“He was coming after me there too, and I…I, well…I just…I couldn’t resist him no more, and things happened. Things I ain’t proud of.”
“What happened next?”
“Nothing. He didn’t break up with her like he said he would. He didn’t talk to me or nothing for a week or so, and I finally cried to my momma about it. Told her what I’d done. She whipped my behind good for that. Said I deserved the floozy reputation I had, that no good man would ever want the likes of me, and told me if I did it again, she’d send me to live with my uncle in Alabama.”
I felt blessed to have a mother that treated me with kindness and compassion, and Amy’s situation broke my heart. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“You’d think I’d learn from it, but I was stupid. I thought I was different. When he started chasing after me again, I tried to push him away, I did, and I did a good job of it that first night of the drag race, at least for a while, but then, well, I didn’t.”
“And did something happen the night Jenny was killed?”
She rubbed the back of her neck. “Yes, we was together that night like he says, but I didn’t let it go far. I was strong, and I pushed him away ‘fore it got too heavy. I told him he needed to break up with Jenny before we could be together again, but he just laughed. He said he wasn’t going to break it off with her for someone like me. Said I wasn’t his only side girl, and he didn’t need me. That’s when I knew he was just using me.”
My heart broke for that teenage girl. “Amy, was it true that Jenny called you?”
“Yes ma’am, and I told her nothing happened. I was ashamed for lying, but I was embarrassed.”
“Can you tell me about the conversation again?”
She nodded. “She accused me of getting with Eric. Said she knew all about us, and that Allison had confirmed it, but I told her nothing happened. I told her he tried, but I wasn’t going for it.”
“Wait, she told you Allison knew about you and Eric?”
“Yes, ma’am. Said Allison done told her about us from a couple weeks before.”
“How did Allison know? Did someone see you together another time, or did she mention that night before specifically?”
She shrugged. “I don’t quite remember, but I think she was talking about both before and that night. But I don’t think nobody saw us doing anything other than talking because no one else said anything, and you know if they had, it would have been all over school right quick.”
That was true. No teenager could hold on to that kind of gossip for long. Though without realizing it, Amy just admitted to being with Eric before the first night of the drag race. So, how would Allison have found out? “Okay, let’s just go back to the night Jenny was killed. Eric was at the drag race most of the night, and his friends confirmed that. Allison told me she doesn’t know if you were there after things happened with you and Eric. Did you leave right after that?”
“I was a mess when he told me we was never gonna be a couple. I tried to get it together, but I was too upset, so I left.”
“Then how did you account for your time the rest of the night?”
“My momma was home.”
“Did the deputy know any of this?”
She shook her head. “When he came to talk to me, word had already got out about Jenny being dead and all, and my momma made me swear to him that I wasn’t with Eric in the Godly way, so I had to say I was with fending him off and having conversations with him was all.”
And Deputy Pittman believed that? That didn’t make sense, and it didn’t make sense that he’d consider Old Man Goodson a suspect over Amy. “Amy, I don’t understand how that would stop the deputy from further questioning you. I’m not saying I think you killed her, but as a deputy his behavior seems odd to me.”
She gazed downward, and when she spoke, her voice was barely over a whisper. “After he left, my momma talked to Eric’s momma, and the next thing I knew, we was both off the suspect list, and that was the end of that.”
“Do you know what they discussed?”
She shook her head. “She just told me I wouldn’t see the light of day if I ever set eyes on that boy again.”
“Could I talk to your mother? Do you think she’d talk about it now?”
“Like I said, Momma’s gone. Been gone for five years now. Don’t matter though. She took it to her grave. I tried asking her a time or two, and she wouldn’t tell me nothing.”
“What about Eric? Did you ever talk to him about it?”
“No, ma’am. I did what my momma said. I didn’t want no more trouble. That Allison came by and fussed at me, and Momma told me I did good by keeping to my story, and the next thing I knew, those two were a couple, and everyone just moved on. You’re the first person to ask about it all in years.”
What had Amy’s mother done to stop Deputy Pittman from pursuing Amy and Eric as suspects? Without realizing it, Amy added another component to the situation, and one that didn’t fit into the puzzle anywhere.
* * *
Belle texted that she’d left for the day and had plans for a quick dinner with Matthew, but wanted me to come by later and try to open the trunk. I replied that I’d be there after I stopped at the office to grab my laptop and then picked up Bo from doggie day care.
I changed my plan and got Bo first and drove him to the office. I kept a bag of dog food there for him, so I fed him while I took care of a few things. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Amy said. I went through my notes and added key points to the main timeline.
Allison didn’t mention her confrontation with Amy. Why? Buford Jennings said he saw Allison’s truck pulling into the barn around noon, and Millie confirmed it. But Allison said she’d left at least two, but more like three hours before then to return the movies for the store’s opening at ten o’clock. Traffic from Bramblett County to Sandy Springs back then wouldn’t have been bad, but it was still a good hour drive. If she was telling the truth, she’d have to have left by nine. She hadn’t returned, at least not that she’d said, so someone either had their times wrong, or one of them was lying.
