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Gary Wilson was in law enforcement longer than he could remember. A former Marine Corp Vet, he did his time and became a cop when he got out of the military. A ten year stint in a rough Chicago precinct back in the day reminded him the Turner boy’s murder was far from resolved.
When the State boys rolled out of Little Bend two days later, they waited for the FBI to step in. He shuffled the coroner’s reports, countless statements from witnesses who documented the Turner boy’s last movements, and something just didn’t fit.
The boy was unquestionably devoted to his younger brother and sister. He wouldn’t have left them in town unattended. Cameron Chase insisted Jace Turner agreed to give him a ride to Marnie Slade’s trailer that morning. That was when the questions began.
Cameron insisted he was dropped at the Slade trailer before ten in the morning. Not one resident of the squalid trailer park could verify Chase’s presence on Marnie’s porch until after one in the afternoon. The Slade girl didn’t arrive home from work until one-thirty. Why would Cameron wait for his girl for three hours knowing she wasn’t at home?
The murder scene was also less than three miles away. The cop in him saw the obvious gaps in Chase’s alibi of where he was those three and a half hours. Unlike everyone else, he saw it as opportunity. The Chase boy was the last one to see Jace Turner alive. Like it or not, he was a potential suspect.
Gary also saw how quick the boy demanded his father be called and an attorney as soon as he was brought in for questioning. If the kid didn’t have anything to hide; he sure acted fishy from the start. Something in his manner disturbed Sheriff Wilson. Those soulless blue eyes seemed unaffected from the grief he should feel to know his best friend was just murdered.
The sheriff had little to go on retracing Jace’s steps. The boy withdrew six hundred dollars from his account at shortly after nine, dropped his brother at the office, and went to an antique shop down the road to buy his girlfriend a gift.
Amelia Warren of Amelia’s Boutique and Gifts verified the antique ruby and diamond ring was purchased by Jace Turner before ten that morning. She said the two boys met up outside the storefront and left together. The receipt for the ring was found in his pocket, but the ring was missing, and three hundred in cash he had left on him.
This all troubled Gary. He was less than two months from retirement and Dan would take over as acting sheriff until the next election. He didn’t like the way this case pulled at him like no other had before in his career.
Maybe it was the way the Morgan girl sobbed all over his shirt uniform that night, or it was his thoughts of his own son. Whatever it was, it kept pushing at the notion Cameron Chase was hiding something.
Unless they charged the Chase boy, they had no cause to continue to bring him in. Gary sighed and sat back, looking out the window of his office. His grey eyes were narrowed thoughtfully.
The Slade girl knew more than she let on. The Goth-looking girl wore too much make-up and her skirts were too short. She got around too. Dan claimed he ‘hit that’ plenty when she came in for questioning.
Gary saw the nervous way the girl smoked and avoided his eyes. She claimed to know Cameron was waiting for her that morning, though unlikely, as no text messages and calls were exchanged between them.
She backed up Cam’s story but her demeanor was far from normal. She waxed between crying and looking tough during the interview. She and the Turner boy were close. How close was what Gary wondered. The Slade girl ran around. According to Dan she was a freak in the bed.
He should be thinking about fly-fishing and seeing his grand kids, not piecing together a murder right now. Dan needed this experience and he put him in charge, but the deputy refused to see the obvious that was in front of him.
Growing up with all these people in Little Bend made it impossible for him to see the Chase boy as a suspect. Dan hung out with Cam’s older brother in school and vouched the boy was a good, decent kid, if a bit wild the last year.
Dan refused to consider Chase as a suspect, going with the lone, murdering drifter theory the State cops believed. Gary might have believed that too, except it was too easy.
Gary had to sit back and let Dan handle the investigation. He was looking into a couple theories of his own. The missing ring was troubling him. Obviously, the boy planned to give it to Lindsay Morgan. The two were going away to school together in the fall. He debated the wisdom in telling the girl. She was so broken up she hadn’t left her apartment since.
Even more tragically, the state workers would arrive that week to take the Turner kids unless they got a family to take them in here. Nobody wanted Everett Turner at their door and would likely refuse to take his kids in.
The heartbreak of the case was even more profound when it was learned Jace Turner was giving up his golden ticket to the NFL to stay behind and care for his siblings. Gary knew such a noble sacrifice was rare among kids today. Maybe that was why he decided to do his own digging.
Oblivion Page 11