Red Hatchet Falls

by Susan Clayton-Goldner

  She got teary. “You must think I’m a fool. All my girlfriends do.” She laughed but it was a tattered, wet laugh. She dug the heel of her hand under each eye. “And I guess I am.”

  “I don’t think you’re a fool. One thing life has taught me is the heart wants what it wants. But can anyone confirm you were home before ten on Friday night? And didn’t go out again? Do you have a roommate or boyfriend?”

  “I live alone. And pathetic as it seems, Sherm is my boyfriend. He said he was going to leave his wife. That she’d become a crazed, praying-all-the-time convert to Islam or something like that. Her behavior made him go nuts. And he wanted to raise the kids Catholic like he was raised. He figured when they went to court, he could get full custody with her being so weird—especially after 9-11. But why all the questions? Is Sherm in some kind of trouble? I tried to call him all day on Saturday and again on Sunday, but his phone went straight to voicemail. And, from what I understand, he didn't show up for work on Monday either."

  For a few seconds, Radhauser was too stunned to speak. You’d have to live in a cave not to know about Marsha Parsons’ dismembering. “It was on the news and in the newspaper on Sunday morning.”

  “I don’t have a TV and I don’t subscribe to the paper.” She shrugged. “What’s the point? It’s all bad news anyway.”

  “Marsha Parsons was found dead in her house last Saturday morning. The medical examiner estimates her death took place between ten and midnight on Friday. That would be just about the time you were walking home.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth. “What are you getting at? You can’t think I had anything to do with her death. I didn’t even know her.”

  “Why can’t I think that? You were having an affair with her husband. He was your boyfriend and you wanted to be with him all the time. Maybe you decided to hurry the separation and divorce process a little.” His voice held a deliberate accusation.

  For a long moment, she said nothing, just stared at the tabletop and clutched her drink. Finally, she looked up at him. Tears dripped down her cheeks. "I'm not that desperate, Detective Radhauser."

  He backed off a little. “Did you walk by the Parsons’ house on your way home Friday?”

  She dabbed her face with a napkin. “Yes. The porch light was on, but the house was mostly dark. Marsha’s not cut out to be a mother. She puts the kids to bed pretty early. Sometimes right after dinner.”

  “So, you didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary?”

  “No. Everything looked normal. Where’s Sherm now? Is he all right?” Her dark eyes widened with something that looked a lot like concern.

  “At the moment, he’s in jail, being held for his wife’s murder.”

  “Murder?” Her face went white. “Oh my God. He finally…I mean…You think Sherm…You think he…he murdered Marsha?”

  “I’m confused,” Radhauser said. “He finally what? Are you saying Parsons told you about his plan to kill his wife?”

  “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “But you did. So, finish your sentence. Did Parsons tell you he planned to murder Marsha?”

  Her long fingers tightened around her glass. “Sherm drinks too much. He says a lot of things he doesn’t mean.” She hung her head.

  Radhauser slapped the tabletop with his open hand.

  Cheryl startled, lifted her gaze to meet his.

  “Did he tell you he wanted to murder his wife?”

  She hesitated. “Not in so many words.”

  “But you got the idea he was thinking about it?”

  “He made a few comments. Talked about how easy it would be for us to be a family if she weren’t around anymore.”

  “Maybe he was talking about divorce.”

  “Maybe.”

  "But you don't think so, do you?"

  “He was pretty mad when he said it. And he sure sounded like he meant it.” There wasn’t a trace of hesitation in her voice.

  Radhauser turned off the recorder. “My car’s outside. I need to see your cottage and pick up the shoes and the clothing you wore on Friday night,” Radhauser said, though he knew she was wearing them—his test to see if she’d tell him the truth.

  “I have them on,” she said.

  “Then you’ll need to change.”

  "You don’t consider me a suspect, do you?" She cradled her face in her hands, her eyes wide.

