A Reckoning in the Back Country

by Terry Shames

  “Do you happen to recall what your husband was wearing when he left here?”

  “No, I don’t know. He usually wears khaki pants and a button-up shirt. But I didn’t see him when he left. . . . I don’t understand. You’ve seen his picture. Can’t you tell whether it’s him?” Her voice is shrill.

  The khaki pants fit, but who knows what kind of shirt the dead man was wearing. It was shredded and covered with blood.

  “The identification is difficult. The body was damaged.”

  She stares at me.

  “The problem is, the man was attacked by animals. Dogs. And his face is . . .”

  She puts a hand to her mouth, stifling a cry.

  “I’m sorry. I think it’s best that you not try to identify the body until the medical team has had a chance to clean him up a little bit.”

  “No. I need to see him now. It may not be him.”

  “Mrs. Wilkins, are there any identifying marks on your husband’s body? A tattoo, birthmark, scars?”

  “His little toe is missing on his right foot. When he was six, a neighbor child dropped a hatchet and cut it off.”

  I rise. “That’s a pretty good marker. Let me go take a look, and I’ll get back with you.”

  “I want to see him.”

  I sigh. “I can’t keep you from it, but it’s a bad idea. You’d be better off waiting.”

  A knock on the door saves me. The door swings open and young woman says, “Mother, what’s going on next door? What are all the cop cars doing there?” She’s willowy and attractive, looking very much like a younger version of Margaret Wilkins. She’s dressed more for a board meeting than a day in the country, with a slim-skirted suit and white blouse, high heels, and expensive-looking jewelry. Her officious tone matches her dress.

  “Emily, there’s been . . .” Margaret’s voice falters. “Oh God, you’d better come inside.”

  Eyeing me as if she doesn’t welcome a stranger in the house, the young woman sweeps past me. “Why is it so warm in here?” she demands.

  “Where’s Daniel?” Margaret asks. “I thought the two of you were driving up together.”

  The girl shoots her mother an impatient look. “He’s bringing in the luggage.” The announcement is punctuated by a thud on the front porch.

  A young man strides in, grinning. He looks much like his father, but cheerful. He goes straight for Margaret and flings his arms around her. “How’s my little mamma?”

  “Daniel . . .”

  At the sound of her voice, he steps back, looking puzzled. He turns to me and extends his hand. “I’m Daniel Wilkins. What’s going on?”

  I introduce myself. “I was talking to your mamma. Something has happened.”

  “Kids, come into the living room,” Margaret says. “Let’s sit down.”

  Emily’s gaze sweeps past me to the living room. She frowns as if she doesn’t like what she sees.

  “Come on, Em. The furniture isn’t going to give you cooties,” her brother says. He puts his arm around Margaret and walks her over to the sofa. “Sit with me. Tell me what’s up.”

  Emily sits down across from them primly and crosses her legs. She still isn’t catching on that there’s a problem. Or maybe she’s scared and this is her way of dealing with it.

  I’m still standing. Quietly, I say to Margaret, “You want me to talk to them?”

  She nods. I walk over to the fireplace, where I can see all three of them.

  “Your mamma called yesterday and said your daddy was missing.”

  “What? Why didn’t you call us?” Daniel says.

  “I just . . . I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Emily says, practically spitting the words.

  “Em, give her a break,” her brother says.

  “If you’ll bear with me,” I say. “An hour ago, the body of a man was found in the woods back behind your house. He fits your daddy’s general description. I came to ask your mamma if there is an identifying mark I can use to confirm if it’s him. I’m going back out there now to make that identification.”

  Daniel gets up from the sofa. “Wait. I’m confused. Can’t you tell . . . ?” His question dies away. He’s caught on that this is an unusual situation.

  “The man we found was attacked by animals. It’s hard to identify his features.”

  “Animals! Like what?” he says.

