by David Archer
“Bingo, right again.”
Sam looked into the young man’s eyes and was surprised to see that Jason really wanted him to get the answer right. He wasn’t sure why, but it definitely mattered to the boy.
“That only leaves revenge,” Sam said. “We have to find someone that felt she had done them wrong, somewhere along the line. The problem with that is that, as you said yourself, nobody had a cross word to say about her.”
Jason started to speak, but Sam was suddenly lost in his thoughts. Actually, someone did have some pretty cross words to say about Millie. Her sister, Judith. Millie stole Judith’s fiancé and had his children. Millie got the wedding and the marriage and the romance and the children and everything. If anyone had a vengeance motive, it had to be Judith Wingo.
Something Jason said caught Sam’s attention, but he couldn’t quite catch it. “Sorry? Would you say that again?”
“I said, there was only one person in the world who might have any bitterness or anger toward Ms. Cameron,” Jason said. “And that one person would have to be…” He looked expectantly at Sam.
Sam blinked. “You know about her sister, then?” he asked.
Jason yanked his head backward and narrowed his eyes. “Sister? She had a sister?”
“Yes,” Sam said. “In fact, her husband was originally engaged to her sister, Judith. He left her after Millie ended up pregnant with his child, and he and Millie were married and moved away.”
Jason’s eyes were about as big around as a dinner plate, and he gave a low whistle. “Well, that really throws a monkey wrench into the machinery,” he said. “Because I didn’t know anything about a sister. I figured it had to be her daughter.”
It was Sam’s turn to look confused. “Debbie? As far as I know, no one has ever suspected Debbie…”
“No, not Debbie,” Jason said. “I’m talking about her other daughter, Debbie’s sister. The one that up and disappeared when she was only thirteen or so.”
Another brief memory suddenly surfaced, a snippet of Debbie’s voice: “I mean, my sister’s disappearance, then Mom being murdered and Ross being accused of it, then Randy falling asleep behind the wheel—they used to say my family was cursed…”
Sam looked at Jason. “What else can you tell me about this other daughter?”
Jason looked at his mother, who leaned forward. “Her name was Lynette,” Mrs. Garrity said. “She was a beautiful girl, but she was always—well, precocious. I think she was about thirteen when she disappeared, but she looked more like a sixteen-year-old if you take my meaning. The boys were constantly sniffing around her, and she was eating up the attention. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just boys who were paying that attention to her, and she got caught with a local man. He was arrested and taken to jail, but she disappeared a couple of days later. Without her, the prosecutor said he couldn’t make the charges stick, so the man was released and everything was dismissed. Nobody knows for sure whatever happened to Lynette, but there were rumors.”
“What kind of rumors?” Sam asked.
Mrs. Garrity glanced at her son, then turned her eyes back to Sam. “Well, that she was sent away to have a child, that she’d gotten pregnant. But the worst rumor was that she had been killed, of course, though nobody really believed it around here. It just seemed kind of odd to everybody that, after she was gone, the man she got in trouble with suddenly seemed to be best friends with her mom and dad.”
9
“Did anyone ever ask Millie what happened?” Sam asked, his eyes wide. “I’d think she would have wanted to quash any rumors.”
Mrs. Garrity shrugged her shoulders with an expression that said she wasn’t all that sure what Millie would want. “She always claimed she didn’t know where the girl had gone,” she said, “and it was no secret that both Ross and Debbie—she was only about six at the time—they both kept asking what happened to Lynette. Some people thought she ran away, some thought she got dropped down one of the old mine shafts around here, but most said she got shipped off somewhere because she was pregnant.”
“You said Lynette was thirteen, but Debbie was only about six,” Sam said. “So, we’re talking about roughly thirty years ago?”
“Something like that,” Mrs. Garrity said. “I’d say probably thirty-two, maybe thirty-three years.”
“Did the sheriff ever look into it? I would think he would have been pretty pissed off if his only witness against a child molester vanished on him.”
