Dead Man Falls

by Paula Boyd

  I groaned, fully aware of what he was implying. "Oh, no, this has nothing at all to do with me. It is pure coincidence that I’m here."

  "Jolene’s in town for her mother’s birthday," Jerry said easily. "It’s a tradition in her family, I believe."

  It’s a torturous family law with consequences that make lethal injection sound appealing, but who was I to quibble? "That’s right," I said. "And Mother dragged me out here against my will to see the new falls. I was trying to ignore the ceremony, really I was, but the corpse hurtling into the river kind of caught my eye."

  Rick stared at me again, and I couldn’t begin to figure out what he was thinking. Again, he turned back to Jerry. "Sheriff," he said, all stiff and stuffy. "I need you to step over here for a moment. We need to speak privately."

  "Oh, for crying out loud, Richard. Just stop with the scowling and so-not-you formal crap, and tell me what’s going on."

  "We’ve had a murder, Jolene," he said, adding condescension to his officiousness. "That's what's going on."

  "Wow, really? Who knew. Guess that’s why you’re the hot-shot detective, huh?"

  He scowled some more. "This is official police business."

  "Jerry’s not one of your official police," I said rather astutely. "He works in another county, remember? He’s not on duty any more than I am."

  Richard Rankin, big-time detective, didn’t bother replying to that one. He just motioned to Jerry again. "Over here."

  "Fine, whatever."

  Jerry shrugged and followed Rick to a spot by another big cottonwood where they could whisper in private. I watched them, trying to read their lips, but it is a lot harder than you’d think, and I couldn’t make out a single word.

  Rick caught me watching and turned his back to me then made Jerry do the same. With no one looking, I very quietly eased myself across the grass toward them. I heard the words "yearbook" and "pages" just before Rick caught me and clamped his lips together.

  Jerry said, "There’s no point in trying to keep this from her, Rick. Either you tell her or I will."

  My heart fluttered a little then took a dive toward my knee caps. "Tell me what?"

  Rick sighed heavily. "Fine, see for yourself."

  As I followed Rick and Jerry back toward where Calvin had been pulled from the river, I noticed a team of officers had appeared up above the falls, in front of the fire trucks, roping off the area with yellow crime scene tape. I suppose it made sense that the body had to have been planted from the top side of the falls since climbing up the front rocks with a corpse over your shoulder wouldn’t be easy--or practical.

  It did bring up some good questions, however, such as "Was access to the upper area usually restricted or could the public get there at all hours?" Then again, any footprints or tire tracks left up top by the killer would have probably been obliterated by the firefighters and their trucks, not to mention their high-powered hoses.

  We followed Rick into the inner circle of officials and stood above Calvin Holt’s very dead body. Somewhere between my brief tango with panic and the distraction of crime scene logic, I had managed to wall off enough emotion that I could look down at Calvin and pretend to be unaffected--at least temporarily.

  The deceased had put on a few pounds since high school and was now bald except for a ring of gray-brown hair around the lower back of his head. Vaulting down the rocks into the river had done some facial damage--and the bullet hole was kind of distracting--but I still guessed he’d probably been a fairly decent looking man, much better than the younger high school version.

  I also wondered if he’d been a nice guy, if he’d gotten married, had kids, started a computer repair company or maybe sold refrigerators at Sears. I suspected the invisible nerd had turned out far better than anyone in his high school graduating class would have ever guessed. Except that now he’d been murdered.

  Rick knelt beside Calvin Holt and pointed to his hands, which were wrapped together with yellow nylon cord--very much like the roll that the dark-haired kid had tried to give the officer a few minutes ago.

  I snapped my head around to look for the young man and sure enough, there he was, upriver from our little group, still holding his package of bright new rope. Behind him, I thought I caught a glimpse of a blue Hawaiian shirt. Russell?

  The bouncing yellow bag of rope pulled my attention back to the fidgety young man. He had a familiar look about him, as did the woman behind him and the man next to her, and the man next to him, which made me pretty sure I was losing my mind. I couldn’t know every face in the crowd, but darned if it wasn’t looking like I should. The young man’s eyes darted back and forth as he tossed the package--the unopened package--of yellow rope between his hands.

