The J D Bragg Mystery Series Box Set

by Ron Fisher

  He gave me an earnest look and stuck out a thin hand. I shook it.

  “I’m going somewhere to read this,” I said, holding up Jamal’s journal. “I’ll let you know what I learn. Thanks again, Ronnie. You’re a good guy.”

  I left Ronnie standing on the side of the road and walked to my Jeep. A cup of coffee always made a good companion for reading, so I headed into Landrum looking for that, along with a quiet table for one.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  A place named Southern Delights didn’t sound like a coffee shop to me, but the lady behind the counter at the gas station where I filled up the Jeep’s tank said it had the best cup of coffee in town. I took her word for it and found the place in downtown Landrum. Not only was the coffee as good as advertised, but also the freshly made warm cinnamon bun I ordered to go with it was out of this world tasty.

  I grabbed a small table by the window, got comfortable, and opened Jamal’s journal. There was the typical teenage stuff, a lot of it about school, teachers, classmates, and training tips to himself about running track, with quotes from someone I assumed was his track coach. Much of the narrative was in bits and pieces, personal notes to himself that would help him remember more later. Many entries were about his girlfriend Monique, a lot of them cryptic and in a code completely beyond my ability to decipher. It was easy to see which things he didn’t want anyone else to read—like his mother. I gathered from these entries that he and Monique had gone well beyond the kissing and making out stage. He was a good kid, but he wasn’t a saint. I scanned past most of this.

  The more I read, the more I learned that Jamal had big dreams for the future. His narrative left me feeling like I knew him, which made me regret his death even more.

  There was an entry of him overhearing Kroll and his vet Sam Squires talking about Emperor’s infertility. He thought neither Mr. Kroll or his vet were aware that he heard them. They were in the hall of the stable, and he was working in a closed stall. Jamal sounded certain about what he heard. If that got him killed, Kroll would have had to know somehow that Jamal overheard them. Did Monique talk to someone about it? Or did Wilson Kroll or Sam Squires catch him eavesdropping and Jamal didn’t know?

  A few pages later, Jamal included the account of his losing his job. He simply wrote, “laid off,” and didn’t call it a firing. Jamal sounded more confused than angry about it, puzzled over the whole thing, believing that he was a good worker doing a good job. Overall, Jamal didn’t seem too upset. Nothing was said about an argument, harsh words, threats, or Kroll’s infertile horse. Jamal must have been just the most viable scapegoat for Kroll to blame for the shooting. Who would believe Jamal over him? That part had worked.

  I was almost to the end, beginning to think there was nothing more of interest. Then I saw the last entry, dated the Saturday Jamal went missing. It read:

  “Old Mrs. N. came morning. Went with. Move boxes to rm. in stable loft. $25. Trunk in storage rm. always locked. Trunk open today. Looked in. Weird stuff. >Halloween masks. Women jewelry. Broken polo mallets. TC came in. Caught me. Accused stealing. Yelled. Don’t like him. Finished wk. Mrs. N. took home.”

  Was TC Teddy Crane? And Mrs. N, Chuck Norman’s mother? At lunch Wednesday with Teddy and Chuck, Teddy said he boarded his horses at the Norman’s stables. What else did he keep there? The trunk Jamal found? This was why Agent Smith didn’t find anything at Teddy’s house. Teddy didn’t keep it there, he kept it at the stable where his horses were!

  I left money on the table for the coffee and cinnamon roll and headed to my Jeep. Chuck said he lived in one of the big old barns on Hunting Country Road, and with a little help from Google and GPS, I found the address. It was west toward Tryon a mile from Natasha’s place.

  I called Detective Mosely Smith, but it went directly to his voicemail. At the beep, I said, “Detective Smith, this is J.D. Bragg. I think I know why you didn’t find anything tying Teddy Crane to the serial killings at his house. He doesn’t keep it there. He hides it in an old trunk at the stables where he boards his horses.” I gave him the address, and added, “I’m not waiting until you get a search warrant, I’m on my way there now.”

