The Case of the Missing Department Head

by David Staats

  “I went back there and the buzzards flew off but they didn’t go far and sat in nearby trees and it was a body. I didn’t look any closer, but went into the house and called the police.”

  Dure interrupted. “Have the police interviewed you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you want me to represent you?”

  “Yes, sir. That is why I am here. I want you to represent me. I don’t want to be put in prison.”

  “Excuse me, then, for a moment, while I place a call,” said Dure.

  Dure took up the telephone handset and punched a pre-set button. “Mr. Preston, please,” he said. After a moment: “Preston, you handling the Houlihan case?”

  “I am aware of a homicide with that name, but the police have made no arrest, and so there is no case as far as I am concerned,” said the voice coming out of the phone.

  “Mr. Houlihan has retained me. We want our medical examiner to be present when you have your guy do the examination.”

  “As you know, Walter, that is being handled by the police homicide investigation unit. If the exam’s already been started, nothing we can do.”

  “If it’s already been started, you stop it until our guy gets there.”

  “I’ll do what I can for you, Walter. But I can’t make promises.”

  “You’ll look bad if at some later time I bring this conversation to the court’s attention.”

  “So your guy did it, huh?”

  “I doubt it, but the facts are yet to be determined. I’m protecting his interests. It’s going to be Doctor Mulvaney. I’ll call him now, but you make sure your guy waits for him.”

  Dure called Dr. Mulvaney. Then he called in Kara and dictated a short letter memorializing his conversation with the county prosecutor, and told her to fax it to Mr. Preston.

  “Mr. Houlihan, I ask your pardon for that interruption, but I wanted to get that matter taken care of before the 5:00 closing hour. In some matters, one has to move quickly. Now, you were saying that you had called the police . . ..”

  “They sent out two cars. And in the meantime, I called my wife, but she wasn’t at work.” At this point, he stopped and looked like he was going to break down.

  “It was my wife. And I didn’t know what to do. An ambulance came. They took her and the police asked me a lot of questions. I don’t want to go to jail.” Here Mr. Houlihan stopped.

  “I will help you,” said Dure.

  “I’ve heard that you’re good,” said Houlihan.

  Dure bowed his head slightly and bit his lip in acknowledgment of the double compliment. “Tell me exactly what you saw,” said Dure.

  “After I called the police, and after I found out that my wife was not at work, I became afraid – afraid it was her. I went back out into the yard to try to look at the body. But it was too terrible. I didn’t get any closer than thirty feet. The buzzards had torn the clothing and attacked the body. From my angle, I couldn’t see the head, but the clothes looked like they could have been my wife’s, so I couldn’t look anymore. I went back into the house and called my wife’s work again.”

  “Go on.”

  “They said – when I first called, I just asked to talk to her, and they said she was not in – but now I asked had she been in that day, and her secretary said no.

  “Where does your wife work?”

  “She’s the head of the county library system.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “By then the police were just arriving. I had been thinking that since she scheduled the Friday before off, and since I was away the whole weekend, she might have gone for a little vacation herself. But I hadn’t heard from her.

  “I wanted to watch what the police did – from a distance, but they wouldn’t let me. They kept me in the house asking questions.”

  Dure asked what the police had asked and what Houlihan had said in response. Houlihan told him the following: His wife’s name was Tiffany Houlihan; they had been married for going on 24 years; they had one son, named Liam; Liam was 23 years old, had graduated from the local college, and was now working part-time at a deli called Sam’s Whiches; Liam did not live with his parents, but shared an apartment with a friend; Mr. Houlihan had left home with his Shave-Ice trailer about 1:15 Friday, right after lunch; he had driven about fifty miles south and had set up in the parking lot at a week-end gun show; he had stayed at the gun show all weekend and had driven back that morning, arriving home about 11:00 a.m., as he had earlier said, and from there things were as he had said earlier, seeing the buzzards, calling the police, etc. He had a happy marriage, got along with his wife; could not think of anyone who would want to hurt him or his wife; did not know of any reason why anyone would want to kill her; probably in light of the mutilated state of the body, she would be cremated, which is what he thinks she would have wanted anyway.

  Dure seemed to be finished with his questions. He paused and seemed to be thinking. “One last thing,” he said, “did you kill your wife?”

  Houlihan’s head flew up and back as if someone had struck him. He opened his eyes wide. “No, no. No,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Alright,” said Dure.

  He had the client sign a representation agreement and set the retainer at five thousand dollars. “If I have to go into court, my fee will be one hundred thousand dollars, but until that time five thousand will suffice.”

  Houlihan had a blank look on his face, as if he did not comprehend.

  “You understand,” said Dure “My fee now is five thousand dollars. If I have to go into court for any reason, you will have to pay me an additional one hundred thousand dollars. The reason is that once I enter an appearance in court on your behalf, the court will not let me withdraw from the case, unless in rare and extraordinary circumstances, which do not include non-payment of fee. So once I’m in, I’m in to the end of trial, if there is one. That would include pre-trial motion practice, trial preparation, the trial, and post-trial motions. It does not include appeals.”

