by A. E. Howe
Small county, small budget. Luckily, old man Crawley decided that he could eat off of this story for years to come and offered to do it for cost.
After the backhoe uncovered the pipe, we were able to use it, and the assistance of a dozen men, to lift the pipe out and set it on the back of a flatbed pickup truck. Darzi sealed the ends of the pipe as best he could, and I made absolutely sure that the thing was strapped down tight. It was completely dark by the time we finished.
“I’ve already checked with the hospital and they have someone who can cut it open,” Dr. Darzi said. “I’ll do the autopsy as soon as we’ve cracked the shell and gotten your nut out.” He chuckled darkly, but with the corpses piling up, I didn’t find his joke very funny.
“Do you think he got in there on his own or was someone able to push the body inside?” I asked.
“My opinion, based just on what I’ve seen, is that he crawled in there on his own. I don’t think that anyone could have pushed a body as big as you say he was up into that pipe. Force him to crawl in there…? Maybe. But more likely, a severe mental breakdown, possibly fueled by drugs, led him to crawl in there on his own,” Darzi said as the truck carrying the pipe drove off down the dirt road. “But I’ll know a lot more after I’ve seen the body and we have a toxicology report.” He got into his car and followed his latest science experiment back to the morgue.
“We better go talk to the family,” I said to Darlene.
“This is going to be tough,” Darlene said in a classic understatement as we parked in front of the main house.
“Let’s get it over with.”
I knocked on the door and once again we were ushered into their inner sanctum to tell them how another member of their family had been killed.
“Are you telling me that you still don’t have any idea who’s doing this?” Clive’s face was bright red and his eyes were literally bulging with suppressed emotion.
“Yes.” I wished I had a different answer, but what else could I say?
“Who’s going to be next?” Clive started to get out of his chair, but Marge put her hand on his arm. Without even looking at her, he settled back down.
“We don’t know what killed Hank. There is a strong possibility that he was high on drugs…”
“But you don’t know that!” Marge interrupted. Jane rolled her eyes and Andrew huffed.
“No, we don’t. But intoxication could have contributed to his death. However, we have to go with the assumption that others in the family might be in danger. One of the things I’d advise is for you all to stay together. Skip anything that you do routinely.”
“What?” Jane asked.
“If someone is stalking your family, the worst thing you can do is remain predictable,” Darlene explained.
“That’s ridiculous. If someone is stalking us, then you need to protect us,” Andrew said, using his outdoor voice.
“We can’t protect you 24/7,” I said calmly. “But we’re going to be working to catch the person who’s committed these crimes. One of the best ways you all can help us is by giving us information.”
Andrew threw up his hands. “You’ve already questioned us. Twice! We’ve told you what we know. This is some sick serial killer who’s chosen to pick on our family.”
I really wanted to tell him that he wasn’t officially a part of this family, so why didn’t he wait outside, but I didn’t think that would fly. Instead I said, “Random murder is unlikely. We believe…,” I looked at Darlene for support and she gave a slight nod, “…that the killer has targeted you all for a very specific motive.”
“What motive?” Jane asked.
“If we knew the motive we’d probably know the killer,” I said. “Money, revenge or something more cryptic. But the odds are that the murderer is someone who one or all of you know or have known in the past. So please think. Run past events over in your head. Look for someone who might have a reason to want to hurt your father and your brother. Maybe both your brothers.”
I was doing my best, but all I was getting were sullen looks, and who could blame them? The family was being picked off one by one and we weren’t any closer to finding the person responsible.
“What about this Joel guy?” Clive suggested and got a look from Jane and Marge. “What?” he asked them.
“I really don’t think that an old boyfriend of mine is seeking revenge. Even I would admit that I wasn’t that hot,” Jane said.
“Well, we know he’s in town,” Clive insisted.
“I’ve seen him a couple of times,” Jane admitted.
“A couple times? You told us about seeing him when you were driving. What other time did you see him?” I inquired.
Jane looked at me as though she’d forgotten I was in the room. “Oh, well, a week ago, I guess. I just passed him in the Supersave.” I didn’t believe that she ever went inside the Supersave, but now was not the time to confront her about it. I just filed it away.
“When can we have the funeral?” Marge asked. She always reverted to the practical matters at hand.
“Are we still having all the funerals together? I mean, are we including Hank in the funeral with Dad and Joe?” Jane asked.
“We’d better or there won’t be anyone at his,” Andrew said, receiving my Heartless Bastard of the Year award.
“I think it would be the right thing to do,” Marge said, giving Andrew an ice cold stare. He started to roll his eyes and thought better of it.
“I can’t say for sure when Hank’s body will be released. I would think that Marshall’s Funeral Home should be able to pick… him up by Friday.” I tried to put it as delicately as possible.
“Poor Daddy has already waited a week,” Jane said. “But it wouldn’t be fair not to include Hank Junior.”
“I agree. I couldn’t go through two funerals. We’ll bury all three at the same time. I’ll talk to Mr. Marshall first thing in the morning,” Marge said. Clive reached over and put his arm around her shoulder. Andrew must have thought it was a contest, because he reached out and took Jane’s hand.
