A New Prospect

by Wayne Zurl

  “Yeah, I guess everybody’s okay. Nonie is upset because I got hot with Cecil before, but most everyone’s just shocked.”

  “How many people are at the dinner?”

  “We had ninety-six people pay for dinner. With the club officers that goes just over a hundred.”

  “That’s a lot of witnesses. I’ll need a list of all the others who were at the show but didn’t stay.”

  “Sure, we’ve got that.”

  “Anybody look guilty to you?” I said, acting like a smart-ass

  “What the hell does a guilty person look like, Sam? You really don’t think I did this, do you?”

  I gave his shoulder a friendly punch. “I’d be surprised, Georgie. I’d really be surprised.”

  A white Ford Expedition with county Sheriff’s logos on the doors pulled onto the grass with its blue lights flashing. The lights went out, and crime scene investigator Jackie Shuman walked over to shake hands.

  George Morgan took that as his cue to leave. I told him I’d keep in touch and tell him how the investigation progressed.

  “First day on the road and you start off by killin’ one o’ your citizens?” Jackie asked.

  “Yeah, they also blamed me for the blizzard of ’93 when I moved here.”

  Jackie smiled and asked, “You doin’ aw rot today?”

  “Not too bad. It’s been a busy day.”

  I’d known Jackie for several years. One of the regulars at the range I visit when I feel like proving I can still shoot up a silhouette target, Jackie gave me the information I needed about the chief’s job in Prospect.

  A veteran of ten years with the Blount County Sheriff’s Office, thirty-four-year-old Jackie represented another new colleague young enough to be my son. I remembered a lot more old-timers on the job up in New York.

  “M.E. coming?” I asked.

  “After a while. He’s busy tonight. Maryville’s got them a fatal wreck—truck versus motorcycle—on 321 nears the Willie Blount High School turnoff.”

  I learned that in Tennessee we have wrecks, not motor vehicle accidents.

  “How nice for them,” I said.

  “And I’m workin’ alone tonight ‘cause my partner done called in sick.”

  “My sympathies. I heard there’s a bug going around. I’ll help if you pay me minimum wage.”

  “Shoot, ain’t hardly gonna do that.”

  We started looking at the body. The weapon, a Gerber five-and-a-half-inch, stainless steel kitchen knife, had been pushed about halfway into Cecil’s torso. A little northwest of that wound we saw another. A large blood splotch surrounded it on Cecil’s pale yellow sport shirt. Gravity prompted the blood to travel down Cecil’s side, spread over the chair cushion and finally onto the grass below.

  “That’s a hell of a lot of blood,” I said. “I guess the first cut did some serious damage around the heart.”

  “Yep, looks like he jest laid back and bled out.”

  “I doubt the old boy felt much relative discomfort from the second puncture.”

  “Be my guess, too.”

  The M.E. wagon pulled off the road and stopped on the grass as we considered Cecil’s misfortune. I watched the driver speaking on his radio. Jackie fetched his camera case and bag of forensic gear out of the Ford.

  Two flies flitted around and landed on Cecil’s cheese. He’d be their next target.

  I stepped back from the body and cracked the side of my knee on the bumper of the Rolls Royce. It hurt—a lot.

  “Goddamnit!” I said, sounding like a typical New Yorker faced with one of the daily inconveniences of life.

  “You step in somethin’?” Jackie asked with a grin.

  “No, I just smashed my leg on this goddamn bumper. Hey, don’t look so pleased about it. Keep working. Don’t I pay you by the hour?” I didn’t see that as the perfect ending to my long day.

  Jackie looked closely at the ground around the body and area just beyond it. “Must be a million footprints on this ground and too much grass to let one look any different than t’others.”

  “I counted them before you got here. There are more than a million.”

  “If you’re gonna do my job, why’d you call me here?”

  “Your boss wanted me to be sure you stayed busy.”

  “Shoot, my boss wouldn’t know busy if it bit him in the butt.”

  “I’ll tell him you said so.”

  “Humpf.”

  “Pay attention to what you’re doing, son. Mr. Lovejoy here would want you to do a bang-up job.”

  “That’s why they send me—when only the very best will do.”