  “At this point in the investigation, anyone who knew Marsha and could benefit from her death is a person of interest.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The search of Cheryl's cottage yielded nothing obvious that might connect her to Marsha Parsons' murder. Cheryl kept a photo of Sherman, Junior, and Jill on her bedside table. The frame had the word Dream in script above the picture. Radhauser saw it as an indication Cheryl did care about Sherman. And the fact that the photo included the children made him believe Parsons may have made some promises—led Cheryl to believe the four of them might be a family someday.

  But Radhauser hadn’t missed the fact that she was pretty fast to throw him under the bus. If she was in love with the man, why hadn’t she defended him, said she thought it would be impossible for him to do something so heinous? People were unpredictable. Just when he thought he figured them out, there was a surprise waiting for him.

  Radhauser put the clothing Cheryl was wearing along with her shoes into evidence bags, planning to take them to the lab for analysis. There was always the possibility she’d changed her clothes and walked back to the Parsons’ house, murdered Marsha, then returned home and burned her bloody clothing. But the fireplace ashes showed no evidence that anything other than wood had been burned inside. And his walk around the house revealed no burn barrel or evidence of a fire pit or burn pile. Of course, she could have hidden the clothes somewhere else.

  Cheryl wasn’t a large woman. Would she have had the strength to carry Marsha Parsons from the bedroom, down the hallway, and into the dining room?

  What was the matter with him? Every piece of evidence they had so far pointed to Sherman Parsons. He had the opportunity. The murder weapon had his fingerprints all over it. Stains on his apron turned out to match his wife's blood type. He had a lover, waiting in the wings to be a mother to his children.

  But why wouldn’t that feeling in Radhauser’s gut that he’d arrested the wrong man go away?

  * * *

  At about nine on Saturday evening, one week after Sully had found Marsha Parsons’ severed hand, Radhauser received a call at home. The kids were already in bed and he was sharing a glass of wine with Gracie. The caller ID told him it was Captain Murphy.

  “You need to get over to the OSU campus and fast,” Murphy said. “All hell’s breaking loose at the Muslim Prayer House. A group of anti-Islamic protestors have gathered without a permit and they’re out for blood. McBride and Corbin will meet you there. I’ve called in everyone we have—even talked to the mayor about getting some National Guard troops over there. Ashland hasn’t seen anything like this since the civil rights protests in the sixties.”

  When Radhauser arrived, the area around the Muslim Prayer House looked like a war zone. Three patrol cars barricaded the road leading to the house, their blue and red lights blazing. Several young men wearing white supremacist T-shirts that said White Is Right had climbed onto the patrol cars’ roofs. One of them shouted through a bull horn. “Burn every mosque in America. Mass murdering Muslims go home.”

  Sirens whined. More police cars pulled up.

  Anti-Muslim picketers carrying lighted torches lined the streets, holding up signs that read Go Back Where You Belong. Terrorists Not Welcome Here. America Hates Muslims. Allah is not our God.

  Corbin and McBride were doing their best to get the crowd under control.

  A group of Muslim men in turbans and skull caps and women wearing their traditional hijabs, niqabs, robes, and jilbabs carried peace signs with slogans. They carried lighted candles and were led by a bearded man, who appeared to be in his early thirties. He
wore a long white robe and turban. The group chanted in unison. “We love America. Fight hatred with love. America is our home. America is where we belong.”

  Marching right alongside them, holding Rodney's leash in one hand and Rishima Reynolds' hand in the other, was Homer Sullivan. Atop his bib-overalls, he wore a tie-dyed T-shirt with a peace symbol on the front. A relic, no doubt, from his protests against the Vietnam war. What the hell was he doing here? Rishima was either converting to Islam or showing her solidarity by wearing a hijab.

  Radhauser leaped out of his car and was running toward Sully when the sound of glass shattering rung out over the protests. Someone had thrown a torch into the prayer house. Flames licked at the window frame and shot through the ceiling of the small clapboard house that provided a place for Muslim students to pray and worship.

  A tall, slender and bearded man, wearing a green baseball cap and dark-colored jeans, ran away from the burning house. Suspicious he may be the arsonist, Radhauser chased after him, but lost him in the crowd.

  Sirens wailed in the distance as fire trucks and ambulances arrived.