If Allison’s time was correct, she was the last person to see Jenny alive, at least to the best of my knowledge. Between nine o’clock the day she died and that evening, no one was around to see her, Eric doesn’t specifically recall talking to her, and Allison wasn’t around to check on her. The only person that talked to her was Amy.
I tapped my pencil on my desk. Bo wandered over and sniffed my leg, and I gave him a pat on the head. I knew I was missing something, but I didn’t know what, just that it was something in those few hours when Jenny was MIA.
I remembered the storyline from one of the crime shows I watched, and my brain clicked. I swiped through the contacts on my iPhone until I came across Henry Huggins, our coroner. We’d established a mutual admiration for each other when a previous client of mine died several months before.
He picked up the call on the first ring. “You got Huggins.”
“Hey Henry, it’s Lily Sprayberry. How are you?”
“Well, howdy there, Lily. What a surprise hearing your sweet voice on the line. What can I do you for little lady?”
“I’m doing a little research, and I was hoping we could chat. I’d like to run some things by you.”
“Is this hypothetical research, or about a current case? You know I can’t say much about a current investigation.”
“Oh, I know. It’s a cold case, actually. It’s not being actively investigated. Does that help?”
“Sure, go ahead. I may have an opinion or twenty. What you want to know?”
“Thirty-five years ago, a young girl named Jennifer Rawlings was killed. A county worker found her off the trail by the side of 369. Do you remember anything about her case?”
“Honey, I know I’m not a looker like your fiancé, but I didn’t realize I looked that old, not until now anyway. I was only six-years-old then.”
I laughed. “Heavens, I’m not implying you lo
ok old. I wanted to talk more about how crime scenes and bodies were handled then. I thought you could help.”
“I might could, but I know someone that could give you some hands-on experience talk. How about that?”
He referred to his father, Henry senior, who he’d replaced as the coroner some time ago when his dad suffered a stroke and needed to retire. While I would have loved to talk with the coroner that handled the situation, I didn’t know if his health would allow it. “I don’t want to bother your dad during his recovery. How is he doing by the way?”
“Honey, pretty girl like you stopping by to chat, you’d be the light in his day.”
“Is he well enough to see me?”
He laughed, a hearty, belly laugh. “That man’ll out last us all. He’s got himself a bit of a limp now and some trouble on his right side, but his brain’s as good as gold, and he’s back to talking up a storm. I tell ya, it’s a miracle what a little therapy can do.”
“I can stop by on my way to a friend’s house if that’s okay?”
“Sounds good. I’ll give him a call, and I’ll meet you over there. How’s that?”
“That would be great, Henry. Thank you.”
He gave me the address though I already knew where Henry senior lived. I gathered my things, stuffed them into my bag, and headed to my house to drop off Bo. I was a horrible dog momma for leaving him, but he didn’t seem to mind. He drank some water and jumped up onto the couch and was out in seconds.
I rubbed his head and gave him a kiss. “Poor guy. You must have been flirting hard today to be so tired.”
He didn’t respond.
I headed over to Henry senior’s house, and his son greeted me at the door. After quite a bit of small talk, I felt comfortable enough to approach the subject.
“Mr. Huggins, I’m looking into the murder of Jennifer Rawlings, and I’m hoping you can answer some questions for me.”
When he smiled, the right side of his face didn’t move much, but his eyes sparkled. “What’s a realtor doing investigatin’ a cold case?”
“Pa, I told you, it’s her hobby.”
I didn’t want to be disrespectful, so I explained how my client’s coin collection had disappeared, and showed them a copy of the note left in its place. “I owe it to the Hansards to get their coin collection back, and I feel like I owe it to Jennifer Rawlings now, too. But, I’d appreciate it if you could keep the missing collection between the three of us.”
He nodded. “What do you want to know?”
I pulled out my timeline and went through every detail starting the evening before she was killed, to when Deputy Pittman was officially removed from the case, and it went into the cold case files. “I’m missing something.
Henry senior reviewed the timeline. “You got the case file?”
“A copy of it, yes.”
He stretched out his hand and I gave it to him. He flipped through the pages, carefully scrutinizing some while casually reading others. “I was at the scene. Poor girl. Looked like she’d been sleeping, till you saw the back of her head. It was bashed in but good.”
I’d seen what a crushed skull looked like, and my stomach lurched at the thought. “Do you remember anything about what happened?”
“I called time of death, but we had to send her off to South Fulton County for the autopsy.”
I had a copy of the autopsy report, and Dylan and I reviewed it initially, so I detailed what I understood to the two men. “Did you ever see the autopsy report?”
Henry senior shook his head. “My job was done. I wasn’t nosy about that kind of stuff like my son here is.”
I removed the report from my bag. “Can you look at it and let me know what you think?”
Henry junior asked for the report. “May I see it?”
“Sure, any help is appreciated.”
He read through the report and handed it to his father. “Seems to be in order. What do you think, Pa?”
