by Mark Stone
Following the blood, I moved up to the front porch, also stained with the dots. Anger running through me, I pounded on the front door but, to my surprise, it was already open and the force of my knock pushed it even further ajar.
“Police,” I said contemplatively. “This is the police. I’m coming in.”
There’s this thing about being a detective that no one tells you until you’re smart enough to already know it yourself, and certainly no one teaches it. It’s a feeling. It has nothing to do with evidence or surroundings and everything to do with your gut telling you, for whatever reason, that you’re about to step into something intense. Some detectives think of it as some kind of survival mechanism, a real life, biological spider sense or something.
I always liked to think of it as the man upstairs giving me a heads up. Whatever it was, I felt it as I stepped through the door.
The house was in shambles, couches turned over, the television busted up, and holes punched into the wall. And that was just the living room.
“Police!” I said louder, brandishing my firearm. “I have reason to believe a crime was committed here and I’m coming in!”
No one answered. As I stepped closer, I realized just why that was.
Walking into the ruined foyer, I saw the body of a man. His face was white and pale, his eyes open. He was hanging from the rafters, his legs dangling and a noose around his neck.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket, one hand still holding my gun at the ready. I didn’t want to make this call, especially not tonight, but I knew what I had to do. I knew what was right.
“Boomer,” I said when my best friend answered the phone. “There’s something going on, and I think it’s bigger than just the priest.”
Chapter 9
“Did you check the rest of the house to make sure no one else was here?” Boomer asked me as he stepped through the still open door on Calhoun drive. He looked different than he had just an hour or so ago. While he was still disheveled, subdued, and obviously tired, my friend had a spark of determination in him that I recognized. It lit his face with purpose and might have even been distracting him from the worry he must have been feeling while waiting helplessly for Father Jameson’s surgery to end. I thought about Debbie, about how I’d promised her that I’d keep this from her husband, at least for the night, and the way I’d broken that promise. Seeing that he wasn’t falling apart right now helped me feel like I’d made the right decision in bringing him in on this. Not that I had much of a choice. You find a dead body, and your hands are kind of tied like that.
“Of course I did. I’m not a rookie. It’s all clear,” I answered as he kept pace with me, walking into the living room and toward the body. I moved nothing before Emma and her team got there, leaving them to their work of going over the body. “Any word on Father Jameson?”
“Not yet,” Boomer answered simply. “They tell me that’s a good thing though.” His eyes never strayed from the body, now taken from its noose and laid on the floor by Emma and her forensic team. “Any idea who this guy is? I don’t recognize him, which is weird.”
I pulled the ID I took from his wallet after Emma was done looking him over. “Not as weird as you’d think. Says his name is Archer Hillman, from Fort Meyers.”
“No wonder I didn’t recognize him,” Boomer said. “Any idea what he’s doing down here?”
“Not offhand,” I admitted. “I also can’t get in touch with the homeowner. I called Chloe down in Records at Town Hall. Woke her up, which she wasn’t thrilled about, but I explained the situation and she pulled the deed for me. Turns out the property belongs to a guy up in Georgia named Oscar Edwin. Couldn’t get him on the phone, though that might be because it’s the middle of the night. Either way, I talked to a couple of neighbors after the squad cars showed up. They told me that, as far as they knew, this place hasn’t been rented out in over a year.”
“Well that’s not true,” Boomer answered, still looking down at the body. “This place has been turned upside down. I mean, it’s completely destroyed, but none of the stuff is old and the amount of dust here doesn’t lead me to believe this place hasn’t been lived in. Someone had been here. They just didn’t want anyone to know it.”
“Which is why the packing paper is still up in all the windows,” I said, motioning to the windows, all covered. “You think it’s squatters, maybe some homeless?”
“Out here? Doubt it,” Boomer scoffed. “Besides, I’ve never known a homeless person who could afford a plasma television.” He motioned to the broken piece of electronics laying on the floor. “I’m not sure what’s going on here, and I have no idea what it has to do with Father Jameson.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t mention this earlier,” I said, looking over at my friend. “I should have said something.”
“Debbie told me,” he answered. “She said she was looking out for me, that you both were. You came to me when you had to, and you’ve done good work here. Don’t beat yourself up about it.” His eyes flickered over to me. “But don’t keep anything else from me. I’m a grown man and this is my job. I can handle it.”
“Noted,” I said, nodding. “To that end, there’s something else you need to know. Peter came to me earlier.”
“Peter as in your bastard half brother?” Boomer asked. “Earlier when?”
“Before I came here, in the hospital parking lot,” I answered. “Apparently he’s been seeing Father Jameson.”
“Seeing him?”
“As a spiritual advisor, I guess you could call it,” I answered. “He’s the reason I came to this house in the first place. He claims to have seen Father Jameson write it down a few days ago while on a heated telephone conversation.”
“Oh, is that what he claims?” Boomer asked, his teeth grinding together. “That’s a pretty big coincidence.”
