Saving Cecil

by Lee Mims

  He smiled—years in jail and living in a third world country had mellowed him somewhat. “It definitely made me an easy mark,” he said sheepishly.

  Thoughts of those dark, desperate times consumed us until I asked, “But why now, Dad. Why did Buster’s sister come forward now. Why not back then?”

  “She didn’t know back then,” he answered. “The daughter had enough of her wits about her to believe Stuckey when he told her that if she talked about her boyfriend and what she’d done, her days at a nice place like Mary Hill Institute would be over.”

  “Apparently her mental condition deteriorated as time passed,” Bud jumped in, “and a few years ago she told Buster’s wife and a couple of her friends at the institution how she’d killed her lover, Gary Wayne, and how her dad had covered it up for her.”

  “Long story short,” my dad said, “Buster got up with me. Told me what his sister had heard. I went back to the same New York lawyer Bud hired for me all those years ago. He’s still going strong. Anyway, lots of legal maneuvers—depositions and such—have taken place, papers have been filed and now we’re waiting on a judge to have a warrant served on Stuckey.”

  “What about Johnny Lee?” I asked. “Has he been helping you? Stuckey thinks he has.”

  “Not in the beginning,” my dad said. “Buster and I just happened to run into him one day at lunch. Later we told him what was going on. He’s been real supportive and helpful.”

  “So how long has Stuckey known about this?” I asked.

  “Over a year at least,” my dad said. “But it was only recently that we actually took papers out on him.”

  “But if he knew this freight train was coming down the tracks at him, why did he file to run for sheriff again?” I wondered out loud.

  “Maybe he thought aiding and abetting for someone in his position, a parent of a mentally impaired person, might be something he could politically survive,” Bud suggested, moving into the kitchen to stir the sauce. “You know how people are. Even manipulating evidence and lying can be overlooked if you get the right jury, especially when the love and protection of a child is involved. We’ll just have to see how it goes.”

  Dad and I followed him so we could help with dinner since the kids would be arriving soon. I thought now was as good a time as any to drop my bomb. “Not after I add my two cents worth,” I said.

  “What’s that mean?” my dad and Bud asked in one voice.

  I told them about my latest run-in with Stuckey.

  “And that was just a few hours ago?” Bud boomed. “We need to call Chris! Good lord, Cleo, why didn’t you say something?”

  “I’ll kill that son-of-a-bitch!” Dad roared.

  I turned to my dad. “Stop!” I said firmly. “I was going to say something. I was just waiting until Chris got here. Besides, Stuckey can’t go far with an ice pack between his legs.” The two men in my life gave me curious looks. “Krav Maga,” I explained.

  “Ahhh,” they said, nodding in agreement.

  “And,” I said. “I still need to fill you in on what happened during the time after I had lunch with you and Chris and the wildlife agents until I laid Stuckey low.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Bud and my dad set the table and I made a salad while I told them how Luther got stabbed and the well had almost been turned into a very large cigarette lighter. We’d just finished when Chris arrived. He didn’t even get through the door before Bud bent his ear about Stuckey drawing his gun and threatening to murder me.

  “So that’s where he went,” Chris said. “When we left the Lauderbach home, I was behind him in our caravan and he was following the deputy carrying Junior. Not too long after we passed where you were pulled over down from the Lauderbach’s driveway, he pulled over, too, and waved me by. He’d given orders to secure all the relevant locations on the farm that were crime scenes, so naturally I thought he was probably going to do some of his famous supervising. He must have doubled back and followed you to Junior’s shack.”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “He could have easily waited where I couldn’t see him until I left the Lauderbachs’ and then followed me.”

  “All I can say is he wasn’t in the office and his second in command, First Deputy Carter, had to fill in. Of course, that’s been happening a lot lately. I was seriously ticked, too, ‘cause I was ready and waiting with proof that he was the one who shot out your tire.”

