Murder Comes by Mail

by A. H. Gabhart

  “Yeah. They’re on the way, but I guess we’re in your jurisdiction now. Leastways your state cop buddy says so.” He glanced around. “A place like this seems too far out for any jurisdiction.”

  “No way to know where she might have been killed, but little doubt the same guy is responsible. Makes it still your case.”

  Whitt settled his gaze on Michael and a corner of his lip went up in something that approached a smile. “Good that you’re seeing things straight.”

  Michael met his stare. He refused to let the man intimidate him. The sight of Julie Lynne was intimidating enough.

  With a bark of a laugh, Whitt turned back to the car. “No telling when the techs will get here or even if they will. They’re not used to the boonies. So we might as well get it over with. They can go over the car after we tow it out and sweep the area for a murder weapon if it isn’t conveniently in the car. ’Course if I’d been Jackson, I’d have pitched it in the lake.” Whitt frowned and looked around. “The million-dollar question is how he dumped the car and then got out of here. It’s got to be twenty miles or more back to the interstate.”

  Michael didn’t offer an answer. Let the man come up with his own theories.

  Opening the door was even worse than they’d imagined. First off, all the doors were locked. Michael smashed a hole in the back window with Buck’s tire jack handle in order to reach in to unlock the door next to Julie Lynne’s body. He was thankful the lock was easy to reach on the door ledge and that his stomach was empty.

  Justin’s face went a funny shade of gray and beads of sweat popped out on his forehead as he positioned the body bag on the ground. He pulled on rubber gloves and held out a second pair. “I’ll need help,” he said to none of them in particular.

  Michael took the gloves. It was the least he could do for Julie Lynne. Besides, nobody else stepped forward. Buck was on his knees by the lake, dousing his head in the water. Hank was on his feet hugging the tree they’d been sitting under. Chekowski had her notebook over her nose, her eyes wide and fixed.

  “Don’t forget to breathe, Chekowski,” Whitt ordered without a look back at her. “This isn’t one of the better ones, but it may not be the worst you ever see if you stay in homicide.”

  Whitt stepped nearer the car to watch as Justin and Michael carefully maneuvered the body out of the seat and onto the body bag.

  “Different weapon.” Whitt leaned over the body for a closer look. “Not as neat a wound. My guess is she was a victim before the reporter woman. Body might have been stashed in the trunk when the perp delivered those pictures to the girl yesterday. Then he must have brought the car out here to plant it in your backyard, Keane.”

  Whitt paused, maybe to see if Michael had anything to say. He didn’t.

  “Quite a trick—getting her positioned like that with decomposition and all. Not something I’d want to do.” Whitt straightened up but didn’t back away from the body. “Officer Garrett said she was an actress. Name Julie Lynne Hoskins, and that you knew her. That she was from around these parts.”

  Michael didn’t bother answering as he helped Justin pull the bag up until it entombed Julie Lynne. He stripped off the gloves and dropped them into the plastic bag Justin held out to him. Then he went over to the lake, knelt down, and plunged his hands into the water. When he dug his fingers down into the cool lake bottom, mud swirled up to cloud the clear water and nearly hide his hands.

  Whitt followed him over to the lake’s edge. “You can’t wash that kind of thing off.”

  Michael pulled his fingers out of the mud and swished them around before he lifted his hands out of the water and gave them a shake. He stood up and kept his eyes on the lake. “I hadn’t seen her since we were juniors in high school until the play last week in Eagleton.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Garrett told me. That you and your church ladies were headed to the city to see her strut her stuff when you so fortuitously kept our psycho from ending it all.”

  Michael turned to look directly at Whitt. “What else do you want to know?”

  “Everything.” Whitt’s eyes narrowed on Michael. “Only everything.”

  “Like what?” He tried to sound like he cared, but he didn’t. He just wanted to be away from this place. Away from Whitt.

  “Like how come this guy has decided to draw his bead on you? Like are you sure you never met him before? Like how has he managed to kill three women pow, pow, pow?” Whitt made a gun with his thumb and finger and pretended to shoot it off. “That fast. Three women he picked out because you knew them.”