  Smith wouldn’t like it, but I wanted to see it for myself. My brain was spinning. What if Jamal wasn’t killed because he knew Emperor was infertile? What if Teddy killed him because he caught him looking in the trunk? Jamal didn’t know the significance of what was in there, but Teddy couldn’t risk him even telling anyone. The mask hadn’t made the news, but Teddy must know it eventually would since he was seen by a witness leaving the scene of one of his murders. Why he didn’t just throw it away, I didn’t know, but he still had it when he hit me at the track, and when he was looking into the window at Kroll’s party. The mask must hold some significant meaning to him, but who knew what went on in his deranged mind. He was a serial killer.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  I found a place just out of sight of the Norman’s huge home and parked along the shoulder. I got out and climbed over a rail fence and went into the woods that circumvented a picturesque green pasture. I came out behind the stables, which were to the side and behind the Tudor-style house. No one saw me—or at least I didn’t think so. But there were enough windows in the big house that someone could have been looking out of one of them, but I’d take that chance. The worst that could happen was a trespassing charge, now that I didn’t have to worry about Teddy hitting me in the head with a polo mallet again.

  The doors were closed on the four-car garage on the side of the house, so I had no idea who was home. I went in through the rear of the stables and passed two stalls with horses in them, Teddy’s, I assumed. One of them gave me a horse raspberry as I walked by. The other stalls, except for one filled with hay, were empty and looked like they had been for some time. I remembered Chuck saying they sold their horses after his father died, and these stalls had been without animals so long, they no longer smelled of them.

  I climbed a narrow set of stairs up to the loft and found a huge room that had held hay and other silage when more horses were stabled there. Now it was bare. As I’d seen, Teddy kept his horses’ fodder in one of the stalls below.

  There was an open area in the middle of the floor for pitching hay down below, and a door off to one side, which I assumed was the storage room. I walked over and opened it. Inside was a smaller room filled with old cast-off furniture large and small, covered with clear plastic or bed sheets, and stacks of cardboard moving boxes of various sizes. The result of Jamal’s labor on that Saturday, probably. In a corner were a couple of old saddles and tack, and against a far wall, an old wooden trunk, the lid padlocked.

  In for a penny, in for a pound, the old cliché went. I went back down the stairs, found a pitchfork, and brought it back. I inserted the tines between the lock and the latch and put my weight behind it. The latch broke, the wood splintered, and the padlock fell to the floor.

  I raised the trunk lid and found just what Jamal described. There was not one, but two identical Guy Fawkes’ masks. Teddy kept a spare, I thought. There were also two of what Jamal described as broken polo mallets—but they weren’t broken, the handles on them were just shortened, one sawed off to about two feet, the other shorter, about hammer size. These mallets weren’t meant to reach a ball on the ground from horseback. They were used to smash in the teeth and lips of Teddy’s victims. A large plastic zip bag contained items of women’s jewelry and accessories; bracelets, necklaces, and rings, mostly flashy cheap things like a prostitute would wear. Teddy’s souvenirs.

  I used the pitchfork to move things around so I wouldn’t get my fingerprints on anything. Underneath the masks and mallets, I found a box of the plastic zip bags—2-gallon size. There were plenty left in the box, so Teddy had well supplied himself for the future. One side of the trunk held a stack of folded clothing, an Aussie drover’s slouch hat on top. I moved the hat and unfolded what turned out to be a long cowboy duster, like the ones I’d seen Teddy wear. Agent Smith said he’d
found two of them at Teddy’s house. I guess one as stylish as Teddy just couldn’t have too many cool threads.

  Then I saw the award ribbons. There were about a dozen at the bottom of the trunk, all awards for Junior equine events and competitions. There were a couple of 2nd and 3rd places, but most of them were for 1st place. They were for polo, dressage, jumping events, and riding competitions. Childhood memories, I thought. Even serial killers were children once. There was also a packet of clippings, tied together by a length of string. I took it off and looked at them. They were old enough to have turned a faded yellow. They were all stories about a junior rider that one headline called the “child prodigy of the horse world.” I looked at a photograph. It showed a kid dressed in the shirt, helmet and boots of a polo player. The caption underneath gave his name, but I’d already recognized him. It was a young Chuck Norman.

