A Bustle in the Hedgerow (CASMIRC Book 1)

by Ben Miller

  13

  Heath and Camilla landed at Hostetter Airport outside of York, PA around 11:20 that morning. A uniformed police officer met them at the airport. As per Heath’s suggestion on the phone earlier, the officer drove them to the scene of Adrianna Cottrell’s murder, where Ken Howard met them shortly before noon. They exchanged handshakes and introductions. Howard then walked them around to the playground along the side of the Grove Street Elementary School.

  “Anyone ever say anything to you about The White Shadow?” Heath asked the large, chiseled African-American police officer.

  Camilla rolled her eyes. She perceived Heath as an intelligent agent with good work ethic and diligence, who often lacked appropriate social skills. He reminded her of that awkward but well-meaning kid in middle school who spoke out of turn during class, trying to be funny, only to receive groans from his classmates and scorn from his teachers. Though she didn’t exactly enjoy working with him directly, she had always found it tolerable. Sometimes, though, he really pushed the boundaries of her tolerance. Like now.

  “Excuse me?” Howard replied, his voice deeper than a few seconds ago.

  Already Heath wished he had not said anything. “Uh, The White Shadow. It was a TV show about a white NBA player who coached at a mostly…ethnic...inner city high school after his retirement. The actor who played him was named Ken Howard.” Heath had read up on Wikipedia from his iPhone on their way to the airport in Quantico.

  “Never heard of it,” Howard muttered. His mood lightened slightly, “But I did see 1776 like ten times when I was a kid. My parents used to make us watch it every year on the 3rd of July, to get us in the mood, you know? Ken Howard played Thomas Jefferson.”

  “OK,” Heath said, now feeling that he and Howard had formed a bond.

  “Jefferson has been my favorite president ever since.”

  “Cool.” Heath nodded in approval, happy with the exchange. He suddenly felt the urge to choose his own favorite president.

  Howard stopped walking at the corner of three tennis courts, with a twelve-foot high fence running around the perimeter. In front of them stretched an 8-feet wide grass walkway between the fence on the right and a waist-high hedgerow on the left. A strand of yellow “Crime Scene” tape ran between the fence post to their right and a tree on their left, about ten feet behind the hedgerow. “This is it,” Howard declared. He lifted up the tape and Camilla and Heath ducked underneath and walked through.

  They looked around them, at the green grass, the burgeoning hedgerow, and the scraggly grass, weeds, and leaves behind it. A mix of pine trees, hemlocks, and tall oaks thickened the brush substantially about fifteen feet behind the hedges. They all stood in silence for a good minute, ostensibly out of respect for the deceased. Camilla realized this quietness must be tough for Heath; she gained a little more respect for him as he remained silent with the other two of them.

  Howard was the one who broke the silence. He began to walk forward and point behind the hedgerow as he spoke. “The body was found here.” He stopped walking about 40 feet down the grass path. Both Camilla and Heath had been following, but their attention diverged. Heath’s gaze followed Howard’s pointing right hand, but Camilla spent her time surveying the surrounding area.

  “She was face up, her head here,” he pointed to his left, towards the direction they had come from, “and her feet this way.” His right hand fanned out, palm down.

  Even though it was only mid-April, the hedges had filled in nicely. They would have provided cover for the body, and the murderous act that created it.

  “Who found her?” Heath asked.

  “A teacher, Jed Thompson. It was at the end of the school day. The kids will often play outside for ten to thirty minutes while they wait for their parents to pick them up. In addition to Mr. Thompson, one other teacher was assigned After School Duty to keep watch out here while waiting for parents to come by. Mrs. Orlovski, fifth grade teacher, was the one here on Monday.”

  Camilla interrupted her survey of the perimeter to look at Howard. She noticed that he did not have a notebook in his hand, and this impressed her. Officer Howard recited all of these details from memory.

  “Where was she? And where was Mr. Thompson?” Heath inquired.