  “I didn’t know Hope.”

  “Victim one,” Whitt corrected. “You say you didn’t know her, and yet her earring ends up in your washing machine. Not only has this killer offed three women in little more than a week, he’s stirred you right in the middle of the mix. He has to be a pro.”

  “A pro?” Michael frowned.

  “Right. Jackson’s my name. Killing’s my game.” Whitt raised his voice in a little singsong chant.

  “That doesn’t sound right. Pros don’t kill unless money is involved.”

  “You might think that, but could be this guy was having a slow year.” Whitt shrugged. “The whole thing defies any kind of logic, if you can ever apply logic to murder. Maybe the biggest question of all is, how come we’ve never seen anything about this guy before if he’s such a killing machine?”

  Whitt looked at Chekowski when she stepped up beside them, no longer looking like she might dump her breakfast any minute. “What do you think is the most important question to answer, Chekowski?”

  “How did he get out of here?” She looked around as if that seemed an impossibility to her. She let her gaze fall on Michael. “What do you think is the most important question to answer, Deputy Keane?”

  “Where is he now?”

  28

  When the afternoon shadows began lengthening, Whitt gave the nod to T.R. to drag the car out, even though the crime scene technicians hadn’t shown up.

  Whitt shoved his phone back in his pocket after trying to call them for the tenth time. “No telling where they are. Probably made a wrong turn and ended up in the next county. Maybe the next state.” He went on in a mutter that was almost a growl. “How anybody can live in a place without a phone signal.”

  Chekowski looked down at her own phone and then rubbed off the screen as if that might make the signal come in. “We did go over the whole area already, sir. Inch by inch.”

  “Without finding anything but bugs and blasted beggar lice.” Whitt picked a few of the sticktights off his pants leg. “And no wonder, after everybody and his brother tramped around in here before we came on the scene. Guess protecting a crime scene is not one of the deputy courses.”

  Michael let him talk. It didn’t matter what the man said. There hadn’t been anything to find except the car. He’d walked the lake edge. No sign of any kind of canoe or boat being slid out into the water, but the ground was hard or the killer could have slid the canoe off the top of the car directly into the water. If that’s how he got back out to civilization. Where phones worked. Where murders happened.

  Whitt and Chekowski rode in the cab with Buck back to their car parked at Michael’s house. Hank, who quit hugging his tree long enough to fish a new memory card out of his pocket and take pictures of T.R. attaching the tow lines to the car, climbed in T.R.’s truck to ride out with him. Michael and Justin climbed into the back of Buck’s truck with poor Julie Lynne. Before he closed the truck’s tailgate, Michael motioned for Jasper to jump up with them, but the dog whined and backed away.

  The dog loped along happily behind the truck and Michael wished he could jump out of the truck bed and walk along with him. Instead, he dodged low-hanging branches that whipped out at the truck and tried not to think about the body in the bag at his feet. He and Justin didn’t talk. Perhaps in respect for the dead or perhaps because there was nothing to say.

  Michael glanced back at the lake before the bushes swallow
ed them up. Blue water lightly kissed the bank where the car had sat. A heavy rain would completely rid the place of any sign of what had been there. For some reason, that made Michael feel better.

  At his house, Michael helped Justin load the body bag into the hearse. He was glad to see the coroner’s taillights disappear as he headed up the lane toward the highway. Buck followed him out, anxious to find a car wash.

  Whitt leaned against his car and looked around. “Pretty isolated out here, Deputy.”

  “It’s quiet. Peaceful. Normally.” Michael turned on the garden hose attached to his outside faucet to fill up Jasper’s water dish.

  The dog lapped at the water without much enthusiasm. He’d had no qualms about slaking his thirst with lake water. Michael leaned over and let the spout of water from the hose fill his mouth. Hank gave Whitt and Chekowski a sideways glance when Michael held the hose out toward them and reached for it first. He took a long drink, then let the water splash over his face.

  “What’s he doing still here?” Whitt glared at Hank as if seeing him for the first time instead of having already threatened him with arrest for obstruction of justice if he stepped one foot in Whitt’s way.

