by Linda Ladd
Bud and I stood back and said nothing as the forensics team joined us one by one. We watched Vicky, the department photographer, do her thing from every angle, fast and efficient as usual. Nobody said much. Maybe we were getting pretty fed up with finding and tagging dead bodies. Even though this wasn’t a murder but a suicide, it was just as hard to stomach when the vic was little more than a teenager.
Once the body was cut down and lowered to the ground, Buckeye searched through the victim’s preppy clothes and found in his front pants’ pocket a current driver’s license and a small metal ring with three keys, two neatly labeled with white tape: car and front door, the third left unlabeled. No wallet, no good-bye note, no money, nothing, just empty pockets and the driver’s license and keys. Odd thing, though, were those bracelets. They were made out of blue and white beads, some with black dots in the middle that looked almost like eyes, the kind of bracelets made from elastic that stretched over your hands. I counted twenty-six of them. Thirteen on each arm. That number could not be coincidental.
Buck examined the driver’s license, then held it up between two gloved fingers. “Name’s Michael Murphy. Twenty-one years old. Photo matches, so do vitals.”
I said, “Black was right on.”
Buck said, “The cell phone’s brand new. No outgoing, no incoming. It’s one of those phones you buy minutes for. We’ll see if we can find fingerprints for you.”
“Good.”
Bud said, “Wonder why the kid didn’t leave a note?”
“Maybe he didn’t expect to be found. Maybe he thought nobody would ever find him. That’s why he came up so far under the bridge support. Maybe he left it at home.”
“Who did find him?” I turned to Connie O’Hara for that answer.
“Some kids playing basketball over there on that playground.” She pointed to a little park off to our right, one with a basketball court surrounded by a twelve-foot chain-link fence. “They were playing one-on-one and the ball went through a gap in the fence and rolled down this way. When one of the boys came down the hill searching the brush for it, he saw the vic hanging over here. Scared him to death, so they all ran like hell to where one of their moms worked at the Applebee’s just down the road. She called in to 911.”
“Okay. Buck, let us know what you find out. Bud and I need to go check out this guy’s house. Hopefully, we’ll get a note.”
Below I heard the Cobalt crank up, and I waved to Black and watched him ease the boat from the bank and speed off toward Cedar Bend Lodge. Then I turned and followed Bud up the hill to his Bronco. I was not particularly looking forward to telling this kid’s parents what he’d gone and done on this beautiful summer day.
As it turned out, Michael Murphy, Son of the Great One at the Capitol, ran a pizzeria called Mikey’s Place in Osage Beach on Highway 54. It was located in the Stonecrest Shopping Center, and we assumed he lived in the apartment right above the restaurant. Bud pulled up and stopped right in front of the pizzeria’s front door. The Stonecrest Book and Toy store was a few doors down, and I knew some of the ladies there because I shopped for presents for Bud and Black at that store once upon a time. We’d have to check them out and see what they knew about Mikey Murphy. There was also a Starbucks out in the center of the parking lot, which made us both crave some latte and cinnamon rolls, but we decided to put the brakes on that idea until after we had given notification of the death. Only problem with that is we probably won’t be able to stomach any by then. My own personal kind of diet.
The front door key on Murphy’s key ring fit the front door of the pizza place, labeled appropriately, for our convenience, I guess. The pizza parlor was closed up and deserted. We knocked a couple of times anyway, just in case he had a roommate or live-in girlfriend asleep upstairs or tossing pizza dough in the back. Traffic was still going strong on 54 in front of the Stonecrest Shopping Center, and we stood waiting for a few minutes. I was hoping there wasn’t anybody inside to break this horrible news to. I wasn’t good at notifying next of kin, loathed every minute of it, would rather have ten root canals in a row, oh, yeah.
Bud said, “Somebody must be in there. I smell food cooking. Barbeque, maybe.”
Looked like my hopes weren’t panning out. “Yeah, but this is a pizza place and the closed sign is sitting right there in the window.”
“Doesn’t mean somebody can’t be cooking dinner for when this poor guy was supposed to get home. Or maybe he likes Crock-Pots. Let’s go in.”
