Jewel of a Murderer

by M. Glenn Graves

  “Don’t beat yourself up, kiddo. You’re only human,” she said. I thought I detected a snicker.

  It was nearly noon, so I fixed a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a toasted cheese sandwich. The coffee brewed while I consumed my lunch. Instead of the couch, I opted for the mismatched yet comfortable armchair that allowed me to stare out the living room window while I chewed and stewed.

  Wineski called to update me on Jasper.

  “You lost him?”

  “Personally, I didn’t lose him. The two uniforms assigned to keep an eye on him lost him.”

  “You assigned them, right?”

  “Don’t like where you’re headed with that. Just wanted to give you a heads-up about this fellow who seems to have a grudge against you and a need for dog-compensation.”

  “Whattaya think? I owe this Jasper character anything for the care and feeding of a dog that ran away from him?”

  “You know all of that to be fact?” he said.

  “Mostly.”

  “Not my call. You could offer him a few bucks, but I don’t know. Seems that he’s got something else going.”

  “You wanna fill me in on that seeming of yours?”

  “Can’t say what it feels like, just that none of this makes a whole lot of sense. For me too many years have elapsed since he lost the dog, or abandoned him, or Sam walked away. To come back after such a long time…I don’t know.”

  “Fishy, as they say?”

  “You could say that. Just called to let you know that your tax dollars have failed you this time.”

  “This time? I could send you a list.”

  He hung up without responding. His way of ending distasteful conversations. To the point.

  I took my empty soup bowl to the kitchen sink. I gave Sam the other half of my toasted cheese sandwich. I grabbed a mug from the cupboard, filled it with coffee, and headed back to the chair to stare at the Norfolk view on the other side of my window. It wasn’t much of a view, but then, I wasn’t really looking at anything. More thinking and trying to find ways to soothe my bruised investigative ego.

  “You actually entertaining the idea of offering this Jaz character some money for Sam?”

  “Not really. It was merely a question to see if I was within my rights to not offer anything.”

  “You pretend to be so hard-nosed, that sometimes your softer side just oozes out from the inside without even a scuffle.”

  “Mind your own business. Speaking of that, do you have anything on Pearl Higgins?”

  “Are you blurring the lines here, Master Detective?” Rogers asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What does Pearl Higgins have to do with Jasper Connell and your present predicament of a problem?”

  “Nothing, why?”

  “So why do you want me to tell you what I have on Pearl Higgins?”

  “Because in retelling you the story of Sam’s first investigation, I have misplaced some salient facts about that woman. When I was telling you the part where I had forgotten to have you do some research back then on her, I realized that whatever data you uncovered I had not retained. I have forgotten the woman again.”

  “Oh, I see. Being mortal and all does have its failings. Right?”

  “Enlighten me, please, as to what you found out about Pearl during that earlier case.”

  “Tsk, tsk. I am saddened that you forget my work so easily. I actually saved you a trip to greater Burnsville, North Carolina back then. At the time of my research, I discovered that Pearl Higgins had been dead for nearly two years.”

  “Instructive, of course, but not necessarily everything I might like to know about the woman.”

  “Patience, my love. I have more.”

  “What else you got?”

  “According to the hospital report I found, Pearl died from some latent complications with her last pregnancy and delivery.”

  “That would have been Odem’s birth,” I said.

  “Not so fast. There was one child born after Odem. A third pregnancy that ended in a still-birth. Her doctor did allude to a pre-existing issue from an earlier delivery. He called it a fistula formation that developed into an abscess during her pregnancy with this third fetus.”

  “Likely explains Bernstein’s marginal note way back when,” I said.

  “Mother and baby were buried there in Burnsville.”

  “I take it she lived for a short while after giving birth.”

  “Three days, the report said. Long enough for her to name the baby. Ruby Stone Higgins.”

  “Wow. If consistency were a virtue, she’d have it,” I said. “How old was Pearl when she died?”

  “Death certificate says that she was forty-eight,” Rogers said. “Maybe too late to be having a baby.”

  “Some people have managed to birth children into their sixties. Still, it might have contributed to her death.”

  “Does that satisfy your curiosity about Pearl?” she asked.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know why she came back into mind…now.”

  “Just the jogging of the brain from the retelling of your story…speaking of that, since Sam is still with us, I’m going out on a tenuous limb here and guess that he finally returned to you from his river-side adventures that day,” Rogers said.

  I began relating my insights to Rogers once more.

  “He finally found me in the parking lot. I was sitting in the backseat of the car. He had been gone for at least an hour and some change. Maybe two hours. I was enjoying myself so much by that point, I lost track of time. I was dozing.”

  “And he returned empty-pawed no doubt.”

  “Actually, he was returning with the last lead we got on the case. I was sitting in the backseat directly behind the driver’s seat with the door open and my feet on the parking lot pavement.”

  “Asleep in that posture?” she said.

  “Kinda.”

  “Well, stranger,” I said as this massive black head suddenly appeared and rested on my lap. “It’s about time you returned. I’ve been bored to tears here.”

