by A. E. Howe
By nine o’clock we had everyone briefed and as organized as we were going to get. We fanned out to the south and east, away from the Parrish property. After only half an hour, Deputy Sykes found a sweatshirt and a jeweler’s bag. The bag tested positive for meth. I bagged the shirt and Darlene volunteered to take it up to Hank’s apartment and compare it to the other shirts in his wardrobe.
Dad pulled up just as Darlene was getting back. She came over to where I was filling him in on the search. “Sorry to interrupt, but this is a very close match for a couple of sweatshirts in his closet. Same size, about the same amount of wear. The tags are identical.”
“Thanks, Darlene,” I said and she headed back out to rejoin the search.
“I called over to Leon County and two of their K-9 teams should be here soon. And they’ve offered air support if we need it. I’ve also got the mounted posse on standby, depending on what the dogs find,” Dad said.
“That’ll help,” I said.
“So what do you think really happened?”
“Honestly, it looks like Hank might have fallen completely off the wagon. Meth, and maybe heroin, but he’s been known to use just about anything that would make him high or, for that matter, low. He was pretty much an equal-opportunity abuser when he was off the leash. Heroin was his favorite, but…” I shrugged. “Having been clean for a few months, he could have misjudged his tolerance.”
“Yeah, that’s not uncommon.” Dad nodded.
“Then, in an impaired state and with his fixation on finding this stupid lost gold, he could have easily convinced himself that he was on the trail of something and wandered who knows where into these woods. On the other hand, that might be what he, or someone else, wants us to believe. Maybe the dogs can put us on the right track,” I said and Dad nodded grimly.
“I hate election years. I’m always second-guessing myself. Am I doing all of this because of who Hank is or, should I say, who his family is? Probably. We have families calling in every day about their kids, drug addicts that have gone missing. We file a report and put out a bulletin, but we don’t call out the National Guard,” Dad mused.
“Be fair. This man is also a suspect in a pair of murders. Not only is he a suspect, but his relationship to the earlier victims puts him at high risk of being murdered himself.”
Dad put his hand on my shoulder. “Thanks. I’ll be back in touch later. I’ll leave it to you and Marks to coordinate everything here.”
When Dad called at noon, I was able to report on the work of the K-9 teams. “Dogs got here about an hour ago. They followed the trail from where the shirt was found to Sandy Bottom Creek. The handlers thought they picked up a couple of trails on the other side of the creek, but they couldn’t be sure. They did find some footprints in the creek bed that are probably Hank’s.”
“That would have him moving deeper onto Florida Pines land.”
“Afraid so.”
“I called over there earlier, just to let them know what was going on. They don’t have any objections to us searching their land. In fact, they said they’d send one of their crews out to help. I’ll call Bob and have him bring out the posse, then I’ll get the boys and join you down there.”
By “the boys,” Dad meant Finn and Mac, his two old-style American Quarter Horses. In the past I’d resisted Dad’s penchant for throwing me up on Mac every chance he got as part of the mounted posse, but today I was looking forward to it. The Parrishes and some of their neighbors had brought down their ATVs, but even those vehicles couldn’t go everywhere a horse could. I was tired of walking from search group to search group. Being mounted would be a real advantage, with a better line of sight and the ability to cover more ground in less time.
Darlene had commandeered one of the four-wheelers and was buzzing around, following up on anything that the searchers found. The woods were full of a hundred years’ worth of farming and hunting cast-offs. Most of it was obviously irrelevant, but we told the searchers to report anything they found. Before anything could be discarded, either a crime scene tech, Darlene or myself had to put eyes on it.
Bob Muller showed up just before two with a couple of horse trailers and five members of the mounted posse. Bob was a retired deputy who put his heart and soul into the posse. The department had bought two used horse trailers for the posse to use, and Bob meticulously maintained them and all of the posse’s equipment. Bob rode an older Saddlebred that he loved for its easy gait.