Mrs. Garrity shook her head. “I think he might have asked Millie, but that would have been about all. And they didn’t consider it any type of molestation; the guy was only charged with statutory rape. That’s pretty much how they used to look at such things around here.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “So, who was this guy? Is he still around here?”
Mrs. Garrity lowered her eyes to the floor for a moment, then looked back up at Sam. “He’s not around anymore,” she said flatly. “He got into his car one day about six months later and said he was running up to the store to get some cigarettes, and he never came back. Nobody has seen or heard from him since.”
Something in her expression made Sam look closely at her. “Okay,” he said, “but who was he? Do you know his name?”
“Oh, yeah,” the woman said. “His name was Bill Parkinson. The son of a bitch was also my father.”
That explains the animosity I’m sensing, Sam thought. “Do you have any kind of theory on where he disappeared to?”
“Nope,” she said. “And absolutely no interest in finding out. Lynette and I were the same age, and we were pretty much inseparable most of the time. She was my best friend, and when it all blew open I found out that she and my dad had been sneaking around together for three months. It started one night when she was sleeping over at my place, and then they just kept finding chances to meet up. I don’t know whether she was really pregnant or not, because I never got to talk to her after they got caught, but if I had to make a guess I’d say she probably was. I’m one of those who thinks she was sent away, maybe shipped off to some other relative to have the baby and then just never wanted to come home. As for my father, just about everybody believes he found out where she was and went to be with her. Wouldn’t surprise me even a little bit if that’s the case.”
Sam glanced at Jason for a moment, but he could see that the boy had obviously heard all this before. “So, Jason,” he said. “You were thinking that maybe it was Lynette who came and killed Millie?”
The younger man shrugged. “Well, that’s what I thought until you told me about her sister. I can imagine she would have wanted some kind of revenge, too, don’t you think? Gives us another whole suspect.”
“Actually, I think we have three suspects now,” Sam said. He held up one finger. “There’s Judith, Millie’s sister, who hated her for stealing her fiancé away.” Another finger went up. “There’s Lynette, who might have hated her mother for sending her away, that’s possible.” A third finger joined the other two. “And we’ve got Bill Parkinson, your grandfather. If he and Lynette are together out there somewhere, it’s possible he’s the one who killed Millie, in retaliation for whatever damage he thinks the exposure did to their lives.”
Jason gave him a calculating look, but then he shook his head. “It wasn’t him,” he said. “I’m telling you, the killer was a woman. I couldn’t get a good enough look to make any kind of guess on how old the woman might have been, but it was definitely a woman.”
Sam chewed his cheek and thought for a moment. “Let’s get back to the person you saw. Can you remember what kind of clothes she might’ve been wearing?”
“Yeah, sure. Looked like a yellow shirt, and the pants were either brown or a dark red, I’m not certain.”
“That helps quite a bit,” Sam said. “Ross saw the same person in the woods, not long before he came inside and found his mother dead. He specifically mentioned a yellow shirt and brown pants, and that the person was wearing a black hat. He said he saw whoever it was drop the hat, so h
e went and looked down at it and saw that it had a feather on it. Did you notice anything about a feather?”
Jason screwed up his face and thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Seems like I might have noticed something back then, but I really can’t remember now. I don’t know if I’m remembering that I saw a feather or if I’m imagining I saw one because you mentioned it, know what I mean?”
Sam grinned. “I understand, and that’s good thinking on your part. Have you ever thought of going into police work? You think like an investigator, I can tell you that.”
Jason smiled and blushed. “Actually, I’ve applied to every police department within fifty miles but always get turned down. I’ve had some little scrapes with the law, and they probably ruined me.”
“Don’t give up,” Sam said. “As long as you don’t have any felonies on your record, you can still become a cop. Think about going to college, maybe study criminal justice. You might have to go farther away to find a job, but I’m sure you can.” He rose to his feet. “You’ve given me a lot of information, and I really appreciate it. Now I’ll give you a bit. I went over to Millie’s house before I came here, just to look it over, and a lady came over and gave me the keys, so I went inside. I…”
“Oh, oh,” Jason said, and his mother’s face suddenly looked ashen. “Did you—did anything weird happen?”
