Give Me Some Sugar

by Gen Griffin

  “Propane or charcoal?”

  “Propane.”

  “He blow himself up?” Lora began poking at the head.

  “How did you guess?”

  “The only way the state board is investigating a small town operation in a Podunk hole in the wall like Callahan County is if something fucked up pretty badly.”

  “Good call.” Sully sat down on a stool that had been pushed against the wall. “In all seriousness, I drove all the way up here because I wanted a professional opinion from someone who actually received their doctorate.”

  “Mmm. Hmm. And to think, I just thought you missed me.” She turned the head over very carefully and began inspecting the bullet hole in the skull. “How are you planning on explaining the epic bill that Silver City is going to send Callahan County for my time? Or did you drag your sorry tail in here after not calling me for months and expect to get a favor?”

  “You can send the bill,” Sully said. “I have legitimate reasons for obtaining an unbiased professional opinion of the head.”

  “What are you hoping I'll tell you?” Lora asked.

  “Tell me everything.”

  “A full report?” She frowned at him. “You're kidding?”

  “Nope. I want everything. Treat it like you've found the Governor's missing nephew.” Sully watched Lora appreciatively as she worked. The girl had a true gift for paying attention to the details More than one case had been made based solely on Lora's findings during an autopsy.

  “You want a full work up on a decapitated head.” Lora turned back towards Sully. “What am I looking for?”

  He shook her head at her. “I'd rather not bias your findings.”

  “You have your own suspicions?”

  “I do.”

  “And your suspicions are enough to make you drive this head across three counties?” Lora put her hands on her hips and waited.

  “No,” Sully studied the skull casually. Even to his untrained eye, it looked like a murder victim. “The person whose trunk I found the head in is the reason I brought it to Silver City for identification and a full work up.”

  “Oh. He a bad dude?”

  “No. Not in the way you're thinking anyway. Possum Creek doesn't have any heavy hitters as far as the criminals are concerned. Most of the crimes are pretty cut and dried.”

  “But this one isn't?”

  “This one probably is too. I'm just being careful,” Sully said. “Tell me what you can tell about the skull and I'll give you more details about how it got in my hands.”

  “Its female. Mid-forties to early fifties. Caucasian. Lousy teeth but she had enough dental work done that you'll be able to match the teeth to any dental records you can find. She's had a couple of root canals and probably two dozen fillings.”

  “She has fillings.” Sully wasn't pleased with the news.

  “Sure. Plenty of them.”

  “Modern fillings.”

  “Done within the last 20 years. She was definitely born after 1960. The dental work is relatively modern. Why?”

  “Shit.” Sully rubbed his forehead tiredly. “There goes my hope that the skull was some kind of antique novelty item.”

  “You were hoping it was some sort of sideshow prop?” Lora was watching him with open curiosity.

  “Its a skull,” Sully pointed out. “I'd rather be dealing with a prop then a murder.”

  “True.” Lora pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Sorry to tell you this, but I think your victim died fairly recently.”

  “Any chance the skull is a medical specimen?”

  “No.” Lora gestured at the head. “Its decapitated and the decomposition is incomplete. Medical schools don't have any use for mostly rotted corpses. The only place that might keep something like this on hand for learning purposes would be a body farm. Body farms don't usually lose their corpses and if they do, they don't lose them in a town like Possum Creek.”

  “You may have a point.”

  “I know what I'm talking about. Besides, the head was severed from the neck with a very rudimentary tool, judging by the damage to the bone. I'll give you a better assessment of the weapon in my full report but for now lets just say you're looking for a weapon similar to an ax.”

  “An ax.” Sully could feel a headache coming on. “Someone shot our victim and then chopped her head off with an ax?”

  “The ax damage actually looks a little more recent than the bullet hole. My guess is that the ax had nothing to do with the cause of death. The head was severed postmortem.”

  Sully stared down at the tool marks on the head. Now that Lora had wiped away the tuna salad and pointed to the discoloration difference between the wounds, he could see what she was talking about.