I showed Bob a map of the area and indicated the best places for the posse to start—areas where the pines were mature and the ground was thick with palmettos.
As the posse headed out, Dad drove up with his horse trailer, followed by Jamie, Mauser’s dog-sitter, and the big dog himself. They had brought a pop-up tent to serve as a refreshment and first aid station. The fire department was on its way with ice, food and medical supplies. We were lucky that the weather was cool, but we were already getting some volunteers that had pushed themselves too hard. I recruited a couple of folks to help Jamie set up the tent, then helped Dad unload the horses. As usual, Finn was lively and curious while his brother Mac dozed off while I brushed him down.
Saddled and mounted, Dad and I headed out to check in with the search groups.
“Why’d you bring Mauser?” I asked. Not that Dad wasn’t willing to bring Mauser to just about any function, but I was still a bit surprised.
“Jamie wanted to do something, so I figured he could help with the refreshments. And, when I got to thinking about it, Mauser will be a bit of comic relief for everyone.”
Maybe he was right. I’d been on a couple of other search and rescue operations, and most of the time was spent searching rather than rescuing. It was easy to become fatigued and disillusioned.
At six o’clock, with the sun beginning to slip behind the trees, Dad and I returned to search HQ. We were done for the day. Having search parties out at night would only end up compounding our problems.
As I dismounted, I realized that it had been a while since I’d spent more than an hour or two on horseback. I was feeling sore in muscles that I didn’t even know I had. I tied Mac to the posse’s picket line and took off his saddle, then walked over to the refreshment tent. There I found Jamie handing out bottled water and chips while Mauser reclined on the ground, allowing people to pet and admire him. When he saw me, he stood up and came lumbering over to beat me with his tail and slobber on my clothes.
“Yeah, you big lazy dog. You didn’t even get off of your bed at the office the other day.”
Mauser ignored my ridicule and leaned hard into me. I scratched him until my arms were sore, then pushed him off on a young fireman named Jerry who couldn’t believe how big the dog was.
I was guzzling a bottle of water when Darlene came over. She was covered in dust, but other than that looked like she’d just stepped out of the office.
“Nothing. I figure we’ve covered a couple hundred acres pretty thoroughly. Leon’s helicopter was able to cover all of the clear-cut areas, so we can mark them as being searched. Level one, of course,” she reported.
We had agreed on three levels for the search. Level one was eyeballs from a distance, like a plane or helicopter. Level two was searched on foot or from horseback with a density of about five people per acre. Level three was an intense search for any evidence. We’d done a level three search within two hundred yards of where Hank’s phone was found.
I looked over to see Jerry playing with Mauser. He was crouched down, mock wrestling with the giant dog like you would a Boxer or a Pitbull.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” I said to him as a good-natured warning.
He looked at me the way firemen have always looked at cops, as if to say, You guys aren’t tough enough. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a big ’ol Rottweiler at home,” Jerry said with a boyish grin.
With perfect timing, Mauser chose that moment to jump up and punch Jerry right in the eye with one of his ten-pound paws, knocking him to the ground. Mause
r followed up the blow by jumping up and down on top of the fireman, who was mumbling a few choice words as he rolled right and left, trying to get out from under the playful and delighted Great Dane.
I snapped a leash on Mauser’s collar while Jamie ran over to help Jerry up off the ground.
“Big guy, you play too rough,” Jerry said. But, in a true show of sportsmanship, he bent down and gave Mauser a good scratching to show that there were no hard feelings.
On Wednesday morning the weather unleashed a seasonal downpour that soon settled into a steady drizzle, so we started out with only the hardcore volunteers and professionals. Jane, Marge and Clive were there, but the strain on the family was beginning to show. Several times I caught them bickering about directions, or when to take a break. They were also still trying to figure out the funeral details. They’d decided to have Hank’s and Joe’s burials at the same time, but now they couldn’t decide how long to wait with Hank Junior missing.
