Red Hatchet Falls

by Susan Clayton-Goldner

  Just about everyone in the Ashland Police Department called Dr. Heron Blue. If his height, pencil-thin frame and color choices in clothing weren’t enough, the man had a long and narrow-pointed nose. His elongated neck and the way he always leaned forward made it seem like his head arrived in a room seconds before the rest of him got there. But Radhauser was way too fond of the ME and impressed by his competence to treat him with disrespect and referred to him only as Heron.

  Radhauser took off his Stetson and tapped on the door frame.

  When Heron looked up, his dark-rimmed reading glasses slipped down his nose. He took them off. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite cowboy detective. What brings you here on a Saturday, Wind?”

  “Didn’t your secretary tell you?”

  He shot a guilty glance at the stack of unread messages on his desk. “By the time I finished my post-mortem, she’d gone to lunch.”

  After taking a seat in one of the two chairs in front of the desk, Radhauser set his cowboy hat, crown-side down, on the mahogany table between the chairs. “I have something to show you.” He placed the small cooler on Heron’s desk. “It was delivered to my office earlier today.”

  With the curiosity of a born forensics man, Heron opened the cooler, picked up the evidence bag, studied the hand for a moment, then turned it palm-side down. "Someone with talent did this line drawing in what looks like a permanent marker. Seems whoever severed it is trying to tell us something." He glanced up at Radhauser. "Any idea what?"

  Great, an artist who went around cutting off hands and using them as a canvas. Was the victim a mother? A bad mother? The drawing would indicate a loving mother. But why cut off the hand of a loving mother? Or was the sketch an indictment—a message that this woman had failed as a mother? It had only been a year since Radhauser arrested Carter Heartson for the murder of his birth mother. Did Ashland have another mother killer in its midst?

  “Not yet, but I’m working on it. McBride didn’t have any luck with area ERs. She’s organized a door-to-door search, jetting out from the park. Any possibility this woman could still be alive?”

  Heron, always ponderous and pedantic, set the bag back on his desk and cupped his chin in his hand. For at least ten seconds, he didn’t say a word. “It depends,” he finally said.

  Radhauser waited.

  Heron picked up the bag and examined it again, paying careful attention to each separate finger and its manicured nail.

  “Depends on what?”

  “On whether or not the victim was lucky. Or if anyone administered care. Sometimes, but not always, if the cut is clean, like this one, the arteries will spasm and close off and there will be very little bleeding.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  Heron addressed his comments to the hand, the same way Radhauser had heard him talk to bodies on his autopsy table. Heron had told him showing respect for the dead and waiting patiently for them to tell you what their bodies knew was a big part of being a pathologist. “You could still be alive, my dear, if your arteries contracted or if someone administered pressure to the stump, maybe pushing the ulnar and radial arteries against a bone in your wrist. Did you, or someone who loved you, have the presence of mind to get a tourniquet in place?”

  Heron looked up from the hand and met Radhauser’s gaze. “If none of those scenarios played out for her, it wouldn’t take long to go into hypovolemic shock.”

  Radhauser held up both hands to stop Heron giving a dissertation on severed limbs. "Translate, please. What is hypovolemic shock?"

  "It's when a body loses twenty percent of its blood volume. The heart can't pump enough blood and it results in organ failure and ultimately death. It wouldn't be more than about five minutes before she would collapse. It's not a pretty sight, blood spurting with each heartbeat out of the stump at the end of your arm. It would take a composed victim to look at her wound, let alone administer a tourniquet with her one remaining hand."

  Heron carefully set the bag back on his desk.

  “How long do you estimate it's been since the hand was amputated?”

  "In some Sharia-controlled countries, cutting off the offending hand at the wrist is an accepted form of punishment for theft."

  “Are you saying my perp might be Muslim?” Just what he needed so soon after the Twin Towers came down. That event sent the whole country into a state of paranoia against any person who looked like a Middle Easterner.