  Better late than never. “Wow!” I said not wanting to take the wind from his sails. “That’s great work. How’d you manage that without having me swear out a warrant?”

  “I didn’t need one. Remember I told you right after your accident that I was going up on the ridge overlooking the spot where you lost control of your Jeep and did a header into Pocket Creek? I believe you cautioned me about a bull.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I went up there and found a rifle cartridge. Now, you may not know this but a spent cartridge from a bullet is a very telltale item when ascertaining if a particular gun fired that bullet.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, because when a gun is discharged, the firing pin hits the cartridge and the resulting … explosion, if you will, propels the bullet forward and the cartridge backward into the breech of the gun. When that happens, the impact leaves a distinctive stamp on the cartridge. Moreover, the injecting mechanism that flips the cartridge from the gun leaves marks or scratches on the cartridge particular to that gun and that gun alone. In other words, if I have two spent cartridges that have the same unique markings on them, it’s undeniable that they were fired by the same gun.”

  “So,” I said. “Wouldn’t you need another cartridge fired by his rifle, which means you’d still need a court order to get his rifle and have it fired in a lab?”

  “Ordinarily,” Chris said. “But recently I participated in the fall turkey shoot put on by our county to raise money for purchasing special equipment for the sheriff’s department. The sheriff participates and encourages everyone in the department to do the same. He always uses his favorite hunting rifle, the one he keeps on his wall. It was pretty easy for me to pick up a shell …

  “Which you compared to the shell from the ridge and—”

  “Perfect match. No ballistics expert on the planet would deny that. Sheriff’s rifle is old, the pin is slightly off to one side and it leaves a very unique stamp on the spent cartridge.”

  “So, when are you going to confront him with this information?”

  “I already have. When Sheriff Stuckey finally did show up, he went straight to his office. I marched in right behind him and confronted him with the cartridges and asked him, man to man, why he did it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me to get out. I told him I was going to call for an inquiry and about that time there was a knock at the door. It was a bailiff who promptly served him with papers. No one knows what they are about and Sheriff sure wasn’t saying. He just told Carter he had a few matters to clear up and that Carter was in charge until further notice.”

  “Thank the Lord!” whooped my dad with a smack of his hand on the counter. “For a minute there I thought this young whipper-snapper was going to do what I’ve been trying to get done for as many years as he is old by simply picking up a cartridge and shooting a few turkeys!”

  “Oh, my gosh!” Bud exclaimed. “Excuse our manners, Pete, but it has been one helluva day, starting before dawn for me.” He turned to Chris and made the proper introductions.

  “It’s an honor, sir,” Chris said, shaking my dad’s hand. “Cleo told me all about what happened with you and the sheriff back in 1987. So, you’re saying the papers the sheriff got today have something to do with that incident?”

  “Yes, they do and I’ll bring you up to speed on that before the night is over, but right now, I want you to continue with your explanation of how you’re going to put tha
t lying son-of-a-bitch where he belongs—in jail.”

  “In order to do that,” Chris said. “I need to back up to the last time I saw you, Cleo. I went back to the office to fill out the paperwork following the hog operation arrest …” Chris hesitated, looking at my dad.

  “No need to fill in there,” Bud interjected. “I told Pete all about that earlier this morning,” Bud said.

  “I don’t know what happened!” I complained.

  “It was very uneventful,” Chris said. “Your husband … to-be was never in any danger. Nothing compared to the experience you were having at that time, only we didn’t even know it.”

  “Yeah,” Bud said. “I feel bad. I thought you were home in bed asleep.”

  “Anyway,” Chris went on, “we had agents in several locations. Everyone had their nocks trained on Butcher. Right after he got Bud installed in his tree stand, he made a beeline to a hog pen containing a gigantic feral boar. The guys tell me he’d go 400 pounds or more. Anyway we had the pen staked out. It was about a quarter of a mile through the woods from Bud. Soon as Butcher put his hand on the gate to release the hog, the guys arrested him. Then Bud went home and I headed back to the office. That’s when I got the call from you and all hell broke loose.”

