by Rick Reed
“I agree,” Jack said.
“You do? Well, there you have it then,” Shaunda said. “Let’s get back out there and find Claire’s Jeep.”
Jack said, “I agree the one from today is probably is the one we’re looking for. We don’t know that for sure. If we focus on him, we may miss some important leads from the older cases. Clues that may help us find the one from Troy Junior’s murder. Clues that may help with Brandon’s murder. There’s no solid lead from today. We can drive around hoping to get lucky, or we can work this like I intend to. The longer we sit here, pissing and moaning, the more lead time the killer has,” Jack said.
All were silent.
“Okay then,” Jack said, once again going to the whiteboards. “We need to know who called these deaths in.” The victim’s names were down the left side of the board next to their photos. Jack drew a column and titled it “Caller”. They went through each victim and in each case the caller was anonymous.
Jack said, “Let’s go with the two that Chief Lynch and Chief Jerrell were working before we arrived. Shaunda, how did you get the call about Troy Junior?”
Shaunda said, “We don’t have our own dispatch. We pretty much rely on Sullivan County Dispatch to call us, but me and Joey have department cell phones. One cell phone actually. We take turns carrying it when we’re on duty. Everyone in town has the number so they just call direct. Saves time.”
“I got the call on the work phone. It displayed the number but not a name. The caller said someone had drowned in Dugger Lake and hung up. The number wasn’t in my phone directory. Turned out to be Troy Junior’s phone. The time and date I got the call are on my police report. I was on duty so I went to check it out. Truthfully, I thought it was a prank call because the voice sounded so young.”
Jack said, “To be clear, this call didn’t come in from dispatch?”
“It came in from Troy’s phone,” she answered.
“Male or female caller?” Jack asked.
“I couldn’t tell. It was a young voice. Could’ve been either.”
“How did you know exactly where to find Troy’s body?” Jack asked.
“There’s a short stretch of lake inside Dugger city limits. The lake is split down the middle. One half belongs to Sullivan County, one half to Greene County. I got my little piece of the lake. I went to the lake and saw a body floating about ten feet out in the water. It was face down and naked except for something white around the head. It turned out to be underwear.”
“Like with Brandon?” Jack asked.
“Yeah. Brandon was face down, too, but not as far out in the water as Troy.”
Jack said, “We’ll get to Brandon. Let’s stick with Troy Junior.”
She said, “It took me twenty minutes to get to the lake. Troy Junior was out in the deep water. I swim like a rock. I figured whoever it was must be dead. I called Joey at home and then I called for our coroner. We don’t have Crime Scene people. We do everything ourselves if we can. Joey showed up and got the body out of the water. We waited for Doc Bonner.”
Jack said, “You didn’t have Crime Scene come out?”
“In hindsight, maybe I should have called Sullivan County Sheriff or State Police, but they take an hour to respond if they respond at all. Besides, we got the body out of the water by ourselves and we didn’t know it was anything but an accidental drowning until Troy got a different coroner involved.”
“How long before Chief Jerrell got involved?” Jack asked.
Jack couldn’t decide if Shaunda was irritated or embarrassed. She said, “I called Troy after Doc Bonner got the body.”
“Twelve hours later,” Jerrell said through clenched teeth. “I didn’t have a chance to examine the scene before it was trampled. You should have called me, Shauny. You knew it was Troy when you pulled him out.”
“I did,” she said. “I wanted to be sure what I had before I called you.”
Jerrell came out of his chair. “Wanted to be sure! What’s that even mean? You knew who it was. You knew he was dead. You knew I was his father. You knew I’d help you any way I could. You should have called me and let me help with the crime scene.”
Shaunda raised her voice. “Yeah. I knew you would help. Like you helped today. You’d come in like an invading army and take over, contaminating my crime scene. Get it through that thick head that you didn’t belong there…”
“Didn’t belong there? That was my son! You and that pimple faced deputy of yours screwed it all up. You two wrapped my boy up in a blue tarp and stuck him in the back of a truck and took him to Bonner’s office. Bonner’s not even a forensic pathologist. You might as well have had a veterinarian come out. What the hell were you thinking Chief?”