  “Do you want me to pay you now?” asked Houlihan?

  “Pay my secretary. We will talk more later.” He paused before standing up. “Important: Don’t talk to anyone about the case. No one. Not the police. Not your family. No one other than me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Houlihan, “but I’ve already talked to the police.”

  “We will deal with that. No more. No talking. You’ve got it?”

  “Understood, sir.”

  Some patients don’t comply with prescribed treatment, causing headaches for doctors.

  Some clients don’t follow legal advice, causing headaches for lawyers.

  3.

  After the interview, Houlihan drove to his house in a late-model, nice-looking Ford F-250 with a double cab. Dure and Ralph followed to inspect the scene of the crime.

  As Ralph drove, Dure told Ralph the main points of the interview and asked him what he thought of the case. Ralph said, “You’ve got a guy, comes in says he doesn’t want to go to jail, pays you five thousand dollars even though he hasn’t been arrested?”

  “Mr. Houlihan seems a fearful man,” said Dure.

  “Yeah ‘cause he’s carrying a load,” said Ralph. “You don’t put money out like than unless you’ve got a diaper full.”

  “He said he was away all weekend with his vending trailer,” continued Dure. “If we can prove that, it may be a good alibi. Since the police have not arrested our client, they don’t think they have enough evidence to make a case. At this stage, I want to do two things: nail down our client’s alibi, and find out what we can about the deceased. This case may never come to trial, but we should do certain minimally essential preparation – just in case.”

  Sunderly Chase was about fifteen minutes from the office. Dead center at the front of the median strip dividing the entrance road to the development was a sign on which was written in forbidding capital letters:

  A DEED-RESTRICTED COMMUNITY

  NO SOLICITING<
br />
  24-HOUR SURVEILLANCE

  They drove past large houses on large lots. They must have been at least an acre.

  Sunderly Chase was like an ice maiden, beautiful, but cold. The large, dark-windowed houses, each one a unique design, with a sort of English Gothic motif predominant, were set well back from the road, and the large lots seemed all to have been professionally landscaped. Every neatly mown lawn showed the crosshatch pattern of the large power mowers used by landscaping companies.

  They drove down a long, curving road for perhaps half a mile, then turned right onto another gently curving road, which after a quarter of a mile, with a mere two houses on each side, branched in two. They took the left-hand branch onto yet another curving road which turned out to be a cul-de-sac. It had five houses on the outside-of-the-curve side of the street, and three houses on the inside-of-the-curve side. They stopped at the third house on the outside side. Yellow plastic police-line tape was up all around the house.

  The little neighborhood was as quiet and apparently deserted as a ghost town. In the driveway of the Houlihan’s house sat a trailer painted in many tropical colors and bearing the slogan, “Hawaiian Shave-Ice.” The house was not the largest in the neighborhood, but it was large enough. It appeared to be as well kept up as the others. The yard was neat, and the plantings seemed to have been professionally chosen and maintained.

  They climbed out of their vehicles into the quiet and congregated. “You don’t leave that trailer out in this neighborhood?” said Dure.

  “No,” said Houlihan. “Normally, I keep it in the garage.”

  “Show me where the body was found,” said Dure.

  Houlihan walked toward the driveway to his house. When he got to the foot of the driveway, where police tape blocked further access, he pointed towards the rear of the lot, along a row of plantings between his house and the next. “Back there. You can see the extra loop of police tape around where . . . the body was found.”

  “Ralph, take photographs,” said Dure.

  Dure went up to the police-line tape and peered at the place indicated. There was not much to see from that distance. It was probably forty yards from the edge of the street to where the smaller circle of tape was.

  He got on his phone again. “Preston? . . . When are they going to take the police tape down?”

  “I have no control over that.”

  “Okay if we go in?”

  “If you go in and tamper with the scene, you’ll look bad if at some later time I bring that fact to the court’s attention.”

  “Of course we won’t tamper with the scene.”

  “If you go in, you’re tampering with the scene.”

  “Did you get the medical examiner situation arranged?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Preston.”

  Dure clicked off the call. “How about your neighbor?” he said to Houlihan. “Will he let us go on his property where we can get a closer view of the place where the body was?”

  “He’s a good neighbor,” said Houlihan. “Probably.”

  There were enough tall trees in that part of the neighborhood that shadows cast by the slanting evening sun put the house next door entirely in shade.

  “This is the Loveless’s house,” said Houlihan, as they were walking along the street to the next driveway. “He’s a widower, now.” After a pause he added, “So am I . . . now,” and he looked very sad.

  Brush strokes from the most recent application of rubberized driveway sealant were visible in the Loveless’s driveway as they footed slowly to the walkway that led to the front door.

  Houlihan rang the bell, and in a moment came the sound of a thump and of air being drawn in around the edges of the all-glass storm door. The heavy wooden door swung open to reveal an elderly man of upright bearing. The storm door was sparkling clean and transparent. A small, sad smile briefly graced the man’s face as he recognized Houlihan, and he eagerly reached forward to unlatch the storm door while at the same time taking in Dure and Ralph. “Howard,” he said, “I’m so sorry to hear about what happened. How are you? Come in.”