  Hank stared back at Whitt. “A good reporter can smell a story a mile away, and that one wasn’t hard to smell. In fact, I can still smell it.”

  Chekowski sniffed one of her arms. “Do odors like that cling to you? You know, like smoke.”

  “I don’t think that’s what you’re smelling.” Michael took the hose back from Hank and offered it to Whitt and Chekowski. When Whitt gave his head a little shake, Chekowski moistened her lips and lowered her hand back down to her side. “Somebody must have dumped some fish down by the lake. Or could be my dog dragged something up into the yard. Dogs like the smell.”

  The thought of the smell again must have been enough to make Chekowski risk Whitt’s displeasure. She grabbed the hose and leaned over to let the water run across her nose and mouth.

  Whitt frowned and opened his mouth, but Michael jumped in front of whatever the man was going to say. “Are we through here, Detective, or do you have more questions?”

  “I don’t have anything but questions, Deputy. My problem is finding somebody with answers.”

  “Wonder where the pictures are?” Hank spoke up.

  Whitt stared daggers at him. “Maybe you should try to smell them out in your mailbox, newshound.”

  Hank’s face flashed red as he took a step toward Whitt. He rubbed his hands dry on his pants and fingered the camera strap around his neck as if ready to use his most lethal weapon. “Now look here, Mr. Hotshot Detective. I’m just trying to do my job for the people of Hidden Springs by reporting the news, and if you’d do your job a little better, maybe none of us would be here and that poor woman would be on a stage somewhere instead of—” Hank ran out of steam and finished weakly—“instead of where she is.”

  Whitt surprised Michael by laughing. Honest “that’s funny” laughter. He didn’t think the man had that kind of laughter in him, an opinion obviously shared by Chekowski from the look on her face as she stared up from the water hose at her boss.

  “‘Ace Newshound Meets Hotshot Detective.’” Whitt gave a snort to choke off his laugh. “Some headline. Might even make me think about skimming the story.” His eyes narrowed on Hank. “How often does that rag of yours comes out?”

  Hank’s shoulders slumped. “Once a week. Not again till next Wednesday.”

  “Could be by then we’ll have Jackson, and I’ll give you an exclusive, Ace.”

  Hank came as close to smiling as he had all day. “I’ll hold you to your word on that, Hotshot.”

  “Till then, do me a favor and disappear.” Every hint of a smile was gone from Whitt’s face. “I’m sure your deputy here will give you a press briefing in the morning.”

  “Sure, Hank. I’ll call you in the morning if anything else turns up.” Michael took the hose from Chekowski and turned off the faucet without offering it to Whitt again.

  “No more bodies.” The color drained out of Hank’s face. “Please, no more bodies.” He turned toward his old van, then looked back at Whitt. “Your men will surely find something in the car, won’t you? Some lead to get a line on this Jackson before he has a chance to kill again.”

  “Could be, Ace. Like I said, the deputy here will let you know.”

  Fat chance that Whitt would ever share any information with Michael to pass along to anybody, but Michael didn’t say so.

  “But will the leads lead anywhere?” Whitt muttered as he watched Hank’s van bounce away toward the highway. The man settled his back more comfortably against his car, as though he were a neighbor who had stopped by to shoot the breeze for a while. “What is it they say about the probability of catching a murderer, Chekowski?”

  “That if you don’t catch the perpetrator in the first twenty-four or thirty-six hours, the odds go down that you ever will.” Chekowski pulled a tissue out of a hidden pocket and swiped the last drops of water off her face.

  “One thing about this guy. He keeps giving us a fresh twenty-four to work with,” Whitt said.

  Twilight crept out of the woods to surround them, but Michael didn’t invite them into his house. If Whitt wanted to third-degree him, he’d have to do it at the office and not here. Michael didn’t want them poking around his house, passing judgment on how he lived. He wasn’t in the mood to listen to Whitt’s questions and hear the undercurrent of blame in what the man was asking.