Jack raised his voice over both of theirs. “Stop. Stop. This isn’t getting us anywhere. What’s done is done. We need to concentrate on what to do now. We need each other. That means no more arguments between you two.”
“Well she…” Jerrell began but stopped when Jack stood and pointed toward the door.
“If you want to duke it out take it outside. But to be honest, I don’t know how much more of a beating Chief Lynch can take.”
Liddell took his wallet out and slapped a twenty dollar bill on the table. “Twenty says she can take him.” That eased the tension and everyone calmed a little.
“Sorry Shauny,” Jerrell said.
“Yes, you are,” she responded. “I’m sorry too. I could’ve done things differently I guess.”
Before they could start in on each other about who the sorriest was, Jack said, “Okay, your report said the victim’s car was missing, but Chief Jerrell said his son owned a truck and it was found by Linton officers in a field behind a tavern in Dugger. I’m confused. Was it a truck or a car?”
Jerrell said, “Troy had traded his car to a guy in Bloomfield for an old Chevy pickup truck. They didn’t bother to register the vehicles and left the old license plates on them. My guys saw the truck sitting out behind the Coal Miner Bar in Dugger a few days later and thought it was suspicious. They ran the plates and tracked down the owner of record. That’s how we found out about the trade.”
“In my defense, there’s no way I would have known that truck was Troy’s. I got a vehicle description from dispatch for a Toyota Camry.”
Jack interrupted, “Okay. Okay. I can see how that would have been confusing. Who found the truck?”
“Sergeant Ditterline found it,” Crocker said. “Ditty’s psychic sometimes.”
“Do any of you know if anything was missing from the body or the truck?” Jack asked.
“I can tell you we didn’t find anything at the scene. No clothes or personal items.” She gave Jerrell a scathing look. “How could I know about the truck?”
Jerrell said, “I searched his truck and found nothing. His apartment in Dugger was a mess but the boy was always a slob. When he was ten years old his mom gave him a gold necklace with a gold eagle charm. She told him he would soar like an eagle one day. I never found it. Not in his truck or in his apartment. He wouldn’t have given it away. Shaunda said she didn’t find anything at the scene. I went out there and used a metal detector and came up empty.”
Crocker lay the Stockton-Linton High yearbook on the table and held it open on a page. “Here’s Troy’s senior picture. He’s wearing that chain.”
They passed the yearbook around the table. “Is that it Chief?” Jack asked.
“That’s it.”
“Can you get a copy of that and enlarge it?” Jack asked.
“Sure can,” Crocker said. “I’ll check all the pawn shops.”
“He wouldn’t have pawned it,” Jerrell said, “but I guess you should check them too.”
Jack was glad to see Liddell was keeping notes. Things were moving fast. He turned to Shaunda. “Were you able to find where the call was made from?”
She said, �
��I don’t know where the call was made from, but it was Troy’s cell phone number. I didn’t have the number in my directory. I called the number back but the voicemail didn’t identify who the phone belonged to.”
“How did you find out it was his cell phone?” Jack asked.
“I found the phone at Troy’s apartment.”
Jerrell came unglued. “You had his phone all this time and didn’t tell me!”
“It’s evidence,” Shaunda said. “I couldn’t let you tamper with it. If it turned into something how could I explain handing it over to you? It was my investigation not yours. You would have done the same thing.”
“Did you find his chain and the eagle?” Jerrell asked. “He would have been wearing it.”
“No. I didn’t,” Shaunda said with finality.
Jack cut in. “Water under the bridge now. The important thing is that she has the phone.” He could see Jerrell wasn’t going to let it go. He didn’t blame him but he’d seen other investigators hide their evidence jealously. He asked Shaunda, “Did you check the call record?”