  I watched Jackie prepare to work the scene. His movements were precise, no wasted motion. The more he moved, the more competent he looked. Over the years, I’ve seen many evidence technicians work, and Jackie looked like he could function efficiently anywhere.

  When civilians are watching, I’ve always told my detectives to act professionally.

  When cops are alone at a crime scene, the conversation may wander to subjects other than the victim.

  I began to see one of Jackie’s talents, the ability to process a scene, find the evidence and still carry on a totally unrelated conversation. I guess people of his generation call that multi-tasking.

  To the casual onlooker, we may have sounded unsympathetic. Knowing a little about Cecil, I doubted any cop would spend time grieving for him. No more than a mason would cry over a broken cement block.

  “You interested in goin’ huntin’ this year, Sam?”

  “Never have before, kid. Can’t think of a good reason to kill Bambi.”

  “I’m goin’ out west ag’in with them Ledbetter boys fer mule deer. Thought you might wannna come. Venison’s good eatin’.”

  He spoke as he walked in a spiraling pattern moving outward, away from the body. He moved in a peculiar, bent-over position, scrutinizing the ground. He reminded me of Igor, the hunchback in Frankenstein.

  “Last year I had went out a’huntin’ with them same ol’ boys. We all took mule deers. Wyomin’s perty country,” he explained as he kept up his search of the grassed area.

  “Thanks. I’ll do my hunting with a camera.”

  “Suit yase’f.”

  He stood upright for a moment, giving an exaggerated stretch to his back. Watching him, I thought, ‘Wait until you’re my age, young feller.’

  The morgue wagon pulled further onto the grassy field and stopped a few yards from the murder scene. I called Jackie over.

  “M.E.’s ready. Remember where you’re searching and come help me with the body so he can do his tests.”

  “I’ll git my camera.”

  Jackie clicked photo after photo. I removed the knife from Cecil’s ribs and dropped it into an evidence bag. I wrote the time, date and my initials on the plastic.

  “Give me your autograph on the bag, son.” I said to Jackie.

  He added his initials and badge number and took custody of the knife.

  “I’ll engrave my mark on the knife when I do the prints back at the office,” he said.

  An M.E.’s assistant walked over toward the body carrying a satchel of equipment.

  “You two mind me interruptin’?” he said. “If you’re done takin’ pitchers and shootin’ the breeze, that is. I’d like ta do a couple o’ tests, then pack up this here body and be on m’ way.”

  “Shut up, Earl.” Jackie spoke with a big grin. “Yer soundin’ like an ol’ woman.”

  “Damn young’uns,” Earl said. “This one always gives me grief.”

  I ignored Jackie and answered the morgue assistant’s earlier question.

  “Go ahead. Jackie’s got his photos. You do your thing and then make him look all peaceful like dead people are supposed to look for their funeral.”

  He pulled Lovejoys clothes apart to find the appropriate spot to stick a liver probe. I already knew the time of death, but protocol is protocol.

  “I’ll be takin’ him up to the UT lab fer the autop
sy, not no funeral parlor. He’ll be lookin’ dead when we’re finished with him. You’ll be getting’ a re-port from them. Mebbe sometime Monday. Best give ‘em a call though. Might need some shakin’ up.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that. No doctor on call tonight?”

  “Nope. Doc Rappaport, he’s usually the one who comes out, he done called in sick with what he said was food poisonin’. Done et somethin’ didn’t agree with him. Sounds like he’s a hurtin’ puppy. But shoot, I done enough o’ these and kin manage m’se’f .”

  “I’ll bet you can.”

  “You sure don’t sound like yer from around here, Chief.”

  “No, sir, my first day at Prospect PD. I’ve been living here for a while, but I’m originally from New York.”

  “With the po-leece up there?”

  “Twenty years.”

  “Lord have mercy.”

  “My name’s Sam Jenkins. Good to meet you.”

  “Earl W. Ogle—call me Earl.” He pronounced his middle initial “dubyah.”

  While Earl Ogle conducted his tests, Jackie and I measured the relative distances from the body to assorted objects for his crime scene sketch.

  When Earl finished, we helped him bag Cecil and put him in the morgue wagon for his trip to the forensics lab.

