The Killer in the Woods

by Rick Van Etten

  Obviously, the police weren’t similarly inclined. Following the old “think horses, not zebras” line of rationale, they were going with the simplest and most likely explanation, which was that Wilson accidentally shot Reynolds, reported it but attempted to hide the fact that he was the shooter, then later, under the influence of several beers, confessed to his buddy Charlie Flanagan what he’d done.

  And who could blame them for accepting all of this at face value? It made a nice neat package, even if, again, it wasn’t rock solid. Wilson had been charged with manslaughter in accordance with the supposed accidental nature of the shooting. Murder would have been a tough sell to a jury, as it would require the establishment of some sort of motive. Since it would quickly become obvious Wilson hadn’t known Reynolds and had no reason to kill him, that wouldn’t have flown.

  Still, a charge of manslaughter was bad enough. If convicted, Wilson would be doing some hard time. And that meant I was going to have to intervene. Rule Number 2—no collateral damage—demanded that I do so. I couldn’t let Wilson go down for a crime I’d committed.

  I was somehow going to have to figure out a way to get him exonerated and at the same time—I hoped—keep myself in the clear.

  Shit.

  I already said that, didn’t I?

  Chapter 9

  I waited until the next day to call James Collins.

  I was hoping for some sort of inspiration or magical solution (no, I can’t bring myself to say “magic bullet” here) that would show me how to get Carlyle Wilson off the hook without revealing anything about my own involvement in Frank Reynolds’ death.

  Of course, no such solution presented itself.

  I spent quite a bit of time turning the whole matter upside down and inside out and I kept coming back to the same conclusion. For some reason Charlie Flanagan had lied when he told the police Carlyle Wilson had confessed to killing Frank Reynolds.

  The newspaper clipping James Collins sent me hadn’t exactly been loaded with details, so I had very little to go on besides my own inferences. But somehow my gut told me that Charlie Flanagan was the bad guy here; that Carlyle Wilson was a stand-up citizen who’d had the misfortune of being the one to find Frank Reynolds’ body and, by an unlucky coincidence, was carrying a recently fired shotgun when he’d done so.

  Wilson hadn’t hesitated to report what he’d found and had led the police right back to Reynolds. At that point it probably hadn’t even occurred to him that he might be considered a suspect.

  Well. No good deed goes unpunished.

  I also couldn’t help reflecting on how badly I’d miscalculated a few things myself. After shooting Reynolds I’d walked out of the woods that morning feeling almost jauntily confident that his death would ultimately be ruled an accident—the result of a stray shot—and no one would ever be charged.

  I knew his body would eventually be discovered but I hadn’t considered the possibility that the person who found him would almost immediately become the primary suspect. Truth is, I’d pretty much assumed Reynolds’ body might not be found for several days, say after he failed to return home that weekend and his wife contacted authorities and initiated a search. If it had gone down like that, all of the other deer hunters in the area would have long since been gone from the woods and my stray shot scenario might have played out as I hoped.

  No such luck.

  I went online and did a bit of searching for more information but I didn’t turn up much. There was a story about Wilson’s arrest posted on the Peoria Journal-Star’s website but it was basically just a replay of the story James Collins had sent me from the Chicago Tribune. I didn’t learn anything I hadn’t already known.

  Then I did a search on Rushville, Illinois, and came up with a few semi-interesting tidbits. Rushville was the county seat of Schuyler County, with a population of a little less than 3,200. Translation: It was a small town in which I’d likely be noticed almost immediately if I showed up and started poking around or asking questions about any of its residents.

  One of Rushville’s most notable citizens had been a Dr. Russell Dohner, who had charged only $5 (originally $2) for home and office visits for over 60 years until his retirement in 2013. When I read this I couldn’t help wondering if he’d ever treated Carlisle Wilson or Charlie Flanagan.

  Also, the Rushville Times was the town’s newspaper, published once a week on Wednesday. The paper didn’t have a website so there was no immediate way to check for any stories it might have run on Carlyle Wilson’s arrest, although I had to assume there would be something, as this would be big news in such a small community.

  For the moment, I’d hit a dead end.

  That, plus the feeling that I should at least acknowledge receiving his note, led me to call James Collins. I still had his phone number and I called him on a new burner at 10:30 Thursday morning. Remembering the question he’d posed on his sticky note—and that I’d told him to call me Tom—when he answered I invoked Tom Hanks’ classic line from Apollo 13: “Houston, we have a problem.”

  He gave a quick laugh and said, “I see you got the clipping.”

  “Yes, I did. Thanks for sending it, and no, I don’t mean that sarcastically.”

  “I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Well, I can’t say it’s good news, but yes, I appreciate you letting me know. I’m going to have to do something about it, although I haven’t figured out what.”

  “You’re not going to let this Wilson guy take his chances at trial?”

  “No, I can’t do that. There’s too much chance he’ll be convicted. That’s…unacceptable.”

  He gave another short laugh. “A hit man with a code of honor…I love it.”