Shaunda bristled. “I don’t have the resources you big city boys have, but I’m not completely clueless. I checked and I wrote it all down. And you know what?”
She was angry. She made them wait.
“There weren’t any calls except the call made to me. Someone deleted the calls made and received and the contacts.”
Jerrell said in a measured tone, “Can I have the phone and a copy of your notes now?”
“Depends,” Shaunda said.
“Chief Lynch, we can—” Jack said, but she interrupted him.
“I checked out the phone. There was nothing there. The last call on the phone was to me.”
“You still should have had the common decency to have told me you found the phone,” Jerrell shouted.
“I had my reasons, Troy,” Shaunda said.
“What reason could you possibly have?”
“I was protecting you.”
“If there was nothing on the phone, what the hell could you be protecting me from?”
“From yourself you moron. If we found the guy responsible you would have already ruined the chain of custody. A defense attorney would have torn you to pieces like a Cinnamon Pull-Apart bun. You can’t smash everything and everyone and hope you get the right person.”
Jack interrupted their brewing argument. “I agree with Chief Lynch. She should maintain control of the cell phone for chain of custody issues. I agree with Chief Jerrell that he should have been told that the phone was recovered and what information was obtained from the phone. I would like to send the phone to my computer analyst. She might be able to retrieve missing data.”
Shaunda let out a breath. “The phone is in my office.” Her eyes cut toward Jerrell. “This doesn’t get us anywhere. Can we move on?”
Jerrell said, “Did you at least protect the phone? Tell me you did.”
“Drop it, Troy. I was only trying to…”
“My protection is not your concern.” Jerrell rose and marched out of the room.
Shaunda started after him but Jack held her back. “Give him some space.”
Chapter 14
Jerrell came back in the room and sat down saying nothing.
“Troy…” Shaunda said.
Jerrell held a hand up. “Let’s just get on with this.”
Jack said, “I think we’ve covered Troy Junior for now. We need to talk about Brandon Dillingham. Same questions.”
Shaunda had pushed her chair away from the table and rubbed at the scrapes on her knuckles. She said, “As you know, I stopped Brandon this morning. He was in his mom’s Jeep. Patty Burris, my daughter’s friend, was driving. Patty is barely sixteen and doesn’t have a driver’s license. She said Brandon was mauling her until I guess he saw headlights coming. That would be me. I let Brandon go with a warning and took Patty home and went home. It couldn’t have been more than an hour later I got the call from Sullivan County Dispatch. Suspicious circumstance at Dugger Lake. Possible drowning.”
“I called Joey, told him what we had and he said he’d meet me there. When I arrived, Joey was already pulling the body out onto the bank.”
“We turned the body over, removed a pair of underwear from his head and we both identified Brandon Dillingham. I called dispatch back and asked who had called in the run. They said it was anonymous and gave me the number it had come from. There were no other vehicles in the area and I didn’t see any traffic on my way there. We didn’t see anyone out on the lake. The phone that called dispatch was Brandon’s.”
Jack asked, “Does anyone know if County Dispatch keeps recordings of the radio traffic?”
Shaunda said, “Dugger PD isn’t a big enough department to work without a personal work phone. The people in Dugger don’t tend to call the cell number unless it’s a real emergency. They call 911 if they need an ambulance, or there’s a fire, that kind of stuff and then dispatch calls us. If it’s just some drunk refusing to leave, they call us. We try not to put people in jail if it’s something we can take care of ourselves.”
“Dugger is a village and we keep ourselves to ourselves. If a wife is beaten by her husband she might call me or might not. We handle things discreetly but you know how small towns are. Gossip spreads like cancer.”
Jack started to suspect that secrecy was the reason Jerrell had been notified so late in the game. Shaunda said she was trying to spare his feelings, but that may have only been part of her reasoning. He’d been in other small towns that buried their secrets. Just like Las Vegas, what happens in Dugger stays in Dugger.