The worst of it was over. Darlene and I asked a few more questions, but it was clear that the family had reached their emotional limit. Pressing them further wasn’t going to get us any answers tonight.
After two grueling days in the woods and all of the anxiety of a murder investigation stuck in neutral, I was glad to come home to a warm meal. Cara had texted earlier that she was going over to my place and would have dinner ready for me whenever I got there.
I managed to drag myself through the front door just before ten o’clock. The aroma of garlic, tomatoes and sausage was welcome. I hadn’t eaten a proper meal since Hank went missing.
“Lasagna,” Cara said after giving me a hug. “Go get a hot shower and I’ll get everything on the table.”
“You’re too good to me.”
“Don’t get too used to it. I’m on my best behavior,” she told me with a smile that made me feel even better. A relationship without some good-natured kidding would be torture.
I might not have felt like a new man after the shower and dinner, but I felt less like I’d been in a two-day boxing match. I sat down at the table and plowed into my meal.
“So what are you going to do now?” Cara asked.
“Depends on what we find out from the autopsy. Regardless, I think we’re going to have to put the spotlight on the family.”
“And the gold hunters.”
“Wildcards. The gold hunt definitely has ties to the family, but I just don’t see either Marcy or Joel committing murder for it. And now that Hank is gone… Darlene and I are just going to have to comb through the evidence again and see if we can come up with something that points us in the right direction.”
Tomorrow was St. Patrick’s Day so, in a nod to the Celtic side of her heritage, Cara put on a Loreena McKennitt playlist. The soothing melodies made my eyelids droop. Cara took the dishes into the kitchen to wash them and I’m pretty sure I was asleep on the couch before s
he even turned the water on.
Chapter Twenty
On Thursday, Darlene and I went straight into the conference room to spread everything out and look at the suspects and evidence anew.
“I’ve found a few tidbits,” Darlene said after a while, holding up a handful of printouts. “Jane and Andrew are stretched pretty thin. She’s been helping him financially while he’s trying to start his own law firm.”
“How thin?”
“Between student loans, mortgages, car loans and credit cards, they’re about five-hundred thousand in debit.”
“Wow. But with student loans and mortgages these days, that’s not beyond the pale. He’s a lawyer and she’s a paralegal, so they have the potential to stay afloat. But money could certainly be a motive for them.”
“Yes, but it’s not like the farm has been making a fortune either. I was talking to Bud down at the bank, and his feeling is that they aren’t big enough to be really profitable. They make a good living when the weather cooperates, but that doesn’t always happen.”
“What’s the bottom line?”
“The value of the land and equipment puts them in the black to the tune of about two million dollars. But Bud explained that that would require liquefying all the assets, including the house. Interestingly, Joe had talked to him about doing just that. Bud said he wasn’t going to sell the main house, but he wanted to know how much they could get out of the rest of it. Seemed he wasn’t as keen on farming as his dad was.”
“Pete told me there were some rumors going around that Hank Senior was having some memory problems. I’ll check with his doctor and see if he was just getting old, or if it was a sign of something more ominous,” I said.
“Shantel said they’re still waiting on the DNA results for the skin on the alligator.”
“Hopefully it’s a good sample. Though it may not do us much good since everybody in the family would share the same markers. Speaking of family, what about Marge?”
“She loves that farm. She and Clive took out a mortgage on their house to help the farm a couple of years ago when we had a dry summer. Financially, they’re doing okay. At least no worse off than most Americans.”
“Marge is devoted to the farm. I wonder what she’d do if she knew that Joe had talked about selling out? There’s a case for her. If their dad was developing Alzheimer’s or dementia and would be turning things over to Joe, and she discovered Joe wanted to sell out, she could have humanely put her dad down and then took out Joe.” It was a testament to how frustrating the case was that I didn’t think this was a completely ridiculous suggestion.
“I guess it’s foolish to ask if she can shoot a crossbow.”
“Everyone in that family started hunting when they were old enough to walk. There are a dozen pictures in the house of them with trophy bucks. But that does bring up the question of where the crossbow came from.”
“Not much there. We found a couple on the property, but that doesn’t do us much good. Ballistics can’t match anything from a crossbow to the bolt that killed him. The bolt was a cheap and readily available brand. The closest Walmart on our side of Leon County sells them. Marcus is taking the lead on that. He emailed pictures to the company that makes them, but they’re in China. The poorly translated reply said that they would probably be able to identify the year and the factory it came from, but that’s about all.”
“Investigations in the modern world… some things are easier while some are a lot more complicated. Okay, that brings us to our gold diggers.”
“What a bunch of losers.” Darlene sighed. “All of them have arrests for various offenses. We’ll start with your girlfriend.” She gave me a What were you thinking? look.
“Ex. Ex-girlfriend.”
“If that helps you sleep at night. Your ex-girlfriend has a record that goes from minor driving infractions to a DUI, and from there to a bad check and an assault charge for hitting a patron in a bar.”
