by Mark Tufo
Justin nodded. “But, there’s a lot of shit going on here that just doesn’t add up.”
“Like what?”
“Like a total lack of physical evidence!” Justin exclaimed quietly.
“What?” He turned and pointed to the body. “Dude, there’s a dead body right there. There’s a rope hanging around his neck. How much more physical evidence do you want?”
Justin nodded and grabbed him by the arm. “Come here.” He pulled him over to the tree where the body was hanging. “Denise pointed this out to me. I didn’t even notice it.”
“What, man? I’m not seeing anything.”
“The ground.” He pointed to the grass. “The Davidsons have an automatic sprinkler system. See how lush and green this lawn is? Notice how soft and spongy the yard is? See how we’ve all left foot print traffic?”
“Yeah, so?”
“There weren’t ANY prints under the tree when we got here. None, zero, zilch, nada.”
Eckerson cocked his head to the side. “That’s not possible…”
Justin placed his finger on the end of his nose and smiled. “Bingo,” he said softly. “How does a perp drag a two hundred and twenty pound football player all the way over here, work the rope up and over that limb, cinch him up and tie the rope off without so much as a ladder? Do you see how tall that damn tree limb is? You should have seen what it took for Guffey’s guys to get up there just to cut the friggin’ rope.”
Eckerson stepped back and shook his head. “There’s a logical explanation.”
“Explain how he was tossed out the second story window and there’s no impact area below.”
Eckerson turned and looked and then smiled. “Perp carried him down the stairs. Easy.”
“Doors were locked from the inside when we arrived.”
“The girl locked them again afterward.”
“She was too far gone, brother. She was in shock when we arrived.”
Jeff looked around. “Where is she now? Did you get her statement?”
Justin shook his head. “She was in no shape to give a statement. Bennie took her to the Medical Center to get checked out and get her some kind of ‘Calm-the-Fuck-Down-Pill’ so that maybe we could get a statement that made sense.”
“Ben Gregory?”
“Yeah. He’s kin to her somehow. He got her calmed enough to get the initial statement.”
Jeff snorted. “Shit. Bennie Gregory is about half off his rocker anyway. More than likely, he’s the one that told her to say that a ghost did it so she can claim insanity at her trial.” Eckerson shook his head and gave Justin a sideways look. “There’s always a logical explanation.”
Justin nodded. “Okay. So, this Brian…” he flipped through his notes, “Brian Culley, star football player, who outweighs her two-to-one and was about to rape her, suddenly finds himself being tossed around the room by this hundred and five pound sixteen-year-old girl, then she figures out a way to drag him out to her yard without being seen by neighbors, ties a perfect hangman’s knot, pulls him up into this old oak tree and shimmies up into the tree and ties it off while he’s dangling from it, then goes back into the house and hides under the covers without so much as breaking a nail?” Justin mocked. “Makes perfect sense to me. Why don’t you write that up in your report and we’ll see what Scott thinks.”
Jeff smiled at him, “Why don’t you write up that Casper the friendly ghost dragged his ass out here and hung him like a piñata and we’ll see what Scott thinks.”
Justin blanched. “I’m not saying she’s right. I’m just saying that things smell fishy as hell.”
“Excuse me, deputies?” the medical examiner said, waving them over.
“Did you find something else?” Justin asked.
“We have an anomaly here that…well, I just can’t quite explain at the moment.” He lifted Brian’s t-shirt. “I didn’t notice this when I first did the liver temp, but when we rolled him to put him in the body bag, we noticed his back.” They rolled him on his side and pulled the shirt over his chest.
“Jesus. That looks like a bullet wound.” Jeff said.
“Yes, it does, except, there’s no blood loss,” the medical examiner stated. “I’ll know more once I get him back and do a thorough exam.”
Justin looked closer at the entry wound and the much larger exit wound. “How the hell could he have been shot and there not be a hole in his shirt?”