Bud pushed open the door, and we entered the dark interior of the restaurant. Cautiously, of course—we weren’t stupid. I didn’t pull my gun, either of them, actually, because I neither sensed nor expected danger. At least not until my sixth sense quivered alive and poked me in the back and said something to the effect of “get the hell out of here quick.” At that point, I decided to stop just inside the door and take weapon to hand. When I did that, Bud did, too. We’re a team, you see. We both looked around. Bud called out a guarded hello.
It was dark and gloomy inside, not a large place but probably nice and cheery when open for service, with lots of tables with red-checked vinyl tablecloths and red booths along each wall. Baskets of red and white checked napkins and crocks of silk red geraniums on every table and white candles melting down over empty Chianti bottles. There was a long bar at the back with lots of neon signs advertising Busch and Bud Light and Coors, but it was very quiet except for some low and steady electronic beeps emanating from somewhere in the back.
“You hear that, Bud?”
“The beeping? Yeah.”
“What is it?”
“Dunno, but it’s comin’ from back there, behind those black swinging doors. Probably some timer goin’ off in the kitchen, maybe?”
We headed for the swinging doors off to the right side of the bar that probably led into the kitchen. Suddenly I felt another little warning chill and waited while it crawled its way up my spine and made the back of my neck feel all stiff and icy. The smell of cooking meat was even stronger now. I looked at Bud, and he nodded. We held weapons ready and entered the kitchen like it was Daniel’s lion’s den. The room was as big as the dining area, but clear of danger. The oven light was blinking red and making the steady beeps. There was a big metal oven rack lying on a large center island topped with black granite, and I moved around the counter, then bent down and peered inside the glass door of the giant pizza oven.
My stomach rolled, heaved up some bile. I backed up, stunned, not sure I believed my eyes. “Oh, my God, Bud, tell me that’s not what I think it is in there.”
Bud said, “What? Lemme see.”
“Look inside there and tell me what that is.”
Bud rounded the island but didn’t peer inside anything. He grabbed the oven handle and jerked the door down. Oh yeah, nightmares incomin’. Horrified, we both stared at what lay inside. Someone had stuffed a body in there. A woman, small and naked, bent, almost folded into a fetal position. The oven control was set on low, and by the looks of it, she had been roasting inside for a long, long time. Her skin was brown and crusty and I could smell the singeing of her long dark hair. I felt more caustic sting of acid in the back of my throat and gagged reflexively.
“Turn it off, Bud, turn it off, quick, oh my God! I’m gonna be sick!”
Bud slammed the door and switched off the control, and we both rushed outside, away from the odor and the awful sight, hands shaking and sick to our stomachs. Out in the fresh air, I bent over with my hands on my knees and took some deep breaths to stop the nausea that was tossing around that Cherry Pepsi inside my stomach. Oh, God, I was gonna throw up. I was used to gruesome crime scenes, but this? This was depraved, inconceivable. Bud paced off down the sidewalk, stood ten yards up from me alone for several minutes, dragging his palms down over his face, clearing his throat, over and over, then he came back, pacing back and forth in front of me, trying to walk off the horror we’d just discovered. He shook his head, put his hands on his hips. “Who the hell do you thi
nk that is in there?”
I rubbed my fingers over my mouth, still almost tasting the odor of the woman’s roasted flesh. I swallowed hard, trying to get a grip, but this time it was hard. I finally said, “I don’t know. How could somebody do that to somebody else? Stick them in an oven and cook them like that. God, who could do that?”
Bud said, “Some sick, psycho, sonofabitch, is who. I’m callin’ Buck. He’s gotta get over here and get her outta there. I can’t stand havin’ her in there, slow cookin’ like that.”
Now that we knew what the smell was, it was unbearable. We both backed away from the front door, and I waited while Bud got the crime scene tape out of his Bronco. We strung it up around the front. Neither of us spoke. Neither of us wanted to go back inside.
I finally said, “We’ve gotta check out the apartment. There might be somebody up there, another victim, maybe. Maybe one who’s still alive.”
Bud looked at me like I’d suggested going inside and ordering a pizza. He didn’t want to see that body again. And I sure as hell didn’t. I’d probably never want to eat in any restaurant again, I can tell you that, much less a Pizza Hut. But we had to check out the second-floor apartment, had no choice, and God only knew what we’d find up there.