  “Mr. Thompson spent the entire time after school around the front of the building, near where we parked.” Howard pointed back in that direction. “As you can see, from where we are here, all the way over to there....” He turned to point to the opposite corner of the tennis courts. “…is obscured from the front of the building.”

  “And the other teacher?” Camilla reminded.

  “She spent the time walking back and forth along the side of the school.”

  About forty yards separated the school from the tennis courts. Swing sets, slides, monkey bars, and other traditional playground equipment populated the northern half of this area, nearer to the parking lot. A bed of pavement covered the southern half, with a small baseball diamond painted on it, as well as a hopscotch board, a four-square court, and a shuffleboard court.

  “She said she never saw anything over this direction. Her attention was focused on the playground in between. In fact, she never even saw Adrianna come this way.”

  “How many children were playing out here that day?” Camilla seemed to take charge of the questioning.

  “We estimate about seventy-five. Of course, the numbers continually diminish as parents arrive to pick up their kids. No one ever takes attendance, but the average start is usually around seventy-five.” Howard continued, as if anticipating the next question. “Adrianna was apparently known to sometimes wander off on her own. Her parents both said that they often lost track of her—on days at the park, at the mall, what have you. She would say she was off ‘imagining.’”

  The corners of Camilla’s mouth turned downward in sadness. Surely she never “imagined” anything like this, she thought.

  “The last anyone saw her alive, she was walking-slash-skipping on the opposite side of the tennis courts away from the school, her head bobbing from one shoulder to the other.”

  “Who saw her?” Heath chimed in.

  “Two of the other children and Mrs. Orlovski.”

  Howard turned his gaze down to the ground where Adrianna Cottrell’s body had been found. “Adrianna was car-pooling with one of the other children, Amelia Schwab. Amelia’s mother was running a little late that day, showed up at about 4:05, twenty-five minutes after school let out. There were 14 children left here at that time, Amelia being one of them. When they couldn’t find Adrianna, Mrs. Schwab, Amelia, and the two teachers went looking for her. Mr. Thompson found her.”

  Howard held his hand out palm down, at an angle parallel to the ground, on the other side of the hedges. “You can see that the ground here slopes away toward the trees. We’ve had an unseasonably dry April so far, and any rain we get would have mostly run down that way, toward the trees. So, no footprints anywhere around to speak of.”

  “Witnesses?” Camilla queried.

  “No one. Hard to believe, I know, but..." Howard shook his head. "Nothing.”

  He turned and began walking away from them, opposite from the direction they had come. He kept his head turned back over his right shoulder and gestured with his right hand to follow him. As they neared the end of the fence at the far side of the last tennis court, Howard pointed ahead of him. “You can see that the tennis courts are on an elevation, and the ground slopes down about fifteen to twenty feet to Orchard Street below.”

  Heath and Camilla could now see the street. On the other side was a stone wall standing about six feet high that spanned the entire city block. From their elevated vantage point, they could see the desolate cemetery beyond the wall.

  Howard turned back to face them. “No passers-by have come forward, so, for now, I assume there were none. But we continue to put our contact info in the paper and on the news.” He turned to his left, looking south along Orchard Street. A few relatively dense rows of
maple trees stood behind a chain-link fence on the far side of the tennis courts, and Howard indicated them by raising his left hand.

  “On the other side of that tree line are a few houses. Only one person was home at the time, three houses down. Mrs. Ulbright, 72, retired widow. She was watching TV in the back room of her house, didn’t see a thing.”

  Howard turned back toward them and pointed at the street with his right hand. He was a very demonstrative person, Camilla noticed. He would make a great tour guide, she thought sincerely.

  “My theory is that the perp parked somewhere here along Orchard Street and came up here.” He started walking back along the grass pathway, crouched slightly as if re-enacting the murderer’s trek.

  “He probably hid over here…,” He leapt over the hedgerow in one quick, steady step, displaying unusual agility for a man his size. “…On this side of the hedgerow, and waited for Adrianna to come by.”

  “But how would he know she would?” Heath asked.

