the cold metal of the trunk lid. It felt better. It would get better. This bubble inside her chest would pop and she’d be able to breathe without having to hold herself together. After.
She turned at the sound of a vehicle ricocheting down the drive. It was several moments before a rusted Chevy Malibu pulled through the brush, a silver-haired man behind the wheel. By then, she’d managed to locate a long black toolbox.
He nodded at Elle as he stepped out of the silver sedan, carrying a nylon bag, and tromped toward her with the gait of an old man.
His eyes scanned the scene, missing nothing.
“Is that a suspect?” Jack Case pointed to Robin still chained to the rail.
“No. She has trouble following instructions.” Elle tried to smile, but it crumpled on her lips, becoming a tremble.
“You don’t look so good.” He rubbed her shoulder, peering into her ashen face. “It can’t be that bad. Remember that kid on the train tracks? Jesus that was some mess, took days just to find all the parts.”
Elle nodded remembering the day they’d been called out to the train bridge that spanned the Potawatomi. He said kid because he couldn’t say Crystal Cipriani. A few years ago Crystal and her boyfriend had decided to use a shortcut over the train bridge. Halfway across, they heard a train coming up from behind. Her boyfriend made it across, Crystal hadn’t. She tripped a third of the way. Three days later they were still finding pieces of her in the shallow waters under the bridge. After fifty years on the job, forgetting Crystal’s name was one of many coping mechanisms Jack had come up with. For Elle, the name Crystal Cipriani screamed neon in her mind.
They say every new memory created pushes an old one out, but some things are unforgettable. The four months spent as Case’s assistant gripped onto Elle’s memory with claws. The day she applied to the sheriff’s department at twenty-three, she’d already experienced more death than most did in a lifetime.
There wasn’t a lot of work for a coroner in Flynn County, mostly identifying the remains of careless drunks and old people. Occasionally, there was an accident.
Elle lowered her voice. “It’s Jessie. The victim. It’s Jessie Forrester.”
“Oh, Jesus, Elle, I’m sorry.” His hand moved to her back, strong, comforting. He studied her with his dark brown eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“This is going to be tough enough as it is. I don’t need your pity.”
“This look?” He pointed to his face. “It’s concern, not pity.” He let his hand drop. “Are you going to be able to manage this?”
“Of course. I haven’t seen Jessie in years. It’s just the shock of seeing him like that.” Elle felt the absence of Case’s hand, like a cold hole had opened up on her back creating an escape hatch for her anxiety. But it refused to budge. She set her toolbox on the leafy ground and began searching through it, taking inventory. It appeared brand new, fully stocked. Each item fit perfectly into a slot, nestled tightly to the next. No gaps, nothing missing. Elle snapped it shut, prepared.
“I’ve already questioned Tanya. She doesn’t know anything. She was supposed to meet someone here, but she won’t say who.”
“Strange.”
Elle shrugged. “Probably a boy she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s seeing.”
“And the blonde?” Case picked his way through the fallen branches toward the front porch of the house.
Robin leaned against the railing, defiant, relaxed, observing them.
Elle let out a long, breathy sigh. “She’s a reporter for some magazine up in Chicago.”
“You brought a reporter to a crime scene?”
Elle’s stomach lurched. “I didn’t know it was a crime scene. Brady set it up. He’s been on my ass about it all morning. I thought if I played along, showed her how boring this place actually is, she’d go home and forget about the story.”
“That plan backfired.”
Elle snorted. “And then some.”
* * *
EJ stood guard, his arms crossed, eyes swinging back and forth across the high school parking lot, sucking on a Marlboro Light. The air was thick with gnats, large balls of them hovered like dark moons. EJ swatted them with little effect.
J.P. Flynn High School cozied into the woods behind him, the tall pines acting as sentinels. It wasn’t a large building, unchanged since the late seventies when it had replaced its predecessor, but it was large enough to fit all the high school students in Turlough and surrounding areas.
“Hurry up. Lunch bell’s about to ring.” EJ flicked his cigarette into a pool of green radiator fluid.
“One sec.” Dan’s voice was muffled, his head and upper body jammed into the trunk of a beat-up ’82 Mustang GT.
Just then, the bell sounded. Within seconds, students streamed out of the building. The quiet of the early afternoon shattered like the glass guarding a fire alarm.
“Hurry up.”
“It’s got to be here.”
EJ leaned over, peering into the junk filled trunk. “Maybe Randy didn�
��t take your pump.” His eyes darted back to the school entrance. “Shit. Here he comes.”