  “You think someone dug a corpse up and then cut her head off?”

  “I doubt it,” Lora said. “Its a little hard to tell because the rest of the body isn't here, but I don't see any dirt particles or insects on the head. I don't see any signs that she was ever embalmed or prepared for a funeral. Her eyelids weren't sewn or glued shut. Neither were her lips. My unofficial guess is that we're looking at the head of a homicide victim. Her dental work is pretty substantial so I'd say your odds should be good on getting an ID on her. There's still plenty of DNA on the head as well. I can test it against any other samples you might turn up.”

  “That is so not the news I wanted to hear,” Sully muttered.

  “You brought me a human head. Did you really think I was going to tell you that all was perfectly normal?” Lora asked him. “I mean, did you think I was going to say that decapitating folks is the newest pre-burial trend in the industry?”

  “No.” Sully stood up and headed for the coffee pot that was tucked into the furthest corner of the room. Lora trailed after him.

  “I'm going to go ahead and take the dental x-rays as well as run a DNA profile. Maybe you can get your victim identified pretty quickly.”

  “Thanks.” He pulled two mugs off the hooks and filled them to the brim with black coffee. He passed one to Lora. “I was really hoping the skull was going to be a sideshow prop.”

  “Why?” Lora asked. “I'd have thought you'd be grateful to catch a real case. You've got to be bored to death working in that little town in the middle of nowhere. I still can't believe you walked away from your career so you could go help your brother raise his kids. You know McArns got your promotion, right?”

  “I heard.” Sully took a long sip of the hot coffee.

  “You committed career suicide.”

  “I know. I try not to think about it real often. Tate needed me. The girls needed me. I did what I had to do.”

  “You quit your job, sold your house and moved to the middle of nowhere to go be a firefighter. You hate fighting fires.” Lora played with the handle of her mug.

  “Melissa's body ever turn up?” He didn't need her to answer the question.

  “You know it hasn't.”

  “Then I did what I had to do.” Sully set the coffee mug back on the counter. “You said you wanted to know more about the skull.”

  “You're changing the subject.”

  “I am,” Sully acknowledged. “Believe me when I say that I question my own decisions enough. I don't need other people questioning them for me.”

  “Sorry.” Lora looked genuinely embarrassed. “Tell me about the skull.”

  He nodded. “Earlier this afternoon a call came though dispatch reporting that a very specific and easily identifiable vehicle was being used to transport a load of illegal prescription drugs across town. I decided to follow up on the tip and pulled over the vehicle in question for a traffic stop. I searched the car from top to bottom. I did not find any drugs, but I did find this head hidden in the trunk where the spare tire normally goes.”

  “Oh nice.”

  “It gets better. The guy who owns the car in question is Callahan County's least popular sheriff's deputy.”

  “He's a cop.”

  “He's a cop. Barely.” Sully ru
bbed his eyes tiredly.

  “Barely?” Lola tilted her head at him curiously.

  “He needs to lose his badge. He didn't go into law enforcement because he respects the law or wants to help people. He went into law enforcement because he's looking for revenge. He gets off on the power trip he gets from being a cop.”

  “You can get a power trip from being a cop in a county with less than 5,000 people living in it?”

  “You'd be surprised what this guy can get a power trip off of. The first couple of months I was in town, he pulled me over and wrote me over $800 in tickets just because he could. He said he knew Tate and knew I was Tate's brother. He said that I needed to understand that the law in Callahan County wasn't to be ignored. He had no idea I had just resigned from a detective's position with a department six times the size of the Callahan County sheriff's department. He also didn't care that I was the new assistant fire chief for Possum Creek.

  “What an ass.”

  “He doesn't give two flying flips about the brotherhood that's supposed to exist between law enforcement officers.”

  “How did he react to being busted by you?”

  “Not well. He claims he's never seen the head before in his life.”

  “Do you believe him?” Lora asked.