“It is,” I admitted. “But he claims to have a solid alibi, one I can check out in the morning. What’s more, I—”
“I know. You believe him,” Boomer answered. “I can tell by the look on your face. More than that, I believe in your instincts.” He shook his head, looking at the body again. “Besides, why would he inject himself into this thing if he was actually involved? It wouldn’t make any sense. Do check on his story though.”
“Of course,” I answered. ‘So, what do you think happened here? Think this guy got into a fight with Father Jameson then, seeing what happened to him after he forced him out on the street, offed himself?”
“Maybe,” Boomer answered. “Though I’d be curious to see what Emma has to say about things.”
As if on cue, Emma walked through the front door, having come back from her work van with a stretcher, a black body bag, and a pair of people to help lift the corpse.
“I’d say give me a couple of hours to be sure,” she said, having heard what Boomer said. “But, right offhand, I’d say this wasn’t a suicide.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at the woman and then, as she knelt toward it, the body as well.
“He almost certainly died from strangulation,” she said, tilting the man’s chin upward. “But look at this. There are two distinct rope marks on his neck. One matches the angle of the hanging, but the second, the deeper mark, is straighter.” She looked up at me. “It’s as though someone stood behind him and strangled him from the back.” She stood. “My guess is, that’s exactly what happened.”
“And why would someone do that?” I asked. “Why kill someone and then set it up to look like a suicide in a house where no one is supposed to be living?”
“I wouldn’t have any idea,” she said, shrugging at me. “You’re the detectives, boys.”
“Well, he’s the chief, but I get your point,” I answered as Boomer’s phone went off. He looked down, a text message coming across his screen.
“Everything okay?” I asked, looking over at him.
“It will be,” he said, looking back up at me, the shadow of a smile starting across his face
. “Father Jameson is out of surgery. Debbie’s says that Rebecca said everything went well and that he should be awake soon.” Boomer nodded at me. “He’ll tell us everything we need to know about what happened here tonight.”
A wave of relief ran through me. Sure, everything wasn’t exactly peachy. I was standing squarely in the middle of a tragedy, after all. A crime had been committed here, and a man was dead. Archer Hillman had been murdered, and someone had done a damned good job of making it look like a suicide. His family would have to be notified, his remains would have to be transported up to Fort Meyers and, because this happened in our neck of the swamp, it fell to us to answer the question of why and how. Having a conscious Father Jameson to answer those questions would definitely help. That did pose another threat though.
It was becoming very clear to both Boomer and myself that what happened to the priest wasn’t an accident. Someone tried to kill him. Whether or not that person was the same individual who ran him over or whether the hit and run was just a grisly coincidence was beside the point right now. If someone wanted him dead a few hours ago, it stood to reason that they would still want him dead now. We had to make sure that didn’t happen. We had to make sure he was safe.
“You should go back to the hospital,” I said, looking to Boomer. “I’ll do another sweep of the house, look for evidence and whatnot, and make sure everything is tied down for when the team comes to dust for prints tomorrow.”
Boomer nodded at me.
“The sun will be up soon,” I continued, “I know the officers you had on the scene questioned neighbors for anything that might have struck them as out of the ordinary and came up empty-handed, but I’d like to give it a shot myself.” I shook my head. “This place is a dead end street. I can’t imagine no one saw anything.”
“It’s a sleepy dead end street,” Boomer answered. “Five houses, two of them aren’t occupied. Or shouldn’t have been,” he said, looking around at the house we now stood in, the one that was supposedly empty. “Another two of the houses belong to people who work the night shift at Falcones,” he continued, namedropping the textile mill thirty miles outside of town that my mother was never able to get into during her life.
“By my count, that leaves one house to check into. I’ll talk to the next door neighbors as soon as I see signs of life in there,” I said. “A struggle like this, a man running out into the street and being hit by a car; theft should have seen or heard something.”
“Absolutely, but you’re wrong about one thing. It leaves two houses to check into,” Boomer corrected. “This place was supposed to be empty and it certainly isn’t. The house across from it is supposed to be too, but who knows what we’ll find if we go inside. Call Records again. Find out who owns the house across the way and get them to consent to let us go into it. Something tells me we might find more than we bargained for if we do.”
“Sure thing,” I answered, before thinking about the last call I made to the Records lady and how it had gone down. I shook my head. “Chloe’s going to hate me,”
“Yeah,” Boomer said, walking out the door on his way back to the hospital. “Probably.”
Chapter 10
First light had barely broken when I found myself banging on the front door of the house right next to the one where all the trouble had gone down. I had been in touch with both Boomer and Rebecca since Father Jameson got out of surgery. While the priest had pulled through just fine, Rebecca told me that Boomer had been a bit optimistic about his condition.
He had some brain swelling and, while she expected him to make a recovery, she couldn’t say what sort of condition he’d been in when he woke up or even how long that might be.
