by Ed Robinson
We couldn’t answer those questions. The discovery only led to more unknowns. The entry didn’t appear forced. Had the owners left the place unlocked? Was it someone who had a key? Did a family member or friend drop by unannounced to take a shower and steal a beer? We needed to question the owners, but we weren’t actual investigators. We also didn’t trust the Beech Mountain PD to ask the right questions in the manner that would elicit truthful responses.
“We need to know the identity of everyone who might have a key to this place,” Brody announced. “Who owns this place, anyway?”
“The Chief knows them,” an officer said. “Friends with them, I think.”
“That’s an interesting development,” I said. “We’ll need to talk with him, and them.”
“I want to look around some more,” Brody said. “There might be more here. Can I have some time alone in here?”
The officer had to ask the Chief, who permitted Brody to keep looking around. He left us alone with instructions to lock up when we were done. All of this was completely against any reasonable procedure. Why wasn’t the Chief here himself? Why didn’t we have some competent investigator on the scene? It was the location of a murder after all. The lack of vigor from local law enforcement was astounding, although I’d experienced it in the past. Murders were hard to solve, and beyond the capabilities of small-town departments here in northwest North Carolina. Resources were almost nonexistent, including forensic capabilities, manpower, and know-how.
I wondered how this would affect whatever else Brody might find. It seemed to me that a good defense lawyer would object to the chain of command of any evidence she uncovered. She forged ahead anyway, determined to find something more. I looked over the place too, but stayed out of her way. She was on a mission.
“The beds are undisturbed,” she said. “He wasn’t here long enough to take a dump, though he did take a leak. He drank a beer and took a shower. That’s about it.”
“No forcible entry,” I said. “Came right in through the front door. This was not the hermit.”
“It’s someone known to this family,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s our killer.”
“Another coincidence,” I pointed out.
“Can’t be sure how long ago he was here,” she said. “With no one in the house, the shower could stay wet for a long time. The beer left in the can was stale and smelly. The toilet water wasn’t particularly fresh. This could match up with our timeline. What if the killer came here to clean up afterward?”
“And he’s someone the Chief knows,” I said. “Shit’s getting deeper.”
“Yet the Chief granted us permission to keep sniffing around,” she said. “That doesn’t seem right.”
“Should we turn over the scene to him?” I asked. “Or maybe call in the State Police?”
“Lacking a cellphone,” she said. “We’ll have to leave here to do either.”
“Don’t touch anything,” I said. “We’ll point out what you find to whoever comes in behind us.”
“I wish I had some gloves,” she said. “I’ll be careful.”
“The beer can will provide us with DNA,” I said. “That officer should have bagged it.”
“We’re not dealing with a team of Sherlocks here,” she said.
“One of the downsides to living in a crime-free zone,” I said. “Top-notch investigators aren’t needed around here. Not often anyway.”
“Maybe I should open a private detective service,” she said. “Contract out to the local departments. Put Former FBI on my business cards.”
“I’ll get some too,” I said. “Mountain man with a hound dog.”
“Dynamic Duo Investigative Services,” she said. “It’s got a nice ring to it.”
“Superheroes of the High Country,” I added. “Able to leap small creeks with a single bound.”
“Let me think for a minute,” she said. “Guy waltzes in here with a key. Grabs a beer, takes a leak and a shower. We know it’s a man because he left the toilet seat up. Doesn’t appear to have disturbed anything else, unless he made the bed up real nice before he left. We need to check the fridge, the TV remote, and the toilet seat for prints. We need real cops for that, and a database.”
“Keeping in mind that the Chief knows the homeowners here,” I said. “Maybe even knows the person who entered. The casual nature of it suggests he was allowed to be here, and we’ve got no connection to the dead girl.”
“But who drops by just to take a shower and then leaves?”
“Good point,” I said. “Maybe a skier?”
“Certainly possible,” she said. “We need to go find out what the Chief knows.”
On the way to the police department, my gut started speaking to me again. It was telling me to be suspicious of the Chief. I tried to dismiss it, due to my previous trouble with the Banner Elk Chief. Not all cops were crooked, but the thought that we couldn’t trust this guy wouldn’t go away. Instead, it got louder and louder. Just before we pulled in the parking lot, I decided to drive on past.
“Where are we going?” Brody asked.
“Something’s not right,” I said. “I’m afraid the Chief will cover up whatever is found.”
“Why?” she asked. “On what grounds?”
“Nothing but intuition,” I confessed. “A gut feeling.”
“But we need the police to take prints and run DNA,” she said.
“I say we call Rominger or Johnson,” I said. “I trust the state cops. We’ve got to get them involved.”
“You want to let me in on the secret?”
“Just a bullshit theory,” I said. “For the purpose of argument, let’s say this mystery person is our killer. After he offed the girl, he went to that address to clean up. The owners are friends with the Chief. The suspect may be known to the Chief. He goes in and dismisses or falsifies the evidence to protect someone unknown to us. We’ll never know the truth.”
