Poplar Falls

by Arseneault, Pierre C;

  Before Marci could reply, Trudy had ended the call. Marci looked at her phone while she processed what had just happened. Trudy was a busy lawyer and was never on social media during the day. Maybe they needed to have a talk about certain issues after all. But that would have to wait. She shot a glance across the street at the crowd of people watching things unfold as she refocused her attention to the matter at hand, which was doing what the Turlingtons had hired her to do. Sell their house.

  “I’m so sorry, but I needed to take that,” Marci stated as she put the phone in her purse and joined the Blanchards on the sidewalk, to what would eventually become their new home. “My clients are very important and some calls can’t be ignored.” Marci was lying, but as usual nobody could tell. She was good at it.

  8

  Meanwhile, Emma was still on the porch and back on the phone with her friend Myrtle, filling her in on the goings-on at their friend Agatha’s apartment building across the street. And also, how that redheaded, lesbian, real-estate slut Marci Grant was showing the neighbours’ house again. Slut was what Emma called Marci behind her back. Emma usually liked everyone, unless they didn’t like her, and she knew full well Marci Grant wasn’t a fan of hers.

  “I miss the Turlingtons. I mean, they were weird and all but at least they were sorta normal,” Emma said. “I just hope these people aren’t serial killers. Or worse, religious nuts,” Emma said to her friend.

  Myrtle laughed at Emma’s comment before getting to the point she wanted to make. “I’m thinking we should have an emergency meeting tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Emma asked. “Bill and I had plans.” Emma shot a glance at Bill, who was enthralled behind his huge pair of binoculars.

  “Cancel,” Myrtle blurted. “With everything that’s going on across the street, we need to call an emergency meeting.”

  “Okay,” Emma replied. “Bill won’t like that I’m cancelling our night.”

  Bill lowered the binoculars and gave Emma a dirty look. He was listening after all, she thought.

  “Oh shush, if you know what’s good for you,” Emma said to Bill. “Not you, Myrtle. Bill just gave me the stink eye.”

  “I’ll call Ester and Mavis. You call Geraldine and Agatha.”

  “Okay,” Emma replied. “But Agatha’s at the police station being questioned. She’s probably a suspect or something.”

  “Oh my,” Myrtle replied. “Oh my goodness!”

  Both women laughed.

  “Isn’t this exciting?” Myrtle asked.

  9

  Later that night, under a blanket of stars, Detective Tilley pulled her car into her driveway and killed the engine. She sat still for a moment, adjusting her rear view mirror. From across the street she could see a familiar glow coming from the otherwise dark screened-in porch at her partner’s house. When the faint light flickered she took this to mean that Dodge was still awake, which wasn’t a surprise as he had been doing this ever since their last case went cold. Getting out of her car, she walked across the street. Dodge lit a small lamp as she approached.

  “Good workout?” he asked as a yoga pants and hoodie-clad Tilley climbed the steps to his porch. From the little Dodge could see in the dark, her hair was matted as it usually was after a serious visit to the gym.

  “Yup, the usual,” Tilley replied. What she didn’t confess was the need to burn off the nervous energy a new case of this magnitude stirred up. How, if she didn’t burn off some steam, she wouldn’t sleep a wink. “How was your run?”

  “Good,” he replied, sitting in the dark still in his running shorts, damp with perspiration, while he nursed a cold beer. He ran almost every night but doubled his run when he had something on his mind. He hadn’t forgotten not being able to catch the perp stealing women’s underwear. The one the local press named the Panty Bandit. The thought of him still being out there bothered Dodge, and it was obvious to most everyone who knew him. Dodge fiddled with the old Dell laptop computer which sat in his lap.

  “Beer?” he asked, gesturing to an old cabinet near the door of the porch.

  Tilley opened the cabinet door to reveal a hidden mini fridge containing both full and empty beer cans. She took a beer and perched herself on the cabinet fridge.

