by Bo Thunboe
Jake stepped across the body and squatted to examine Henry’s left forearm. The flesh was already hardening with rigor and felt wooden. When Jake lifted the arm, it came up stiffly, and the body—Henry—rolled with it. Rigor had advanced from the smaller muscles all the way to the shoulders and torso, which meant Henry’s death had occurred closer to the beginning of their time window—nine thirty, when the neighbor saw Henry come home—than to Grady’s visit seventeen hours later.
Jake pulled up Henry’s sleeve and found purple splotches and streaks of lividity displayed evenly along the length of his lower arm, where his blood had pooled after his heart stopped pumping. So—Henry hadn’t been moved since death. He examined Henry’s hand and arm carefully for defensive wounds and found nothing beyond the little nicks and paint flecks the handyman always carried.
He stepped back over Henry, checked the other arm, and confirmed his conclusions.
Jake then leaned in for a closer look at the wound, careful to stay out of the blood. A blunt object had hit Henry on the hairline above his left eye, cleaving both skin and skull, gray matter showing through the bone and flesh. Jake rubbed at a sudden pain in his chest. He took a couple more deep breaths, blinking away a blur in his eyes, and refocused. The wound had only one edge, which indicated a single blow. Blood had run down the side of Henry’s head and pooled during the final beats of his heart. The pool hadn’t been disturbed, indicating Henry hadn’t moved his head after hitting the floor.
Jake stepped back near Henry’s feet and took in the whole scene. The killer had stood here, near the opening between the two rooms, and hit Henry with an overhand blow. Henry had fallen back. His right hand reached out to the table for support, but succeeded only in pulling the maps to the floor with him as he fell. Once he was down, he stayed down.
No struggle.
A single blow.
No defensive wounds.
Either Henry had known his attacker or the violence was so sudden he didn’t have a chance to react.
Or both.
* * *
Henry had converted the dining area into a workroom for his hobby: excavating outhouse pits in search of historic artifacts from Weston’s past. He had tied the chandelier tight to the ceiling with a black zip tie and had set a banquet table against the outside wall. Maps and charts tabbed with Post-it notes covered the table’s left side in a loose stack that had spilled onto the floor. The table’s right side held a laptop computer and a printer/scanner combo. A mesh-backed chair was pushed under the table in front of the computer. The back wall was solid shelving crammed full of books and papers and magazines.
Jake saw nothing capable of causing the damage done to Henry’s skull.
Blunt force trauma usually left blood splatter, but Jake didn’t see any. With a single blow there wouldn’t be a flinging trail from a back swing, but there should still be a splash from the impact. He checked the ceiling, floor, and walls, but found nothing. He’d have to wait for what the forensic team and their eagle eyes—and luminol—turned up.
From outside the house came the sound of gravel crunching under tires. Help was arriving. But Jake wanted to take a quick look through the house before the deputy coroner and the forensic team crowded in, so he moved back to the entryway.
A stack of cardboard boxes stood next to the front door. The top box had been slit open, but that had been done long ago, as the dust was undisturbed along the edge of the loose flap. Jake lifted the flap with a fingertip and found the box full of Henry’s book: Outhouse Archeology. It was a coffee-table book of interesting antiquities Henry had found in the outhouse pits. Jake had a signed copy, of course. He thought Henry had done a great job of pulling together each artifact with a short history of the family who had lived on the property.
Henry’s recliner sat in the front corner under a wall-mounted reading lamp. A double stack of books rose from the floor next to the chair. Jake shuffled through them: a mix of American histories and biographies, black-marbled composition books, and books about Weston and Paget County, including a historical novel for children by a local author.
Jake then inspected the items under the coffee table’s glass top. These were the best Indian artifacts Henry had found along the river—dozens of arrowheads, a grinding stone, and worked flint chunks—each nestled in a fold of shiny black fabric. A place for everything, and everything in its place.
He continued on to the shelving. Henry had been proud of the outhouse finds he displayed on the front edge of each shelf: little glass medicine bottles, broken ceramics, a pipe, coins, a belt buckle, and on and on. But now these outhouse mementos were all jammed together at one end or the other of each shelf. The books were out of place, too: some weren’t lined up evenly, and others had been pulled partly out and left that way.
Someone had searched the shelves.
Jake swept his gaze back over the other end of the room. The television and stereo and gaming system were untouched. If the killer were a druggie, those easily fenced electronics would be gone and the search for other valuables would have left everything strewn across the floor. This was something else. A careful search for something specific.
Something the killer knew about and wanted.
But what?
And had the killer found it?
CHAPTER THREE
Grady opened the front door and leaned in. “Detective? The deputy coroner and the forensic team are both out here. Let me know when you’re ready.”
“Let them in in ten minutes.”
Jake moved on to the back hall. All three doors were open—two bedrooms and a bathroom—and all the lights were on. He went to the larger bedroom first—April’s bedroom when she stayed with her dad, which was most weekends. She was a freshman at Paget Community College and lived with her mom a few blocks away. Her room smelled faintly of something flowery, perfume or a hidden air freshener. She was an avid reader, and fantasy and romance paperbacks filled the shelf above her desk. This room had been searched too: the books were jumbled, the bedding mussed, the clothes in the drawers and closet pushed to the sides.