Sam grimaced. “Well, she had warned me that, as she put it, the place is haunted. At first, it just felt kind of weird in there, but then all of a sudden this tin can, like a big coffee can, came rolling across the floor at me, and it just about scared me to death. But then it stopped, and a mouse came running out of it, so I managed to get my heartbeat back under control. I did see a couple of other weird things, though; in one of the bedrooms, the one that I think must have been Ross’s room, there’s a manikin all dressed up in bib overalls and a straw hat. Would you know anything about that?”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “After old man Cameron died, Ross found that thing somewhere and dressed it up like his daddy. I guess it helped him cope with the old man being gone, or at least that’s what everybody said.”
Sam nodded. “That would make sense, I guess. I just wondered about it. The other thing, though, it was pretty spooky. I went into the kitchen and was just standing there, and all of a sudden one of the cabinet doors opened up, one of the upper cabinets. For a second I thought I saw a face looking out, but then it was gone and I saw something else inside.” He took a deep breath. “I’m pretty sure it was the hat that the person you saw was wearing. It’s a black leather hat, like one of those military-style hats that fold flat, and it had some kind of a feather attached to it. I was wondering if you might have any idea how it could have gotten into the cabinet?”
Jason’s eyes were wide, and so were his mother’s. Mrs. Garrity was the first one to speak.
“I don’t think we have any idea at all,” she said. “I can tell you this, though. It wasn’t there the last time I was in that house, but that was back when Debbie and her husband were trying to gather up whatever they wanted to keep from it, maybe a couple weeks after the old woman died. I know it wasn’t there because I was helping her, and I opened every cabinet in the kitchen to see if there was anything in it they might want.” She shivered, and the look on her face reflected fear. “That’s really, really strange. I can’t imagine who would’ve put that there, or who might have known it even existed. I don’t think I ever heard about a hat until today.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Jason said. “You said Ross saw the hat after whoever it was tossed it away, but did he say anything about picking it up?”
“No,” Sam said, shaking his head. “Quite the opposite. According to Ross, he left it laying right where it was. He had said that it had gotten dirty because dirt had stuck to blood that was on the hat, and the one I found has dark mud stains on it. I found a trash bag and tucked it inside, I’m going to take it to the sheriff to see if maybe there might be some hairs inside it from whoever was wearing it. If there is, a good lab can pull DNA from them.”
“Man,” Jason said, “that is really weird. The only other person who would even have known the hat existed would be the killer, and she surely wouldn’t have gone back to put it inside the house. Maybe one of those cops? But that wouldn’t make any sense, either, because they wouldn’t have put it in a kitchen cabinet.”
“I agree, that wouldn’t make any sense. Listen, the lady who gave me the keys didn’t wait around, and I didn’t see where she went. She said her name was Marie. Would you…”
Mrs. Garrity had leapt to her feet. “Marie?” she asked, her eyes wide. “What did she look like?”
A chill went down Sam’s spine. “About five feet tall, kind of chunky. Looks like she might be in her sixties?”
“And she gave you keys?”
Sam reached into his pocket and pulled the key ring out. “Yeah, these,” he said.
The woman stared at the keys in his hand for a moment, then looked up at his eyes. “Mr. Prichard,” she said slowly, “the only Marie I ever knew around here was Marie Logan, and you just described her pretty well. The only problem with that is that she died three years ago. Up until then, she looked after the house for Debbie and her husband, but when she died no one could ever find the keys.”
Sam stared at her for a moment and then looked at the keys in his hand. “This is getting crazy,” he said. “I don’t know what to think, let alone what to believe. You’re trying to tell me that a ghost gave me these keys?”