Dan stood up, shutting the lid with his elbow, one fluid motion. A hulking senior rambled toward them. Randy Pritchard. The team’s linebacker. Beefier than beefcake. He stomped down the entrance path, a Chicago Bears jersey stretching where his muscles bulged, his jeans straining against his thighs.
“You think he saw us?” asked Dan.
Randy’s and EJ’s eyes locked.
“Oh, yeah, he saw us.” EJ grabbed at Dan’s shirt sleeve, pulling him away from Randy’s trunk. But Dan stood firm, itching for a fight.
Dan yanked his arm back. “I can handle little ole Pritchy.”
“Get the fuck away from my car.” Randy’s voice sounded like someone had slowed down a tape recorder. His words rumbled in his drum of a chest before driving toward his throat and out the gaping hole that was his mouth.
“Oh hi, guys.” Dan beamed at the football team forming a barricade around him and EJ.
Randy popped his trunk and dug through several weeks’ worth of soiled workout gear, searching for anything missing. He slammed it shut when nothing appeared to have been taken. “What were you looking for?”
“Your sister. I heard you kept her in there for quickies between classes,” said Dan. The playful tone of his voice matched his eyes. “That is why you rushed out here, wasn’t it?”
A smattering of laughs.
“Heard you two had a little cuddle on the cot in the drunk tank last night.” Randy turned to check for an audience. A large crowd had formed around the threesome. Half the school was closing in for front-row seats to what promised to be an interesting diversion. “Fair game, boys. Even baby Ashley’s sister knows he’s a flamer.” At the word flamer, he let his right hand go limp.
“Screw you, Randy,” EJ said. He was coming around to the idea that they wouldn’t be getting out of here without a little blood splatter. The more from Randy, the better.
“Oh, I bet you’d like to, wouldn’t you?” Randy said.
In a flash, the pack surged forward, anticipation palpable. Dan stepped back, fist balled, preparing to strike when a voice shouted above the din.
“What is going on here?” The crowd scattered, washed away like dirt off the concrete. Principal Withers thrust himself into the center of the group. He found three faces and one thought: oh, shit.
* * *
Flies buzzed above Jessie’s corpse. The spare sunlight creeping through the wood slats caught their wings like diamonds falling through the air.
The flash from a camera sent them scattering. Elle cupped the lens and refocused on a burn mark near his left shoulder.
“Are you planning on fingerprinting the place?” Case crouched next to the body, a clipboard balanced on his knee.
To the side, vials and evidence bags lined the wall, ready to be taken to the state lab. Elle and Case had been at it for hours, systematically scraping and peeling. Any thought of lunch had been swept away by the fetor and imminent decay of the body between them.
Elle dropped the camera to her side. “I had planned on getting Stan to do it.” She waved toward the front door with her free hand.
“Want me to go check on the kid?” Case nodded toward the front porch where Stan sat, hat in hands, trying not to retch all over his polished shoes. On arrival, Stan hadn’t managed to make it all the way outside before ridding himself of breakfast. His mound of puke in the foyer now mingled with the odor of putrefaction.
“He’ll be okay. When I’m finished here, I’ll start fingerprinting. I honestly don’t think it’s going to be much help. Half of J.P. Flynn’s been through here.” She wiped the sweat pooling at her hairline with the back of her arm. Elle’s sleeves were rolled to her elbow. Several strands of hair had escaped her bun, the humidity teasing them into a frenzy. Piled next to the evidence collection were several sets of spent blue latex gloves. Elle ripped her current pair off and added it to the heap. “I didn’t exactly create the most professional impression myself.”
Case’s lips formed a straight line, barely opening as he spoke. “Stan didn’t know the man, Elle. Give yourself a little credit.”
She had seen worse. There would always be worse. She hadn’t thought about it in years. For some reason today, the image of her parents lying in the morgue crawled out of the place she’d thought she’d buried it.
Over the years, dealing with the dead had gotten easier. But the corpses she worked on with Case didn’t come with memories. When she looked at them, she didn’t see their smiles or scowls. Their arms raised in victory when she came in first during varsity track meets, the disappointment in their eyes when she skipped school, the anger when she missed curfew. They were just bodies.
Elle kept Jessie’s body divided in her mind. A muddied shoe. Blood on the fisted fingers. Matted hair. It made it easier to think of him as parts to a larger puzzle, the pieces of which were now scattered in a bloody mess throughout an abandoned house in the middle of the woods.