  What the hell? I thought. Why were these in here?

  Suddenly I heard the floorboards creak behind me.

  I turned to see Chuck Norman standing in the doorway pointing a gun at me.

  Then it hit me as if the roof had fallen in on me.

  “It’s you, not Teddy,” I said.

  Before I could say another word, he shot me.

  He got me just under my collarbone near my right shoulder, and it knocked me flat on my back. Don’t let anybody ever tell you it doesn’t hurt to get shot. It hurts like hell. My first thought was that at least the bullet missed my lung; the pain was higher than that, and I seemed to be breathing okay. My second thought was that he was going to shoot me again.

  He was making his way toward me in a stiff-legged gait; the gun pointed directly at my head. He wore a determined look that said his next shot wouldn’t just wound.

  I held out my good arm toward him, palm outward as if I were superman, able to stop a speeding bullet. But I had no super powers, my Glock was in the Jeep, and I needed a real world way to stop him, and quick. The only thought I had was to get him talking. I gritted my teeth against the pain and said, “Why did you kill Teddy and Natasha? They were your best friends.”

  It worked. He stopped suddenly, his eyes doing a slow refocus like his mind had slipped into some other spatial dimension, and he was fighting hard to get back.

  “Teddy knew I was being him,” he finally said, his face morphing into an angry pout, his voice almost child-like. He lowered the gun when he said that, lost in the thought.

  “How were you him?” I asked, saying anything to keep him talking before he shot me again. I could only hope Detective Smith got my message and was pulling into Chuck’s drive right now, a cadre of cops behind him.

  “I was being strong. Like Teddy.”

  My shoulder was going numb. The good news was the pain was subsiding, the bad news was I might be bleeding to death. “You admired Teddy, didn’t you?” I said.

  “Teddy would never have put up with Mother. He would smash her in the mouth if she talked to him like she talks to me.”

  Smash her in the mouth. Interesting choice of words, I thought.

  “You admire those ‘occupy’ protestors, too, don’t you? That’s what the ‘Anonymous’ mask is all about, right?”

  “The mask represents my fight for justice and retribution.”

  “These women are substitutes for your mother, aren’t they? You’re shutting her up by shutting them up.”

  “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me!” he yelled, spittle flying from his mouth. He took a quick step toward me, raising the gun again. “I don’t like that . . . I don’t like that! Do you understand? Do you know what it’s like to listen to the things that come out of my mother’s mouth—the brow-beatings, the criticisms, the terrible, cruel things she says to me? I wanted to shut her up. I had to shut her up. But, how could I? She’s my mother!”

  “I’m not trying to psychoanalyze you, Chuck, I’m just trying to understand you, and why you killed Teddy, when you admired him so much.”

  “He turned on me. He was going to tell,” he said and nodded to the open trunk behind me. “He saw . . . what’s in there.”

  “When was that?” I asked.

  “When that nigger boy saw it.”

  His face had gone very red, and the wild look was back in his eyes. “Teddy wasn’t my friend anymore. He was yelling at me. Just like Mother.”

  “Why was he yelling at you?” I asked.

  “Because you accused him of looking through Mr. Kroll’s windows at his party, and you thought he was the one who hit you on the track that night. He knew it was me. He’d seen the mask, too. And sooner or later he would learn about the women. I was seen being him, and it would come out.”

  “What about Natasha? I said. “Did she walk in on you?”

  “She wasn’t supposed to be there. She just barged in and left me no choice.”

  I didn’t see any regret in his face. “You killed Jamal Johnson, too, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Can you not hear? I just told you he saw who I was, too. He had no right looking at my things. My mother caused that. She hired him. Once again, she was trying to destroy my life like she did when she sold the horses. And then there the boy was, right in my headlights. I was in Mother’s big SUV, and it was easy. But I should have buried him deeper. I won’t make that same mistake with you. I should have hit you harder at the track. You’re like Mother. Everything you do is against me.”