Henry’s room had received a similar going-over, and in the bathroom the cabinet door under the sink stood open and the cleaning products were shoved aside, the glass cleaner toppled.
The door at the end of the hallway opened into a small kitchen with metal cabinets and chrome-edged countertops. Two drawers were partly open and the killer had swept the packaged food in the tall pantry to the side of each shelf as he searched.
Jake stepped onto what had once been the back porch before Henry enclosed it and turned it into the office for his handyman business. This room was cooler than the rest of the house, and the gritty odors of leaves and dirt leaked through the thin walls. It was a tiny space, barely large enough for Henry’s metal desk, a pair of filing cabinets, and a single bookshelf. An open file drawer and a stack of Fox Handyman marketing fliers spilled across the floor, indicating the search had continued out here.
A wall calendar above the desk listed all of Henry’s appointments. Jake knew Henry as a go-getter, always hustling to pay his child support and support his hobbies, but the November schedule didn’t reflect that. Some days this month had nothing scheduled at all. Jake flipped back to October, which was busier, with at least one job every day and sometimes two or three: cleaning gutters, replacing sump pumps, painting a living room. And August and September looked like the typical chaos of activity that Jake remembered—every single day crammed with jobs. Did things slow down in the fall, or did something slow Henry down?
Back in the kitchen, a narrow door opened to steep stairs dropping into gloom. Jake had never been in Henry’s basement and couldn’t find the light switch. He pulled his flashlight from the pocket of his blazer, adjusted the beam to a wide swath, and took the stairs sideways, aiming his flashlight ahead of him. At the bottom he swung the light in an arc and found a string hang
ing from the ceiling. When he pulled it, a pair of bulbs came on to light a laundry area—washer and dryer, a sink on metal legs, a long table piled with folded clothes. A dehumidifier hummed and rattled in the corner, and the dry and dusty basement air prickled Jake’s nose with a faint scent of laundry detergent. He found the same signs of a search here. A cabinet door was open above the washer, and a spill of grainy detergent was scattered across the floor. A scuff in the spillage looked like a partial footprint; Jake made a mental note to have the forensic team take a sample of the detergent in case they found a suspect with some on his shoes.
The rest of the basement was blocked off by a heavy green tarp nailed to the floor joists above. Jake walked around it into a large open space, lit by a row of bare bulbs down the center. This was clearly a storage area. It held an assortment of wood furniture, three bicycles, and a long table stacked with books. Jake examined a few of the books. Book-of-the-month editions of popular fiction from the sixties and seventies: good quality for reading, but worthless as collectables.
The floor above him shook and creaked under the onslaught of incoming criminalists, and Jake ducked his head in reflex.
There wasn’t much here for the killer to search through. Jake probed the dark corner behind the water heater and furnace with his flashlight’s beam but found nothing. A workbench along the wall had a shelf under it holding paint cans, but everything else was out in the open.
A digital camera sat on top of a barstool. Jake turned it on and scrolled back through the stored photos. It showed individual items from the clutter posed in front of the canvas room divider. Henry must have been selling some of this junk, or trying to.
As Jake headed back upstairs, his phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and checked the screen. It was Coogan, Jake’s best friend since second grade. He had been as close to Henry as Jake had been. The three of them were inseparable all the way through high school, when Jake and Coogan left town for college and Henry stayed behind, already earning a good living as a handyman.
“Hey,” Jake said, sitting down on a hard plank step.
“Jake?” Coogan’s voice held his usual midafternoon dark roast–infused energy. “We still on for—”
“I’m over at Henry’s, Coog. He…” Jake trailed off. He was unable to get the words out.
“Jake? What is it?” Coogan’s voice dropped. “What about Henry?”
“He’s been murdered.” Jake squeezed his eyes shut.
“Jesus.” Coogan breathed the word. “What happened?”
“I… can’t get into it yet.” Jake straightened. “I’m heading over to tell April and Lynn in a bit. I…”
“I’ll call Judy and let her know. Maybe she could go be with Lynn?”
“But have her wait outside until I leave, okay?”
“Damn it, Jake.” Coogan’s voice caught. “I just can’t believe…”
“I know. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Okay. I’ll be here.”
Jake pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. He took a deep breath, flexed the grimace off his face, and got moving.
* * *
Three technicians in white Tyvek jumpsuits were already at work—one angling around Henry’s body with his camera clicking, another kneeling on the floor with a tape measure and a clipboard, and a third working the front room near the bulky silhouette of Duke Fanning, the forensic investigator in charge. Jake was glad to see Fanning was on the case; he was the county’s best FIC.
A small, sharply dressed man with a gleaming bald dome stood next to Fanning, his back to the body. Jansen, Paget County coroner. In Illinois, coroner was an elected position, and the coroner wasn’t required to have criminal justice experience. Which Jansen didn’t. The man was a buffoon who owned a clothing store and had bought his way into office through the Republican machine. Jake’s temper rose, but he fought it down as he strode across the floor.