  “I’m not implying that, Detective. Although it is certainly a possibility. Local Muslims are understandably angry at the way they’ve been ostracized and villainized. All those protestors outside the Islamic Center and on the Southern Oregon University campus. But at this point, I’m merely mentioning that the practice still exists in some parts of the world. A little piece of information to tuck into that investigative cowboy hat of yours.” The ME pushed his chair back and stood. “I’ll call you with a more accurate timeframe once I get the hand into the lab and run some microscopic tests.”

  “Do you have any idea what weapon was used to cut off her hand?”

  "Because it's a clean cut, I'd say something with a sharp blade. An ax, a meat cleaver or maybe a hatchet." Heron picked up the evidence bag and headed out of his office, pausing in the doorway to toss another sentence over his shoulder at Radhauser. "I'll rehydrate the fingers and see if I can get you a viable print." And then he disappeared down the hallway toward the morgue and his autopsy suite.

  Before Radhauser made it to the parking lot, his phone rang.

  It was McBride. “You’re not going to believe this, Wind, but I got a hit on the ring. It was a special order. A mother’s ring—but different from most. Her husband wanted one birthstone for each of her two children and one for the victim and himself.”

  “Was the jeweler able to give you a name and address?”

  “It took some persuasion, but yes. Sherman Parsons, 119 Vista Street in Ashland.”

  "Go ahead and call off the door-to-door. Have them continue to search the park, abandoned warehouses, and wooded areas. Good work with the jeweler, McBride. I'm sure those rattlesnake earrings of yours helped."

  “That’s why I wear them, sir.”

  “I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes. Hopefully, something at the Parsons’ house will lead us to our victim.”

  Chapter Four

  Radhauser parked in front. The house was one of the Craftsman-style bungalows typical of Ashland. Most of them were built in the thirties. Many had been purchased by Californians retiring to a place where housing was more affordable, traffic more manageable, and the lifestyle a little slower. Once here, they remodeled with up-to-date kitchens and bathrooms, granite counters and hardwood floors. Exteriors were painted sage green, pale yellow or Wedgwood blue. Professionally landscaped places with mulched flower beds, lawns neatly edged and without a trace of weeds.

  This one looked shabby and in need of paint. Four aluminum lawn chairs, the old woven web type, cluttered the front porch. The strips were faded, frayed and several were hanging loose. The yard needed cutting and crabgrass grew over the sidewalk and into the concrete cracks.

  As he entered through a partially opened front door, Radhauser was greeted by the sound of young children crying. Judging by the volume and tenor of the cries, there were at least two. One was a baby or young toddler; the other sounded older. A feeling of dread washed over him, realizing the mother they called for was most likely dead.

  McBride, wearing latex gloves and shoe protectors, had already taped off the entrance to the dining room. “Looks like we found our victim. She didn’t make it. According to the driver’s license I found in her purse, our victim’s name is Marsha Parsons. I cancelled the park search.”

  He hurried over to McBride. “Where are the kids? Are they okay?”

  "Their bedroom door was bolted from the outside. I put on gloves and carefully opened it. There’s a boy who looks to be about four or five. And a baby girl. Maybe one year old or so. They’re upset, but not hurt. I told them
we’d take good care of them soon, but we had some work to do first. I thought it was better the kids didn't see…" She nodded toward the dining room.

  Radhauser slipped on a pair of gloves and slid shoe protectors over the soles of his cowboy boots. He stood at the opening into the dining room and surveyed the entire room.

  The usual queasy response bubbled in his gut. No matter how many times he saw it, there was always something repellent about blood and the sight of a death, especially one as violent as this. He shoved it back and refused to acknowledge it.

  The table, a long, rectangular one with thick, ornately carved wooden legs, was covered in maroon cloth. Someone, perhaps the murderer, had pushed it against the wall beneath the room's only window. The curtains were drawn. A blue, plastic tarp had been spread over the wide, hardwood planked floor. This perp was fastidious. Why would he or she take the time to protect the floor? The body was sitting on one of the dining room chairs placed on the center of the tarp.

