by Linda Ladd
About sixty yards ahead we spotted a couple of brown sheriff patrol cars, and a big neon green wrecker emblazoned with RUSHIN’S TOWING SERVICE painted in white on the side. We pulled up behind the truck and were met by two deputies. I was glad to see it wasn’t Connie O’Hara on call today. Traipsing around on slick ice did not go well with pregnancy. Instead, Pete Hancock and David Obion, two of our new recruits, had taken the dawn call. Both were in their early twenties, and sometimes made me feel old. They had strung yellow crime-scene tape among the trees edging the road. It stretched out into the woods a good distance from their vehicles.
I asked Hancock. “What you got so far?”
He was bundled up, a big, muscular guy who lifted weights fanatically and looked like a hulking linebacker in his bulky parka. He had intelligent dark eyes and skin, clean-shaven but for a bushy Tom Selleck/Magnum mustache. His cheeks were flushed red from exposure to the cold air, and he kept licking winter-cracked lips.
Obion was stamping his feet and rubbing his gloved hands together. He was taller and leaner and was an all-around serious kind of guy. He constantly asked questions about police procedure, by the book and all that. He carried a sheriff’s department manual with him at all times. All I could see was his face and brown eyes, the same exact color of Kraft caramels, looking out from inside the tight drawstring of his black fur hood. That reminded me to pull up my own hood. Our breaths steamed in and out with each word uttered and hurt our lungs if we inhaled too deeply.
It seemed unnaturally quiet, but somewhere in that snow-muffled, silent woods, an angelologist was hanging cold and dead from a tree limb. Obion pointed a gloved finger out through the trees and said, “The body’s straight through there, in that big oak tree yonder.”
I said, “Anybody else been inside the perimeter?”
“No ma’am, I taped it off myself. The scene’s intact.”
Bud said, “The wrecker guy go in to see if the vic was alive?”
Hancock shook his head. “They knew he was dead the minute the headlights lit him up. Look; see for yourself.”
We followed the two officers down a slight incline, where a vehicle had slid off the road and landed on its side in the snowbank. Three of us negotiated the icy terrain successfully, but Bud immediately slipped and slid down the hill on his back. But what do you expect? He’s Atlanta-born. While he cursed rather impressively and brushed himself off, I examined the wrecked vehicle. It was a brand-new, Sonic-blue Ford mustang convertible that no doubt wished it lived in Miami with other models that went topless. I made a mental note to check out who was in the car and when the accident had been called in. Could have been the perp trying to get away in a big hurry; stranger things had happened. I said as much to Hancock.
“Could be right. Belongs to some guy who works over at the academy. The guys in the tow truck said he walked back to the school and stayed the night after his car turned over on his way home. He called them this morning to pull him out. We told them to hold off until crime scene finishes with the car.”
“Good job. Tell you what, Hancock. Contact the school and request that any staff still on the premises be ready for interviews sometime this morning. We’ll go over there after we secure the body and finish with the crime scene.”
“Right.”
Hancock and Obion turned and trudged with great, deep footsteps back toward their vehicles.
“There’s Classon. Man alive, look at him.” Bud was pointing up into the tree limbs, and I followed his gaze to a five-foot-diameter oak tree, standing stark and black against the gray sky, its massive branches coated with about six inches of snow.
Thirty feet up, suspended from the fork of two big limbs, hung a large black trash bag. Although it was crusted with snow, we could see a human head protruding from the top, the trash bag’s bright yellow drawstring handles tied around the victim’s neck in a big, droopy bow. From our vantage point the face looked bluish and frozen, like a face trapped under a sheet of ice. If it was Simon Classon, he wasn’t smiling like in the picture Black had pulled up on his website. It looked like the killer had tied a red ski rope around his neck to hang him and secure him to the limb. A square of silver duct tape covered his mouth.