Here Comes Trouble
It took forever for his parents to get over Lyla drowning. Much too long, the son thought, downright irritated. Jeez, what was with all the crying and carrying on and mourning, like it was gonna go on for years? He tried to divert his family’s attention away from Lyla’s death by winning medals and trophies and that kinda stuff, but no, no, it was always poor Lyla, poor Lyla died so young, poor Lyla, poor Lyla, poor Lyla. It really did just make him sick to his stomach.
Time went by, dragged, in fact, and eventually his mom had a new baby, another girl, and they named her Destiny. He thought they went overboard with that lame name, but hey, they thought God had given them a new little daughter to make up for taking dear little Lyla away. His parents could be so naïve.
Sometimes he wondered where he got his brains. Both his parents were dumb as rocks. Heck, he could pull about anything over on them, anything at all, including his sister’s murder. Not that he particularly looked at it as murder; she just had to die young, that’s all, no real reason why. It was just in the cards for her. Her predestined life plan. He was just an instrument in it, that’s all. Sometimes things happened that were just plain inexplicable. But still, he was a lot more intelligent than anybody else in his family. And they were easy to manipulate. After all, they idolized him, and for very good reason.
One summer when he had grown older, his dad decided to take the whole family on a vacation to Arizona. Unfortunately, after Lyla drowned, they had closed up the pool for good, even filled it in with dirt, and never had another family barbeque in their backyard. That seemed a bit extreme to him, but hey, what could he do? He was still a minor and they could boss him around. The drive out west was pretty uneventful and boring, but they took his mom’s big Dodge van so all the kids could have a seat belt. She was really paranoid about keeping all the kids safe now. All the younger kids bickered constantly, but it didn’t bother him much. He had earphones and an iPod and he’d downloaded hundreds of songs that he liked, so all he did was listen to music.
The son loved music. His favorite rock band was one from Germany because they had these really dark and disturbing lyrics. They were right up his alley. He loved to read books, too. He liked geography and learning about other countries and cultures and what the people who lived there did. He loved learning about everything. His dad said he had a photographic memory, and he was dead on. All the son had to do was read something one single time, and he had it forever. Could almost quote it verbatim, even. Talk about smart; he’d cornered the market.
Now they were all out sightseeing at the Grand Canyon because his dad and mom loved to hike trails with beautiful scenery around to look at, and the son found it awesome to the extreme. His dad had gotten them all tickets on this cool old-fashioned train that took them up to the Grand Canyon from their hotel in Phoenix, which was the old, fancy one called the Biltmore. Right now they were hiking down one of the canyon’s narrow, dusty trails with a bunch of other people. The place was really something, with all those high drop-offs and craggy cliffs that shone in the bright sun with beautiful, horizontal bands of reds and yellows and coppers and browns. Far, far away, and way down on the floor of the canyon, he could see the Colorado River, and it looked like a shiny ribbon in the sunlight. He loved it here. For once, his parents had chosen a really awesome place to visit.
Avidly, he listened to the guide who was telling them all about the history of the Grand Canyon, but he lagged behind the group with his mother, a little concerned about her health. She was a good athlete, too, that’s where he thought he probably got his skills, but she was still a little out of shape from giving birth a couple of months ago, so she had to stop a lot and rest. He worried that she was gonna poop out and not be able to finish the hike, so he decided to give her a hand.
“Hey, Mom, let me carry Destiny some. You’re tired. I can tell. She’s gotta be getting heavy.”
“That’s okay, sweetie, I like holding her. I just need to rest a minute, ’s all.”
His mom sat down in the shade of a little scruffy pine tree that was growing out the side of the canyon. His dad was already about ten or fifteen yards ahead of them down the twisting trail that ran precariously along the edge of the cliff, and the son yelled down to him.
“Hey, Dad, Mom’s gotta sit down and rest for a sec. I’ll stay with her. You go on ahead with the other kids. We’ll be along in a few minutes.”
“You sure, honey?” his dad called back to his wife.
“I’ll be fine. Go on, but watch the kids around that guardrail.”
