by Steve Goble
A line of skeletal maples and oaks stood between us and the river, and I heard what I thought was an animal scurrying about. Turned out that was just a dry, dead leaf, spinning about in a swirling wind and scratching the naked branches. The still-standing corn to our left rattled dry leaves in the breeze, too. It sounded as though we were surrounded by rattlesnakes, or things trying to scratch their way out of graves.
That unsettling thought turned out to be the perfect prelude for what awaited us on the riverbank.
“She was caught under that tree there, in those gnarly branches,” Dooman said. He pointed toward a maple that had been undercut by the current long ago but was still fighting gravity. It leaned across the river, its branches drooping into the water like a kid’s fingers dangling from a raft. Jason Melograna, our MCSO crime scene photographer, was practically doing yoga trying to get an angle on the spot.
“No tracks or anything here, and Baxter, bless him, swam over to the other bank. He did not see any tracks or anything over there, either, and he’s a hunter. So I don’t think anyone shoved her in there. I think she drifted from upstream and got caught.” Dooman’s voice was even, steady. He was a veteran cop, not given to emotional displays. Not given to the kind of anger I could feel boiling in my gut. “We are not far downstream from the state bridge—might have been thrown in from there.”
“Not an accident, then.”
“Don’t think so, Ed. You’ll see.”
I did see.
There she was, just this side of the riverside brush and trees, having been hauled out on a stretcher. She was nude, on her back, deathly pale, weeds entangled in her hair, mud marring her skin, red scratches all over her white body, a rusty red that had to be blood staining her blonde tresses. Her forehead was broken, cracked, raw.
She looked too goddamned much like another girl, in another town, who had died in a horrible way because we did not find her in time. I tried to blink that memory away. It didn’t work.
Rick Danvers, the county medical examiner, knelt on one knee beside her. He was near retirement, bald and skinny, and looked out of place no matter where he was, but he was good at his job. Several paramedics stood nearby, soaked from the waist down. They had hauled the girl out of the water. They had to be freezing in the autumn breeze, but they weren’t going anywhere just yet. They would carry her up to the ambulance when Danvers was done with his examination.
“Hi, Rick.”
Danvers looked up upon my greeting. “Hello, Ed. You bust a knuckle?” He pointed at my hand, bleeding slightly from the punch I gave my truck roof.
“Minor scrape, getting out of my truck.”
He reached into a case and pulled out a Band-Aid. “Cover it up. That’s an order.”
I complied. “I’m working a missing girl case,” I said, pulling a bunch of facts remembered from Shelly’s file into the working part of my brain. It wasn’t easy. I had to tell myself to focus. “My girl is a teen blonde. Has a butterfly tattoo on her left shoulder.”
“Well,” Danvers said, and I probably could have chimed in and finished the sentence for him, “this is a blonde girl with a butterfly tattoo on her left shoulder. And I would estimate age at fifteen to eighteen.”
“Monarch butterfly?”
“I would say probably, yes,” Danvers answered. “I don’t know butterflies very well, though. I don’t want to roll her, but I have an image on my iPad. Just a sec.” He flipped back the cover from the device lying on the ground beside him and started tapping the screen and sliding fingers across it.
Dooman inhaled deeply. “Fuck, Ed. Gotta be her.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The Columbus cop is on her way.”
“Sad thing,” Dooman said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Here is this girl’s butterfly,” Danvers said, showing us the image on his screen. I’d seen the same image on Megan’s Instagram photos, only brighter, not dulled by death and cold river water.
“That looks like hers,” I said. “Not official confirmation, obviously, but it’s hers.”
Dooman sighed. He was the senior detective, and I was supposed to defer to him, especially on the big cases, and with all the press this was going to generate, this was a big case. But Bob is a good man, and he wasn’t going to swoop in and take charge on a case I was already working. He looked at me. “What can I do to help?”
I spat. “I have a guy in the pokey. Bob Van Heusen. Plays guitar in any rock band that’ll have him, and none of them will have him in anything but short doses. He is based in Columbus, where my girl was before she disappeared. I would love to know when and where he was born, what he was doing Saturday night, how he votes, what he reads, how long his dick is, the whole fucking shebang. Mostly, I want to know how he ends up in our goddamned countryside at the same time as this dead girl.”
“You got it,” Bob said. “Sounds like a big coincidence, and you know how I feel about those.”
I stared at the girl. “We have other coincidences.” I filled him in on Soul Scraped, and Jeff Cotton.
“Shit,” he said upon hearing the local football star’s connection. “That is going to be delicate. I’ll read your file on the case, get caught up.”
“Thanks,” I said. “The Columbus cop, Shelly Beckworth, it’s really her case. I’d like to stick with her and talk to all the kids. None of them knew anything last time, of course, but we didn’t know the girl was dead at the time. We’ll try to shake a little more out of them now.”
“Good,” Dooman said. “Got a working theory?”
“Not really,” I said. “Not yet, anyway.” The closest thing I had to a theory was that I might just beat the killer to death and toss his carcass into Black Powder Creek.