  Howard tilted his head. “Both her teachers and her classmates said she sometimes skipped around the tennis courts, singing to herself. Not every day, but often enough that anyone watching for a week or two might notice.”

  “So you think the perp was stalking her?”

  Howard nodded. “In my theory.”

  Camilla asked, “What about her parents?”

  “Both at work at the time. Father is an accountant and had a 4 pm meeting with a client, who verifies. Mother is part-owner of a floral shop downtown, and it was her night to work until closing, which is usually 5 pm. When she got the phone call from our department, several customers were in the store and heard her shriek.”

  “Phone call?” Heath asked, somewhat derisively.

  For the first time, Howard looked slightly embarrassed. The look didn’t fit him. “Yeah. It wasn’t me. It was one of our newer officers. He has since been reprimanded.” This was a bit of a lie, though Howard didn’t really know that. Nat Fordham had self-imposed his leave of absence and would never return to the force.

  “Family had no known enemies, no recent threats. They’ve never noticed anyone suspicious around their house or in the neighborhood. There is a 4-year-old sister who was in day care at the time.”

  “We would like to question the family,” Camilla stated.

  “Of course. They’ve been very helpful so far. Devastated, understandably, but willing to help. When we’re done here, I’ll try to reach them to set something up,” Howard said.

  Heath gestured back to the ground where her body had been. “And you said over the phone that there was no blood, fingerprints, or foreign DNA found anywhere on or around the body.”

  Howard looked up from the ground into Heath’s eyes. “That’s right. We have a pretty good forensics unit; I trust them.”

  “Remind me of some of the oddities with the autopsy?” Camilla asked. She remembered the details from the debriefing that morning, but she wanted to hear them from Howard. Maybe something had been omitted between his first phone conversation with Heath and their morning meeting.

  “Yeah. I’ll get you a copy of the full report. I think that’s where the money is. That, and the note. COD was asphyxiation from strangulation. Significant bruising of the anterior throat. But she had several post-mortem lateral rib fractures, as well as sternal bruising. As if something heavy had been dropped on her chest shortly after strangulation.”

  Camilla bent her knees into a crouch and looked at the dense trees in front of her. She then looked back to her right, toward Orchard Street.

  “He had to have come and gone from that direction.” She pointed back toward Orchard Street.

  Heath concurred. “The trees would have created too slow a getaway.”

  Camilla looked up at him. “And too noisy. The ground in there is covered with dried leaves.”

  She turned herself around, still crouched, to look at the hedgerow. After studying it carefully for several seconds, she shifted her gaze up to Howard. “Any evidence of damage to the hedges? Any broken branches, anything that might leave a trace of him behind?”

  Howard again shook his head, “Nothing. While forensics was here, I myself crawled along both sides of these hedges. Nothing was out of place.”

  Camilla stood up and took a deep breath. She blew it out in a huff and turned to Heath. “Anything else you want to see here?”

  Heath contemplated briefly. “Nope.”

  Camilla nodded as she turned to Howard. “All right. Let’s get to know more about poor little Miss Adrianna.”

  14

  Jack took his Bluetooth out of his right ear and placed it back into the console between the front seats of his car. He firmly believed in using hands-free devices while driving-- even before it became a law-- but he hated those pretentious assholes that walked around with their Bluetoothes in their ears. (Or is it Blueteeth?) Once Jack had completed his conversation, the hands-free device went back to its rightful resting place. He tapped one of the sound system buttons on his steering wheel to restart his iPod where it had left off before the phone call: about halfway through the Arcade Fire album The Suburbs. Jack had always followed music slightly off the mainstream. He became a big fan of the eclectic Canadian group after their 2004 debut Funeral.

  He was almost home, and it was only 12:40. He had just gotten off the phone with Philip Prince; they had set up another lunch meeting tomorrow. Philip seemed as delighted as the over-privileged pre-teen girl who gets a pony for her birthday. Jack couldn’t remember ever hearing Prince sound so excited. It struck him a bit odd.