Domestic violence was one thing, but two murders—particularly when one was the son of the neighboring town’s police chief, and the other was the son of a prominent politician in Dugger—would be hard to keep quiet. The fact that they weren’t already buried in reporters backed up what Shaunda said. They’d tell each other but no one would call the media.
Jack had another mean thought. If they hadn’t arrived at the scene this morning, he wondered if Brandon’s death wouldn’t have become an accidental drowning. Easy call. Somewhat respectful death in that there wouldn’t be an investigation revealing all the boy’s faults.
Jack asked, “Do you think we’re dealing with a local? Two deaths within a week of each other and in the same location. Another in the same lake three years ago. I’m not big on coincidence.” He didn’t get the reaction he’d expected.
Shaunda said, “I don’t believe it. We’re on State Highway 54 which is one of the major roads that lead to the interstate. Easy access to the stripper pit lakes. I vote for it being an outsider.”
Liddell and Jack had been discussing that same thing on their way to Linton. Over the road truck driver? Traveling salesman? Patterns were seldom recognized if the killer spread his hobby over numerous states, but these were all within fifteen miles of each other. The only outlier was the one in Hutsonville, Illinois and that was less than forty miles away.
“The victims were all local and our analyst didn’t find any matching cases anywhere else. Someone local makes more sense. A local killer follows the pattern,” Jack said. “In the Hutsonville murder the victim’s car was parked in his own driveway several miles from where the body was found. The next three, Washington, Winters and DiLegge, the vehicles were found near the body. The only two where the vehicle was hidden took place near Dugger.”
“You’re suggesting what?” Shaunda asked.
“Two possibilities. The killer moved Baker, Troy and Brandon’s vehicles because he had to. The other vehicles were found at the scene because he wasn’t worried about them being discovered quickly. Dugger is central to all of the killings.”
“Possibilities,” Shaunda said, waving her hand dismissively at the theory.
“Okay. Let’s discuss something else,” Jack said. “How did the killer get t
o and from the lakes?”
Jerrell answered, “He could have hitched a ride. Rode a bicycle. Maybe it’s a transient? Needed a vehicle sometimes to get somewhere else and carjacked the victims. If he was on a bicycle he could have stowed it in the stolen vehicle until he made his getaway. As far as Troy’s murder is concerned it’s possible Troy left the truck back behind the Coal Miner Bar himself. If he was drunk, and he usually was, anything’s possible.”
Shaunda said, “I like the transient idea. Maybe they picked this guy up, he made them take him to the lake and killed them?”
Jack said, “Or there’s another possibility we haven’t discussed yet.” He waited until he had everyone’s attention. “There are two killers.”
“Now you’re saying I have two homicidal maniacs living in Dugger. Nothing ever happens in Dugger. It’s a quiet little place. The evidence points toward the killer being a homeless person. Like the one that came to my house. Maybe he was the same guy that clobbered me. He killed Brandon and just decided to drive a new Jeep for kicks. He realized he left something behind and came back on foot. If someone like that wanted to avoid being seen they could easily do it. Whoever it was knocked the crap out of me and got away on foot. I say it’s a homeless person.”
“If the killer is a homeless person don’t you think they would have taken the victims money or valuables?” Jerrell asked.
“He took my valuable badge,” she said defiantly.
Jack asked, “Troy’s truck was found how far from the lake?”
“It’s four or five miles to the bar from the lake,” Shaunda said.
“Four or five miles,” Jack said. “Clint Baker’s body was found about the same distance from his car and home. It would take about an hour to walk that far.”
“Less than that if they were hitching a ride, or going cross country on foot,” Shaunda said, still pushing her homeless theory.
“I don’t like a hitchhiker for the killer,” Jack said. “Maybe for Brandon because he’s not the right age, and he doesn’t fit as part of the group of high school friends. Neither does Clint Baker at this point.”