Dead Reckoning

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  Evan wished with all his might for the law against smoking in public buildings to be spontaneously repealed. When it didn’t happen, he just cleared his throat. “Okay. Understood. A problem for another day. Just do me a favor, okay? Try to slow your speech to the speed of sound, so I don’t miss anything important.”

  “Yeah, sure, no prob,” the kid said, slightly slower than the average auctioneer.

  Evan shook his head slightly, but he couldn’t help liking the kid. “You might want to think about cutting back on the Monsters or the Red Bulls or whatever you’re living on.”

  “Oh, no, no. I don’t touch the stuff,” Danny said with a big grin. “I’m a juicer, right?”

  Evan squinted at the boy. “Heroin?” he asked.

  “Aw, no, no! That’s funny,” Danny said, then looked serious. “Cucumbers, kale and so forth, you know?”

  “Ah, juicing,” Evan said.

  “Right? You yank the fiber out of those fruits and veggies and it’s like shooting those natural sugars and antioxidants right into your bloodstream, you know? I’ve got more energy than most squirrels.”

  Evan thought the kid was also built like one, but he refrained from suggesting he might want to throw a pork chop into his juicer, from time to time.

  “Okay, so what have we got?” Evan said, pulling his notebook and pen from his breast pocket.

  “What you’ve got is a grey-black discoloration from the soot at the entry wound, a faint abrasion ring, muzzle imprint, circumferential skull fractures radiating outward from the wound. The bullet passed through the cranial cavity, cleared out his sinuses, and exited just under the left nostril, causing significant tissue damage to the septum and upper lip. What you haven’t got is any GSR or bruising on either hand. The entry wound is dead-center on the midline, at the top back of the head. So, he didn’t do this himself. You’ve got all the tell-tale signs of a single contact shot to the back of the head. Cause of death: massive brain damage due to gun shot, manner of death: homicide.”

  “We didn’t find the gun, so I was already thinking someone else might have been there,” Evan said. “Anything about the weapon used?”

  “The entry and exit wounds are consistent with the .45 bullet that was recovered at the scene. The doc found a copper fragment inside the sinus cavity from the bullet’s jacket. If there is any doubt, your ballistics guy can match the fragment to the rest of the bullet, so that’s kind of a slam dunk.”

  “No other injuries? Defensive wounds? Indications that he was bound or that he struggled?”

  “Doc didn’t find anything.” Danny said, leafing through the autopsy report. He pulled out the third page, adjusted his glasses and said, “Well, there’s a bandage on his neck, where he had a mole removed, but that’s been there a few days.”

  “Yes, it has,” Evan said. “Did Grundy run toxicology? Any drugs or alcohol in his system?”

  “Plenty of alcohol in Grundy’s system,” Danny said, with a furtive glance at Evan, trying to determine whether he caught the joke, and whether he appreciated it.

  Evan gave no indication of either.

  “But the sheriff was clean,” Danny added quickly. “Elevated adrenaline levels, but that is to be expected. I went ahead and packaged up a sample to send to the state crime lab. They might pick up something the doc missed, but none of the regular suspects showed up on our tests.”

  “Time of death?” Evan asked.

  “Between 1:00a.m. and three.”

  Evan surveyed the small autopsy suite. Everything necessary for a proper post-mortem was present, except a competent M.E. To Danny he said, “If Dr. Grundy does happen to make an appearance today, tell him… You know what, never mind. Just email a copy of that report to the SO.” He closed his notebook and slipped the pen into its holder.

  “Actually,” Danny said quickly, “I can’t email it. Doc hasn’t set up that clearance on my computer. And…well, I had a couple other things I wanted to point out.”

  “Other things?” Evan asked.

  “Yeah, so, there were a couple of other...things. Stuff I found kind of interesting that didn’t seem to pop much for Dr. Grundy, you know?”

  Evan stopped midway to putting his notebook back in his pocket. “What kind of things?”

  “Okay, so, the first one may not be super exciting or anything, I just found it curious,” the kid said. “But the Sheriff’s pants, the knees.”