The shiver that shot over my flesh had nothing to do with the freezing temperature. Visions of my last case stabbed my mind, lots of silver duct tape on lots of nude women, and worst of all, the deep, visceral fear I felt when a screech of duct tape was torn off to bind me to a bed. A swift, internal shake sent those ghosts back into the dark. All that was over and done with; the killer locked up tight in a hospital for the criminally insane. More comforting was the fact that Black checked with the doctor every week, just to make sure we didn’t have to watch our backs. Still, we both kept guns under our pillows and awoke sweating and trembling from nightmares. No sir, this was somebody else entirely. Another monster slithering up from the dark places to wreak havoc on the innocent and unsuspecting.
“There aren’t any footprints leading in, Bud. He got him up there before the snow started.”
“Yeah. Good God, look at the blood frozen to his head. He was alive and still bleedin’ when the perp hung him. I reckon he was assaulted in his front hall, then transported alive out here for some sick reason.”
Simon Classon’s head tilted to one side, and blood had run down from his head wound and frozen into an eight-inch blood icicle that protruded off his temple. Snow had formed a cap atop the red hair on the other side of his head and looked as if he wore a jaunty white beret.
I said, “What’d you make of the perp putting the body in a trash bag?”
“Hell if I know. So the bears don’t eat him?” Bud, at his most amusing. But he wasn’t smiling. Neither was I.
“Why would the perp care if the body was scattered? You think he wanted us to find Classon intact?”
Bud shrugged. He was chewing Juicy Fruit. “Maybe we’ll find out when we see what’s he’s done to the vic inside that bag.”
“Right.” Another involuntary shudder. Not sure I wanted to know what the black plastic hid, I said, “Okay, now we’ve got to figure out how to get the body down without corrupting the scene. Buckeye’ll be here soon with his team. You think we can get him down with the wrecker’s winch?”
Bud shook his head. “Won’t reach. Maybe we oughta call a fire truck out here with a rescue basket. If the perp left anything behind, it’ll be under the snow cover, anyway. Let’s get some pictures around the base of the tree, then the truck can back in close enough to reach him. Buckeye’ll have to go up first and get his photos of the body before we bring him down.”
“Get Buck on the phone, Bud. See what his ETA is and then call the fire department. I want Classon down ASAP and out of sight of the school.”
It took us a while to search the perimeter for footprints or other evidence, of which we found nada, of course, then Bud and I huddled in his Bronco with the heater on full blast until the coroner showed up. Bud found a doughnut on the floor that had fallen out of the box a few days ago, brushed it off, and polished it off for breakfast. He was fastidious as hell in his attire and personal grooming, but when he was hungry, he overlooked things like dirt and contamination. However, it did happen to be a cake Krispy Kreme with pecans on top, so I took the petrified chunk he offered me and dunked it in my coffee to soften it up.
About twenty minutes later, Buckeye’s crime-scene van pulled up, followed closely by a rumbling Canton County fire truck. When I got out into the cold to meet them, the sky was roiling and boiling with more mottled gray clouds, raring to dump another foot or two of snow on the lake.
Buckeye Boyd was our medical examiner and coroner, and pretty much looked like Captain Kangaroo on that old kiddie show, but without his buddy, Mr. Greenjeans, hanging around the house grinning. Buck liked to fish; in other words, he had fanatical bass-fishing tendencies. He had an entire room in his house devoted to tall, shiny bass-fishing trophies, and about 600 rods and reels and multicolor plastic worms. H
e also gave one awesome fish fry for the sheriff’s department on the last day of August. He was excellent at his job and hadn’t made a mistake that lost a case in the ten years he’d been in charge.
“Hell, I thought we were in for some peace and quiet after all that shit last summer,” he said. He drank some coffee out of the Minit Stop Styrofoam cup he was holding. The luscious smell of vanilla cappuccino drifted to me.
My good friend, twenty-something John Becker, a.k.a. Shaggy, Shag, or Shag Man, brought up the rear. He was hatless, gloveless, and drinking from a forty-six-ounce cup of Mello Yello in ice, which pretty much sums him up. But a criminalist extraordinaire he truly is. If there was one shred of evidence left behind at a crime scene, he’d sniff it out. He grinned.