  “The local vet says it looks like he was killed by a pack of dogs.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “You better sit down,” I say. He sinks down next to Margaret and buries his head in his hands. He’s breathing hard.

  Margaret grabs his hand. “Daniel, we don’t know for sure if it’s your daddy.”

  He looks at her. Sweat has popped out on his brow. “What could he have been doing in the woods?”

  “I really have no idea,” she says. “This whole thing is unimaginable.”

  He looks up at me. “Is there a problem with packs of dogs back there in the woods? It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “There have been rumors that there are dogs on the loose.”

  Suddenly Emily stands up, her chin tilted at a defiant angle. “So you don’t know for certain the man you found is our father, right?” Her tone is brisk.

  “True, we don’t know for sure yet. Like I said, I’m going back there now to try and identify him. Your mamma told me your daddy is missing a toe. That gives me something to use to rule out if isn’t him.”

  Emily grimaces and a whimper escapes her. Daniel stands up and looks down at Margaret. “I’ll go with Chief Craddock to make a positive ID,” he says.

  “No, Daniel, I don’t want you to see your daddy that way,” Margaret says, getting up from the sofa. “It’s up to me.”

  “Why?” Daniel says. “It will be hideous for any of us. Why should you do it?”

  “I suggested to your mamma that whoever makes the identification waits until the medical examiner has had a chance to clean him up a bit.”

  “And I told you I’m going to find out now,” Margaret says. She walks toward the front door with a firm step. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m going, too,” Daniel says.

  “I don’t think I can stand it,” Emily says.

  “You don’t have to go. In fact, I rather you didn’t. If it turns out not to be your daddy, there’s no sense in you having to see him,” Margaret says.

  When the three of us go outside, I see that two squad cars—one from Bobtail PD and the other from the Department of Public Safety—have arrived. The medical examiner isn’t here yet. None of the officers are around, so I assume they’ve gone back to the scene. As we walk past the Hastings house, Glo Hastings comes out onto the porch. “Frank took the troopers back to the woods,” she says. “He’s back here, but he said if you need him for anything, just ask.” She walks to the bottom of the steps and reaches out to Margaret. “I’m just so sorry. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  “I’ll be fine, Gloria.” Her voice wavers.

  We make a quiet procession. The path is already beaten down more than it was. As I thought it might, the temperature has risen and it’s almost warm, although the wind is still coming in fitful gusts. As we near the scene where the body was found, I hear voices and I slow up. “Look,” I say, turning to Margaret and her son. “At least let me examine the man’s right foot. If it’s intact, the body isn’t your husband’s and there’s no need for you to view it.”

  “That makes sense,” Daniel says, putting his arm around Margaret and pulling her close. Margaret nods.

  Three men I don’t know are hovering over the body—one from the Bobtail Police Department, and two Department of Public Safety officers who are dressed in coveralls and booties to avoid contaminating the scene. The Bobtail PD man is standing a little apart, because he won’t be called on to do any forensic work—that’s up to the troopers. They all look young and shocked.

  One of the troopers takes the lead and introduc
es himself as David Bagley and his partner as Don Casey. “I know you by name,” Bagley says to me. “I work alongside Luke Schoppe. He thinks the world of you.”

  I nod in acknowledgment. “I’ll do all I can not to disturb the body, but I’m going to take a look at the man’s right foot.” I tell them why. The men part the way, and I pull on a pair of gloves and stoop down to take off the right shoe. I peel off the sock. There’s something vulnerable about the man’s naked, pale foot and I have a momentary impulse to put my hand on the foot, as if to comfort him. But my training says otherwise.

  There was never any real doubt in my mind that the victim was Lewis Wilkins, and the missing toe confirms it. I stand up and peel off the gloves. “Well, that pretty much tells the tale.”

  I walk back and tell Margaret and Daniel Wilkins that the man is likely their husband and father.

  “Well.” Margaret’s voice is matter-of-fact. “Let me see him.”