“I have no idea, gentlemen. I just tell you the state of the body as we find them. I can’t tell you how they get in that condition.”
Justin sighed. “How soon?”
“I’ll get started on him first thing.” Both deputies watched them zip up the body bag and roll him away.
Justin turned to Jeff. “So, shot and hung.” He shook his head again. “We didn’t find any casings around here.”
“So he was shot with a revolver,” Eckerson stated.
“Right. One that can shoot through a body without piercing the t-shirt.” Justin said. “That’s either one hell of a fancy revolver, or one helluva tough t-shirt.”
“There’s a logical explanation,” Jeff insisted.
“I’m sure there is,” Justin replied. “And when you figure out what it is, let me know.”
*****
Sheriff Evans set aside the reports that Justin and Eckerson had prepared from the previous night and turned to his day shift senior detective, Deputy Jason Knapp. “Did you read them both?”
Knapp was holding his copies in his lap and still shaking his head. “Justin’s reads like a bad horror novel, and Jeff’s is simply a statement of facts. A complete reversal for them both.”
Scott took off his reading glasses and pushed away from his desk. “Maybe they’ve been on nights too long?” he shrugged. “Lack of sleep or something.”
“I’ll admit, this case seems pretty odd, but it’s preliminary. They just picked it up.”
Scott shook his head. “From what I’m reading, there isn’t much to go on besides the girl’s statement…and Bennie took it.” He picked up the file again. “Made of smoke or mist or some such…”
“Mist. Looked like a mist, she said.” Jason nodded. “Normally, I’d just dismiss it, but her tox-screen came back clean. Alcohol level was zero. No known drugs.”
“Her grandmother pick her up?” Scott asked.
“Yeah. Her parents should be back by now. You know, DPS will most likely get involved anyway.” He was testing the waters and he knew it. “Why not invite them in and have their lab guys go over the rope? Maybe they can find some DNA or something.”
Scott looked up from the file again and gave him a less than friendly stare. “It’s being hand delivered to their lab as we speak. Their lab can go over it and give us the results without having a Ranger down here poking his nose into things.”
“Completely understandable.” He sat back and gave Scott a goofy smile. “The fun part will be if you can convince DPS to play along and stay out of it.”
“Easy enough if we don’t tell them,” Scott said. “What they don’t know won’t hurt us.”
“Yeah, sounds easy. But it’s funny as hell how they always find out.” He stretched as he stood up. “You may want to call the medical examiner and ask him to not make that phone call until after we’ve solved this case.”
“Already done,” Scott said.
*****
“We need to think of the best way to get that rich bastard.” Roger cracked open another beer. The two had driven out of town and parked in an open cow pasture to get drunk and plot their revenge. “I want to make him suffer.”
“But, Roger, he gave us good money,” Casper argued. “Why kick a hornet’s nest?”
“The son of a bitch took us, and he knows it!” He threw his empty bottle against a tree. “We know it and he knows it,” he barked as he twisted the top off another.
“But if you go screwing with him, we can’t make no more money off of him,” Casper whined. “You’d be burning bridges.”
“Bridges?!” Roger screamed, sloshing his beer as he flung his arms wide. “You’re worried about letting that bastard take advantage of us again, after he screwed us the way he did?” He stomped as he got up into Casper’s face, breathing hard. “You’re so fucking spineless, it’s hurting me.”
“I’m just saying that we should think about this a bit more before you go and do something that—”
“I’ve already thought about it!” He stormed away, pacing in circles. “He took us, and now we need to make him hurt. It’s as simple as that.”
Casper sat in the dirt and leaned against the back tire of the truck. “Okay, Rog, if you say so,” he sighed. “What are we gonna do?”
“I dunno yet. But we gotta make it good. We gotta make him hurt. We gotta hit him where it hurts. How do you hurt someone who has everything?” he asked more to himself.
“I dunno, Rog…take his money?” Casper guessed.
