Last Girl Gone

by J. G. Hetherton

  “I know you don’t, Laura. I know.”

  And just as quickly, the rage burned bright again. It had lingered inside her, nourished by the ember of her guilt until it could catch fire once more.

  “You know? You know?” she yelled.

  The nearest small object was her water glass. She hurled it against the brick wall and watched the shards rain down.

  Jasmine DeVane was quiet. She was wise enough to let silence do the talking.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I’m really sorry. I just—”

  “I know,” Jasmine said again.

  “I need to go. Can we stop for today?”

  “Of course. You’re the best gauge of your own mood. If you think it would be better to take a break and continue next time, then that’s what we should do.”

  “Okay,” Laura said, and stood. She gathered her bag and her jacket and put a hand on the door handle. Behind her, she heard Jasmine DeVane stand.

  “Laura?”

  “Tomorrow, okay?”

  “Laura, I want you to say his name for me.”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Say his name and we’ll be done for the day. Say his name and count it a victory. It has no power over you.”

  Laura turned, and the warm, encouraging look on Jasmine’s face melted her defenses. Her therapist was just about her only friend. It was a thought so utterly sad she had to fight off a bout of sudden, manic laughter.

  When she spoke, the words came out so quietly, they were almost gone before they arrived. “Eugene Hobbes.”

  “Again,” Jasmine said.

  “Eugene Hobbes,” she said, then turned and left the building.

  MASS-MURDER TRAIL LEADS TO TRAGIC PAST

  Colin Smythe, Times Staff Writer

  August 4, 2017

  HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — The gruesome trail left across North Carolina by Eugene Francis Hobbes began with a heartbreaking childhood, according to a new journal discovered by his ex-wife.

  A month has passed since the disappearance of Teresa Mitchem and the murder of Olive Hanson, and the killings of Susan Gilroy, Alina Scopoloto, and Maria Mendelsohn occurred more than three decades ago. For many close to the case, it remains a harrowing, interminable experience. Their largest questions have always been the chief concerns of any murder investigation: who, and why?

  Eugene Francis Hobbes was born in 1948 deep in the Ouachitas, the remote mountains of Arkansas. It was a home birth onto a dirt floor, and he was a large baby. His mother bled to death within a few hours, long before any help could reach them.

  His father died in 1953, and Eugene and his brother, Charles, were sent to live with an uncle in east Texas. He joined the army in 1966, and his fingerprints and photograph were taken as a matter of routine. The former would later be used to identify his body; the latter depicts a squint-eyed young man with a crew cut and ghastly acne scarring. He married his first wife in 1975, and they divorced in 1976. In 1979 he married Aubrey Craig, with whom he had one daughter, and they divorced early in 1988.

  Between 1988 and 2017, when he was the victim of an apparent suicide, no record of his movements or activities has been found. His motives have remained shrouded in mystery, but a journal discovered by his second wife, a copy of which has been obtained by the Times, describes a devastating childhood and offers insight into the making of a monster.

  The journal records his earliest memory: shouldering the blame for the death of his mother. At the hands of his father and older brother he was beaten, made to sleep outside, forced to eat raw meat, and required to defecate himself on command. His uncle, with whom he later lived, served three years in a Texas state penitentiary for sexual coercion of a minor. Hobbes relates the abuse he and his brother suffered at his uncle’s hands, and how he was subsequently abused by his brother alone.

  According to his journal, Eugene Hobbes killed his brother when he was eighteen and Charles was twenty-one. His account has them driving back into Arkansas, up into the Ouachitas. With the help of a bottle of whiskey, a gun, and some strong handcuffs, he apparently subdued his brother, then forced him to dig a hole in the earth before choking him to death.

  Police sources have confirmed the discovery of a body, not as yet officially identified, at the location described in the journal.