  After photographing everything from the perspective of the doorway, Radhauser ducked under the crime scene tape and stood in front of the victim. A slender, blonde woman, who appeared to be in her mid-thirties, was secured to the chair, her left arm held with duct tape behind her. Two strips of duct tape covered her mouth and her neck was bent to one side like a broken branch.

  She wasn’t moving. Careful not to step in the blood, he quickly checked her carotid. Even though McBride had already done it, this was part of his procedure. As expected, he found no pulse.

  The victim wore a pink nightgown, though it was difficult to tell since most of the fabric was bloodied. Her right hand was cut off at the wrist. The handless arm dangled next to her body but was no longer bleeding. The duct tape holding her left arm was wrapped several times around one of the chair’s back slats. Her feet were bare, her toenails polished that same, heart-breaking shade of pink. The woman’s ankles were duct-taped together, then attached to the cross bar between the two front chair legs with several more layers of tape. She was surrounded by a sizeable pool of very dark blood that had started to congeal around the edges, meaning she’d been dead for more than a few hours. He made a note to have forensics check the duct tape for prints.

  Her blue eyes were open and staring straight ahead, a blank look frozen in her milky gaze. He leaned in to smell around her mouth and detected the distinct sweet and chemical smell of chloroform. In all probability, she was unconscious when she was brought into the dining room, but must have awakened at some point—perhaps by the pain of the severing.

  A thin plastic raincoat, the kind that folds up into a pouch and can be carried in a pocket or purse, was draped over one of the other chairs. The raincoat was speckled with blood. On the same chair’s seat cushion, a pair of shoe protectors, not unlike the ones Radhauser had just put on, were set carefully, side by side. They, too, were covered in blood.

  He said a silent prayer, hoping the kids hadn’t witnessed their mother’s death.

  Most of the time Radhauser loved his job, but on days like this one, facing two crying kids with a dead mother, he hated being a detective. “Was the house unlocked when you arrived?”

  "The front door was locked and the door from the kitchen to the backyard was secure—locked and deadbolted. I've done a quick search of the rooms and the property. It's all clear. I found no signs of forced entry. The side door to the garage was unlocked, so either the killer had a key or entered through the garage and into the kitchen. And all the windows are locked. I notified Heron," she said. "He's on his way with a couple of forensics guys. I found an apron stained with something that looks like blood in the bathroom hamper. I bagged it."

  “Good work,” Radhauser said. “Make sure forensics dusts the garage doorknobs for prints and the one into the kids’ bedroom. Have them take the raincoat and tarp in for analysis as well.”

  She made notes.

  “Did the search of the park trashcans yield anything?”

  McBride shook her head. "Lots of Burger King and McDonald's bags, but nothing that looked as if it had transported a severed hand."

  “We better notify Services to Children and Families about the kids.”

  “Already done, sir. They’re sending a social worker to pick them up. I thought it was better to leave them in their bedroom. That’s why I relocked the door.”

  “Excellent work.”

  “Before you get too involved in the crime scene, there’s something else you should see.” Her voice was low and urgent. She led him down a narrow hallway, past the door where the children were held, and into a small bedroom. The shade was drawn. When she flipped on the light, the room was empty except for a narrow table under the window. A comfortable-looking chair and ottoman sat beneath it. The wooden floor, in the center of the room, was covered by a colorful fringed throw rug about 2’ x 4’. White walls held nothing except a large, gold decal of a crescent moon and one star set equal distance from the two points of the crescent—one of the symbols of Islam. A copy of the Quran lay open on the table, a timer device of some sort and a string of amber-colored beads.

  Radhauser picked up the beads. His gaze found McBride. They stared at each other for a moment, silence stretching between them. "Do you know what these are?"

  “No, sir. Some kind of rosary?”

  “Muslims call them prayer beads. Each of the ninety-nine represents one of the names for God. Muslims believe the one-hundredth name is known only to God—whom they refer to as Allah.”

  She nodded toward the floor. “I guess that must be a prayer rug.”