“First rate conspiracy theory,” she said. “Based on nothing.”
“I listen to my gut,” I told her. “It has served me well.”
“That’s everything the FBI taught us not to do,” she said. “Never let your personal feelings interfere with the evidence.”
“So far our evidence is incomplete,” I said. “We know someone was in that house, but we don’t know who. If we leave it up to the Chief, we may never know.”
“Just like we don’t know the identity of the Beech Mountain Hermit,” she said. “We’re no closer to solving this murder than when we started.”
“Chasing coincidences,” I said. “I hate it, but it’s all we’ve got.”
“While the cops all sit drinking coffee and eating donuts,” she said. “It’s a wonderful place we’ve moved to.”
“Gives us something to do,” I said. “Sure beats cleaning poop out of the bilge.”
“Or getting eaten alive by mosquitoes,” she said. “Or any number of other things we used to deal with.”
“The only thing constant in life is change,” I said. “We’ve made a big one. Any regrets?”
“Not a damn one,” she said. “I love our cabin. It’s beautiful here. The cold didn’t defeat us. I’m content with the move.”
“Me too,” I said. “Now let’s go find some real cops.”
We drove from Beech Mountain to Boone to visit the State Police. Johnson was off duty, but Rominger was out on the roads. He came back in to hear our concerns. I told him what we’d found and presented him with our various theories.
“We think it would be best if you guys took control up there,” I said. “Collect the evidence properly and maintain the chain of custody so it can be used later if it proves useful.”
“You say your gut tells you not to trust the Chief of Police on Beech Mountain,” he said. “But does it tell you that this person was indeed the killer?”
“It doesn’t say either way,” I said. “But I’m inclined to follow this lead until we’ve got some proof. We clear the guy and mo
ve on, or he’s our killer.”
“What about the hermit?” he asked. “You were all fired up about him at first.”
“I didn’t know he existed before I started digging around in the woods,” I said. “Hell, we’re all assuming that what I found is connected to the break-ins. There’s a whole lot of assuming going on. We have evidence that a man sometimes sleeps in the woods near the lake. We have no evidence that he breaks into houses, or that he killed the girl. We have evidence that someone entered this particular house and took a shower. We have nothing to connect him to the murder either. It’s my personal opinion that the Chief on Beech Mountain does not have the skill nor the resources to solve this particular crime, and may even have the incentive to cover it up.”
“That’s where we come in?” he asked.
“My opinion is more professional than personal,” Brody said. “But I know Breeze well enough to give credence to his hunches.”
“You two have learned more about what’s going on up there than the rest of us,” he said. “I’ll give you that much. But it’s still damn little to go on.”
“Figure out who was in that house and what he was doing there,” Brody said. “Maybe his visit is perfectly innocent. Won’t hurt our feelings. We’ll look elsewhere, but with so little to go on, we can’t let this particular clue slip out of our hands.”
“I agree,” he said. “Let me make my commander aware. We’ll move in on the Chief’s turf and take over.”
“We’ve got a few more properties on the list,” I said. “Then I think I might try to locate our hermit.”
“That’s on you,” he said. “Did you get a phone yet?”
“Don’t intend to,” I told him.
“Makes it difficult to communicate with you,” he said. “Fucking dinosaur.”
“I am what I am,” I said. “We can dig out the SAT phone if you want.”
“Would you?” he asked. “I’m going to need to contact you sooner or later.”
“Okay, fine,” I said. “We’ll go home and charge the thing up. We’ll be up on Beech tomorrow. After that, I’ll be out west of the lake. Let us know who was in that house.”
“Will do.”
We drove home with nothing but questions that had no answers. We had no murder weapon, no crime scene, and no real suspects. We’d been trying to connect random events to the girl’s murder. There was official police work to be done at the house someone had entered, but it could have been a legitimate visitor having nothing to do with the crime. There was an unknown individual frequenting the woods around the lake. He may or may not be the person responsible for multiple break-ins over a course of years.
Our good old-fashioned shoe leather approach wasn’t producing much in the way of results. The Beech Mountain officers who’d interviewed various random people at the ski resort hadn’t discovered much either. Yes, the girl had been spotted by several guests, but no one saw her leave, with or without a man. She’d barely been on anyone’s radar before she vanished.
No one had come forward to offer any eyewitness information. No one saw her at the lake. No one saw her along the streets of the town. We couldn’t place her anywhere but at the ski village. Most of the guests from that night were now long gone. This was no Agatha Christie mystery where all the guests were locked in the lodge until the crime was solved. People came from all over the world to ski on Beech Mountain. The local cops hadn’t spoken with all of them. Once they found the kids who remembered the girl, they hadn’t dug much deeper.
If you want your murder to be solved, don’t get killed in northwestern North Carolina. The small local agencies and the county Sheriffs aren’t equipped to successfully investigate murders unless the culprit is obvious. In the case of the girl’s death, nothing was obvious. It appeared to be a random murder with no motive. The girl had no connection to anyone local. Anyone she met at the resort would have been a stranger. That didn’t make her any less dead, but it made finding her killer practically impossible.