“We know she’s unstable. Marcy is absolutely capable of going too far. I would not be surprised if she accidently killed someone. On purpose though? She’d have to have a good motive. Did she kill Hank Senior because he was going to kick them off his property? That seems a little over the top. Maybe she pointed the crossbow at him and accidentally pulled the trigger. That’s possible. Then Joe found out and so she had to kill him? And Hank Junior might or might not have been the victim of murder. Which reminds me, Darzi has scheduled the autopsy for noon.”
“We have Joel Patrick next. He’s a little piece of work himself. Fraud seems to be his favorite pastime. Many arrests and two convictions. His scams mostly run right along the thin edge between legal stealing and the illegal kind. As far as violence goes, he’s usually on the receiving end. He scams someone then they get mad and attempt to break his face, is the usual pattern.”
“With him, we at least have a history. He did have a physical altercation with Hank Senior.”
“Yeah, but for this crumb that’s the norm. A month seldom goes by that someone doesn’t want to take a shot at him.”
“Same scenario that we laid out for Marcy could be true for him.”
“That’s true. Also, if they did find gold, then I can imagine him fighting to defend his share, à la The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”
“Argggh! There is no gold! Though that does beg the question of how the whole gold hunt thing got started. Is that part of the plot or just a weird side note?”
“On to number three, Eddie Thompson. Related to the notorious Thompsons. Mostly some moving violations and a couple minor drug infractions. But considering who his father and grandfather are, I think it is safe to say that he could find it in himself to do some serious violence. However, he seems like a junior player, brought in by Marcy as her toady,” Darlene finished.
I had to admire her summation of Eddie and his role, though I doubted that he could have had anything to do with the murders. I’d seen him when he was confronted by serious crimes. He got very nervous very quickly. I didn’t see any of that in him now.
“Of course, there is always the other option—person or persons unknown,” I threw on the table.
“We can’t rule it out. But to kill two grown men, possibly three, would require a motive. I haven’t seen anyone outside of our two groups with a decent motive,” Darlene stated.
“I have to agree. I talked to Pete, the man with his ear to the tracks, and he hasn’t heard of anything else from the breakfast set.”
Until recently, Pete had eaten at Winston’s Grill every morning while listening to all of the morning gossip from the local farmers and businessmen. Now, with the grill shut down, they’d had to improvise a new routine at the Donut Hole. The Hole had moved in some more chairs and built covered seating outdoors, but the morning crowd was definitely having to compromise.
“Nothing?”
“Just some typical grumblings over minor business disputes. Parrish Farm is a big operation so you’d expect there to be a few issues. Al Parkston was having a minor tiff with Hank Senior over the lease on one of Al’s fields. But none of it suggests a motive for murder.”
I looked at my watch. “I don’t see any reason for both of us to go to the autopsy. One of us can run over there while the other follows up on the trace evidence.”
“I’ve got some things I can do in Tallahassee. I’ll take the autopsy,” Darlene said.
“Deal.” I’d seen enough bad-looking corpses lately. Darlene was welcome to this one. I felt bad for the family. They’d be looking at one open and two closed caskets at the funeral. Even so, half the people who came up to pay their respects to Hank Senior would be looking to see if they could tell where the crossbow bolt went into his skull.
I went back to the area that Shantel and Marcus called home. The crime scene techs all shared the duty of storing and keeping track of evidence. As well as keeping most things under lock and key, their office and the storage rooms in the back were the most heavily monitored areas in the building, with c
ameras covering every inch of the space. No one wanted the department to face a chain of custody or tampering issue in the middle of a trial.
Shantel was at her computer checking email when I came in. “Look at you. How many bodies have you racked up in the last couple of weeks?” she kidded me.
“Don’t remind me. Have you come up with anything useful?” I asked hopefully.
“You expect me to pull your chestnuts out of the fire?” She paused for just a second and then added, “I guess I do owe you.”
“You don’t owe me a thing. Speaking of what you don’t owe me, how is Tonya doing?”
“Better. Fewer nightmares. Thinks the sun rises and falls with you and Pete. Poor, deluded child.” Shantel smiled. “She’s thinking about going into nursing. She’s signed up for classes again for the spring semester at Tallahassee Community College.”
“Glad to hear she’s doing better.”
“I just poked the lab again. They could have our DNA from the alligator done. It just depends on where we are in the queue. Maybe later today or tomorrow. I actually got a partial fingerprint off of the bolt, but I don’t think it’s large enough to do much good. And we searched Hank Junior’s room yesterday, but we didn’t find much there either.”
“Some good news, please.”
“There isn’t any. I did finally get in touch with the blood splatter expert and he confirmed Darzi’s suspicions that there was another weapon used in the initial attack on Joe. Something light enough to swing. But he’s still got to do some experiments to determine which way the object was swung and how tall the attacker probably was, etc. I’m telling you, those guys love to do their little tests. He was so excited about slinging blood around, I thought he was going to start giggling.” Shantel shook her head.
“Let’s do another search of Joe’s house to make sure we didn’t miss anything that might have been used. Have your blood expert give you a range of sizes that would match the smaller weapon.”
“He pretty much said that from what he knows now, it could be anything from a golf club to a two-by-four. I’ll take our new intern over and have her go through the house with me. She needs the experience. Someday I want us to have enough money to only hire experienced help. I swear I spend most of my time training people.”