  “So what happened when you finally did get back to the office after arresting Junior?” I asked.

  “As I’ve said, the sheriff wasn’t there. Turns out he was getting a nut crunching from you, but I didn’t know that, either. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t busy, however. You see, I’d been working with the BPD, the Baltimore Police Department, and they finally got our search warrant for Butcher’s house served. In it they found a compound bow and arrows and a rifle along with a rifle rack presumably removed from his green Toyota truck. They noted that the rack was broken, so maybe that’s why he removed it.”

  “Sounds plausible,” I said.

  “BPD measured the arrows for us and sent us digital photos. I had just received them the night before the hog hunt. Now here’s where I thought I was going to have a problem. As you know, I was working on the premise that Junior was our killer. That he’d shot Clinton with an arrow and then finished him off with a knife to the stomach.”

  “Yeah … ” I said apprehensively.

  “But according to the information you gave me about arrows and how they have to be sized to the person shooting them, they were far too long to have been Junior’s. And, when we searched the chicken house, we found where he’d stashed supplies for making arrows and a few he’d completed. They were orange, not green.”

  “Junior wasn’t the killer?” I asked incredulously. “I was so sure.”

  “First let me tell you this,” Chris said and took a long pull from his beer. “Junior’s lawyer was waiting for us when we arrived. Mr. Lauderbach had called him before we even left his house with Junior. So, on the way to take Junior to his laywer, who was waiting in an interrogation room, we marched him right by the holding cell where we’d put Butcher. Let me tell you, they both got a case of the round eyes.”

  “So they really did know each other, just like Luther told me,” I said.

  “Yep,” Chris smiled. We told the lawyer what we had on the kid, regarding both the attempted bombing and the death of Clinton Baker. Meanwhile, Junior was having a jumping up and down fit to explain what really happened to Clinton Baker and ranting that Mr. Butcher should not be held in jail because ‘he was too important.’”

  “So did his lawyer let him talk?” Bud asked incredulously.

  “Actually, he did,” Chris said.

  “So what did he say?” I said, impatiently. “What did happen to Clinton Baker?”

  “First, regarding Bud’s question, while I was meeting with his lawyer, Mr. and Mrs. Lauderbach joined the party, too, and they all decided to let Junior give us his version of what happened. The first thing he admitted to was placing the bomb on the well.”

  “Oh how sad,” I said, “his parents had to hear it.”

  “Yes,” Chris said. “It was sad, one of the saddest things I’ve seen involving kids in my career. They were completely crushed when he told them to their face that he thought they were ‘ignorant of the ways of the modern business world.’ He jabbered wildly about how they were opting for short-term gains with the natural gas wells, while the development of the land would give them instant returns that could be invested to last for generations, yada yada. I felt so sorry for his folks.”

  “Jeez,” Bud said. “He had it exactly ass backwards! When land is sold to developers, it’s gone forever and the money, if poorly invested could be lost too. The gas play will bring solid, large returns for thirty years or more. I know of wells that are still in play after eighty years and in the end, the land is still theirs to run the family business. What a dolt!”

  “I think he just got his head turned by Butcher,” Chris said. “He is a slick realtor who came along, saw a big fat goose just ripe for roasting, and realized that Junior was his access to it.”

  “Do you think he had anything to do with the bomb,” I asked. “Because I believe there may have been someone involved other than Junior.”

  Chris looked surprised. “He vehemently denies having anything whatsoever to do with it and I tend to believe him. He’s just a slick hustler, not a mad bomber. Do you suspect anyone else?”

  “Not really. I just know no one on our site wears sneakers and there were New Balance sneaker prints around the well and the shack where Junior made the bomb.”

  “Oh,” Chris said, relieved. “Junior had on New Balance shoes.”