Brody held out hope that either we’d find something at one of the last few houses on our list, or what we’d already found would lead to the killer. I had little confidence in either. I wasn’t contributing much to the search; it wasn’t my area of expertise. I felt like I was on a leash. My place was out in the wilderness tracking down the hermit. He might not have killed the girl, but his existence was part of this mystery. I didn’t care about his habit of entering vacant houses for a little comfort. I wasn’t trying to have him prosecuted for that. I wanted to meet the man and take a measure of him.
He was of the mountains like I aspired to be. He knew the wild ways of the High Country. He was a survivor. Maybe he killed the girl, maybe he didn’t, but I couldn’t know until I found him. I did know that he’d been near the lake sometime around the time of her death. Red wouldn’t have picked up his scent otherwise. Maybe he saw something that would be helpful to the case. Maybe he could identify the person who dumped the girl’s body. Either way, I was now determined to find the Beech Mountain Hermit. It was the best way I could think of to contribute to the effort.
First I had to endure another day of walking the properties on the list. Brody was just as diligent as she’d been on the first day. I tried to concentrate, but my mind was elsewhere. We didn’t find one damn thing out of the ordinary that day, and I was done with it.
“Let’s get in touch with Rominger,” I said. “See what’s happening on his end.”
Seven
We didn’t like what Rominger had to say. The Chief had been uncooperative. It was his jurisdiction, and he’d be damned if the State Police would interfere in his investigation. He was friends with the homeowners, and it was his duty to find out what was going on at their property. No one had a key. No one had permission to enter in their absence. They didn’t hide a key on the premises.
He failed to mention that he’d ceded the early investigation to civilians, or that he’d shown no interest in the crime whatsoever until this particular address became an issue. He did admit that he hadn’t yet found the time to go collect any evidence from the scene.
“We need to get in there and get that beer can,” I said. “And dust for prints. The Chief will cover it up.”
“But why?” Brody asked. “And what good is the evidence if we take it with no police presence?”
“Help me out here, Rominger,” I said. “Can’t you get a warrant or something?”
“That address is solidly within the town limits of Beech Mountain,” he said. “They’ve got jurisdiction over the lake and right up to the Watauga River to the north.”
“In Watauga County?” I asked.
“Most of it is in Avery County,” he said. “But parts are in Watauga.”
“So how do we get the beer can and take prints and still be able to use them?”
“I don’t see a way,” he said. “But maybe your concerns about the Chief are overblown. Maybe he is just protecting his turf here. He didn’t much care until you found something, but now he’s on the case.”
“Goes against my gut,” I told him. “That’s all I can tell you.”
“I can’t force him to turn over the evidence to us,” he said. “He’s got first right.”
“Can you follow up on it?” I asked. “Have him tell you who the person was?”
“If he makes a clear determination,” he said. “We’re obviously an interested agency on this case.”
“I already don’t trust him,” I said. “Why do I think he’ll say he found no matches to DNA or fingerprints?”
“At that point, we’ll ask to run the search ourselves,” he said. “He’ll have to share it with us.”
“Bingo,” I said. “So we wait for him to bungle it, then you can look into it further.”
“If he cooperates,” he said. “Which is what he didn’t do today.”
“You know where I stand,” I said. “But I’m done dicking around here. I’m going after the hermit. Let us know what the Chief gives you.”
“That ought to keep you out of our hair for a while,” he said. “Let us do our job, Breeze. We can’t take your gut to court.”
The wheels of justice were turning way too slowly for my taste, but there was nothing I could do about it. Finding the hermit wouldn’t necessarily speed things up either. I also knew that locating one anonymous man in a vast wilderness was like playing the lottery. The odds were not in my favor.
As far as I was concerned, the only good thing about Beech Mountain was the brewery in the ski village. Too many houses had been built over the years. The roads were treacherous. I didn’t like to ski, but mainly I was pissed that no one seemed serious about solving the murder of a teenage girl from France. At least I had Brody on my side.
“Is it always like this?” I asked her. “Competing agencies?”
“If the FBI moved in on a case, it was theirs,” she said. “No matter how much the locals protested. This is different.”
“Clearly the State Police are better equipped,” I said.
“But the agency having jurisdiction has to request their aid,” she said. “That happens all the time with small towns. Some of them can’t even provide service twenty-four seven, especially in rural areas, who generally would call in the Sheriff’s Department.”
I wondered which county our suspect property was in. Involving Avery County would reintroduce Angelina Will to the case. I’d had mixed results with the Watauga County Sheriff’s Department. Their former Sheriff had hated me. He’d lost his reelection bid. Since then I’d been called by them to help with a case. Red had solved it in short order, but I wasn’t close to anyone there. The deputy I’d assisted would vouch for me, but I couldn’t even remember his name.