  People ran out of the front and back doors of the prayer house. Some of them were screaming. One man's robe caught on fire. Panicked, the man ran, fanning the flames. Another man shouted, "Stop, drop and roll." Then he pushed the burning man onto the ground and rolled him in the grass. The burned man's screams pierced the night air.

  In a neighboring yard, a pit bull barked and struggled to climb the chain-link fence, his teeth bared.

  Moments later, EMTs loaded the burned man into an ambulance and headed toward what Radhauser assumed would be a Medford hospital burn unit.

  He glanced at his watch. It was nine-fifteen. He put in a quick call to Murphy for permission to institute a curfew, then opened his trunk and picked up the megaphone. Radhauser’s voice boomed through the loudspeakers. “This is an unlawful protest. You have fifteen minutes to vacate these streets. The Ashland Police Department is instituting a curfew starting tonight at nine-thirty. Go back to your houses and dorm rooms. Any person in violation of this curfew is subject to arrest.”

  News crews gathered. One of them taped Radhauser’s warning, then headed into the crowd.

  A few protestors, most of them Muslim women, lowered their signs and began walking. Photographers gathered around them, shoving microphones into their faces, many of them hidden from view by their veils.

  Radhauser hurried over to Rishima and Sully. He knew Sully had befriended Rishima Reynolds, a young, transgender woman, nearly two years ago after the murder of her boyfriend, Parker Collins. Before his death, young Collins had been staying in a cabin across the lake from Sully.

  Rishima threw her arms around Radhauser.

  He held her at arm’s length and studied her.

  She seemed far more self-confident than the last time he’d seen her. Rishima had completed her final surgery. With her dark hair, soulful eyes, and delicate features, she was as beautiful as any young woman Radhauser had ever seen. Rishima wore a long, multicolored skirt that fell just above her ankles and a bright blue blouse with rhinestone buttons. As always, her black leather boots had high, narrow heels and laced up the front like something from the Victorian era.

  Radhauser understood she was finally comfortable in her skin. "What are you doing here?"

  “I participate in every anti-hate march I can,” she said. “I do it in memory of Parker and because you, Parker, and people like Sully stood up for me when I was targeted.”

  Radhauser swallowed. What was it about this girl, whose name was Hindu for moonbeam, that tugged so hard at his heartstrings?

  He turned to Sully. “Okay then, Mr. Sullivan, what are you doing here?”

  Sully puffed out his chest. “With everythin’ that’s been goin’ on since 9-11, I figured a rally like this one might get out of hand. And from the looks of things, I figured right. Me and Rodney are here as Rishima’s bodyguards.”

  As if to prove it, Rodney looked up at Radhauser and hissed.

  Out of nowhere, a Molotov cocktail in a glass soda bottle sailed through a parked police car’s open window.

  “Take Rishima home,” Radhauser shouted to Sully as the car burst into flames.

  Windshield glass shattered. A woman screamed. Others watched with their hands pressed against their mouths. The anti-Muslim protestors cheered. The man who Radhauser suspected had torched the prayer house, still wearing the green baseball cap, raced through the crowd.

  The Muslim man who’d been leading the peace march ran after him, and by the time Radhauser got to them, the Muslim had thrown the anti-Islamic protestor on the ground and was punching him in the face. “In the name of Allah, I will kill you, you racist pig.”

  Radhauser, pretty sure he’d found the leaders of both the pro and anti-Islam groups, broke up the fight, cuffed both men and put them in the back of his patrol car and secured them.

  A block away, a Medford SWAT team in riot gear marched toward the crowd. "Disperse now or you will be arrested."

  People picked up rocks and bottles and hurled them at the guardsmen. Another warning was issued through the loudspeakers—this one by the leader of the guardsmen. “Exit these streets immediately or you will be subject to arrest.”

  When the crowd made no effort to disperse, a sheriff’s deputy threw tear gas into the mass of people. It blanketed everything in a white cloud.

  The sirens grew louder and the smoke thickened. Radhauser’s eyes and throat burned as if he’d swallowed fire. He grabbed a mask from his trunk and put it on.