“High school was a long time ago. I’d rather we keep the personal aspects out of it.”
Case harrumphed. “That’s about as likely as Brady showing up to work in flip-flops and a leisure suit.”
Case was right. There was no way she could keep the town gossips from rehashing her and Jessie’s past. Her mind skipped to some of the less brilliant aspects of her youth. She cringed. More so because there were worse things that could happen. She needed to stop thinking about herself and focus.
“So are we going to talk about this or not?” Case stood, his knees cracking.
“About what?”
“About who the hell would want to kill Jessie? What in the Christ was he even doing in town?”
Elle rested the camera on her shoulder. She waited three seconds before making a choice. A choice she would later regret. “I don’t know. But that’s where I’m going to focus the start of my investigation. As soon as I’m done consulting with the SPI.”
“You know what they’re going to say.”
She nodded. “Yeah, but maybe this’ll be my lucky day and they tell me they magically found some extra resources and can send someone our way.” Case gave her a look. “A girl can dream.”
“Yeah, well”—he pointed to the dead body between them—“dreaming isn’t going to make this go any faster.”
Elle capped the camera lens and placed it back in the bag Stan had brought from the station.
“As far as places to kill someone goes, this is a pretty good choice,” Case said.
“Tell me about it.” It was so isolated a door-to-door was out. On top of that, the place was so full of trash it was impossible to know what was important and what had been there since she’d gone to high school. Elle scribbled a few ideas of where to start the investigation below her reminder. Top of the list was a visit to Jessie’s parents. This she dreaded. All things considered, she’d rather have a root canal and a pap smear done at the same time. Without the nitrous oxide.
“What am I going to say to them?”
Jack didn’t need to ask who them was. “You tell them what you’d tell anyone in this situation. Don’t let yourself get pulled in. Don’t make it personal.” He reached over and squeezed her arm.
“I’ve never had to tell anyone their son was murdered. This isn’t like an accident. There’s going to be an investigation.” Elle folded her notepad and placed it in her pocket. “Shit.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“What?”
“Why couldn’t he be murdered in Chicago and be their problem?”
“That’s not what I was thinking.” Elle tramped out of the house.
Chapter Five
“Did you know the victim? What was his name? Jessie Forrester?” Robin asked. Three and a half hours of standing in the sun hadn’t deflated her appearance. She still looked like she had when she’d walked into Elle’s office earlier that morning: crisp and professional.
Elle shrugged.
“Turlough’s a small place.” Shadows from the hanging canopy danced up the hood of the cruiser and over the windshield as she meandered, slow and deliberate, through the back roads.
“Is that a yes?” While Robin’s appearance might have looked neat on the outside, her insides were anything but. She’d spent her morning fantasizing about chaining Elle to a tree. In the middle of the desert. In another, she’d dragged her out to a set of tracks surrounded by scrub grass and tumbleweeds and tied her to the rail. Only once had she let it get out of hand. She wasn’t sure why she was forming her revenge in western motif, but it was working for her.
Every time she’d managed to get Elle’s attention she’d wave her off as if she were dismissing an annoying fly buzzing around her head. Robin hated to admit how much that had gotten under her skin. She wasn’t used to being ignored.
“We went to the same high school. He was a year ahead.”
Robin shifted in her seat to face Elle straight on. “Are you being vague on purpose?” The seat belt strained against her breasts. “I’ve spent the better part of my day chained like a punished dog. I’m exhausted, pissed off, and sweaty.” She brushed her bangs off her face, but it did nothing to make her look more disheveled. “I don’t appreciate vague.”
“Can you stop talking for one minute, please?” Most of Elle’s hair had escaped its bun in the last few hours, choosing instead to blow free in the wind like flames licking at her face. “I need to think what to say to Jessie’s parents.” Her hands tightened on the wheel as she said his name.
Robin turned back around, arms folded, lip jutting out. She felt like a pouting child, but she couldn’t help it. Elle was turning out to be nothing like she’d expected. When she arrived, she expected to be in and out. Complete the assignment and leave almost as soon as she’d arrived.
Robin hadn’t spent much of her life outside of the city and she preferred it that way. She could navigate in the city. She knew what people expected of her and she of them. Things were simpler. Here, nothing made sense. She’d expected the local law to be a pushover, to give her what she wanted so she could get the hell out of there. She’d also expected the local law to be the equivalent of Kathy Bates in Fried Green Tomatoes. But Sheriff Ashley was proving a different beast.