Cara took the morning off and braved the weather to ride with me. I let her ride Mac while I took the hyperactive Finn. It would have been very romantic riding through the pine woods with her if we hadn’t been hunting for a dead body in the rain.
We were soaked to the bone by noon and my legs were chaffed from riding a wet horse. Cara threw in the towel and left for work while I took a break at the refreshment tent. Darlene drove up on her ATV as I was contemplating the water dripping off of my hat.
“This is frustrating as hell,” I said.
“I hear you, partner,” Darlene said in her best cowboy drawl. I was impressed that she was able to keep a sense of humor under these conditions.
“Any ideas?” I asked her.
“We need to keep it up the rest of the day. Have half the crews continue expanding the search grid and bring the other half back in and start them from the center to re-search the area closest to the point where the phone was recovered,” she suggested.
“You think we missed something?”
“I think it’s possible.”
“You have a point. I’ve certainly heard about cases where the body was found in an area that had been searched once.”
“Then we’re agreed that we’re looking for a body at this point?”
“If he’s in the woods, yes. I still think there’s a good chance that this is all a giant red herring and he’s off doing drugs with some meth-addicted skank,” I said brutally, my exhaustion getting the best of me.
“If that’s the case, then we’ll present the family with a bill and then kill him,” Darlene said, wiping the rain out of her eyes.
I laughed in spite of myself. “Agreed. We also need to go over Hank’s apartment with a fine-toothed comb. Will you ask Shantel and Marcus to schedule some time for that?”
“Now you’re thinking,” she said before driving off again.
Chapter Nineteen
The rain stopped by one o’clock and a few more volunteers showed up. After making sure they all had assignments, I convinced myself to climb back up on Mac, even though every muscle in my body told me that it was a really bad idea. Holding the reins, I saw another car pull up. My old partner Pete clambered out of the driver’s side while his youngest daughter, Kim, hopped out of the other.
“Am I too late to rent an ATV?” Pete asked. He was wearing old BDUs, a flannel shirt and work boots.
“Sorry, they’ve all been taken.” I reached down and shook his hand.
“What’s his name?” Kim asked me, petting Mac’s nose.
I answered her, watching as Mac’s eyelids went to half mast and his head lowered to give the girl full access to his nose. “How’d your dad talk you into coming out in the woods?”
“I want to help,” Kim said. She was in jeans, a flannel shirt and rubber boots.
“Grab your jacket,” Pete told her and she trotted back to the car. “She’s my tomboy. Crazy girl thinks she wants to be a cop. Of course, Jenny wanted to spend time with me too until she discovered boys.”
Kim rejoined us, wearing a pink quilted jacket.
“You all can man the refreshment tent,” I suggested, knowing that Pete wasn’t fond of traipsing through the woods. After his “hard work” yesterday, Mauser had refused to leave the house with Jamie that morning, so we had been leaving the tent unmanned.
“I want to search,” Kim stated firmly. Pete rolled his eyes.
“I’ve got a group searching about half a mile to the north. You can just follow this logging road out to them,” I suggested, pointing to a muddy track heading off through the piney woods.
“You’re sure there isn’t a spare four-wheeler?” Pete grumbled.
“Mom says you need to exercise more.” Kim playfully punched him in the gut.
“Ugggh, no fair ganging up on me. Okay, okay,” Pete said, laughing. “I’ve got my radio,” he said to me, tapping the handheld set on his belt.
“Let’s go,” Kim said and began trotting down the muddy road.
“Lord help me,” Pete said and started after her.
I rode down another road to check on the Parrishes, who had formed a search party made up of themselves and a dozen employees. I’d just ridden up to Marge when I heard Pete’s voice, pitched higher than normal, coming over my radio.
“I think we have your man,” he said.
“Come back?”
“I’m at a culvert on the logging road about a quarter mile from the camp. You’ll need to get the coroner,” he answered, his voice tense. I realized that finding a body with his daughter might not qualify as a fun family outing.