  All around Radhauser, people coughed and covered their mouths and eyes with handkerchiefs and T-shirts they’d ripped from their bodies. They ran in every direction, tears and snot streaming.

  Ten minutes later, the streets were empty. And what was once the Muslim Prayer House was nothing more than a charred shell with its roof caved in.

  * * *

  The man in the green baseball hat turned out to be Bradford Baker, who worked in Security at the Medford Airport. Radhauser ran his sheet. His wife had called in a domestic disturbance and Baker spent a night in jail, but aside from that, he didn't have so much as a traffic violation. To Radhauser’s surprise, Baker readily admitted to leading an anti-Muslim group he'd started after 9-11 called Christians for a Safer America.

  “I’ve got a kid, Detective Radhauser. And I want to preserve our way of life for my boy. We can’t let those raghead terrorists do anything else to destroy America as we’ve always known it.”

  “That prayer house was a place of peace for Muslim college students to worship and study.”

  “I don’t care what you think. I didn’t have anything to do with burning down that house. But it's got no business being in Ashland in the first place. Aren’t we supposed to be a Christian nation? One nation under God. No mention of Allah.”

  “Last time I heard, we’re a country where citizens are free to practice any religion they choose. How about the car bombing? I suppose you had nothing to do with that either.”

  “Not a damn thing. And you can’t prove that I did.”

  Radhauser left Baker, whom he now recognized as the hothead he’d seen berating the Little League player at Thomas Flannigan Sports Park, in McBride’s capable hands. He crossed the hall into the other interrogation room to talk to Imam Fayyad Hadad.

  Fayyad claimed to be the head of an Islamic foundation whose proceeds went to feed poor Muslims around the world. Also, he provided leadership and acted as a chaplain for the prayer house.

  Radhauser found him pacing. His long white robe was stained and torn at the shoulder. He stopped when the detective entered the room, pulled out a chair and sat. “I am guilty of nothing.”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything, Mr. Hadad. I’d just like you to tell me what happened tonight from your perspective.”

  "Please, call me Fayyad. I am a peaceful man, Detective Radhauser. I love my faith and my people. I try to guide Muslim students and those who wish to co
nvert to Islam."

  He said Bradford Baker and his band of Christians had accused them of funding Osama bin Laden and other groups associated with Al-Qaeda. Fayyad hadn’t directly witnessed the torching of the prayer house. “But if it wasn’t Baker, it was one of his disciples.” His face grew red and venom hissed from his words.

  There was nothing Radhauser would rather do than arrest Baker and have him spend the night in jail. But with no concrete evidence against him, and nothing that pointed to Fayyad being anything except a victim of intolerance, Radhauser had no choice but to release both men. Radhauser couldn’t swear it was Baker he’d seen throwing the Molotov cocktail or setting fire to the church.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Almost two weeks had passed since the murder of Marsha Parsons. Things were quiet at the station; a drunk and disorderly at an apartment near the SOU campus, a breaking and entering on Mountain View Avenue, and the protest at the Islamic Center that had gotten out of hand.

  At home, the barn had never been cleaner, nor the yard better groomed. Cooper Drake was easy to like, and more nights than not, he had dinner with the family and often shared an evening drink with Radhauser before returning to the barn.

  On those nights, under a star-filled sky that reminded Radhauser of Tucson, he sat next to Cooper on the back deck or the screened-in porch out front if the mosquitoes were biting. At first, he hadn’t been happy about Gracie inviting Cooper to live in their barn. Now, Radhauser enjoyed having the young man around. Though he suspected Cooper drank alcohol with his friends, he was still two months short of his twenty-first birthday, so it was a root beer for Cooper, a Sam Adams for Radhauser.

  Often, Radhauser’s mind would wander back more than a decade and he’d wonder what kind of man his son, Lucas, would have become. What would he be doing if he were still alive? Would he be married and starting a family of his own? Would he be on the rodeo circuit living his childhood dream? Or would he be sitting here in Cooper’s place, old enough now to have a real beer with his old man?