Mrs. Garrity shrugged, but the expression on her face did not change. “This is an old town,” she said. “You ask around here, you’ll find an awful lot of folks who believe in ghosts. Like Mrs. Jackson—she died back in ’71 when the tornado came through town, but there are at least a couple dozen people around here who saw her walking around at her own funeral, and she’s been seen many times since then. Marie Logan—there’s only one other person who ever claimed to have seen her since she died, and that was her son, Lester. He claims he’s seen her two or three times, and always just before somebody dies.”
Sam shook his head and started to turn toward the door. “Okay, listen, thank you both for your time. I need to…” He stopped and turned back to Jason. “One more question,” he said. “You said you were on the way to see Millie when you saw this woman running out the back door, right?”
Jason frowned. “I didn’t actually see her come out the door,” he said, “but I did see her hurry across the backyard and into the woods.”
Sam nodded. “Okay, I got that. What did you do next? Did you go on up to the house?”
“Yeah, I went up and knocked on the door, but nobody answered. I yelled a couple times to see if she was home, then I turned around and left.”
Sam looked at the boy for a moment. “You didn’t look through the window on the door?”
Jason shook his head. “Well, no,” he said. “Mom always told me it was rude to look in somebody’s windows, so I guess it just didn’t even occur to me.”
Sam nodded and thanked him, then walked out the door toward his truck. As he opened the driver’s door to get in, Jason suddenly appeared beside him.
“Mr. Prichard,” he said, “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’ve got to tell you. I think maybe there’s something about the way Ms. Cameron died that—well, that nobody has figured out. You know the cops said Ross just beat her to death, right? With his hands, I mean?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “You have another theory?”
“I read something not long ago that made me think about that again. See, the human skull can take an awful lot of pressure, like five hundred and twenty pounds on average, so those TV shows where somebody crushes somebody else’s skull, that’s bogus. Now, just to fracture a skull to the point that it penetrates into the brain takes about three hundred and twenty pounds applied to a particular spot. So I checked out how much force the average person can deliver with a fist, without any kind of martial arts t
raining, and it’s about a hundred pounds, give or take twenty percent. But then you have to take into account the fact that most of the damage to her skull was done on the sides, so you have to factor in the fact that it would be moving with every blow. That would take away some of the force of each blow, so it’s really just about impossible to believe that he could’ve done that much damage just by swinging his fists at her.”
Sam nodded. “You’re not the first one to come to that conclusion, but that’s the first time I’ve heard it explained so well. The problem is that once the police decided Ross was guilty, they didn’t even look for a murder weapon. Now, eight years later, it’s a pretty cold trail. I don’t know that we can ever determine exactly what it might have been.”
“A forensic pathologist could,” Jason said. “Even after eight years of being in the grave, the damage to her skull won’t have changed. If it could be arranged to have the body exhumed, and a good forensic pathologist examine it…”
“You’re right, of course,” Sam said, “but exhuming a body is not necessarily an easy thing to do. Do you happen to know where Millie was buried?”
“Yeah. She was buried at the cemetery out south of town. Freeman Cemetery, that’s what it’s called.”
Sam nodded thoughtfully. “Let me mull this over, and I’ll probably talk to Debbie about it. If we can establish that it was physically impossible for Ross to have done this the way the police say, then it would cast some doubt on the whole investigation. The fact that they never came up with any kind of murder weapon might just show how incompetent the sheriff’s office was in this case.”
Jason grinned and shrugged. “Cool,” he said. “And thanks for hearing me out. Nobody else would even listen to me.”
Sam patted the boy on the shoulder and climbed into his truck. He started the engine and turned around, then headed back toward Benton. Despite the fact that it was a Saturday, Sam wanted to try to speak to the sheriff’s deputies who had arrested Ross.
The sheriff’s office was located in the Criminal Justice Center on East Main Street, and Sam pulled in and parked in front of the building. As he climbed out, he reached under the seat and retrieved the trash bag that contained the hat and tucked it under his arm. When he got inside, a receptionist greeted him and directed him to the actual sheriff’s office, just off the lobby.