“Naw, rich bastards like that keep their money in Swiss bank accounts or something. What means more than money to someone like him?”
“Family?” Casper asked.
“Shit. That son of a bitch would feed his kin to the hogs to save on slop,” Roger shot back. “Besides, he ain’t got no family. Stingy bastard wouldn’t spend the money on a date so nobody would have him.”
“Then what, Rog?”
Roger continued to pace then paused. “His stuff.” He snapped his fingers with a grin.
“His stuff?”
“His western stuff,” Roger said expectantly. “The crap he had us digging up for him. That shit meant more to him than anything else in his damned house. Didn’t you see his display case?”
“Well, yeah, but…his house is a fortress. How would we get to it?”
Roger thought a bit and shook his head. “I’m not sure yet, but give me time and I’ll think of something.”
8
“It’s a gunshot wound, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out how.” The medical examiner stripped his gloves and tossed them in the medical waste container. He made new notes in his log and shook his head. “The liver temp taken on the scene indicated that he had been dead less than an hour when we removed him from the tree, yet the body had been exsanguinated.” He looked Justin and Jeff in the face, “That isn’t possible.”
“Unless he was hung up there by a vampire, right?” Jeff asked jokingly.
The ME chose to ignore him, “The blood in the body is what helps to maintain the temperature. By draining it, the body should have cooled faster.”
“So the body must have just been drained before we got there?” Justin asked.
The ME removed his glasses and set them down. “It would appear so. But honestly, gentlemen, nothing in this case is making sense.” He crossed his arms and stared at the two men. “Please tell me the evidence is pointing to some kind of explanation, because honestly, this is baffling as hell.”
Justin and Jeff both looked at each other and shrugged. “Honestly, Doc, we’re not finding anything about this case that makes any sense,” Jeff said. “All we’ve really got is the girl’s statement and that isn’t looking very solid right now.”
“Why were you so late getting on the scene, young man?” the ME asked, poking at Eckerson in jest. “You’re usually one of the first to roll up on something like this.”
“Actually, Doc, I was at another crime scene. I turned it over to another officer to work for now.”
“Not another DB, I hope.”
“Actually,” Eckerson nodded, “about eighty of them. Somebody dug up an old graveyard.”
“Why in the hell…” the ME asked.
“Grave robbers, I suspect. It was over at Little Hope.”
The ME nodded. “The ghost town. Well, some people have more spare time than sense.” He turned and picked up his notes. “I’ll get this typed up and I’ll email you both when I’m done. Let Scott know that I’m sorry I couldn’t give him any more answers. Just more questions.”
“You did what you could, Doc. Thanks,” Justin said as they turned to go. He paused outside the autopsy room. “We’ve got to be missing something.” He placed his hands on his hips and stared off down the hall. “I’m going back to the scene and see what I can find. Why don’t you interview the parents of the girl and just see if they can give you some insight into her relationship with the vic.”
“Alright. I’ll meet you at Ruby’s when I’m done.”
*****
Roger Culley snuck up to the back of Miller’s house, keeping the low row of hedges between himself and the structure. Casper was right on his heels but stumbling in the dark. In the shadows of the twilight, the roots of the brush breaking through the earth appeared to his drug eaten mind as knurled fingers from rotting hands, reaching from their graves to grab and trip him. He was frightened enough of what old man Miller would do to him if they were caught, but the fear of what lay hidden in the dark, the rumors of Miller’s enemies buried in shallow graves behind his great house was enough to rattle his nerves to the point of wetting himself.
Roger found the corner of the house and searched in vain for a security camera. Satisfied that there were none, he slid along the wall to the very back door they had come in before and wiggled the handle.
He turned to Casper and shook his head. “Locked.”
“Let’s go back, Rog. I don’t like the way this feels,” Casper whispered.
“No! We’re gonna make the fucker pay.”