I glanced across the river, through the trees, and watched cars roll slowly down the highway. I could just make out the state bridge, and through the trees I could see the trailer park where Soul Scraped practiced songs about turd blossoms. I turned to Rick. “Anything you can tell us before this girl gets hauled to Columbus for an autopsy?”
“Not a lot. She was tied up at some point. I see what seem to be rope burns, or maybe wire, on her ankles and wrists. Looks like she struggled against them. A lot. Her forehead took a damn heavy blow from something—whatever it was it was, long and fairly sharp. That is probably the blow that killed her, but she took a couple other blows, too, to the face and the back of her head. Bruising to the face.” He pointed. “Other blows to the back of the head. Those were done with something smaller, I’d say. I see what might be rust flakes clinging in the biggest wound, to her forehead, although the river flushed it pretty good.”
“Sharp weapon, you say?”
“Edged, I would say, but big, and damned heavy, regarding the principal wound. It hit her hard. Maybe an axe. Or a machete, even. Of course, it might even have been something she hit when she was tossed—or when she dove—into the river, although at first blush I consider that diving hypothesis unlikely, given the multiple wounds. I’m just trying to keep an open mind to all possibilities until I do a thorough examination.”
“Understood.”
He nodded. “You might want to check upstream at any likely entry points, though. We’ll know more from the autopsy.”
“OK. Any idea when she was killed?”
Danvers sighed. He hates being pressed for information before he’s finished with all his scopes, knives, and test tubes. “Well, I can’t say for certain yet—need to do some lab work and a postmortem, of course—but I’ve seen bodies pulled from rivers before. I’d bet, at this point, anyway, she went in last night, maybe yesterday afternoon at the outside. But not long ago, most likely last night. Can’t say that definitively, though, until I examine her more closely.”
“Of course.” I nodded. Last night, or yesterday afternoon. Hell, she might have been killed while I was out playing SWAT or staring down the barrel of Tess Baldwin’s pistol. She might have been dumped into Black Powder Creek while I was getting drunk and tryin
g to keep two separate cases from tangling in my mind.
Jesus. It really did happen again.
I stared at the dead girl. I could see the potential, the life that she might have led, in her cold, sleeping face. I shuddered. All I could think of in that moment, all I could conjure into my brain, was an image of me gunning down the son of a bitch who had done this thing. This was not the way the universe was supposed to work.
If she had died yesterday or last night, it meant Van Heusen was off the hook. He had been locked up tight. It also might mean Ally Phelps had told us the truth.
I looked at Bob Dooman. He was impassive.
“The guitar man was in jail, so if she went in last night it wasn’t him,” I said. “But there still might be a connection, so I still want him checked out.”
“Yes,” Dooman said. He looked toward the road. “I think I see your detective from Columbus.”
I followed his pointing finger and saw Shelly Beckworth trudging down the sloped cornfield. She must have busted the speed limit big-time.
“Yes, that’s her.” I seized the opportunity to get away from Dooman’s good example of the stoic detective and trotted toward Shelly. A couple of vans belonging to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation fell into line and parked behind her Mazda, and a cadre of people emerged from the vans and started donning field gear.
I was huffing a bit from my jog when I got to her.
“Who is the black Adonis?” Her eyes were locked on Dooman. He was built like a linebacker, but preferred playing cello. Women tended to notice him.
“I thought you were gay?”
“I am, but, damn.”
I marveled at Shelly’s apparent ability to compartmentalize. She was upset about this development, too. I could see it in her face, but she was not letting it rule her. She was going to do her job.
I thought I had learned that skill, too. Maybe I hadn’t.
“Is it her?” She looked at me with an expression that said she already knew.
“No official ID, of course, but it’s her. I reached around my neck and tapped my shoulder. “Butterfly.”
“Fuck.” She took a few seconds to process that, then continued. “We got the phone forensics back, by the way.”
“Anything useful?”
“No. She didn’t take a single photo or text anyone during that party. Didn’t arrange any meetups beforehand, didn’t add any boys’ names to her contacts, or girl names, either; didn’t follow anyone new on social media, didn’t call anywhere. Nothing useful at all.”
“Shit.”
We walked toward the river, and I filled her in on what we knew so far. Then I introduced her to Bob and Rick.
Shelly got right to business. “Anything more you can tell us, Doctor Danvers? For instance, did her head wound occur before she went into the water, or after?”
“Science takes time,” Rick said, winking. “But I can tell you this. The crack in her head,” and he paused to point at the horrible gash, “was more than sufficient to kill her.”
Shelly nodded. “Any idea how long she has been in the water?”
Rick smirked. “I already told Ed, probably went in last night. Can’t say for sure, though. I am good, but not that good.” He picked up his iPad. “But not long. I will know more after a full autopsy, of course. I am thinking about buying a T-shirt that says that, by the way. ‘I’ll know more after a full autopsy.’ I’d sell one to every coroner in the state.”
“Probably,” Shelly conceded. “We’ll keep asking pesky questions anyway.”
“I am sure you will. I’d like to assist the state lab, if possible.” Rick had control freak tendencies.
“I don’t object as long as Doctor Melville doesn’t,” Shelly said. “I have heard you are pretty good at this, so I will ask Doctor Melville myself. I know her pretty well.”