Henry senior examined the report carefully. He read through it and then went back to the summary at the beginning of the report. “This ain’t right.” He glanced at his son. “Those dang medical examiners can’t do what they’re paid to do. Don’t know why they don’t just leave it up to us.”
“Dad, we’re not doctors. We can’t autopsy bodies.”
“I seen more of the dead and their remains that any doctor out there. Don’t take no medical degree to take a body temperature now, does it?”
Henry junior shook his head. “Give me that.” He read the summary again. “Says the time of death was between five o’clock and midnight. Might be a wide spread, but don’t mean he wasn’t right.”
“Don’t care if the spread is wide or not. I know what I know, and that girl died in the morning, not at night.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
The older man huffed and pushed himself up from his chair. “Gimme a minute. I don’t walk as fast as I used to.” He ambled carefully to a wall of bookcases behind him, holding onto pieces of furniture along the way. He pointed at the books on the shelves and when he’d found the one he needed, said, “ah-ha” as he pulled it out. He flipped through the pages and handed me the book.
The chapter was titled, Defining Time of Death. I quickly read through the first paragraph that listed the discussion points of the chapter; body temperature, rigor mortis, livor mortis (lividity), degree of putrefaction, stomach contents, corneal cloudiness, vitreous potassium level, insect activity, and scene markers. I had a basic understanding of rigor mortis and knew body temperature changed when someone died, but I really didn’t know what any of it meant in relation to a dead body, and the rest of the chapter points were completely foreign to me. “Okay, you’re going to have to help me here.”
He smiled. “All those things, they matter when you find a dead body. You got to take things into consideration you don’t pay attention to in a regular death. I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies in my life, and I got a pretty good idea when someone died. It ain’t a perfect science, and I’m not saying I’m right all the time, but I can tell you the medical examiner did wrong by this girl.”
“How do you know?”
“There ain’t a lot of murders in Bramblett. Sure, we got us some more as of late, but back then, we didn’t have a killing for five years straight. I remember that little girl well. Broke my heart to see her lying there like that. I checked her temperature, and the girl hadn’t cooled much at all.”
“Depending on the location of the body, the temperature can rise to the temperature of its surroundings, or decrease if it’s in a cooler area,” his son said.
“She was found outside, and it was summer, so it would make sense that her body didn’t cool quickly. Is that what you’re saying?” I asked.
Henry senior shook his head. “Not exactly, but you’re close. She was found early afternoon, and the area was shaded, no real direct sunlight coming through the trees at that angle. I always made a point of noting the location of a body, and she wasn’t in a place where much sunlight would hit her at either time, setting or rising, and there was enough tree cover there to stop any direct sunlight from heating her up, but her temp was the same as the air.”
His son nodded. “And lividity?”
The old man sighed. “She wasn’t killed in the woods. We know that from the scene, but even so, she’d been dead long enough for the blood to pool in the front part of her body.”
I raised my hand like a school girl. “I don’t understand.”
Henry junior laid it out for me. “When a person dies, the blood pools to the lowest part of the body. Takes several hours to go through a progression of changes, but basically, after about twelve hours, if you were to touch the skin, it would remain the color of the pooled blood.”
I swallowed hard. “Is that how she was at that point?”
Henry senior nodded. “She’d been dead a while already. That medical examiner didn’t know how to do his job.”
Henry junior shook his head.
“Pa, there are other factors that can affect the condition of the body, you know that. She was young, and the report says she weighed one hundred and three pounds, so lividity could have happened sooner.”
“I don’t care about that. I know what I know, and that girl died long before that report says.”
“And you weren’t aware of what was noted in the medical examiner’s report?” I asked.
“No, ma’am. Like I said, my job was done. I left the rest up to the sheriff’s department.”
“Did the deputy in charge of the case ever discuss anything else with you?”
He shook his head.
“And you told him what you believed to be her time of death?”
“Don’t know why I wouldn’t. Don’t mean he’d go with that over the medical examiner though.”
The younger Henry put the book back on the shelf. “Typically, we give our estimate, but law enforcement doesn’t get a say in it and they go with what’s in the autopsy. Thing is, it’s all an estimate, so unless someone witnesses the time of death, we can’t be sure.”
“But if you’re right, and the medical examiner is wrong, that could change the entire investigation.”
The both nodded.
“And that means the suspects with alibis may not have alibis after all.”
They nodded again.
That could change everything. The timing was key, and both Old Man Goodson and Buford Jennings had alibis. Amy said she was at work, but there was too much about her story that hadn’t been true and things that didn’t add up. And Eric’s alibi was completely invalid with the earlier time of death.
That meant both Eric and Amy could have killed Jennifer Rawlings. I stood and thanked them both. “I’m glad you’re doing well, Mr. Huggins.”
Chapter 9
Belle handed me a glass of sweet tea. “Wow, you’re like a real investigator now.” She sat on her couch next to me. “And I know you love this stuff, but sweetie, next time you want to talk blood and gore, do it with your fiancé instead of me, okay? My stomach wasn’t made to talk about those things.”
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