  “Remind me again,” Tilley asked, “why you started keeping your empty beer cans in the fridge?”

  “It’s too warm in here,” he said referring to the screened porch he always drank beer in on warm summer nights. “No fruit flies that way.”

  “You’re one strange cat,” Tilley said. She pointed to a pile of newspapers on the floor. “Anything in those?”

  “The local press headlined the murder but talk in circles since they really know nothing.”

  “So what are you up to now, other than looking creepy sitting here in the dark?”

  “Surfing Facebook,” Dodge replied. “Checking out all the pictures and videos people posted from outside Charlie Baker’s place.”

  “Good idea,” Tilley replied as she sipped the beer and got closer to see the laptop’s screen, which had caused the strange glow in the otherwise-dark screened porch. “Find anything good?”

  “Sorta,” Dodge replied. “Check this out.”

  A few moments later they were watching a video clip which scanned the crowd standing by the yellow police tape. The video was a mere 32 seconds long.

  “Who’s she?” Tilley asked before sipping more beer.

  “Exactly,” Dodge said. “That’s what I want to know.”

  “Walter seems to know her,” Tilley said. She was referring to a young, simple-looking, thin man in baggy clothes and crooked baseball cap. He stood next to his adult-sized tricycle which was complete with two wire baskets (front and back). Hooked to the back was a small trailer cart near full of empty bottles and cans. Standing next to Walter was a tiny brunette, mid-30s, who looked to be sobbing hard. Tears ran down her face as she clutched a large purse to her bosom.

  “She seems way too upset to not have known Charlie,” Dodge replied.

  “A year ago, you could have asked Walter who she is,” Tilley stated incorrectly. It was more than a year. A little over eighteen months, to be more precise.

  “I know,” Dodge replied. Walter hadn’t been this way in his youth. He wasn’t a genius, but he was as smart as most other kids his age. But since the doctors took out a brain tumour and he suffered a brain haemorrhage, his entire vocabulary now consisted of little more than the days of the week.

  Tilley finished her beer and showed the empty can to Dodge as if to ask where to put it.

  “Just leave it there,” he said, gesturing to the top of the cabinet. “I need to put them out for Walter anyway. I’m Wednesday.”

  “Well, show that to the guys at the station tomorrow. She’s cute enough that someone in the office is bound to know who she is.” Tilley set the can down on the cabinet. “Goodnight!” she said as she exited the porch and headed home.

  Dodge closed his fake Facebook account and shut down his laptop. He went to the kitchen and came back with a blue transparent trash bag, collecting the empties from his fridge and anywhere else they might be while his mind wandered to Walter. If Walter wasn’t a simple-minded fool with brain damage, he might have been more confident in his ability to read lips, thought Dodge. He wasn’t sure, but what he assumed Walter was saying to the brunette was ‘Tuesday’ and if Dodge was right that meant she was from Poplar Falls. If he was right, that would mean she would live not that far away and was a regular of Walter’s. Walter would collect her recyclables on Tuesdays, which would narrow down the area she lived in. He didn’t know Walter’s route well, but he knew enough to know this. Dodge mulled this over as he took the bag outside. He finished his beer and placed the empty can in the bag, then tied it shut and placed the bag of cans next to a second bag containing more empty beer cans and juice containers near his porch steps. Walter would
pick them up the next morning, as Dodge was Wednesday after all.

  10

  At the age of 31, Chadwick Lemkie had taken the job of lead Crime Scene Investigator in Poplar Falls to further his career. In any major metropolis, such leadership positions were reserved for more experienced senior crime scene investigators. The ones with a lot more field experience and better qualified to lead. But the police chief had wanted someone independent who was both lab- and field-proficient and using the title of lead CSI worked like a charm. He attracted many interested applicants. ‘Lead CSI’ was just a title since this person would be the entire department. Poplar Falls wasn’t exactly crime central. Mostly thefts and assaults, murders were incredibly rare. Sure there were the occasional suspicious deaths, but most of the time those could be explained; almost always quickly determined as accidental or of natural causes right at the scene. Lemkie had been excited to get the position, even if he had still been doing the same work as before and had nobody to lead, he didn’t care, and he proved himself early on as a great investigator.