  He nudged my hand right hand with his nose. My hand was merely lying on my right thigh in a relaxed position. I opened my hand and he dropped a sparkling, imitation stone into it from his mouth. It was red.

  It appeared to be about the same size as the other stones he had found weeks earlier.

  I got out of the car thinking that he would lead me to the spot where he had discovered his find. We both stood there looking at each other for a few seconds.

  “Show me where,” I said.

  He looked away and then back at me. Then he walked around to the other side of the car. He looked at the rider’s front door, then at me. He barked a few short yelps.

  It was an unfamiliar code between us. I took it to mean that he wanted to ride in the car.

  “You want me to drive you to the spot?”

  He barked once. Aha. Communication.

  I opened the door and he jumped inside. We left the parking lot and I followed his lead. Each time we came to a road that required a decision to go either left or right, I would ask, and he would bark once or twice to guide me.

  “To the left here?”

  Two sharp barks. I turned right. We did that for a few blocks. I was glad we were riding. He had traveled some distance by the time he had left me and returned.

  Twenty minutes later we arrived at the place where he had found the red stone. Apparently, he had picked up the scent some distance from where he had left me near the water and then stayed on that scent to this specific spot. It was a bus stop. The river was just over a slight rise in the terrain and behind some businesses. He pulled at my hand and I followed him to the place that he had emerged from his run along the shoreline. I was learning that communicating with a canine requires some assumptions and some patience. At least that was so with Sam.

  I guessed that the scent ended for good at the bus stop. Considering the amount of human traffic that would utilize such
a place on any given day and considering that a few weeks had passed since Candace had been killed, I didn’t put much stock in his bus stop discovery. It could have belonged to anyone.

  I said nothing to discourage him. The fact that he had traveled nearly three miles was evidence enough that Sam was a lot like me when it came to tenacity. Hard pressed to give in or give up.

  It was after four when we returned to the home of the Violent Crimes Unit. I took the stone to the lab and Starnes was still there working on another case. It was the first time I had the chance to thank her for her assistance in directing me to Reddy Reese and his singular abilities.

  “Glad to help,” she said. “What’s this?”

  Her question was a reference to the red stone. I told her what I thought. She grunted and said she’d compare it to the other stones I mentioned we had logged in at the evidence locker.

  I walked back to the office area and Wineski found me. He motioned for me to come into his sacred space. McGrady was there along with Andrews.

  “I’m pulling the plug on this, guys. We’ll keep our eyes and ears open for a while, but the hard truth is the trail has run cold. We have nothing new to go on, nothing that would lead to any viable suspect. Hardly the perfect crime, if you ask me, but good enough to stump us.”

  “Sam found a clue near Barraud Park,” I said.

  “Sam,” he repeated.

  “Dog find a bone?” McGrady said and chuckled to himself. Nobody else laughed, but he thought it was funny.

  “What’d he find?” Wineski said.

  “A red stone. Starnes is checking it against the other stones we have,” I said.

  “And where does that lead us?” Wineski said.

  “To a different spot,” I said.

  “Not at the park?” he said.

  “Bus stop about three miles from where the suspect ran out of the woods and then along the shoreline of Lafayette,” I said.

  “What suspect would that be?” McGrady asked.

  “Probably the one that stabbed me and killed the others.”

  “The one that got away, huh?” McGrady said and shook his head. “I told you, Captain, that I wasn’t dragging my bones around on this one. And you brought in this super detective, and we have nothing more than some sparkling trinkets that her dog found. I’m impressed,” he said and chuckled again.

  Starnes Carver knocked on Wineski’s door. He nodded at her through the glass. She cracked the door a little and stuck her head inside.

  “Not a match, Clancy. Different from the other stones.”

  “There you have it,” McGrady said with obvious pleasure while standing up. “So much for the super detective and the super-duper dog.”

  It didn’t make sense to me that Sam would retrieve just any shiny orb that he came across. It had to have some connection for him. I simply had no idea what it was. He wasn’t talking.

  I thanked Starnes and she left.

  “That’s all,” Wineski said.

  “Thanks for your assistance, Andrews,” Wineski said as she walked through the door to leave.

  “Maybe next time,” she said over her shoulder.

  I stood there looking at the red stone that Starnes had packaged and labeled for me.

  “You know this doesn’t sit well with me,” I said to Wineski.

  “You need to let it go. Can’t solve them all.”

  “You know sooner or later the bad guys make mistakes.”

  “It’ll have to be later this time around,” he said. “We’ve got nothing to go on.”

  His office door squeaked a little and we both turned to see Starnes Carver standing there.

  “I forgot to tell you something,” she said. “That stone doesn’t match the others because it’s real. It’s a ruby. Probably worth something. We might want to guard it closely or not tell too many people what it really is.”

  Starnes walked away.

  “You think that means something to our case?” Wineski said to me.

  “What case?” I said to him as I handed him the evidence bag with the red stone inside, the last clue we had.