  “Mamma, let’s don’t,” Daniel says, grabbing her by the arm. “There’s no use in it.”

  She yanks her arm away. “I want to see. I need to. And you should stay back here. Chief Craddock will help me.”

  Daniel looks at me with anguish on his face, but stays back as I lend my arm to Margaret for support. As we approach the body, her step seems steady enough, but I can feel her trembling. When we reach the grisly scene, she makes a noise deep in her throat. “Oh, Lew.” She grips my arm but seems unable to turn away.

  “Come on, Margaret, let’s get you out of here,” I say, and turn her around so we can move away from the body of her husband.

  “How in the world did dogs get to him like that?” Her voice is barely above a whisper.

  “I don’t know. That’s what we have to find out.” I haven’t told her he was tied up at the time of the attack. There’s plenty of time to bring that up once she’s had a chance to come to grips with his death.

  Even though the missing toe corroborates that the body is her husband’s, I say, “Do you have any reason to believe this isn’t him?”

  “It’s him. The clothes. His . . . physical structure, I guess you’d say. It’s him.”

  “I’m real sorry, ma’am,” David Bagley says, and the others murmur their condolences.

  I hand Margaret over to Daniel and tell them I’ll come back to the house as soon as the medical examiner shows up. I tell the Bobtail officer, “I know you had a big accident to deal with this morning, so no need for you to stay. I’d appreciate it if you could escort the man’s family back to their house.”

  I watch him lead them away. The path is already trampled. It’s going to be well worn by the time this thing is over. When they are out of sight, I turn to the two remaining officers and we discuss how to proceed. They’ve had a chance to examine the marks on the wrists and agree with me that it looks like Wilkins was tied up before he was attacked.

  “Execution by dog,” Bagley’s partner says.

  CHAPTER 7

  It’s up to the DPS officers to collect crime scene data, and they’ll share it with me, but I hang around long enough to ask the medical examiner one question. He tells me that his rough guess is that Wilkins was killed around thirty-six hours ago.

  “Last time his wife saw him was two days ago, so that’s about right.”

  “It’s a hell of a thing. Wonder what he was doing back here?”

  “I’m fixing to talk to the man’s wife and kids,” I say. “Maybe they can tell me something that will help us find out what he was up to.”

  The two young Hastings grandsons who discovered the body are back outside, across the road, next to the lake doing that thing that boys always seem to do—chucking rocks into the water. Frank Hastings is with them, sitting in a folding aluminum chair and doing something with a fishing reel that involves a lot of unwound fishing line. I wave hello, and he gets up and holds up his hand for me to wait. He comes over and says, “Glo wanted me to tell you she’s got some sandwiches for you, if you’re hungry.”

  I’m famished, and I take her up on the offer. She’s got pimiento cheese and tuna. I’m partial to pimiento cheese, so I take a couple. There’s a smell in the air that I associate with Thanksgiving. She says she’s cooking the sweet potatoes in advance so they’ll be ready to mash up and top with marshmallows. “I can’t stand it, but the kids would kill me if I didn’t serve it.”

  While I wolf down a couple of sandwiches, we make small talk, but finally she says, “I need to know if there’s any danger to my grandkids. Frank said it looks like maybe some wild dogs attacked Lewis Wilkins.”

  I don’t know what’s best, to let her go on thinking this was a random dog attack, or to let her know that there was a human element to it. Both are frightening in their own way. I err on the side of vague caution, “I’d keep the boys out of the woods until we have a chance to figure out exactly what happened.”

  “Frank will take them out fishing tomorrow so they won’t sneak off. Even if I told them Godzilla was back there, they’d still head straight for it the minute our backs are turned.”

  “Even after what they saw back there?”

  “They’ll get over it. Kids are so resilient that sometimes they seem heartless. In a way, I’m glad. But I still don’t want them back there.”

  Before I leave she fortifies me with fresh oatmeal cookies and a cup of coffee, after which I feel more capable of facing Lewis Wilkins’s family again.