  As the brief conversation wound down, Prince had asked for Jack’s permission to invite another friend to join them the following day.

  “Who did you have in mind?” Jack had asked.

  Prince paused for effect. It wasn’t lost on Jack. “Montgomery Johnson would like to meet you.”

  “Really?” Jack replied. For the second time this week, Prince had shocked Jack.

  The current Senate Majority Leader, Montgomery Johnson was serving his fourth consecutive term as a Democratic Senator from Alabama. His Party had selected him as the Majority Leader at the end of his previous term. Jack did not know much about him personally—or professionally, for that matter—but he knew his name carried a lot of weight on The Hill. By bringing Johnson along, Prince emphasized the seriousness of his proposal. Jack surmised that this was the political equivalent of a full-court press.

  Jack told Prince that he had no objections to Johnson coming to lunch. He knew now how he would spend the rest of the afternoon. As soon as he got home, Jack got on the laptop to begin researching Johnson, Rupert Schulz, the current political tone in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and as much as he could about the US Senate.

  15

  Just like the first debriefing earlier that day, Terry Friesz was the last to arrive in the conference room, shortly after 4:00 pm. Dylan Harringer sat in the middle of the front row, facing the screen in front of them, with Amanda Lundquist on his left and Charlie Shaver flanking him on the right. Heath Reilly and Camilla Vanderbilt were projected onto the screen in front of them via Skype.

  “Hi, everyone. Sorry I’m late,” Terry said, though he didn’t feel late. To him, arriving within ten minutes either way of the start of a meeting did not qualify as late or early.

  Amanda turned her head to face him. No one else budged or said a word. Amanda flashed a nervous smile, her eyes motioning towards Harringer. It’s OK, her eyes said, but around here, Harringer likes things to start on time. That facial gesture signaled to Friesz that not all members of the group disagreed with his sense of punctuality, but the most important person did. Friesz noted this, but doubted that this would affect how he approached his job in the future. After a long career in academia, with the pressures of fighting for grants and publishing papers, Friesz did not want to let this second career apply any more strain than was inherently present in working for the FBI. He slipped into the second row of seats, spread his arms out on
the backs of the chairs beside him, and crossed his legs, apparently quite comfortable with his tardiness.

  “We’ll start by hearing from Amanda about any similar cases that may need to be lumped into this investigation,” Harringer announced.

  Amanda nodded and looked down at her laptop. “I performed a pretty exhaustive—”

  “Wait,” Heath interrupted via satellite. “Where’s Jack?”

  Amanda looked up from her laptop, and looked at Harringer. Everyone else looked around and also noted Jack’s absence.

  “He’s working on something else for a few days. I expect him to rejoin this investigation later this week,” Harringer explained.

  “OK,” Heath replied, as if anyone cared that he found this acceptable.

  “Sorry for the interruption, Amanda.” Only because she currently sat beside him, Camilla felt that she should apologize for Heath. She remembered what it felt like being the newest investigator with CASMIRC. This occasionally awkward, ostracized feeling seemed exaggerated as a female. Men still dominated the world of the FBI, especially at the rank of special agent. When she remembered to, Camilla tried to go out of her way to make Amanda feel comfortable.

  “No, that’s fine,” Amanda replied. She easily transitioned her focus back to the laptop. “In the last twelve months, only two female children were killed by strangulation throughout the mid-Atlantic. Both were teenagers, one 16 and one 14, and both by their boyfriends. The 16-year-old’s 19 year-old boyfriend was recently convicted in West Virginia for her murder, and the younger girl’s 16 year-old boyfriend confessed shortly after the crime. Both boys— or, men, I guess— are currently incarcerated. There were no records of successful or attempted murder by strangulation of any girls in the same age range as our two victims.”

  “What about boys?” Harringer asked.

  Amanda nodded again, having anticipated this question. “There were six cases of attempted strangulation in older teenage boys, no murders. All of them were by similar aged boys as part of a physical altercation, and all but one involved alcohol or other drugs.