Danvers seemed pleasantly surprised. “Thank you, Detective.” Shelly nodded.
“I’ll take all the help I can get. Any idea where she could have gone into the river?”
Bob pointed toward the bridge. “That would be the most convenient spot, but it could have been lots of places. River’s up a bit, moving fast, she could have gone a long way before getting stuck in the roots. But if she indeed went in last night, then probably it was not too damned far from here.”
While the coroner and detectives talked, I tried not to think about how pretty girls dying seemed to be a thing that happened all the goddamned time. I tried to ignore the part of my brain that said go buy some more bourbon and let someone better than me fix all this shit. I had not found Megan Beemer in time, but I could catch her killer. I could avenge her. I wasn’t going to get drunk and run away this time.
I had work to do, and I needed to settle down and do it.
That’s what I told myself, anyway. Another voice in my head laughed at that.
I stared at the body, trying to reconcile the pasty inanimate thing with the vibrant cheerleader from the photos in Shelly’s file. I stared, hoping that somewhere among the pale flesh and red scratches and muddy swathes and horrid gashes we would find something that would point me in the right direction. Something that would lead me to her killer.
I knew I would not see such a clue. That was for dreams and fairy tales. But I imagined the eureka moment and envisioned myself sniffing along the trail that led to my fingers on the culprit’s throat. My staring wasn’t going to make that happen. But I knew the lab people would dig deep and find something. Microscopes, Petri dishes, tox screens, DNA. They’d find something.
The big question, though, was the amount of time that might take. State money is always tight, they say, and the labs are shorthanded and overwhelmed. The killer might well vanish in the weeks those tests could take. The killer might get caught, eventually, but it might happen far from here, years from now. I wanted it to happen now. I wanted to be the one to crack it.
Shelly was trying to call her partner, and had wandered away in search of a better cell phone signal. Bob Dooman watched her walk away. “Mmmm …”
“Back down,” I said, trying to make a show of how calm and cool I was. “You’re married.”
“I can still enjoy a good show,” he said. “Don’t matter where I get my appetite, long as I go home to eat.”
“She’s gay.”
Bob laughed. “I don’t care. I’m only looking, remember?”
He started wandering up toward the road. The brief levity had pulled me up from my mental swamp, at least for the moment. I wondered if Dooman had noticed my mood and tried to ease the tension on purpose.
I took one last glance back toward Megan Beemer, who was now tucked into a body bag. An EMS crew lifted the stretcher and began the long, slow trek up the slope toward the waiting ambulance.
I watched them all the way.
Then I walked over to talk to Jerry Coontz. Trumpower nodded. “I have his statement, Ed. I’ll be on my way.”
“Thanks.” I knelt by Jerry. The lines on his face seemed deeper than usual, and his eyes were shut. “You OK, Jerry?”
He looked at me. “Who kills a girl, Ed? Who does that?”
“I won’t know until we solve this one. But we’ll solve it. You’ve made that easier, I want you to know that. The longer she stays in that river, the less evidence we get. Hell, maybe she even breaks free of the branches and flows on downstream, down to the Jacob Fork, on down to Erie, and we never find anything. Without you, that might have happened, but you saw her, and you are going to help bring the killer to justice. I want you to know that, OK?”
He nodded. “Yes. Good.”
“Alright.” I looked around. “You farm a lot of fields around here. Those across the river, near the bridge, are those yours, too?”
“Yeah. Don’t own them, but I lease them and work them.”
“Seen anyone hanging out, driving on the road late, stopping near the bridge, anything out of place in the last couple days?”
“No. Wish I had, but no. I
told all that to Irwin.”
“OK, Jerry. You remember anything, you give me a call, OK?”
“I sure will, Ed.”
“Need a ride home? Don’t want you finishing this field today, until we walk the corn rows and all that. I don’t think we’ll find anything here, because she probably went in somewhere else, but we’ve got to walk it just the same.”
“Trump told me all that,” Jerry said, flipping his John Deere cap back onto his head. “Told me he’d give me a ride, too.”
“OK, then. Let’s go.”
Once Jerry was in Trumpower’s cruiser, I strolled over to Shelly. “You and me will go see if we can find any sign of a girl being tossed from yonder bridge.”
“OK. Let me get some lab people to follow us.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Thursday, 8:42 a.m.
“WE’RE FUCKING FUCKED.”
“Calm the fuck down, or fucking hang up.”
“They fucking found her. They fucking found her. They fucking found her.”
“I know.”
“You said they wouldn’t fucking find her. It’s online, dude. On the news!”
“I know. Don’t pay attention to the news. It’s bad for you.”
“They fucking found her.”
“I know. Calm down.”
“What the fuck are we gonna do?”
“Nothing. Fucking nothing. They can’t pin her to us, man. They can’t. We cleaned up, right? Remember? They ain’t got shit. Just a dead girl. Bodies get dumped all the time. Could’ve been anyone, right? Drug dealers dump bodies. They’ll figure drug dealers. So we do nothing. And we vouch for each other. Alibis, right?”
“Right.”
“Stories are straight, right?”
“Right.”
“So calm the fuck down.”