  He was a tall man, about seventy, with a weathered face.

  “No, no. Thank you, Everett, but if you don’t mind . . . what we’d like to do is walk in your yard . . . this gentleman wants to get a closer look at the place where . . ..”

  Apparently walking and talking were reviving Houlihan’s spirits, or distracting him, or something. He stood with his hands in the quarter pockets of his jeans as if he were discussing the weather.

  The man hesitated, glancing at Dure. Taking the cue, Houlihan introduced Dure. “Alright, I’ll show you,” said Loveless. He came out onto the small porch and the four of them walked around to the side yard.

  Mr. Loveless and Houlihan led the way to a spot between the two houses where there were some evergreen trees and a large rhododendron. Stretched out parallel to the property line was the silhouette of a body. It looked like it had been done with some kind of white spray paint. Where the head would have been was a hole in the ground and raw earth, not of recent digging, in a small pile in front of the hole. The little mound of earth at the mouth of the hole was darkly discolored. This hole was slightly under the rhododendron, and from the hole, the silhouette stretched toward the street. Half of the white marking was in the grass towards the Houlihans’s house, and half was in the mulch bed that ran between the rhododendron and the nearest evergreen tree. This margin between grass and mulch bisected the silhouette lengthwise.

  Mr. Houlihan was breathing heavily, as if under strong emotion.

  Dure went up to the yellow tape that stretched between the trees and gazed at the site. It was about six feet inside the border formed by the tape. He pointed with his toe to a carmine-colored mushroom. “Some kind of Russula,” he said. The other three men had blank looks on their faces, and said nothing.

  “This is where the body was found?” asked Dure.

  Houlihan nodded.

  “Where’s the property line?” he asked, looking at Mr. Loveless.

  Mr. Loveless looked at Houlihan and the latter answered. “It’s somewhere between this tape and the groundhog hole there. Wouldn’t you say, Everett?”

  It seemed for a moment that Loveless hadn’t heard the question. Then he said, “I think that’s about right.”

  “Did you see or hear anything?” said Dure to Loveless.

  “No, I didn’t hear anything. I was shocked when the police came.” Loveless shook his head and frowned.

  Ralph had been taking pictures.

  They all stayed there another few minutes, staring. Dure looked around, seeming to measure an imaginary line between the Loveless house and the Houlihan house. The Loveless house was larger and extended further towards the back of the lot. A line of trees and shrubs ran along the border between the two lots. Dure stepped towards the back of the lot and sighted a line from the place where the body had been located to the back corner of the Houlihan house.

  “Thank you for letting us enter upon your property,” said Dure.

  The laconic Mr. Loveless nodded.

  “Would you mind if we came and spoke to you again about this matter?”

  “That would be alright.”

  They were walking back the way they came. The air of the early June evening was getting cooler. At the porch, Loveless said to Houlihan, “Sorry about your wife, Howard.”

  “Thank you Everett,” said Houlihan, in a loud voice that seemed just barely under control. He spread his hands as if to say, what can you do?

  “Your house is off limits,” said Dure to Houlihan as they walked. Where will you sleep tonight?”

  “I’ll sleep in the cab of my truck,” was the answer. “It’s what I do when I go out on the road. It’s all set up for it.”

  “Oh, yes. You take that trailer out to shows. I remember that you told us that.”

  * * *

  Ralph, driving out of Sunderly Chase with Dure riding shot
gun, stopped at the intersection with the main road. On each corner stood a substantial masonry wall of colorful field stone into which was set a large stone slab, carved in the manner of a tombstone with the name Sunderly Chase. He turned onto the country road and they were driving down a long hill.

  Dure’s cell phone rang.

  “Mr. Dure, Doctor Mulvaney,” said the voice on the phone.

  Dure anticipated the doctor’s first words. “A well-nourished white female,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  The doctor recited his report: “Probable cause of death: decapitation. The body was not in good condition. There was animal or vulture molestation of the corpse in addition to the decapitation. Because of the exsanguination secondary to the decapitation, interpreting the pattern of lividity is problematic and thus determining a time of death is problematic. Also, the exsanguination was incomplete, but whether that is because the neck of the corpse was resting on the little mound at the opening of the animal den, or whether the corpse might have rested in some other place until the body had cooled and coagulation occurred is uncertain. The Commonwealth Medical Examiner opines, and I am inclined to agree, that time of death was either Friday or Saturday. Perhaps checking the weather records for Friday through Monday, especially the temperatures, might help us narrow it down, but I doubt it. Fortunately, the body was in a face-down position, so that the animals – or vultures – did not disturb the stomach or its contents. It appears that the deceased died within 90 to 150 minutes after a meal, probably lunch, although further analysis of the contents of the stomach together with information about the dietary habits of the deceased will strengthen or weaken this conclusion. Tentative conclusion for now: time of death probably between noon and three o’clock either Friday or Saturday, assuming the meal was lunch; however, the meal might possibly have been breakfast, so the outside limits of the time of death are 9:00 a.m. on Friday to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday. My personal opinion is that between noon and 3:00 on Friday is the most probable time.”