  My turn to laugh. “I realize that sounds a little paradoxical,” I said, “but it is what it is. Carlyle Wilson didn’t do anything except happen to be in the right place at the wrong time, or the wrong place at the right time, or however the hell that expression goes.”

  “Right,” James Collins said. “And for what it’s worth, I kind of expected you might feel that way. In fact, that’s the way I feel myself. You wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for me. And I don’t feel good about this other guy taking the fall for what we did.”

  What we did. I liked that. James Collins wasn’t trying to diminish his role in this in any way. Once again, my instincts about him appeared to be accurate. Right now it was nice to know that I’d been correct about something, at least.

  “I’d like to find out more about these two guys, Wilson and Charlie Flanagan,” I said. “For starters, I’d like to know if they were friends, just casual drinking buddies, or if there was any known animosity between them. That clip you sent me said Flanagan claimed Wilson had confessed to killing Reynolds while the two of them were drinking at some local watering hole. That suggests they were on friendly terms, but then why would Flanagan have turned Wilson in?”

  “I wondered about that too,” James Collins said. “If your best friend tells you he’s killed somebody, you probably don’t turn around the next morning and rat him out…at least most people wouldn’t. I wouldn’t, anyway. I might try to talk him into turning himself in, but I wouldn’t go behind his back and give him up myself.”

  “Right,” I said. “So the obvious answer is that they weren’t really all that good of friends. Friendly enough to sit and have a beer together, maybe, but nothing more. So maybe Flanagan thought about it overnight and by the next morning decided he should tell the police what he knew. But I still have a problem with that whole scenario.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t believe Wilson really confessed to Flanagan. He denied it when he was arrested, and I think Flanagan was lying. I also think the story Wilson told was true about shooting at a deer and missing, then finding Reynolds’ body when he was trying to track the deer. The whole confession thing makes no sense unless Wilson somehow convinced himself that he’d accidentally shot Reynolds. And unless he’d happened to shoot at
a deer that was standing exactly in line with where he found Reynolds’ body, which was pretty unlikely, he’d have to know he didn’t shoot him.”

  “So you’re saying you think Flanagan made up the whole bit about Wilson’s confession?”

  “Yes. I don’t know why he’d have done that, but that’s my gut feeling. Wilson was completely up front about contacting the police and telling them what he’d found and then leading them to the scene. I don’t think he had any idea that he might be implicating himself by doing that. He knew he hadn’t killed Reynolds, and my guess is, he was totally taken by surprise when he heard that he’d supposedly confessed and then was arrested.”

  “So the question is, why did Flanagan make up the story about Wilson confessing and then turn him in?”

  “That’s what I need to find out. But I’m kind of at a loss as to how to go about it. I did a quick search on the town, Rushville, and it’s a very small place. Anybody who’s a stranger is going to be spotted almost immediately, especially if he starts asking questions about the townspeople. And even more so if the people he’s asking about were involved in a recent crime.”

  “Kevin and Mark and I might be able to do a little digging and see if we can come up with something.”

  “I was kind of hoping you’d say that,” I said. Kevin and Mark—I’d never learned their last names—were the two hackers who had provided much of the information I’d used to build the plan for taking out Frank Reynolds. “But are you sure you want to involve them again, or for that matter, that you want to involve yourself?”

  “I don’t feel like I have much choice. Like I said, you wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for me, and I don’t want to see an innocent bystander go to prison for something I…uh…caused to happen.”

  “OK,” I said. “Let’s start with any background you can get on those two guys, Wilson and Flanagan. If we go with the assumption that Flanagan made up the story about Wilson confessing to him, that suggests Flanagan had a grudge against Wilson, some reason for wanting to burn him. We need to find out what that reason was.”

  “On it,” Collins said. “Can I call you back at this number when I have something?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll hang onto this phone for at least another few days.” I realized even as I said this I was breaking another one of my rules for protecting my privacy but I figured at this point James Collins was in this almost as deeply as I was and I could trust him as much as I trusted anyone. “In the meantime, I want to ask you one more thing.”

  “Shoot,” he said, and we both laughed uneasily at his bad pun.

  “I’m just curious…how did you initially find out that I’d completed the assignment on Frank Reynolds?”

  “Easy. His wife got a call that Saturday evening from the Schuyler County Sheriff informing her of her husband’s death, plus we didn’t quit monitoring her email or the stuff coming out of his office until just a few days ago. There was an absolute shitstorm when he didn’t come home from deer hunting that weekend. Calls and messages from the office to her, asking where he was, plus some stuff from her to her sister saying something terrible had happened to Frank, etc. That’s when I cut your check and stuck it in the mail.”

  “All right,” I said. “I wondered if there’d been something in the Trib that you might have seen.”

  “There was, but I already knew by then that Reynolds was dead. It was a short piece saying that his body had been found by another deer hunter, and it named Carlyle Wilson, but that was about all…well, the usual stuff about his death being under investigation. But that was before Wilson’s arrest.”

  “OK,” I said. “Now we have to figure out a way to clear Wilson…and I’d prefer we do that without revealing who really killed Frank Reynolds.” James Collins laughed. “And there’s one more thing—we need to do this as quickly as possible. I don’t know how long it will be before Wilson goes to trial, but I’m guessing not long. He’s not sitting in Chicago where there’s a huge backlog of cases. Best case scenario, we find out a way to clear him before the trial gets underway.”