  Lemkie had managed well on his own for nearly five years until the Panty Bandit. His usual case load was not a problem, but when the new case added dozens of homes to investigate Lemkie suddenly found himself overwhelmed. Sending stuff out of town to be processed wasn’t an option the chief could allow, under the circumstances. The mayor was on his back about the local press and he didn’t want that spreading. But with so many peculiar burglaries in a short period of time, the townsfolk feared for their safety. In an effort to get this case resolved quickly, the chief had agreed to let Lemkie hire Calvin on a six-month contract. He proved very knowledgeable for someone fresh out of school and eager to prove himself. Then suddenly one day, the mysterious thefts stopped just as suddenly as they had begun. The last burglary was just like the rest and so they had assumed there would be others. But after three months, Lemkie predicted there would be no more and he was right. But after the six months were up Calvin was kept on.

  Now faced with their very first real murder since coming to Poplar Falls, Lemkie and Calvin would take no chances. They had photographed every inch of Charlie’s apartment, even the most mundane items that probably had nothing to do with Charlie’s death. They had also bagged and tagged a ridiculous amount of stuff from the apartment and now were cataloguing it all. It was hard to tell what might end up being the thing that would solve the crime, so they took practically everything. They had spent hours collecting so many fingerprints that Lemkie didn’t think they would be of much help. But they had taken them anyway to be thorough. They had bobby pins, scrunchies, and multiple hair ties all with different color hair stuck in them. Fourteen buttons of various sizes and color with threads still stuck to them were found under the furniture. Lemkie commented that perhaps clothing had often been removed in a hurry at Charlie’s place. They found a pair of pink patent leather pumps under the bed, too small to be something Charlie wore, Calvin had said jokingly. They had laid out and catalogued the contents of trash cans and other garbage that had littered Charlie’s apartment. The trash can contained a large collection of empty lube containers, used condoms, feminine hygiene products, and a small broken remote covered in something sticky.

  On a separate table in the lab sat all the devices that had hidden cameras in them. They found a plastic rabbit with a camera for an eye; a hollowed-out book with a lens in its spine; a reading lamp above the bed with a lens for a button, and an old VCR with not only a lens but a portable hard drive inside it as well. This recent discovery had the pair of CSIs hatching plans on how to handle the workload. Calvin was good with computers, and so he would be the one to see what was on the electronic device. This he offered to do gladly, though he would come to regret the decision. At the time, hacking into the hard drive was way more appealing than collecting DNA from used condoms and lube containers.

  11

  The following morning both detectives sat at their desks, quietly sipping coffee and going over photos of the evidence that had been catalogued so far. This peculiar case is one for the books, Dodge kept telling everyone. Strewn on his desk were printed copies of the same images Tilley was viewing on the screen of her laptop.

  “So, I started a list of women I think Charlie was sleeping with,” Dodge said with a sly, immature grin. “I added Marci Grant to that list but took her off again since I figure you’d be more her type than Charlie.”

  “You think?” Tilley replied with an air of sarcasm as she stuck a pen in her mouth, clicking through the pictures on her computer.

  “You think he was sleeping with Ms. Weatherbee?” He leaned back in his chair with coffee in hand and put his feet up.

  Tilley grinned, chewing on her pen a bit before spitting it out to reply.

  “To be honest, I don’t know. She looked nervous. I’ve known her since I was in the fifth grade; Ms. Weatherbee is not the nervous type. So for her to be nervous I can only assume they weren’t lovers, and that this was probably the first time she was over at his place.”

  “Maybe,” Dodge replied. “I think we should talk to her anyway.”

  “Sure,” Tilley replied. “She might know something.”

