Dig
Page 24
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Several neighbors heard the blast and at least two of them called the Smithville Police Department to report it. No one knocked on her door to check for fear of what they might find. When Sergeant Greg Stafford showed up, he rang the bell. Jean answered the door.
“Ma’am. Is everything all right in here?” Greg said.
“It wasn’t his face,” she said. She stood in the doorway with the same blank expression and repeated, “It wasn’t his face.”
“Whose face?” Greg said. He entered the house with his hand on the hilt of his sidearm and found Top almost immediately—or what remained of him.
Top without a top.
He thought this and sick as it was, it gave him a nervous chuckle. That might have been the only thing which kept him from vomiting. He saw the shotgun propped against the wall. When he got back to the porch, pale and winded, Jean was seated on the stoop watching out over her front yard. Neighbors gathered around the property in their bathrobes and pajamas. Several children clung to their parents, yawning and rubbing their eyes.
“What happened?” one man said.
“I don’t know,” another answered.
“Is Jean okay?” yet another asked.
Greg walked past Mrs. Kepler and grabbed the radio mic from within his squad car. “I need an ambulance…hell, I need a hearse over here at 1714 Orange. Top Kepler is dead.”
“Dead,” a man said from the end of the driveway. Hushed tones filled the growing crowd of twelve to fifteen people. One mother scooped up her two small children and hurried them back home to safety.
The woman on dispatch, Sandy Rollins, squawked back. “Hearse? You makin’ the time-of-death calls now, Sarge?”
Greg chuckled again—a lifeless noise without its accompanying smile. “She killed the shit out of him, Sandy. His head’s gone. But send the paramedics, hell...send a doc if you want.”
“My god,” Sandy said and the line clicked. There was an electronic blip, followed by fuzz and then silence.
Greg guarded Jean on the porch and kept the nosy neighbors at their distance until some help arrived to seal the place, gather evidence—if it was even necessary—and get Jean Kepler taken into custody.
“Come on, Jean. I have to take you to the station,” Greg said.
She went without argument. “It wasn’t his face,” she said.