  “Got it,” Collins said. “I’ll get back to you as soon as have something.”

  Chapter 10

  After we hung up I sat for a few minutes and replayed our conversation in my mind. That’s something I often do, not only with clients but almost everyone with whom I’ve just talked. I’ve occasionally been accused of overanalyzing things and the people doing the accusing are probably onto something. But I can’t help it; it’s my way of making sure—or at least trying to make sure—I haven’t missed anything critical.

  Of course this exercise can quickly turn into a major self-inflicted mind-fuck as well, especially if I let myself get caught up in the “Here’s what I should have said” game. That can lead to dreaming up various scenarios that will never transpire because the opportunity has already passed, but sometimes those lines of thought are unavoidable.

  As I reviewed my conversation with James Collins just now, he still impressed me as a stand-up guy and someone I could trust to come through with the needed information on Carlisle Wilson and Charlie Flanagan, assuming he and his hacker buddies could turn up anything useful. I realized I’d probably need to give them at least a couple days to do this.

  In the meantime, I could work with what I knew, which wasn’t much. But I could put it down on paper to help organize my thoughts, anyway, and maybe looking at it in writing would trigger some additional ideas. I pulled out a yellow legal pad and went to work.

  I started out by listing the facts as I knew them. Number one on the list was, of course, that Carlyle Wilson didn’t kill Frank Reynolds. Number two was that Wilson’s confession was almost certainly fabricated by Charlie Flanagan. Number three was that the alleged confession was what led to Wilson’s arrest, i.e., the police believed Flanagan’s story and acted upon it. Number four—I was jotting these down as they occurred to me, somewhat at random—was that the police had no real physical evidence of Wilson’s supposed involvement except for his fired shotgun. No slug or empty shell had been recovered, nor would there be.

  Or would they? I was certain that the slug that killed Frank Reynolds—the one I’d fired from my Ruger—would never be found in the woods, and I knew the empty shell would never be found, either, because I’d disposed of it. But what had Wilson done with the empty shell he’d fired at the deer?

  I wondered if he’d ejected it from his gun and left it lying in the woods, or if—like me—he’d caught it and pocketed it. If he’d done the latter, would he still have it, maybe in the pocket of his hunting vest or coat? And if he did, could it somehow be used to clear him?

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t see how. Without the slug, the empty shell was a dead end. Having it in his possession would only confirm that Wilson had fired a shot that morning, which he’d already admitted. If anything, that strengthened the case against him.

  On the other hand, if he’d ejected the shell and left it lying where it fell, and that location was some distance from where Frank Reynolds had been shot, could that be used in his defense? If someone were to find the shell, tie it to Wilson’s gun—a ballistics technician could probably do this, based on the firing pin’s imprint on the primer—and point out that where the shell had been found was nowhere near Frank Reynolds’ body, wouldn’t that at least bolster Wilson’s claim that he’d shot at a deer?

  It was a stretch, but I wondered if it was worth pursuing and how to go about pursuing it. It would require finding out from Wilson, somehow, where he’d been when he fired at the deer, then finding that spot in the woods and scouring it thoroughly to find his discarded shell. That is, if he’d discarded it.

  The more I thought about this scenario, the more implausible it seemed. I didn’t know if Wilson had been on a tree stand when he shot at the deer or if he’d been still-hunting through the woods, but if it was the latter, the chances of finding the exact spot he’d been when he shot at a deer—and then finding the shell if he’d dis
carded it—were almost totally nil.

  Wilson would have to be able to pinpoint exactly where he’d been in such a way that I could return to that spot to look for the shell. It was your classic needle-in-a-haystack search and I’d stand about as much chance of finding the shell as I would of scoring a date with Sandra Bullock the following weekend.

  The whole task of finding the shell would be much easier if he’d been on a tree stand. The stand wouldn’t be that difficult to find, assuming it was still in place and hadn’t been dismantled, and a shell ejected from the stand should be somewhere on the ground beneath it, probably no more than a few yards away. But again, I’d have to somehow ask Wilson at least a few questions to first determine if he’d been hunting from a stand and if so, where it was, and finally, if he’d ejected the shell and left it lying in the woods.

  And assuming he provided that information, and that I found the location and the shell, what would I have? An empty shell that matched the firing pin on Wilson’s gun, maybe proving his claim that he’d shot at a deer that morning, but nothing more.

  A prosecuting attorney could argue that Wilson fired a second time and it was the second shot that killed Frank Reynolds. Finding an empty shell near a tree stand in the woods would do nothing to clear him, to say nothing of the risk I’d be taking myself by trying to find the shell and then somehow getting it entered into evidence.

  I scratched the idea of contacting Wilson and trying to find his spent shell. The potential payoff—minimal, at best—wasn’t worth the risk. Which left me back at square one, trying to find out why Charlie Flanagan had set up Wilson to take the fall for Frank Reynolds’ death.