  I saw the intensity grow in his eyes as he stiffened his arm and pointed the gun between my eyes. I tried to roll away but there was nowhere to go. I gritted my teeth waiting for the shot, then suddenly his face exploded, a mist of blood spraying over me, and he went down in a crumble of elbows, knees, and legs.

  Behind him, his mother stood in the doorway, holding a smoking pistol almost as big as she was. I couldn’t believe she made it up the stairs without either Chuck or me hearing her.

  She slowly opened her fingers and let the gun fall to the floor. I jumped at the sound it made when it hit.

  “I should have done that years ago,” she said, in a calm voice. “Charles was a sick boy, but I ignored it.

  “I need to call an ambulance,” I said, trying to get my phone out of my pocket with my good arm. I dialed nine-one-one, said I’d been shot and gave my name and location. I hung up as they started asking questions.

  If Mrs. Norman heard me, she didn’t act like it. She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, still talking.

  “As a child, Charles was quite the horseman,” she said. “After Robert, my husband died, I sold the horses because Charles had begun to abuse them, hurting them when they didn’t perform to his standards. He was furious with me when I did that. Afterward, he seemed to fold in upon himself. He lost interest in everything, going into a shell and never coming out.”

  She sighed at the thought and continued.

  “I have never known what goes on in that head of his. He has never forgiven me for getting rid of the horses—yet he never mentions it.”

  I was beginning to feel weak and dizzy and closed my eyes. I don’t think she noticed.

  “You may not know this,” she said, “but Robert, my husband, was kicked in the head and killed by a horse he was shoeing. Or so the authorities determined. I must confess that I have never been comfortable with that conclusion. Charles was with him when it happened, but he didn’t seem to show the shock and grief I expected from a fourteen-year-old who just witnessed his father killed. Later, we found a blacksmith hammer buried in the hay in the stall. It had blood on it. Now, there were obviously legitimate ways for blood to get on that hammer as the accident would have caused blood to splatter everywhere, but there was only one way the hammer could have been buried that deep in the hay: someone placed it there.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at her. “Mrs. Norman, are you saying Chuck killed his father with that hammer, buried it in the hay, and blamed it on the horse?” I managed to say.

  She looked at me with tired eyes. “In hindsight, I wish I’d told someone. But to
be honest, I didn’t want to know the truth. So I’ve kept it secret all these years, and turned a blind eye to the sickness in Charles, hoping it would never surface again if I could just keep a tight rein on him.”

  With all the strength I had, I pushed myself back against the trunk and leaned against it. The room was spinning, but the pain in my shoulder seemed to be keeping me alert. I saw Mrs. Norman staring at the open trunk.

  “I’ve known about that chest for some time,” she said, “and the effort Charles made to keep it secret. “But I couldn’t marshal the nerve to look. Perhaps I didn’t want to know what was in there. But from what he was about to do to you, I don’t think I made the right decision. Once again, I should have told someone.”

  Over the sound of her voice, I heard approaching sirens. She stopped talking and was listening now. We could hear car doors slamming out in the yard. Mrs. Norman sighed audibly, and gave me a look that held a lot of things in it: sadness, anger, defensiveness—but I didn’t see remorse.

  I looked down at Chuck Norman lying dead on the floor and thought of Jamal, Natasha, Teddy, and all those dead prostitutes I never met. I wondered if Mrs. Norman had sought psychiatric help for him all those years ago, rather than burying her concern about him and spending the rest of his and her life punishing him verbally for what he was, they would all be alive, and he wouldn’t be lying there.

  They had Mrs. Norman in the back of a squad car, and me in the back of an ambulance. Twice in less than a week. The paramedics patched me up as best as they could and readied me for another trip to the hospital in Columbus.

  Thanks to a shot of something a paramedic gave me, I wasn’t in much pain. Smith came over just as they were about to shut the ambulance doors on me and said, “I don’t know whether to arrest you for coming here without waiting for me, or kick your butt for being so stupid.”

  “I’ll settle for a ‘thank you,” I said. “I solved your big case for you.”