  Sully hesitated and then nodded reluctantly. “He's a total putz. He trips over his own feet and face plants on the sidewalk when he's trying to chase shoplifters out of the gas station. A few months back some teenagers stole his squad car and sunk it in a park fountain in the center of town. He's tried and failed to arrest damn near everyone in the county.”

  “Tried and failed?”

  “Generally speaking, the citizens just ignore him or tell him no. He's maybe 5 foot 6 or five foot seven and a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet. He doesn't have any muscle tone to speak of. He can't run a mile without using his inhaler at least twice.”

  “He can't win a fight,” Lora guessed. “But he could shoot someone.”

  “His aim is horrendous. The sheriff took away his gun and replaced it with a taser because he accidentally shot the windshield out of his own cruiser while trying to check to see if the weapon was loaded. We all know that a shooter can get lucky sometimes, but I'm just having a hard time buying that this guy could take down a horsefly if the horsefly put up a fight. He's been taken hostage by suspects twice in the last year.”

  “You're kidding. You had to have made that one up. No cop gets taken hostage twice in a year.”

  “This poor fuck did,” Sully said.

  “Twice?”

  “Yup.”

  “My god. He doesn't need to be a cop.”

  “No, he doesn't.” Sully picked his coffee mug back up. “It's entirely possible that someone planted that head in the trunk. He puked all over the place when I showed it to him. Projectile vomiting is a fairly hard reaction to fake on a dime. Especially when the person in question is not a good actor.”

  “Does he have any guesses who might have put the head in his car?”

  “The man has an entire county full of enemies and no friends to speak of. He's trying to blame Addison Malone, the county game warden, for putting the head in his car and then calling the tip into dispatch.”

  “You think the game warden is good for it?” Lora asked.

  “If the head had been a prop or a medical specimen, I might have been willing to buy the idea that Addy stuck it in the trunk of Kerry's car to get a cheap laugh. Addison's got a twisted sense of humor and there isn't any love lost between the two of them.”

  “Just two hotblooded American males butting heads or is there more to it?”

  “More to it. Addison's best friend just settled out of court with the county on a harassment lawsuit he filed against Kerry. He's getting a check for $125,000 and a restraining order against the offending officer. Kerry has falsely accused him of murder on so many different occasions that his lawyer made the case that Kerry's behavior has hurt his business and income.”

  “And this Kerry guy hasn't lost his badge yet?”

  “It's coming,” Sully said. “Rumor has it that the sheriff has Kerry's termination paperwork on his desk as we speak.”

  “Sounds like he deserves it. Tell me more about the game warden he's claiming framed him?” Lora propped her head up in her hands and waited for Sully to continue.

  “Addison's a dick but he's a pretty simple dick. Small town good ole boy who never left home. You know that old analogy about a big fish living in a small pond?”

  Lora nodded.

  “Well, Addy's basically a lunker bass living in a puddle. He got his job because his uncle is the sheriff. He's good at his job because everyone in town treats him like a favorite child and he's good to his adoring fan club. He plays cute and dumb well, so people fall all over themselves to help him. He doesn't actually need the help. Tate calls him a small town darling. The term is a little feminine but its accurate enough. If Addison had been a girl, he would have been the county pageant queen.”

  “You don't think he put the skull in the car.” It wasn't a question.

  “Addison can be a real asswipe but he's not half as stupid as he pretends to be. He's been trying to get Kerry fired for around a year now and he's finally won that particular war. Between the two hostage situations, the harassment lawsuit and a collection of citizen complaints that stands eight inches tall and fills three binders, Kerry's goose is cooked. His badge is gone. All Addy has to do is wait 30 days for the paperwork to run through the system and he'll never have to worry about Kerry trying to illegally arrest his buddies without a valid warrant again. Not to mention that once Kerry is discredited, all the complaints Kerry has filed against Addison will also be discredited.”

  “Kerry's filed complaints against your game warden?”