  He remarried in 1979 and moved to Hillsborough, North Carolina, his new wife’s hometown. In 1988 she filed for divorce, alleging abuse against their ten-year-old daughter, and obtained custody and a restraining order. Reports from those who knew him at the time portray a man with a strange, antisocial personality unhinged by the destruction of his family, and elements of the timeline seem to support that this was a pivotal moment: not too long after the loss of his daughter, he met little Susan Gilroy.

  “They don’t have anything to say,” said the Gilroy family attorney, Lawrence Phillips. “You can imagine their state of mind.”

  The families of the other victims did not respond to a request for comment.

  CHAPTER

  23

  ORANGE COUNTY SHERIFF was an elected position, and Michael Fuller looked more like a politician than a lawman. His bespoke navy suit sported a subtle pinstripe, and his white dress shirt was of the starched, spread-collar variety. He had a forest-green tie with a ruby stickpin and a baby face split down the middle by a hooked nose of epic proportions. It worked for him though. Without the nose he would have been too perfect. With it, he played a very convincing everyman.

  He was up and around the desk before she finished opening the door. He stuck out a hand. “Miss Chambers, Miss Chambers, how are you today?”

  “Fine,” Laura said, and put her hand in his.

  He squeezed and held it, treating his captive to a hundred-watt smile. His teeth were whiter than seemed natural, and he smelled of expensive aftershave.

  “So sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  “Actually, I just got here.”

  “Hmm? Where are my manners? Please, take a seat.” He pulled out a leather club chair for her.

  She sat. “You were the district attorney, right?”

  He nodded. “Let me assure you, Miss Chambers, that no one in my office—my old office—knew anything about the reports you made to my predecessor, or about the, er, adversarial nature of his response.”

  “He called me a liar and refused to even see my evidence. I think he was about this close”—she held up her thumb and forefinger a quarter inch apart—“to just throwing me in a cell.”

  Fuller tutted disapprovingly. “Terrible. If my office had known, believe me, we would have taken swift, decisive action.”

  “Pretty easy to say that now.”

  He spread his arms. “Considering I wasn’t contacted at the time, this is the only chance I’ve had to say anything at all.”

  “You could have condemned McKinney for his mistake.”

  “Condemned? He’s not on death row, Miss Chambers. One mistake does not a lifetime of public service negate.”

  “He cost lives. He killed Frank Stuart.”

  Fuller tutted again, and this time it was aimed at her. “Hardly. We all know who killed Deputy Stuart.”

  “Actually, that’s why I’m—”

  Fuller ran right over her with his resonant bass fricatives. “That’s not to diminish his mistake, you understand. He should have listened to you. No one is denying that.”

  “Didn’t seem to stop him from winning a state senate seat,” Laura said.

  “I can understand how that must be perplexing to someone with your experience of the man.” He came around the desk and poured two glasses of water from a crystal pitcher and placed one in front of her. “But not everyone saw him that way. This is politics. Any publicity is good publicity.”

  “Even when a deputy gets killed?”

  “All’s well that ends well. A savage threat to the public was dispatched.”

  Laura’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “So Frank
was what? An acceptable loss?”

  Fuller stood again and yanked down on his lapels, straightening his jacket. When he spoke, the note of secrecy was gone from his voice. “Of course not. No officer is expendable. But you and I are talking about an election, which is really just a matter of mathematics. Month after month, McKinney’s name was all over the news because of that story.” He paused. “What do you think a candidate for state senate normally spends in this part of the state?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Fuller stared off into space, adding up the figures. “Couple of hundred thousand, maybe?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know.”

  His eyes snapped back in her direction. “Anyway, you can’t buy advertising that good. His opponent didn’t stand a chance.”

  Laura wrung her hands. “So basically, I got him elected.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.”

  “Someone needs to hear what I have to say.”

  Fuller returned to his chair and sat back, comfortable. “No reason that can’t be me. I’m all ears.”