“Jansen,” Jake said. “What are you doing here?”
Jansen flinched at the sound of Jake’s voice. “Detective Houser.” He stepped behind Fanning’s bulk. “I didn’t know this was your case.”
“Now you do.”
Jansen swallowed, his giant Adam’s apple running up and down his throat like a flag on a pole. “Yes. I…” He pulled a handkerchief out and dabbed at the sweat suddenly beading on his skull. He leaned to look past Jake. “You have this, Deputy Chen.” Then he spun and bolted for the front door.
Fanning cracked a half smile. “I’m not going to ask what that was about.”
“Good,” Jake said.
Jake filled in FIC Fanning on everything he’d observed, including the signs that the house had been searched, the detergent spill in the basement, and the possibility of a trace on a suspect.
When Jake turned back toward the dining room he spotted Deputy Coroner Liz Chen against the wall, a large plastic equipment box at her feet. Rubber bands were wrapped around her arms and legs to control the Tyvek jumpsuit’s excess bulk on her slight frame.
“I’m glad to see you, DC Chen.”
“Detective Houser.” She nodded, then turned back to observing the techs at work around Henry’s body. She stood completely still, her eyes darting around the room methodically. When she expanded her visual search to include the ceiling, she squinted. Maybe she saw something. Then she shook her head and brought her gaze back to Jake.
“Was the house closed up when he was found?”
“Yes. Are you going to take a liver temp?” It was the best estimator of time of death in closed and constant conditions like this.
“Of course.”
Which meant it was time for Jake to go. He’d already made enough rough memories without seeing Chen cut Henry open to insert her giant thermometer into his torso. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to attend the autopsy and see his friend’s face pulled down or his chest cut open. Christ.
Whoever did this was going to pay.
He stopped on the front stoop to talk to Grady. “Anyone guarding the back?”
Behind the house, Henry’s lot ran down toward the river; a barn huddled under the trees where the lot bordered Riverfront Park. Jake would need to look at the barn before Fanning and his team left, but not right now. The clock was ticking for him to get to Lynn and April before social media made the notification for him.
“Bantam,” Grady said.
“Good. Detective Diggs is going to handle the canvas when she gets here. Probably after five.” Jake stripped off the booties and gloves and tossed them in the trash bag flapping in the breeze by the front door.
“And where are you headed?” Grady asked.
Jack sighed. “I’m going to notify the next of kin.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Jake maneuvered his car past the boxy forensics van and the coroner’s wagon now parked in Henry’s front yard, then turned east on Jackson. Henry’s ex and his daughter lived less than a mile away in a small bungalow just north of downtown.
His cell phone buzzed with a call from Erin. Officially she was the department’s civilian investigator. Unofficially she was a lot more, including Jake’s liaison with the rest of the department. He stayed away from the station and its politics as much as possible.
He pulled to the curb by Centennial Beach. “I should have called you,” he said upon answering. Erin had known Henry as long as he and Coogan had, maybe longer. She’d even dated him in high school.
“Is it really Henry?” Erin’s voice was thick with emotion. “I just… I can’t…”
“It is Henry.”
“And it’s BFT? Like the radio said? That means he…”
“Was murdered,” Jake said.
“You need to take this.” Erin’s voice grew quiet. “I know it’s probably a conflict—”
“I am taking it. Deputy Chief Braff doesn’t need to know Henry was
my friend.”
“If he finds out and tries to pull you, I’ll handle him.”
Jake believed her. She’d handled him on many occasions.
“What can I do?” she asked.
“Check for any calls in that patrol zone in the last twenty-four hours and talk to the patrol officers about any suspicious vehicles or people over the last week.”
“Will do. What else?”
Henry’s thin appointment calendar came to mind. If Henry’s income was down, he might have had trouble paying his child support. “Call Coogan; he represents Henry. Ask him if anything was happening with Henry’s child support case.”
Her pencil scratched away, then: “You’ll need a search warrant.”
She was right. Without a warrant Coogan could get in trouble for sharing his client’s information. “Can you—
“Callie is up at the county complex for the opioid task force meeting. I’ll have her visit the warrant judge before she comes back.”
“Perfect,” Jake said. “Let Coogan know it’s coming. We also need to know whether Henry had a will.”
“Got it.”
Jake ended the call and pulled back onto the road. Coogan and Erin weren’t the only people who would be hit hard by Henry’s murder. Jake couldn’t think of a person in town with a wider group of friends than Henry. At least a hundred of them had gathered around Henry’s backyard fire pit just a couple weeks earlier after the Redhawks’ homecoming game, drinking beer and retelling old stories. It had been a good night.
It has also been the last time Jake had seen Henry alive.
Jake pushed the pain aside to concentrate on where he was going.
And what he had to do when he got there.
Every notification had two purposes: to inform next of kin and to investigate. It was the first, and best, opportunity to observe the people closest to the victim and probe them with as many questions as their mental state would allow. Jake needed to lock down his emotions so he could be alert to every verbal and non-verbal indication of deception.