  What Michael wanted was a shower. A long, hot shower. And then to talk to Alex. Or even better, see her. Pete Ballard, his partner on the force in the city, used to say that a man needed a woman to get over a bad death scene. He claimed the act of making babies was a man’s only defense against the bald truth of violent death. Of course, it wouldn’t matter if Alex was standing right beside him. She wouldn’t be thinking about making any babies with him.

  He remembered what Betty Jean had said about how he couldn’t leave town even if Alex called and said she’d marry him if he could get to her apartment before the day was over. Betty Jean was wrong. He’d be on the road in an instant and let the chips fall where they may. Not that he ever expected that to happen. Right now, he just hoped she’d answer her phone when he called.

  Back behind his house, the frogs began their nightly serenade to see if they could outsing the crickets already chirping full strength. Somewhere in the woods, a screech owl joined in.

  Chekowski jumped and her hand hovered near the holster under her jacket. “What was that?”

  “Relax, Chekowski. Just an owl.” Whitt raised his head a little to listen. “I thought you said it was quiet out here, Deputy.”

  “Quiet except for nature’s noise. Nothing man-made.”

  Whitt tilted his head a little. “I hear traffic.”

  “The interstate,” Michael admitted. “A constant, unfortunate background sound.”

  “How far away from here?”

  “About three miles as the crow flies, but it would be rough walking.” Michael looked to the east toward the sound of traffic.

  “Think our man could have walked it?”

  “I don’t know. Jackson didn’t impress me as somebody who’d attempt walking across town, but then he didn’t look like a man who could entice three young women to go anywhere with him either.” Michael shrugged. “So who knows?”

  “You find out anything about that Jackie Johnson? The one you think might be Jackson?” Whitt turned his eyes back to Michael.

  “The woman in our office is trying to track down his family. I don’t know if she’s had any success since I’ve been out of contact most of the day. She’ll have gone home now.” Michael hoped Betty Jean had sense enough to go back to her parents’ house in spite of the country ham and biscuits. “I can give her a call if you want.”

  Whitt looked at his watch. “Morning will do. It doesn’t look as if we’re going to answer your question tonight anyway.”

  “My
question?”

  “Yeah. Where is he? That’s what you said we needed to know, isn’t it? Right up there with what he’s planning next.”

  “Maybe he’ll take the night off,” Chekowski offered. She looked dead on her feet and as eager to be home taking a hot shower as Michael was.

  “He already took a night off.” Whitt glanced at her and then back at Michael. “You’d agree with that, wouldn’t you, Deputy? This Julie actress whatever-her-name definitely quit breathing before our pretty Ms. Barbour. Maybe even before victim one.”

  “Seems a possibility.”

  “But if that’s true, why didn’t this woman’s picture surface before the others?” Chekowski asked.

  “Who knows?” Whitt said. “Could be the guy didn’t want us to see the pictures until after we found the body.”

  “Maybe there aren’t any pictures this time,” Michael said.

  “Don’t count on that, Deputy. Our guy likes his pictures. I figure it’s just a question of where they’ll surface.”

  After Whitt and Chekowski finally followed the others away up the lane back to Eagleton, Michael unlocked his front door and went inside. Jasper went straight for his food dish.

  “Give me a minute, boy.” Michael grabbed the phone and dialed Aunt Lindy’s number. He listened to it ring as he poured the dog food out for Jasper.

  Of course, she was all right, Aunt Lindy told him. And yes, she could reach out and put her hand on the gun and she certainly would do just that at the first suspicious sound. He needn’t worry about that. So it was entirely unnecessary for him to babysit her. However, if he wanted to be closer to the office, then he was welcome to come back to town for the night. And wasn’t it awful about poor Julie Lynne? She’d looked so happy when they saw her at the play.

  Michael didn’t know why he was surprised that she already knew about Julie Lynne. That kind of news was sure to flash through Hidden Springs at the speed of light. Aunt Lindy had heard it at the grocery store, she said. She didn’t really know much. Just that somebody had discovered the poor girl’s body down at the lake, and it looked like this Jackson was responsible. At least the man everybody was calling Jackson. She reminded Michael that the man’s name was really Jackie Johnson and Michael had surely followed up on that, hadn’t he?