  “What about them?”

  “You want me to get them for you, or just tell you?”

  “Just tell me,” Evan said. The kid was sharper than Evan had originally given him credit for; he figured he might explain it well enough.

  “Right, so it wasn’t particularly damp or dewy at two-thirty - which is the doc’s best guess for time of death, btw. Anyway, around four-thirty, five o’clock it was dewy, sure, but not so much when the Sheriff was killed.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, the knees of his pants were pretty dirty. A little more in the way of grass stains and dirt than I would expect to see, given the lay of the land there where we found him.”

  “Okay,” Evan said again, only to let the kid take a breath.

  “So, to my way of thinking, right, in order for him to have so much staining on the knees of his khakis, he either had to be kneeling somewhere else for a while, someplace wetter and grassier, but that doesn’t make much sense, right, because if you got a guy on his knees, you go ahead and shoot him, correct? You don’t say okay, that’s enough kneeling over here, now I need you to kneel over there.”

  “Sounds sensible,” Evan said. Evan was starting to think he was really going to like this kid within one or two more conversations.

  “I know, right? So, the only thing that makes sense to me is that he was kneeling longer than the time it took for him to get down there and somebody to pull the trigger. Like quite a while, which sort of plays right into this other thing I was looking at.”

  “Which is what?”

  The kid took a deep breath, which pretty much caved in his chest, before he continued. “Okay, so blood splatter, right? Not exactly my specialty or anything, clearly, but I am a big fan.”

  Evan didn’t bother hiding a small smile. “So there’s interesting blood splatter?”

  “So true! Because his hands,” the kid said. He lifted both of the Sheriff’s hands. “Come around here, so you can see his hands from the other side.”

  Evan walked over to stand behind the kid. Danny was holding Hutchins’ hands out horizontally, thumbs side up. There were several small brown stains, more like dots, on the outside edges of the thumbs, and a few on the first two fingers of each hand, on the inside edges.

  “Blood?” Evan asked unnecessarily.

  “Right, but in a place that doesn’t immediately make sense, okay?” The kid pulled the hands away from each other until they were about eight inches apart. “We might see this if he was holding his hands like this, right, but I can’t think of any reason for somebody to do that, unless they’re telling somebody about a fish they caught or getting ready to do The Robot, right?”

  Evan smiled. “Agreed.”

  “But, if his hands were like this,” Danny said, placing them palm to palm, “Then it starts to look right to me. Given the trajectory of the blood and other matter from the exit wound. Because it’s going to start out, just for a second, in a narrow pattern and then whoosh, immediately go wide, right?”

  “Right. So, what are you saying? You think he was bound? Is there any evidence he was handcuffed or tied?”

  “No, none,” the kid said. He put the Sheriff’s hands back down at his sides, then propped a hand of his own on one hip. He shoved his hipster glasses back up with the thumb of his other hand before he spoke. “No, I think maybe he was praying. Which, you know, makes me sad.”

  Evan stared at the kid a moment, then looked down at his former boss. The thought made him a little sad, too.

  NINE

  THE FIRST THING EVAN noticed as he pulled in
to the SO parking lot was the impromptu memorial wall that had sprung up just to the left of the Sheriff’s Office main entrance doors. Flowers, pinwheels, teddy bears, and all manner of other stuff festooned the little nook where on other days there were usually just a couple of UPS packages or a few cigarette butts.

  As Evan approached, he saw several miniature Florida Gator’s helmets among the bouquets and hand drawn cards. Someone had written “Hutch” across the back of a Port St. Joe High School football jersey and pinned it to the wall. Evan stood and scrutinized every memento and card, looking for something that might not belong, but there was nothing that jumped out at him.

  Upon entering the office, he noticed another unusual thing: every deputy on the force had shown up for work today, regardless of their official schedule or the fact that it was a Saturday. There also seemed to be about a dozen reserve deputies and Citizen Patrol volunteers in evidence. There were several deputies in the conference room midway down the hall, and everyone else pretty much crammed themselves into any available space in the hallway itself.