“’ S’up, Claire? This case oughta be just what you need to get yourself all warmed up and back in the saddle.”
“I’m pretty much up to speed already. Was the star of a prostitution sting last night.”
“Crap! You mean I missed you wearin’ those Daisy Dukes and fishnets? Damn, why didn’t Bud call me like usual? That where you got that bruise?”
I nodded, but Buckeye ignored Shaggy’s levity and squinted from snow glare as he examined the snow-laden branches above them. “Well, this one should throw you headfirst back into the fray. Hell, look at that, he’s got the vic hanging out here like a fresh deer carcass.”
I said, “Buckeye, I’m going up in the basket with you and Shag.”
“You got it, but it’ll be a tight fit.”
It took a few hours past forever to position the truck far enough away not to disturb the ground directly underneath the tree but close enough to retrieve the victim. We climbed inside the basket and said nothing as the levered arm raised us slowly into the treetops. The basket hit a snow-covered branch and showered Bud, who yelled a few Dixie-type obscenities down below. The closer we got, the worse the victim looked. It was definitely Simon Classon. I recognized him right off, despite the blue-tinged skin and the blood-red icicle the size and shape of a unicorn’s horn growing out the side of his head. Shag took pictures from every angle, and I distinctly hoped Mr. Classon really didn’t have close relatives who’d have to see how the killer had left him.
I looked at Buckeye. “Got a guess on cause of death?”
“I’ll know more when we get him out of that bag. Could be loss of blood, if the blow to the head didn’t kill him. But my guess is he probably froze to death out here.”
“When do you plan to do him?”
“Today, I hope. This afternoon, probably.”
“Bud and I need to be there. We’ll be done out here mid-afternoon at the latest, but give us a call before you start the autopsy.”
While Shaggy filmed retrieval, Buckeye examined what he could see of the body. “By the shape of the bag, I’d say his legs are bent up under him, probably in a fetal position, but it’s anybody’s guess what else the killer did to him. Question is, why put him in a bag and how the hell did he get him up this high? We need a goddamn truck to get him down. He’d have to’ve gotten him up here in daylight. No way could he have done this in the dark. Hell, somebody should’ve seen the perp in the act. The school’s right there, for God’s sake.”
I leaned around and tried to see how the perp had secured the body to the limb. “He must’ve somehow thrown the rope over the tree limb and hoisted him up.”
“So how’d he tie it off?”
“The rope doesn’t go down to the ground. He had to have tied it off while he was up here with Classon.”
Shaggy chimed in, video camera whirring while he carefully filmed everything we said and did. “What gets me is, why would he put the body here so close to the school where somebody might see it?”
“That’s the question of the day.” I turned in the basket and found a clear view of the main buildings, as well as the old white clapboard church. “If Classon ever regained consciousness, he could’ve seen people moving around at the school.”
Buckeye said, “Could be that’s what the perp wanted all along. Maybe that was part of the torture, for him to see people over there and not be able to call out to them.”
“Pretty morbid shit,” Shaggy said.
“That’s the least of it,” I said.
While Shaggy videotaped, Buckeye strapped the body to the side of the basket, then used his pocketknife to cut the rope around the victim’s neck. I leaned down and examined the deep gash on the man’s left temple. The thick blood icicle was frozen hard to the skull. He had to have been alive when he was hung up in the tree, his heart still pumping out enough blood to form a chunk of ice of that size.
Once we reached the ground and got the body unstrapped, Bud gazed down at the plastic-wrapped corpse lying on its side. “Man, we gotta get this guy.”
I snapped on my latex gloves and knelt beside the body. I examined the tape over the victim’s mouth, and then pushed aside the top of the bag to see if he had been garroted or strangled with a noose.
“He wasn’t hanged. Looks like the perp tied the rope off underneath the armpits to support his weight so he wouldn’t strangle. Whoever killed him wanted Classon suspended up there, alive and suffering.”