  Then Jackie and I continued to search the grounds and bagged and tagged everything that didn’t grow. He dusted every object around the body for prints, photographed the latents, then lifted and transferred them to white cards.

  Three tripod-mounted lights cast enough illumination over the grounds to make it look like late afternoon.

  More than three hours after arriving at the crime scene, Jackie Shuman finished the last of his photos, snapped the pop-up flash back down on the body of his Nikon D-200, wrapped the nylon strap around the camera and tucked it into his black bag.

  “I’ll finish up my reports tonight, long as I don’t get busy.” He zipped the top of his camera bag. “You can have them tomorrow or Monday, one. But honest, Sam, I don’t think I’ve got anythin’ that will be o’ much he’p ta ya. Too many people here walkin’ around, and oohin’ and ahhin’ and touchin’ the cars ta be able ta isolate any suspects.

  “I’ll do the prints on the knife, plate, table and such when I get back ta the office and then let our fingerprint guy run the whole shootin’ match o’ those and the other latents through the computer startin’ Monday. That might take some time, but like I said, I doubt we’ll find anythin’ much worth usin’.” He shrugged as he hefted some of his equipment. “Good doin’ business with ya, Chief.”

  I helped Jackie pack up the van, and he departed.

  Junior and Will had finished with the crowd in the steak house long ago. Will went back on the road, waiting to answer other calls. Junior walked Bitsey on her leash. Those two searched the guest parking area and motel grounds for clues—at time and a half. Ronnie Shields might question the necessity of putting Bitsey on the payroll.

  Cecil Lovejoy would come to aggravate me like few other victims I’ve known. Before my investigation was over, I would have cheerfully stabbed him myself—had he been alive, of course.

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning, I got out of bed at 6:30 after a night of little rest. I’d fallen asleep at 10:30 and woke again at quarter-of-two.

  The homicide began racing through my mind. Did I remember to do all the right things so far? A list of future things I wanted to do sprang up, one on top of the other, none getting the amount of time necessary to think them through. Would I be able to find the killer? Or would I look like a horse’s ass with only a paper reputation from a place far from East Tennessee? Was two o’clock in the morning the time to think about anything more than sugar plum fairies?

  When my sleep gets invaded, it’s like Normandy Beach. Other unrelated things took spots in my thoughts while I tried to focus on nothingness and get back to sleep. Incidents I hadn’t thought about in years rolled through my brain, things with no meaning…with no apparent meaning.

  I nodded off sometime after five and woke again with the alarm at six.

  While Kate spent time doing her hair and getting dressed, the dog and I took a walk—over the hills, but not far away. When we reached the place I wanted to be, I began thinking again.

  I felt lousy that morning. Not just the jet lag-like feeling from lack of adequate sleep, but mentally screwed up. I likened it to the times when close friends died. The same as when I received orders to go to Vietnam. Not unlike finding a notice lying in my in-box summoning me to Internal Affairs. I felt like I lacked control over my life and the new job I’d taken. I wished I could go back in time, any time other than that Sunday morning.

  As a kid, I used to listen to Jack Webb do a voice-over as each opening scene of Dragnet showed the lights of Los Angeles from the Mullholland Drive overlook.

  “This is the city,” he’d say. Then after reciting the weekly philosophical message of a world-weary detective, Jack finished off with, “My name’s Friday. I carry a badge.”

  Well, I wasn’t in Los Angeles, California. I was in Prospect, Tennessee. My name’s Jenkins. And I carry a badge…again.

  Sunday, July 23rd, 2006. It was warm in Prospect. I was working the day-watch out of…Enough of Jack’s delivery. Back to reality.

  Standing on the highest point of our property, my own overlook, I stared down into a small open valley. Behind the valley, a tall mountain ridge stood like a phalanx on an ancient battlefield. Instead of shaggy, bearded Britons attempting to hold their position against an equal number of unkempt Saxons, the hillside held sweet gums, maples, red oaks, dogwoods and tall pine trees, presenting the onlooker an impenetrable barrier.