  “I’m sure you’ve had a lot of people telling you everything there is to know about the Eugene Hobbes case. Investigators, evidence techs, probably even other reporters.”

  Fuller raised one eyebrow.

  “But among all those experts, I’m a very special and unique case: the only eyewitness. No one else was there.”

  “The boy, the photographer?”

  “He didn’t come down to the cabin until after it was all over. I’m your only real eyewitness, and I’m here to clarify my statement. You see, in the context of the coroner’s report—”

  “The coroner’s report. Has that been made public?”

  Laura frowned. “I’m using it to help you understand the holes in the official narrative.”

  “Okay, Miss Chambers, now you’ve got me interested. I was a lawyer, remember? Digging holes in stories was my stock-in-trade.”

  “So what do you make of his legs?”

  He smiled at her. “You must still have a few sources to know about that.”

  “The coroner speculated that he hadn’t walked in years.”

  “He shouldn’t have done that,” Fuller said. “But his legs were quite atrophied, and it is suggestive. Still, he could have been in a wheelchair.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “That’s exactly what I’m here to refute. I made a statement that night, a detective wrote it all down, and I signed it. I think seeing Deputy Stuart hurt like that—”

  “You were in shock.”

  “I wasn’t thinking straight. A few days later I actually read the damn thing.”

  “And it was wrong,” Fuller said.

  “No, it’s technically accurate. But it misses a lot of nuances. Things that didn’t seem important at the time become incredibly so in light of the fact Eugene Hobbes didn’t have use of his legs.”

  Fuller frowned. “Go on.”

  “Well, in my statement it just says I saw him emerge from his hiding place in the leaves and go into the cabin after Stuart. That’s correct, but it leaves out how he moved.”

  “And how, may I ask, did he move?”

  “Fluid. Light. Like an athlete. He ran to the cabin, but without making any real noise. The man I saw certainly was not in a wheelchair. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Hobbes could walk. Even then, the man I saw wasn’t anywhere near seventy years old.”

  “How old would you say he was?”

  “In his physical prime. Forty or under.”

  Fuller tapped his pen against his temple. “Interesting.”

  “It’s a hell of a lot more than interesting. How does that square with an old man whose legs don’t work?”

  “So you’re saying there was someone else up there.”

  Laura watched his face closely. This was the tricky part. “I know how that sounds,” she said. “Pretend we’re at trial. This is what they call a third-man defense, right?”

  “Certainly. The idea that the crime was committed by someone else entirely.”

  “So maybe we could just, hypothetically, pretend I’m defending Eugene Hobbes, and I could lay out my trial strategy.”

  He nodded, intrigued.

  “I was there. I saw him move. I saw how it could have been done. The first thing you have to understand is the angle. The cabin stood with its front door facing us. Behind it was a shed. From up on high I could just make out the shed’s roof; once I got down onto the ground, it was completely concealed behind the cabin. They found electrical tape near Hobbes’s body, and in the report they attribute it to the stock of the shotgun, which was wrapped in the same kind of tape. They assume some came loose, clumped together, fell on the ground.

  “I have a different idea. I think our third man had Eugene Hobbes as a captive. I think he had him restrained in that shed, the shotgun already loaded and taped into his mouth, so that when the time came…”

  Laura brought her hands together and then threw them apart, mimicking an explosion.

  “He could do it without delay, you see?” she continued. “And the torn bits of electrical tape would have been about all that was left. I mean, the shot tore apart his skull. How much tape would survive under those conditions? Hobbes’s hands were restrained, his legs were useless, all he had to do was drag him out of the shed and pull the trigger. You’ve been up there?”

  Fuller nodded.

  “Someone shoved that door shut, and I had to fight my way out of the bedroom. Someone shoved a knife into Frank Stuart, got Hobbes out of the shed, killed him, and then pulled his finger through the trigger guard. It’s also possible that Frank was already dead by the time I got to the cabin, but even if he wasn’t, all that could have been done in ninety seconds, maybe less.”