There was a chance of some permanent damage to some of his motor skills and a real possibility of memory loss, especially memory around the time of the accident. That meant a few things. The good priest had a hard road in front of him, one he’d be helped on by his faithful parishioners and friends around town. It also meant that Boomer’s assumption that we’d be able to get some answers from the man might not pan out. Even if he did remember something, Rebecca gently let me know that he might not be able to communicate it (or anything at all really) for a while. He might have to learn how to speak again, learn how to walk. It was a horrible thought, and there was really no way to know what the extent of the damage would be until Father Jameson woke up and could be evaluated consciously.
The bottom line was; we couldn’t rely on him for any information. That was on us to find and, with Boomer waiting by the man’s bedside (while dealing with various other chiefly duties remotely) I was the one who was going to have to deal with it.
Well, that was just fine by me.
A man with close cropped black hair and bright blue eyes pulled the front door open quickly. He was shirtless and wore a look on his face that told me he had been sleeping until about a minute and a half ago and, if he had it his way, he still would be.
“What the hell are you doing?” the man asked, narrowing his eyes and leering at me. “Has the rooster even crowed yet?”
“Wouldn’t know. Not many roosters in the swamp,” I answered, pulling my badge from my pocket. “My name is Detective Dillon St—”
“I know who you are. I saw you on the news,” he answered. “Saved some woman. Saved some girl. Saved some kid.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. You people congratulate yourselves a lot.”
I balked. “Press conferences are a part of the job sometimes, and it’s not really up to me whether or not the news covers it.” I nodded, clearing my throat. “I need to talk to you about something that happened here last night. I’m sure you’ve seen the caution tape on the street and now surrounding the house next door. I’d like to know what you—”
“I don’t have anything to say,” he said, and started to slam the door in my face.
Now maybe there’s a detective world worth his salt who would allow that to happen to him, but this guy wasn’t dealing with that detective. He was dealing with one who knew bull when he heard it, who knew damned well that there was no way a man with two working eyes could live next to a house and not know that it wasn’t as empty as it was supposed to be.
My arm hit against the door, holding it open. The man’s eyes widened as he realized this wasn’t over. “I notice you didn’t say that you didn’t see anything.”
“Fine,” he responded, breathing heavy. “I didn’t see anything, okay?”
“See, now why don’t I believe you?” I asked, glaring at him.
“Am I under arrest?” he asked in a tone more defiant than afraid. “Because, if I’m not then I don’t have to answer any of your questions.” His mouth twisted downward at me with disgust. “And, if you don’t have a warrant, it means you don’t get to stay on my property.”
“Oh I’ll get a warrant,” I answered confidently. “A man was hanged from the rafters in the house next door to you, a man who wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place.”
The breath caught in the man’s throat and I could tell he hadn’t known that.
“A priest, a staple of this community, was then run down in the middle of the street, right in front of your house.” I took a deep breath. “The rest of your neighbors work the night shift. You’re the only one who could have seen anything last night, and my guess is you don’t have an alibi saying you were somewhere else. You really think when a judge hears all that he won’t give me the right to question you? He will, sir. What’s more, when I come back, it’ll be with a piece of paper that will allow me to riffle through everything you own, to pick your whole damned life up and shake it hard until something falls out.” I took a step forward. “And trust me, sir, I’ve been on the job long enough to know that something always falls out.”
The man blinked at me. “Just- just wait a minute,” he said, stepping forward and pulling the door closed behind him. “I’ve got two kids in there, two daughters. I’m just trying to raise them right and make ends meet. We don’t want an
ything to do with this.”
My heart went out to him and his daughters. I knew what it was for a parent to want to do right by their kid and struggle in that endeavor. I once had a mother who would have very likely said the same thing this guy did if some detective pulled her from her sleep threatening to tear things apart to get to a truth. That didn’t mean I could back down though. Truth was truth, and justice was justice. I was on the hunt for both.
“You need to start talking then,” I said, folding my arms over my chest.
“Don’t you get it?” the man scoffed. “Talking is probably what got that guy hanged in the first place. You think he’s the first person whose squatted in the house beside us? You think he’s the first one who’s not there anymore? Hardly. He’s just the first one you found.”
“Who’s doing this?” I asked. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” the man answered.
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
“Well, you can,” he said. A desperation colored his voice that struck me as genuine. “I don’t know anything other than the basics. Someone came to me a few months back. They offered me ten thousand dollars to keep quiet about whatever might happen on this street.”
“And you took it?” I asked.
“I had to,” he said, his hands tightening into nervous fists. “They said if I didn’t, they’d find another way to keep me quiet. I’m all my girls have, Detective Storm. I’m it. If something happens to me, they’re in foster care. I grew up in that system. It isn't fit for a dog, and I won’t have the two people I love most in this world subjected to that. They are the two halves of my heart, Detective. I’ll do whatever I have to in order to keep them safe.”
“Including lie and stay complicit as horrible things happen around you?” I asked, shaking my head.