  Below the tree line, Glenda Mae Waddell’s rustic log home, three-car garage and long, low stables occupied a large parcel of landscaped property. Several horses grazed in the seven acres of pasture adjacent to the stables.

  A carefully cultivated vegetable garden occupied the space behind me. For the past fourteen years, I devoted countless hours to rototilling, planting, fertilizing and organically spraying the crops I harvested. Using my former hourly wage as a guide, I calculated a cucumber, eggplant or tomato cost me $36.50 each.

  Did I want to give up that relaxing lifestyle to be a cop again? Did I take that job because of my ego and the desire to show myself and the world I’m not too old to play detective again? Or was it hubris? Or both? Are they that different? Are they mutually exclusive?

  A week before I met Cecil Lovejoy I was unemployed. I didn’t know the cops I’d be working with, and I knew only a little about the city that agreed to employ me.

  I remembered back to the day I retired from my last police job. I was happy to leave, glad to be making a new start in a new place. I read once how retirement, if handled correctly, could be a mental tune-up.

  I’ll paraphrase a quote from Forrest Gump. My former police job was like a box of chocolates. Initially things tasted sweet, most of the candies excellent, but by the time I got to the bottom of the box, I lost my taste for what I spent almost half a lifetime consuming.

  I had a lot on my mind, and none of it seemed to be going anywhere.

  I gave a gentle tug on the black nylon leash I held and started our trek down the hill.

  Walking through the garage, I opened the door leading to the laundry room, scooped Bitsey up in my arm and dropped her into the doggie tub on my right. After wiping her wet feet, I placed the dog back on the floor and watched her prance through the kitchen and into the living room. She’d spend the next hour gnawing on the sterilized bone she used to sharpen her fangs. After that, she’d sleep for an hour to rest up for her next walk and her second nap.

  Katherine and I made pancakes with freshly picked blueberries and ate them with strong coffee and the real maple syrup we purchased during a trip to New York’s Champlain Valley the previous autumn.

  “Tough first day, wasn’t it, sweetie?” Kate asked.

  “Enough action for the op
ening of a cheap novel.”

  “When you investigated crimes like that back in New York, you had a whole squad of detectives to do the work. You think it’s wise to take on all the responsibility yourself?”

  “You’d think I would have asked myself that as I stood over the body. The other cops are patrolmen. Kind of hard to provide that public service the people expect and lend a hand with a murder investigation.”

  “So what are you going to do? Can’t you hand this over to the county detectives?”

  “I’ll do what I always did. I’ll make sure the job gets done. I may not get too many days off until this is over, but I’ll work it alone or with a little help where I can find it.”

  I thought about Bettye. She looked like a sharp cop. No reason she couldn’t learn how to investigate.

  “You’re too much, my dear.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  * * * *

  My first days at Prospect PD ended with more complications then a small-town policeman usually gets in a lifetime, and even a good breakfast didn’t curtail my troubled thought process.

  Even Kate thought it foolish to saddle up as my own homicide investigator before I knew where to find the PD men’s room. But after much soul searching and scientifically weighing all the alternatives—actually I flipped a coin—I decided to continue on with the investigation as I originally planned.

  First, I needed some moral support, something more on a professional level than what Kate already offered.

  At 9:30, I dialed a number in Titusville, Florida, calling retired Detective Sergeant Joe Dolinski, my former executive officer and a guy who always stood by me through all kinds of adversity.

  Joey was to me what Gabby Hayes was to Hopalong Cassidy, a faithful sidekick.

  “Hello,” he growled over the phone, just as he did back on the job.

  “Hey, Joey, how’s it going?”

  “Heeey, boss-man, what are ya doin’?” His voice changed.

  “Joey, what’s the difference between you and me?”

  “I don’t know, Sam. Your fly’s open?”

  I remembered him sitting at his desk back in the squad. At forty, Joey’s hair turned snow-white, and he wore short-sleeved shirts twelve months of the year.

  “You’re a smart-ass. I don’t know why I still like you. I should call Frankie and tell him what’s new in my life.”

  “You should call Frankie, boss. He’d like to hear from you. Ever since he had the stroke, he’s not the same old guy. I mean, sometimes he still acts like a fool, but he’s just not the same old Frankie. You know what I mean?”