  Just as he was about to set the beads back on the table, the timer erupted with a half chant/half song he recognized as the Muslim call to prayer.

  Startled, McBride took a step back, her eyes wide.

  “Devout Muslims practice salat.” Radhauser set the beads beside the Quran. “It’s when they pray every day at five designated hours beginning at sunrise. When I was in India, the local mosques sent out the call, telling them it was time for worship. They call it adhan. It’s a bit like country church bells on Sunday morning.”

  McBride studied the timer device. "I have a cousin who converted to Muslim. My aunt told me that before praying, he goes through a ritual of washing his hands, face, and feet. The whole family is worried about him."

  Radhauser pointed to the rug. “That niche at the top of their rug must always face Mecca—the holiest place for them.”

  McBride leaned back against the wall and exhaled a long burst of air and frustration. “I’m impressed.”

  “After 9-11, I did some research. And I’d say it's pretty obvious. Someone in this household is devout in their following the Islamic faith.”

  “You know what’s funny?” Her left eyebrow raised and her voice suggested something wasn’t. “That something so awful as 9-11 could be done in the name of a loving god.”

  “The more you work this job, the more you’ll see how often people use God as an excuse for their crimes.” He thought about what Heron had said. Was there a connection between this murder and the Islamic faith? He certainly hoped not. There was enough anti-Muslim sentiment without something like this adding fuel to the flames. Their tiny, blonde victim seemed an unlikely Muslim, but perhaps the prayer room belonged to her husband.

  McBride acknowledged him with a crisp nod. “I’ll check out the master bedroom while you take your photographs.”

  She'd caught on quickly to the fact that he liked to photograph his own crime scenes. Sure, forensics would supply him with a set, but they didn't always include what he wanted.

  He snapped pictures of the prayer room and all its contents, then returned to the dining room.

  She joined him a moment later. “The bed is turned down and looks as if our victim might have been sleeping when the killer arrived. There is nothing to indicate she fought back. And the bedroom trashcan was empty. I’ll check the bathroom and kitchen sinks. Our killer may have cleaned up before leaving.”

  “Thanks. See if you ca
n find any information, a pay stub or something, that might help us find the husband and father.”

  A mahogany stool, that looked like it once belonged to an old piano, sat beside the chair. A recent slash in the wood about an eighth-of-an-inch thick and three-and-a-half inches long marred the top. Radhauser's first thought was a hatchet. He scanned the room for a weapon but found none.

  After taking several more wide-angle photographs of the entire room, he walked slowly around the victim and snapped pictures from every angle. When he finished, he helped McBride nail up a bed sheet to block the view into the dining room from the kitchen.

  Next to the pantry, another door led into the garage. Radhauser opened it. A red 1999 Honda CRV was parked inside. Along the garage walls, neatly-labeled plastic storage boxes were stacked three high on metal shelving. Christmas Decorations, Easter Baskets, Children's Clothing Sizes 2-4, Extra Blankets. A child's swimming pool and a tricycle hung from the ceiling.

  At the back, a crude workbench lined the entire wall. A four-by-eight-foot sheet of pegboard was nailed above the bench. Assorted tools hung according to size and their utility. A row of screwdrivers. Several hammers. Wrenches. A hatchet with a three-and-a-half-inch blade polished to a high shine.

  Radhauser carefully removed it from its hook and dropped it into an evidence bag. Had he found the murder weapon?

  Chapter Five

  Though it had been less than ten minutes since Radhauser arrived on the scene and he dreaded facing the children, it would be cruel to put it off any longer. They’d done everything they could to protect them from the scene in the dining room. And the social worker from Services to Children and Families would be there soon. Radhauser wanted an opportunity to question the older one before someone arrived and took them away.

  He stood in front of their locked door. The sawdust on the doorknob and carpet told him the outside bolt had been recently installed. Still wearing gloves, hoping neither he nor McBride had disturbed any prints the lab techs might find, Radhauser carefully unbolted it. He and McBride stepped into a room that smelled like a portable toilet after a college football game.