Roger looked around the back patio for a place to hide a key. He picked up a rock and looked under it. He ran his hand under the edge of the railing. He then felt along the top of the door jam, all came up empty. “I’m gonna kick it in.”
“It’s a slider, Rog, you can’t!” Casper said.
Roger looked around again and picked up the rock. Hefting it in his hand he threw it against the sliding glass and heard a disheartening thunk as it struck the middle of the glass and bounced away. His jaw went slack as he stared at the huge glass door and then at the rock.
Casper waved his hands, “Roger! The window!” He pointed. The small window leading into the private study sat slightly open, a breeze blowing the curtains within. “If we’re careful, we can be in and out and he’ll never know.”
Roger cocked his head as he looked at the window then grinned at Casper. “Maybe you ain’t so stupid after all, Cas.”
He stepped over to the window and peered through. The screen slipped out of its clips easily enough and he set it aside. He had Casper cup his hands and boost him up inside. Once Roger was in, he went around and unlocked the sliding door for Casper then checked the door leading to the hallway. Casper finished putting the screen in the window and came walking in the sliding glass door, obviously still nervous.
“Please, let’s just do this and get out.”
Roger stared at the display case and smiled. He went close to the trophy case and read the brass plaques. “I’ll be dipped in shit. Lookit this.” He pointed to the stuff in the middle of the display case. “The old man got some shit from Wyatt Earp.” He clapped his hands together and pulled Casper close. “I think we need to make them ours.”
“Jesus, Rog. What the hell are we gonna do with shit like this? We can’t hock it for shit. We can’t eat it, it’s worthless to us.”
Roger slugged him across the shoulder. “Shut up, dammit. This ain’t for us. It’s to hurt him for fucking us!” He looked around the office and tried to find something to pry open the doors. “Help me find something to get this thing open.”
Casper dug around the office while Roger tried to pry the doors open. He pulled his folder knife and tried to jimmie the lock, then shoved the blade between the doors themselves and tried to pry the doors open. Casper came up with a trophy for Champion Horsemanship that Roger broke beating against the clear acrylic.
“Sonovabitch!” He threw the base aside then grabbed Miller’s chair and threw it against the doors, watching it ricochet off to the side, landing in a pil
e of books and spilling them across the floor.
Roger kicked the base of the cabinet in frustration. “Open up, you mother fucker!” He punched at the thick, clear acrylic, not realizing that it was, in fact bullet proof.
Casper grabbed his arm. “Rog, somebody’s coming.” He pointed to the door leading to the hallway. Roger quieted and could hear the click of shoes quickly approaching the door. He ran to the door and turned the lock under the knob just as the handle began to turn.
“Mr. Miller, are you in there?” a woman’s voice asked in heavily accented English.
“Fuck,” Roger whispered. “I forgot about the maid lady.”
“What do we do?” Casper asked, beginning to freak out. “She might call the cops.”
Roger looked at the door and then back at the cabinet. His beating on the doors and throwing the chair against it had knocked many of the old west collectibles off of their display stands and had made a mess of the display. “We run, dammit.” He grabbed Casper and the two darted out of the sliding glass door and into the darkening night.
*****
Eckerson pulled into Ruby’s and had just turned off the engine of the Charger when Justin pulled in. Justin gave him a questioning look and Jeff shook his head. The parents denied any knowledge of their daughter’s relationship with the football player and Eckerson believed them.
Both men had just called 10-7 on their radios and walked into Ruby’s ordering coffee and picking their booths when Justin’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID and saw it was the sheriff’s office.
He hiked a brow as he glanced at Eckerson and flipped open his phone. “Yeah, Brenda?”
“Both of you at Ruby’s?” she asked, her voice shaky.
“Yeah, why?”
“You’re back, 10-8,” she announced, calling them back into service. “We got another one.”
“Another what?” Justin feared he knew exactly what she meant.
“Another body. Like the last one. Sort of.” She sounded distracted.