  Fuller waited for her to continue, and when he saw she was done, said, “How long were you trapped in the bedroom?”

  “About that. Perhaps two minutes. I didn’t look at my watch.”

  “In stressful situations, time seems to stretch. Is it possible what felt like two minutes was really a matter of seconds?”

  “No,” Laura said. “I had to find the pickaxe and then physically break down the door. It took some time.”

  Fuller nodded. “I can’t say you’re wrong, Miss Chambers. I wasn’t up there. Things could have happened just the way you say they did.”

  “You think I’m lying?”

  “You misunderstand me. You yourself didn’t see what happened behind the cabin, so your version is speculative. I’m saying—yes, I can’t prove that it didn’t happen just that way. I also can’t prove the real killer isn’t John Wayne. You see? You’re asking me to prove a negative.”

  “Goddamn it, his legs didn’t work. How can you explain it any other way?”

  Fuller leaned back in his chair and adjusted the knot in his tie. “I take issue with the idea that you’re explaining it any better. You’ve had the chance to play defense attorney, so now let me play prosecutor. The essence of any third-man defense is the narrative you tell a jury. Someone else committed the crime, and the story you tell has to cover all the normal bases: means, motive, and opportunity. I take it you don’t have a potential suspect?”

  Laura’s face burned. She shook her head.

  “Since we don’t have an actual third man, we can’t speak much to means or opportunity. So what about motive? We have Eugene Hobbes’s journal. In it, he makes certain confessions, things that only the killer would know. Are you suggesting that he is not the person who killed Susan Gilroy, Alina Scopoloto, and Maria Mendelsohn?”

  “No, I’m not denying that. I’m saying he didn’t kill Olive Hanson. He didn’t take Teresa Mitchem. He lacked the means to commit these new crimes.”

  “We’ve discussed that at length, and frankly, you have a point. If this was an actual trial, and I was his defense attorney, that right there might be my strategy. From that alone I could manufacture reasonable doubt.”

  “But you still don’t bel
ieve me.”

  “That’s not it at all. You’re focusing on flaws in the official narrative while ignoring the flaws in your own. Here’s my point: what would be the reason for all this? If someone hates Hobbes, say, because they knew what he had done, why not just expose him?”

  Laura said nothing.

  “Why kill as him, only in service of revealing him? It’s needlessly complicated, and it transforms our third man from a whistle-blowing hero into a child-murderer. There’s nothing to gain from such a turn, and everything to lose.”

  “I don’t have all the answers, Sheriff, but what disturbs me is that I’m the only one looking for them. Maybe the official narrative is more correct than not, but no one is taking the time to actually investigate and find out. Everyone seems content to let sleeping dogs lie. Everyone was so busy getting elected, no one bothered to find out the truth.”

  Fuller frowned.

  “Because what if I’m right? What then?”

  The phone on the desk buzzed, and a voice rasped at him through the intercom: “Your three thirty is here.”

  Fuller pressed a button. “Tell him I’ll be finished in just a moment.” He looked at Laura and shrugged. “Duty calls.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Not at all,” he said, getting up and walking toward the door. “I promise to look into it. Anything less would be unethical.”

  He opened the door, and she walked past him without a word.

  “Goodbye, Miss Chambers,” he called after her.

  She didn’t bother to answer. Behind her, she could hear him glad-handing his next constituent. Everything was normal. Business as usual. The horror called Eugene Hobbes was already fading into the past. All’s well that ends well—everyone seemed to believe it.

  Everyone except Laura Chambers.

  CHAPTER

  24

  NO SHADOWS FELL under the gunmetal-gray sky. A cold wind shook the bare trees, and they swayed to its silent music. Laura wore a sheepskin coat cut to hang almost to her knee, and she pulled it closed near her throat.

  “Can you sit?”

  He gave a quick sharp bark.

  “Sit, Cooper. Sit!”