  “Huh?” I said. “When I saw him he had on black tie-ups.”

  “New Balance makes black leather sneakers,” Bryant said matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, well that answers that,” I said.

  Chris smiled. “Good detective work, though.”

  I shrugged and he continued, “We’ll turn everything over to the DA and they’ll decide what to do from there. As far as the sheriff’s department is concerned, though, we have our man and the case is closed.” Chris crushed his beer can and walked to the trash can. When he came back to the stove island where we were still seated, waiting with bated breath, he just stared at us. “What?” he asked, knowing full well what we were waiting to hear.

  “Who killed Clinton Baker?” Bud and I shouted.

  “Oh, sorry,” Chris said. “Well, it sure wasn’t what I expected, but, according to Junior, no one murdered Clinton Baker. Junior said he was with his friend, Fred Butcher, on the day Baker died. Fred was teaching him how to bow hunt … ”

  “So apparently Fred lied to you about not being a bow hunter when you went all the way to Baltimore to interview him,” I interjected.

  “Yes, he did.” Chris said. “When I asked him why, he had the same reason most everyone in trouble offers—he was scared to tell the truth. I tend to believe him. Again, he’s just a hustler, not a murderer, but as I said, that’s up to the DA.”

  Chris took his seat again and continued. “Butcher accidentally shot Clinton in the back with one of his neon-green arrows, which are the correct length for his body size. They mistook the kid for a boar, apparently he was kneeling, tying his boot. All they saw was his mop of dark brown hair. Junior said they didn’t even know who it was until they rolled him up on his side. That’s also when they saw he had been fatally wounded by a knife.”

  “So poor Clint was tying his boot, got shot in the back and fell face forward onto his knife?” I asked dubiously. “What? How was he holding a knife and tying his boot at the same time? Doesn’t sound possible to me.”

  “He had the knife in his canvas carry-all bag and fell on it when the arrow took him down. We have it now and, as it happens, it was exactly as you described it—fixed blade serrated on the top, so it probably was one of those used on the farm. Plus, we have the bag and it does have a hole in it and blood on it. Don
’t worry,” Chris assured us, “the DA’s office and the forensics folks will verify everything Junior said.”

  “Where did you find all his stuff?” I asked.

  “Once both men saw what had happened, they panicked. Junior pulled the knife out, which meant he had touched it. Butcher, realizing he put his fingerprints on it, told him to take it and the bag and dispose of them. We found everything up in the roost of the chicken house with Junior. He told us, in his haste, he’d pulled the carry-all from around Clint’s neck. Again, this matches with the coroner’s evidence.”

  I remembered the angry wheal on Clint’s neck, probably where the strap had been jerked across it. “Makes sense that Clint would have the knife in his bag, I guess,” I said, explaining how, when I’d found the camo tarp, the twine on one corner was broken and I couldn’t fix it because I didn’t have a knife. “Sad to think he was very likely on his way to fix it when he was killed,” I said. “That’s why he had the knife in his carry-all.”

  “What doesn’t make sense,” Bud said. “Is if the arrow was so unique, it seems to me like the man who made it, Butcher, would have taken it with him.”

  “They were trying to, but the shot was poor. A properly executed shot with a compound bow can bring down a cape buffalo. This one hit the kid in the shoulder bone, which is why it didn’t blow right through him. This was also consistent with the coroner’s report. I spoke with him myself and he told me the head of the arrow was sunk so deep into the scapula bone, no one could’ve removed it by simply pulling.” I grimaced. “They were trying to decide what to do when they heard someone coming and ran. I’m figuring that must have been you,” Chris said, looking at me.

  “What about all the email arguments regarding evolution versus creationism? Did you ask Junior about that?” I asked.

  “Yes, and he admitted there was a huge divide between Clinton and him. He likened it to the divide between Republicans and Democrats. But he rightfully pointed out that while the differences are insurmountable, most of us don’t go around murdering each other over them.”