The son pulled a bottle of Ozarka water out of his backpack and handed it to his mom, and then while she unscrewed the cap and drank about half real quick, he stood looking out over the vast vista of wind-and water-carved canyon and marveled at how deep it was, and how pretty. It almost took his breath away. His mom put down the bottle and cooed at the baby, who was crying and squirming around, as usual.
His mom said, “Thanks for waiting with me, sweetheart. You’ve really been great on this trip.”
“Yeah, I know,” he answered.
They laughed together at that, and she smiled fondly at him. He stood and watched her deal with the fussy baby. She carried the kid in one of those mesh sling things that held the baby tightly against her chest. It looked hot, and so did she. Her face was flushed scarlet with the heat and the exertion of hiking the trail in her weakened condition. She hadn’t slept much the night before because of the baby having colic, and her eyes were bloodshot with sleep deprivation. New babies were such a big pain in the butt.
“Here, Mom, let me hold her for a while. You look really hot.”
“She’s just hungry. Do you see anybody coming down from above?”
He glanced up the trail behind them. “Uh uh, we’re the last ones in the group. The next one doesn’t start for forty-five minutes.”
“Then I’m going to feed her while I sit here and rest. Then she’ll be quiet for the rest of the way down.”
“Okay.”
The son watched her open her sleeveless white blouse, open this special bra she wore, and put her breast up to the baby’s mouth. The child grabbed at her nipple and began to suckle like crazy, and he looked away, repulsed. That was just so gross. It made him queasy in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t believe his mom would do something like that out in public, and in broad daylight, too. He looked both directions again and was glad nobody was in sight. He sat down at the overlook point and gazed out over the panorama, wishing she’d get done with that nursing crap.
His mom said, “Don’t get too close to the edge, honey.”
“I won’t.”
“Are you enjoying the trip?” his mom asked him then from where she was still sitting on the
ground nursing Destiny in the shade of that little tree.
“Yeah. Sure.”
“You don’t seem very happy lately. You know, you’ve been kinda quiet the last few days.”
“Just listenin’ to my music.”
“What are you listening to?”
“Marilyn Manson. I like him pretty good. That’s who I’ve been playing today.”
“I’m glad we got you that iPod. You’re sure putting it to good use.”
“Yeah.”
The son looked back at his mom and said, “Come on, Mom, let me hold her for a while. I like to hold her. That contraption you’re wearing looks real hot. You’ve gotta be uncomfortable.”
His mom laughed again. “It is hot. She feels like a little heater up against me.”
Walking over, he waited for her to lift the strap over her head, and then he took the little baby and held it in one arm. She was about the size of a St. Bernard puppy. She probably didn’t weigh ten or twelve pounds yet. Destiny was quiet now and looked up at him out of dark blue, unblinking eyes.
As his mother leaned back against the rocks and closed her eyes, he examined the baby’s face. Destiny really didn’t look much like Lyla. She was kinda cute, though, he guessed. Her hair was darker, but it was hard to tell because all babies looked just the same to him. He really hadn’t paid much attention to her before. She was pretty useless, but it was kinda neat how people started out like little lumps of nothing and grew tall and strong and athletic like him.
His mom was dozing now, so she must’ve been really exhausted from keeping up with Destiny. He walked back to the very rim of the canyon and gazed out over the vast and magnificent hole carved into the earth. Then he held the little baby up so she could see all the pretty colors. “Lookee out there, Destiny, that’s the Grand Canyon. See that little bitty ribbon down there, that’s the river that carved this place out like this. It took it millions of years.”
The baby gurgled a little and waved her little arms, and he glanced at his mom. She was lying back on the ground now with her forearm over her eyes. Who was she kidding? She was really tired. Having another baby sure had taken it out of her. It suddenly occurred to him to hold the kicking child over the guardrail to see if it would know to be afraid. The baby just hung there from his fist and looked around. Actually, it calmed down a bit. It sure was a stupid little thing. One slip of his hand and it would fall fast and hard, straight down. Or it was so little, he could just throw it out over the drop with his perfectly executed spiral football pass. Heck, he bet it was one or two hundred feet to the bottom. It’d be dead on the first bounce against all those sharp rocks.