  As Evan made his way toward the conference room, he passed the stretch of wall on which several framed photos memorialized the SO officers who had died in the line of duty. He wondered, sadly, how long it would be before Hutch’s picture moved from the wall behind his desk to the wall of death.

  As Evan “Excuse-me’d” his way through the people milling in the hallway, the half-dozen conversations in progress began to shut down. The mood was subdued and solemn, but the conversations were anxious and animated. They were there to console each other and to hold the community together in the most practical of ways, by finding the sheriff’s killer.

  Evan stopped in the doorway to the conference room, and picked out Goff’s face among the fifteen or so that looked back at him. Evan wasn’t prepared to address the entire staff, so he just passed a few nods around the room, then tipped his chin at Goff.

  “Goff, can you come to the, uh, office, please?” Evan was uncomfortable calling it his office anyway, but he felt as though torches and spears would come out if he did so in the midst of this crowd.

  Goff nodded and scissored his way through the bodies in the room, then followed Evan down the hall. After a few paces, a low murmuring started up behind them. Evan led Goff to the office he had used since arriving in Port St. Joe. He nodded or said a word of greeting to several deputies, which they all returned, but their manner was different. It reminded him of how they had greeted him the first few days he had been employed there, as if they had never met him and needed to take his measure.

  He carried the autopsy report in a file folder which he tapped against his thigh as he walked. He and Goff didn’t speak until they were in Evan’s old office, which still contained all of his things. Goff seemed surprised to find himself there, rather than in the big office beyond Vi’s desk. Evan pulled a vinyl chair over to face his desk, and waved at Goff to sit in it, then he walked around his desk and sat down himself. He folded his hands over the autopsy report and huffed out a breath before asking, “Goff, did you know the sheriff to be a praying man?”

  Goff was clearly surprised by the question, and his Adam’s apple worked itself up and down a few times before he answered. “He’d make Sunday mornings, like everybody else, sometimes say the opening prayer at the football game, back when that was allowed. No idea if he did any praying in his free time.”

  “You wouldn’t expect him to be the type to drive out into the swamps at two in the morning to get closer to God, would you?”

  “What’d God be doing in the swamp?” Goff asked, dismissively.

  Evan nodded, granting Goff the point. Then he pushed the autopsy report across the desk. “Grundy’s findings. Have a look if you like, but there’s nothing there we didn’t already know,” Evan said, “Paula hasn’t come up with anything useful in the way of fingerprints or hair from inside the truck. Were you able to get anything good from the widow? From Marlene?”

  Trigg had reported that the remainder of the prints showed nothing irregular. She had compiled a list of the matches for Evan but he didn’t expect much to come of it, other than a lot of overtime.

  “Not much, no,” Goff said. “We went over those bank statements you gave me. All thirty-six months. Nothing much stuck out as unusual. Regular deposits in, regular withdraws out. Nothing unexplained. I asked her about other accounts, safety deposit boxes, all that. Got nothing.”

  “And you discussed his routine with her?”

  “Yep. She knew where he was just about every minute of any given day. If he wasn’t working, he was home with her, and if he wasn’t there, he was coaching football or fishing. And if he was doing any of those things, she usually knew where.”

  “Okay, and nothing stood out to her as unusual in the last few days?”

  Goff shook his head. “Naw. And I don’t think she was keeping anything back, either.”

  Goff pulled the autopsy file closer and opened it up, began reading the summary report on top.

  Evan nodded and watched the man read for a moment. “I’d like to get a rundown of his whereabouts this week. What was he working on? Where did he go? Who did he talk to? Do you think Marlene would be willing to sit with you again so you can put together a sketch of his last few days?”

  “She might be willing, but she won’t need to,” Goff said, pulling a spiral note pad from his breast pocket. “I got it from her on our first visit. Last five days, all whereabouts and activities accounted for. Right up until he left in the middle of the night and didn’t come back.”

  Evan accepted the note pad, eyebrows raised. “Nice work, Goff. I thought you said you didn’t get anything good from her.”