Buckeye said, “Let’s take the body in as it is. I don’t want to open the trash bag out here in the snow, not at this temperature. If he’s been out here very long, we’ll have to thaw the body before I can perform the autopsy anyway. Help me get him on the stretcher.”
As Bud and Shaggy readied the stretcher, I stared down at Simon Classon’s face and wondered who could have hated him so much that he’d go to this much trouble to make sure he died slowly and painfully and in sight of his friends and colleagues. I thought about the angels plastered all over Classon’s house and wondered if he was with them now. So when he opened his eyes and looked at me, my heart stopped.
“Oh, my God, Bud, he’s still alive!”
SEVEN
We got Simon Classon loaded in the crime-scene van and en route to the hospital in nothing flat. I rode in the back while Buckeye Boyd swerved and slid around slick curves on icy roads with the skill of Tony Stewart at the Talladega NASCAR track. Bud was right behind us in his Bronco, and he was keeping up with us, inferior southern driver or not. I covered Simon Classon’s body with a couple of morgue blankets, but there wasn’t a heater in the back because they’d never had occasion to transfer a live murder victim before. Buckeye advised me to leave the trash bag on Classon for added warmth until we got to the emergency room. I leaned over and held the covers down atop him, trying to lend my warmth to his half-frozen body.
Truth be told I was shocked at this bizarre turn of events and trying to get over it, but, man, the fact that he was alive might mean he could tell us who did this terrible thing to him. Simon Classon wasn’t moving at all, not breathing, either, as far as I could tell, but once in a while his ice-crusted eyelids would flutter a little. I had to try.
“Simon, can you hear me?” I still wore my latex gloves, so I pulled the tape off his mouth, deposited it into an evidence bag, and then leaned very close, watching his blue lips, hoping they’d move, that he’d say something, anything, that would help us find his attacker. “Who did this to you, Simon? Please, try to talk, try to tell me. Who did this?”
Simon Classon didn’t move, didn’t utter a word, not even a groan, and I gave up and tried to hold his head steady as Buckeye careened down snow-covered roads, obviously as shook up as I was. We made it to the Canton County Medical Center in under twenty minutes, and I jumped out of the way as the trauma team met the van at a run and pulled the collapsible gurney out and rushed Classon inside. Buckeye and I both raced after them, flashing badges to hospital security as Classon was wheeled through swinging doors into a green-draped trauma room.
“What happened?” The doctor in charge was as young and baby-faced as Noah Wyle, but very calm and collected as his team hoisted the victim onto the examination table. His nameplate said Dr. Bingham.
“Attempted
homicide. We thought he was dead until he opened his eyes.”
“Okay, get him out of that bag, stat.”
About that time, Bud rushed in and we stood out of the way to one side as the nurses took scissors to the black plastic encasing the victim. I knew one of them from my stay in the hospital last summer. Her name was Chris Dale, and she was probably one of the best registered nurses in the county. I was glad she was on shift. When the plastic bag finally came away and was tossed on the floor, Buckeye immediately snatched it up and stuffed it into a large evidence bag, obviously not expecting the man to survive. Inside the garbage bag, Simon Classon was zipped to his neck in a brown, military-issue down sleeping bag.
Bud said, “So that’s how he survived all night in this weather.”
I moved closer as Dr. Bingham unzipped the front of the bag, and the nurses peeled back the flaps to reveal the body. I froze when they screamed in horror and backed away from the table. Then I realized that Simon Classon’s nude body was partially wrapped in some kind of white, gauzy substance that looked like angel hair, the kind of stuff people used around Christmas trees.
“What the hell—?” the doctor began, then jumped back himself as five or six huge spiders skittered out from inside the sleeping bag. Chris Dale screamed as a large brown recluse tried to run up her arm, hysterically batting it off and onto the floor. The doctor stomped on it, and I realized in one sickening moment that it wasn’t angel hair wrapped around Simon Classon’s body but arachnid silk, as soft and white as gauze, a fuzzy cocoon spun by the spiders trapped inside the sleeping bag with their victim.