  I stop by my car to put in a call to Dooley Phillips. He needs to know what happened and that he needn’t look for his buddy. The kid who works in the marina shop says he’s down at the dock working on a motor. “Does he have is cell phone with him?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Then you need to go down and bring him to the phone. It’s important.”

  Dooley sounds out of breath and a little annoyed at being hauled away from whatever he was doing. I tell him that we found Lewis Wilkins’s body, and where. “It appears he was attacked by dogs.”

  “Oh, my God. Dogs? How the hell did that happen? What was he doing out there in the back country anyway?”

  “That’s what we need to find out.”

  “Thank you for calling me. My God, that’s a terrible thing. Does Margaret know?”

  “Yes. I’m at her place now.”

  “You tell her if she needs anything, just give me a call.”

  Daniel answers the door and tells me that Margaret is lying down but that he’ll go get her.

  Margaret’s expression is grim, but she’s composed. She’s even put on some makeup, probably for her children’s sake. We go into the living room. Daniel follows us, but I say, “I need to talk to your mamma alone for a few minutes, and then I’ll want to ask you some questions, too.”

  Daniel hesitates, but Margaret tells him she’ll be okay and he disappears down the hallway. Margaret and I sit down. Her anguish doesn’t show in her face, but her hands are twisted together in her lap as if she’s barely hanging on.

  “I’m glad you sent Daniel out,” Margaret says. “I don’t want the kids to hear any more than they have to.”

  “I’m afraid it will be hard to spare them.”

  She grimaces. “Do you know where those dogs came from that attacked Lewis? I mean, did somebody own them and fail to keep them properly fenced?”

  “I’m not sure. We’ll be looking into it.”

  “‘We’ meaning who?”

  “It’s complicated. In small towns the Department of Public Safety has jurisdiction when a violent death occurs. They’ll get some officers to investigate.”

  “Should I talk to them?”

  “Like I said, it’s complicated. It usually takes them some time to launch an investigation. The local law—that would be me—usually starts looking into it, so that when the DPS assigns somebody, we’ve done the initial work. We know the local situation, so we have an inside track.”

  “I see. So you’re going to start investigating? Like trying to track the dogs?”

  “Someth
ing like that. . . . I know it’s a hard time, but I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  She takes a deep breath. “All right.”

  “You still don’t have any idea who your husband was meeting for dinner Sunday night? Where he was planning on going?”

  “No idea. I can’t imagine what he was doing back there in the woods.”

  “I understand that your husband had a problem in his practice a while back that resulted in a lawsuit. You didn’t mention that the other day. Any particular reason why not?”

  “I didn’t think it had anything to do with him disappearing.”

  “Have you had any contact with the person who brought the lawsuit?”

  “No.” She hesitates. “At least not that I know of. Lewis wouldn’t necessarily have told me.”

  “Apparently your husband’s practice is not active right now. So how was he making a living?”

  “He fills in for other doctors sometimes, if they’re on vacation.” Her jaw tightens. “It’s not much of a living. How did you find out about the lawsuit anyway?”

  “I called his office, and they put me in touch with someone who told me.” I wonder why she thinks it would have been hard to discover the information.

  She hesitates, lips in an angry line. “I don’t see why this has anything to do with Lewis being attacked by dogs.”

  “I’m afraid it’s more serious than that.”

  Her pale eyes are wary. “What do you mean?”

  “I hate to tell you this, but it looks like the attack on your husband was intentional. His hands were restrained. Behind his back.”

  “Restrained?” For the first time, her voice rises. “You mean tied up?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Oh, my God.” She brings a hand to her throat. “That means he couldn’t fight back. So somebody . . . you mean somebody killed him?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She clasps her arms to herself, trembling. “Who would do something so horrible?”

  “Your husband’s murder looks like some kind of revenge. That’s why I thought of the lawsuit.”