  “Well, we didn’t sit there watchin’ TV together,” Goff said mildly. “I got a lot of notes, but I don’t think there’s any one of ‘em that’s gonna lead us straight to the killer. If it’s in his movements the last week or so, I don’t think it’s gonna jump out and kiss us, you know what I mean?”

  Evan nodded, placed Goff’s notebook beside the open autopsy file, and considered the differing merits of the two reports. “Look, Goff. I’m going to need your help. This was an uphill case before Quillen shoved this promotion on me. There’s an awful lot of ground to cover. I need everyone working together and doing their part, even if it’s not the exciting stuff. And I don’t know if they’ll do that just because I asked.”

  Goff didn’t argue the point, but acknowledged it with a nod. “But every one of them wants this guy caught or dead. Preferably both. That’s why they’ll do it,” he said. “You make that the thrust of it an’ they’ll follow.”

  Evan nodded. He pulled a legal pad from a drawer and placed it on the desk, intending to list avenues of investigation, then match those efforts with the available deputies. As he put pen to paper, his phone rang.

  “Caldwell,” he answered.

  “This is Vi,” Vi intoned. “The files you are going to request are arranged on the sheriff’s desk. Would you like to review them there, or shall I bring them to you?”

  “The files?” Evan asked, raising his eyebrows at Goff.

  Vi sighed impatiently, evidently disappointed in Evan’s slowness, and the resulting need to explain things which should have been discernable to the average twelve-year-old. “The files of those recently released, frequent offenders, agitators, political opponents, current investigations, threats, grudges, and general malcontents.”

  Evan felt the corner of his lip lifting of its own accord. Perhaps Goff was right about the level of cooperation he could expect. To Vi, he said, “If you already have them set up in there, go ahead and leave them. I’ll be over there in a few minutes.”

  “Very well,” Vi said. “Is there anything else you need?”

  “If you could, please let everyone know that I will be addressing the office at…” Evan consulted his watch. It was 11:14. “…at 11:30. Explaining where we are with the investigation and handing out assignments.”

  “11
:30,” she said.

  “Yes. Also, other than going over the files you collected for me, I ‘m going to keep working from here for the time being. I’m not going to stall the investigation just to move my stuff into a bigger office.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Vi said and Evan thought he detected a note of approval in her voice. “Will that be all?” she asked.

  “Yes, Vi. Thank you.”

  Across the desk, Goff was leaning back in his chair, a sly grin lifting the corners of his mustache. “See, you’re learning. Get that old gal on your side and you’ll own the place in no time.”

  “I don’t actually want to own it,” Evan said. He slid the legal pad across the desk, then pulled another fresh one from his desk drawer. There were probably a dozen more in there just like it. He got anxious when they ran low. He pulled a Pilot Precise V-7 pen from his blazer pocket. There were a few dozen of them in his desk, too.

  “Can you go through your notes and list everyone Hutch talked to during his last two days?” he asked Goff. “I’m going to want someone to interview each of them.”

  “Got it.”

  On his own pad, Evan started writing down column headings. Dive Team, Financial Statements, Home Phone Records, Office Phone Records, Home Computer, Office Computer, Cell Records. He hesitated for a moment then added Widow to the list. He looked up at Goff who was poring over his note pad as if he’d never seen it before.

  “They just have the one child?” Evan asked.

  “Who?”

  “Hutch and Marlene?” Evan said.

  “Yeah, Amanda,” Goff answered while writing. “She’s grown and gone, married some guy in Panama City or Pensacola or one of them places.”

  “Did you ask her about any hard feelings in the family? Any enemies not connected to his work?”

  “Nope. And I didn’t ask her about affairs, neither. Figured I’d leave the really crappy questions for you, seeing as how you’re the new sheriff and all.”

  Evan looked at him over the top of his legal pad for a long moment, but Goff didn’t look up. Eventually, Evan said, “Well, I appreciate that.” When that got no response, he asked, “Was there talk or suspicion of an affair?”