  Chapter 48

  “Who’s the patron saint of lost causes?” Rogers said to me while I was staring at the floor when I had stopped filling in the blanks Rogers had on her hard drive. I was deep in thought, somewhere else than my apartment, away from Rogers and Sam. I was wondering how I had failed to find the killer of those three people. What had I done wrong?

  “You’re asking me?” I said.

  “Not really. I know the answer, of course. Saint Jude. Just wondered if you knew.”

  “Hypothetical question?”

  “Perhaps rhetorical. It didn’t end the way you had hoped.”

  “True enough. Still, I wouldn’t place it in the lost causes category.”

  “Just that ubiquitous name given by nearly all police forces in the universe – cold case file,” she said. “A word by any other name…”

  “It has remained an elusive murder case for too many years.”

  “You and the Norfolk police as well,” Rogers said.

  “I have fewer unsolved cases than they do,” I rationalized.

  “Oneupmanship, or womanship?”

  “Merely one more justification for going private.”

  “There’s a tidbit missing from your storytelling,” Rogers said.

  “Only one tiny item?”

  “Well, I could very well have more, if you allow me some time to reconstruct and plot it all out.”

  “Tell me the tidbit.”

  “In these last several years, since that day in Wineski’s office where he called a halt to the investigation, has McGrady finally retired or been forced out?” she asked.

  “Oh, that. Yeah, finally retired. I think it was a few years back, don’t remember exactly. Not really something I made note concerning. Wineski finally insisted that the man go away and find other means of employment.”

  “Ouch! Full retirement?” Rogers asked.

  “Why are you so concerned about McGrady?” I said.

  “It seems to me that even in your slanted telling of the tale, he was not all that bad. You seemed to give him some good moments now and then.”

  “I suppose earlier in his career he wasn’t a bad cop.”

  “What do you think happened to him?”

  “Maybe that issue with his family was a turning point. I really can’t say,” I said.

  “And the other thing I have surmised from your tale of unsuccessfulness is that Mister Sam, the Wonder Dog, didn’t really shine too well the first time out,” she said.

  “Not quite the barn-burner you might have expected me to recall for you,” I said.

  “I do recall some bits and pieces of it, but I don’t have any record of an official report you added to my hard drive at the time you ceased working on it.”

  “Never liked to admit defeat. Had nothing salient to end with.”

  “Your expectations still run high, is that what you mean?” she said.

  “I never quit.”

  “Ever come up with any connection for that ruby that Sam found?”

  “Connection? No. Conjecture or supposition or just a wild theory…maybe.”

  “So, tell me your wild theory,” Rogers said.

  “For a long time after Wineski closed the official case and marked it unsolved, I speculated that it was more than just a little interesting that Odem Higgins had a mother named Pearl who had this thing for precious stones. She apparently chose to name two of her children with specific gem names and one of them was simply called Stone. As far as we know. We know from my visit with the doctor in Yancey County that her common law marriage partner was Garnet Stone Connelly. That other man who entered her life, Roscoe Ramsey, likely had nothing to do with her love of stones and the naming the children.”

  “I suppose that’s supported by the fact that there was another man in her life after Odem had left home for college. There is no record of him. You’re probably correct
about Pearl being the gem lover and the name giver,” Rogers added.

  “The oldest child being named Stone does not fit precisely. Since we have no trace of him, it would be nice to know if he had been given a specific gem name in front of Stone,” I said.

  “People are not always the paragons of consistency like me, or like what you think of yourself,” Rogers said.

  “We humans do a lot of bobbing and weaving,” I said.

  “Not sure I understand that metaphor.”

  “Look it up.”

  “Aha,” she exclaimed much too quickly, “it could mean wishy-washy.”

  “Something like that. Hard for humans to stay the course sometimes.”

  “You haven’t told me explicitly any wild theory yet,” she said.

  “Well, all of those gem names, and remember that Sam found those shiny gems – two phony ones and the ruby. Has to be a connection somewhere.”

  “Back to your notion about not believing in coincidences I suspect.”

  “Yeah, that mantra. My wild wandering here is that the ruby Sam found was not something that came off one of the killer’s old tennis shoes, like the two phony ones. Despite its similar size, it represents something more significant.”

  “Like the name of that infant daughter who was still-born,” Rogers said.

  “Precisely. So, I have two people who likely connect in a strong way with the person who killed our three victims.”

  “Odem Stone Higgins and Ruby Stone Higgins,” Rogers said.

  “Bingo.”

  “You thinking that this older brother is the perpetrator?” Rogers asked.

  “Probably. Some type of revenge killing.”

  “You have a hole or two in your theory, chief,” she said.

  “No doubt. What are you thinking?”

  “For one, Ruby Stone Higgins, that infant, died some ten years ago. I doubt if she has anything to do with your revenge killing idea.”

  “Yeah, you’re correct in that. I don’t know. Names and gems. Relationships. Love and loss. All of it still floating around without any clue as to how it all comes together. Very frustrating,” I said. “I suppose I’m simply grabbing at straws.”

  “You generally manage to work around it.”