“Roger that. I’m on my way.”
Marge had heard the transmission. She put her hand over her mouth and stifled a cry.
“I’m going to check it out. Continue searching. This might be nothing. And I wouldn’t say anything to anyone else yet,” I told her. I knew that if Pete said he found a body, then he’d found a body. But I didn’t want the whole family rushing to the scene. Marge nodded her head.
Sensing my urgency, Mac consented to a brisk trot. When we came around a bend about a hundred feet from the culvert, I could see Pete standing there with his arm around his daughter, holding her close to his side.
I brought Mac to a halt in front of them. Dismounting, I asked Kim if she’d hold the horse while her dad and I checked things out. She nodded and took the reins, holding them the way I showed her.
“I’ll take care of him,” she said, sounding younger and more vulnerable than she had half an hour earlier.
Once we were far enough away, Pete said, “Not pretty. When we came down the road there was a buzzard sitting on the edge of the culvert. Kim pointed it out. I told her that there was probably a dead animal inside, but she insisted on checking it out. Thank you, God, that I took the flashlight and looked in the pipe first.”
We stopped and looked down at the culvert. The pipe ran under the road, providing a way for water to pass from one side of the road to the other. The land on both sides of the road was low, with sweetgum trees and red maples intermixed with magnolias and pines. The rain this morning hadn’t been enough to fill the ditch on either side of the road, but the ground was muddy.
“That’s not very big,” I said skeptically. The corrugated pipe that ran under the road couldn’t have been more than eighteen inches wide.
“Trust me,” Pete said. “Can’t you smell it?”
He was right about the odor, but I still couldn’t believe that Hank Junior was in that pipe. “Hank is a big guy,” I said.
“Yeah, okay. I don’t know for sure that it’s Hank, but believe me, there is a dead guy stuffed in that pipe. Do you want to see the front end or the back end?” Pete asked, pointing to the east side of the road for the head and the west side for the feet.
“I guess I’ll take the head,” I said, taking Pete’s flashlight and making my way down to the ditch.
“Not sure that’s the best choice,” Pete said critically.
The odor of rotting flesh was much stronger down there.
Bending down and peering in, I couldn’t see anything inside the small dark pipe. I turned on the flashlight and, trying to hold my breath, got down on my hands and knees in the mud.
I shined the light into the culvert pipe and gasped involuntarily. Staring back at me were the cloudy white eyes of a corpse. From the hair and general appearance, I was pretty sure that it was Hank, but under those conditions it was difficult to be sure. The body looked like it was wedged in solid. I got up and went around to the other side of the road. On my way, I looked over to where Kim was trying to feed Mac wiregrass. “I’m really glad she didn’t see that,” I told Pete as I passed him.
Looking from the other side of the pipe, the feet were a lot closer to me than the head had been. If I’d reached in, I could have touched his shoes.
I walked downwind from the culvert and called Dr. Darzi. “And don’t send the hired help. I think this is going to require the boss onsite,” I told him.
I also called Marge and informed her that the search was over. I told her to take the rest of the family back up to the house and that we’d come meet with them as soon as we could.
Forty-five minutes later, Dr. Darzi, Pete, Darlene and I were standing around discussing how to proceed. “You are simply going to have to dig up the pipe,” Darzi told us, shaking his head. “He has bloated. The only way to get the body out without damaging it and destroying evidence will be to cut the pipe off of him.”
All of us were quiet for a few moments, then I pulled out my phone and called Dad. I explained what we had found and he offered to call Florida Pines and give them an update.
“Who do you want me to call to dig out the pipe?” I asked.
“Good question. Only three months into the new year and we’re running through money like water. Damn it, I guess we don’t have time to take bids. Okay, call Crawley’s Land Clearing. I know they have the equipment to do it. Just try to talk them down on the price. I’ll be down soon to pick up the horses,” he said and hung up.