  “Dozens of them. He's accused Addison of favoritism, corruption, taking bribes, sex trafficking and being an accomplice to murder. None of those complaints have been substantiated in any way.”

  “Sex trafficking? In Possum Creek?” Lora didn't even try to hide her skepticism.

  “Kerry is pretty creative with his reports.”

  “Sounds more like he's delusional. Maybe he is your murderer.”

  “Maybe. I really am going to need that full work up on the head. Regardless of my findings, I'm pretty sure that Kerry is going to try to challenge my investigation. My gut instincts tell me that I'll eventually have to account for every single move I make in regards to this case.”

  “Good thing you don't ever make mistakes.” Lora stood back up and blew him a mock kiss. “Doesn't the silly fool know that Detective Sullivan Briggs always gets the bad guys?”

  “This guy wouldn't know what a bad guy was if he tripped over one, as evidenced by his getting taken hostage twice by criminals.” Sully yawned. “I'm going to run on over to central and see if someone will let me borrow their computer while you finish up with the head. Maybe I'll get lucky and some cop has recently found and identified a headless body.”

  “You want them to catch the killer for you too?” Lora teased.

  “That would be beautiful,” Sully smiled at her.

  “Write down your new email address for me, hotshot. I'll send you the dental x-rays and anything else interesting I find. Maybe we can get a positive ID by morning if we both work it hard tonight.”

  “Have I mentioned how much I miss you?” Sully was suddenly filled with a homesick longing to be back among his professional colleagues.

  “Come back to Silver City,” Lora told him. “I bet they'll give you your old desk back.”

  Sully really wished that taking his old position back were an option.

  Chapter 10

  The stripper had cheesy pink hearts pasted over the nipples of her lopsided, slightly droopy breasts. The hearts had tassels dangling from them. The tassels matched the streamers that were hanging from her g-string as she attempted to 'shake dat ass' on the tiny, round stage. Her ass shaking would have been more interesting if
the body part in question hadn't been flat as a pancake. Still, she was making a go of it and maybe, if a guy got drunk enough, she was attractive. Maybe. Cal doubted it. All he saw when he looked at her was stringy brown hair, bad flower tattoos and a cheap spray tan that had run in several places before it dried.

  As Cal made his way past the stage and headed towards the bar, he realized that he'd never wondered what type of girls worked at a small town strip club before midnight on a Thursday. Now he knew. The ugly ones. The tired ones. The ones who had been rode hard, put away wet and then forgotten about. Girls who could be bought for less than a $20.

  One of the strippers slipped off her platform stage and stumbled into him. She caught his arm and immediately grinned up at him through bright red painted lips. She was missing a front tooth. “Hi sexy. I haven't seen you around here before. What's your name?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her, taking in her frizzy blonde curls and glittery leotard. Miniature rubber ducks were floating around on blue gel inside the plastic heels of her shoes. “You don't need my name.”

  “Touchy touchy.” She let go of his arm. “Your wife know your here?”

  Cal gritted his teeth and tried not to react to her catty tone. He was in a shitty mood but that was no excuse for picking fights with hookers. “Sorry. And yes. It's my bachelor's party.”

  “Its your last night as a free man. You poor baby.” The blonde blinked her false eyelashes at him like she didn't buy the excuse. She pressed herself up against him so that the exposed skin on her stomach was pressing against his side. “I can show you a good time, if you're interested?”

  “Oh my god, I never thought I'd see you in a strip club.”

  Cal turned to see a short brunette with breasts the size of melons headed his direction. She was wearing a feather boa and not much else. “Virginia.”

  “I go by Blossom here in the club.” Virginia swished her curvy hips from side to side as she rocked towards him in a pair of spiked platform heels. She was grinning crookedly at him. “Calvin, Calvin, Calvin. What would your Momma say if she knew you were here?”

  “She knows I'm here.” Cal crossed his arms over his thick, muscular chest and took a step away from the blonde. He didn't want her touching him.