  Dodge settled down in front of his old laptop again and logged into Facebook using his fake account. He quickly found what he was looking for and saved a picture of the sobbing brunette from the crime scene. It was a better one than the picture he had saved the previous evening.

  “I’m assuming we’re going to have a long list of suspects, but this one intrigues me,” he said as he sent a copy of the woman’s picture to the office printer.

  “But we really only need one suspect,” Tilley replied with a smirk. “The guilty one.”

  Dodge chuckled. This, if anything, was Tilley’s mantra, which he poked fun at as often as he could while trying not to make her mad.

  Tilley scanned through the evidence photos, pausing at one in particular which showed multiple objects on a table: a pink hairbrush full of long blonde hairs, a black elastic band which looked to have the same hair color clung to it, a tube of lip balm, a brown button with a few coins, and a few small identical white buttons. The blonde hairs intrigued her, but she couldn’t see any other color hairs in the brush. The next image was of a VCR that had been opened and inside was a small, modern-looking black box.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Tilley said aloud.

  “Probably,” she heard someone say before looking to see who it was. Lead CSI Lemkie walked over to Dodge and handed him a page from the printer. “It’s a cleverly hidden portable hard drive, is what that is.”

  “Really,” Tilley replied. “What’s on it?”

  “We don’t know yet. It’s password-protected but Calvin’s working on hacking it.”

  “What about those wires that looked to have led to something that was taken?” Tilley asked.

  “We’re pretty sure that was a laptop,” Lemkie replied before he turned to Dodge. “Why do you have a picture of Sadie?”

  “Who?” Dodge asked.

  “Her.” Lemkie pointed to the printed picture he had just given Dodge. “Sadie.”

  “You know her?” Tilley asked, spinning her chair completely away from her desk and dedicating her full attention to the conversation at hand.

  “That’s Sadie Cross,” Lemkie replied. “She owns the daycare my son goes to.”

  “Which one?” Dodge asked, digging though the papers on his desk for a pen.

  “Sunshine and Rainbows,” Lemkie said as he proceeded to give them the address. “But you still haven’t told me why you have her picture. Don’t tell me you think she knew Charlie Baker?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” Dodge stated as he examined the picture.

  “Her husband runs a butcher shop downtown,” Lemkie stated matter-of-factly, as if that would prove she couldn’t possibly know Charlie Baker. “Vernon’s Meats,” he added. “Very friendly fe
llow; makes his own meat pies, which are amazing by the way.”

  “I know him,” Tilley said. “Well, sorta. I buy all my meat at his shop. I didn’t know he had a wife.”

  “Interesting,” Dodge stated as he took notes. “Two new suspects just like that.”

  “Two?” Lemkie asked. “Sadie is one of the sweetest women I know.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” Tilley said.

  “Trust me,” Lemkie said.

  “I do,” Dodge said. “But she’s definitely going on the list.”

  “You’ll see what I mean when you meet her,” Lemkie replied. “That woman couldn’t hurt a fly if she tried.”

  12

  Later that afternoon the detectives found themselves in a room that smelled of poo as they were knee-deep in kids, which included quite a few toddlers. Soft-spoken Sadie and her staff obviously had their hands full as little Thomas, Lemkie’s son, had been belted in the face with a toy truck by an upset little girl in pigtails. Obviously a dispute over possession of the toy truck noted Dodge, as he and Tilley were ushered into an office in the back by one of the other caregivers.

  Tilley looked over the pictures hung on the office walls. Most were of Sadie with children of all ages, but there were a few of her with a burly-looking man who she knew was Vernon, Sadie’s husband. Meanwhile, Dodge watched the commotion through the office window as Sadie coddled little Thomas, calming him down before passing him off to another of the caregivers. Sadie came across as mild-mannered even when she scolded the young girl in the pigtails. She smiled at little Thomas before handing over the reins to the other women, while she met in private with the detectives.