  On the surface it looked highly suspicious--and stupidly obvious--that his bag of rope looked just like what was wrapped around the dead guy. Of course, he might not even know it was a dead guy or that rope was involved. Either way it meant nothing. Yellow nylon like that could be found at any and every hardware store or lumberyard on the planet, not to mention the Walmarts and Targets of the world.

  My rather elementary thought processes were nothing to brag about--or even admit to--but I did want to know what the professionals thought. "Hey, Rick," I said, nodding in the direction of the young man. "Who’s the young guy over there with the ball of rope?"

  He followed my gaze. "That’s Nate Irwin, a security guard here at the falls. Good kid. He’s pretty shook up, but his mother’s with him. They’ll both be giving statements."

  I nodded and scanned the rest of the crowd that was building around us. Several more faces rang a bell for one reason or another, but my recognition threshold had moved so far into the realm of ridiculousness that I didn’t bother trying to guess at any personal connections.

  And then it hit me. I wasn’t looking for people I might know--I was looking for a killer. The realization shook me, sending a shiver up my back. The killer could very well be watching me right now, and laughing, or maybe plotting. How would I know?

  Not at all comfortable with that train of thought, I turned back toward Calvin’s body. I was still curious about the yellow cord, even if it wasn’t a good connection to the killer.

  The rope was wound haphazardly around the torso, using only a few wraps, but the wrists were bound with probably five or six loops, as were the ankles. Oddly, though, some of the rope had been cut near the wrists. Something wasn’t right. "Jerry," I said, nudging him slightly before I realized he had his back to me and was still in a serious conversation with Detective Rick. I waited for a break in the mumbling. "Who cut those ropes there?"

  Rick looked at Jerry and Jerry looked at me and finally Rick said, "Let’s get this over with."

  I didn’t much like the way they were looking at me, and having prior experience with such things, I went on the defensive. "Hey, I didn’t do it. I never even got near him. I don’t carry a pocket knife either."

  "Jolene," Jerry said, a tinge of impatience in his voice. "I know you like throwing out possibilities until one sticks, but don’t do it this time, okay?"

  Okay, fine, swell, good. I said not another word as Jerry guided me over to where a couple of officers knelt beside some plastic bags, pointing and muttering. I couldn’t see much, except that it looked like the plastic held crumpled pieces of paper. Yes, I had questions and even a few wild theories, but obviously no one wanted to hear them so I kept my mouth shut and waited until my escorts decided to let me in on the big sacked-up secret.

  Rick said something to the officers. They stood then moved back a few steps. "These pieces of paper were tied between the victim’s hands," he said, squatting down beside the bags. "The killer is apparently trying to tell us something."

  My first thought was oddly not about the killer’s message, but about investigative procedures--or lack thereof. I knew the police station was only a few blocks away, and they’d clearly trotted out the troops. There was some kind of team working on the body, not to mention a bu
nch of investigators above the falls. Maybe they didn’t consider this a crime scene per se; it was simply the point where they’d managed to retrieve the body. Maybe.

  "The killer went to a fair amount of trouble to keep these papers with the body. After we took pictures, I removed the items," Rick said, answering one of my mental questions. "We assumed it was a message."

  Jerry turned toward me and said, "The papers are actually pages from our senior yearbook, Jolene."

  "Yearbook pages?" I said. "From Kickapoo, our senior year. Why?"

  "Calvin Holt’s picture was X’d out," Rick said, bending down and picking up the stack of plastic bags. "The meaning for him is fairly obvious. The other markings less so, but we can’t take any chances."

  The tone of his voice had changed slightly and I’d caught a sideways glance from the usually cheerful beach boy detective that told me he wasn’t angry with me at all. Nope. He was worried. And that was way worse. "What do you mean, markings?" I asked, although I’d already lined up several immediate ideas, none of them good. "And why are you looking at me like that?"

  Jerry slipped his arm around my shoulders as Rick shuffled the plastic-covered, waterlogged papers in his hands. The page he held out to me definitely got my attention.

  There, sealed in an evidence bag, was indeed a page from my high school yearbook--a soggy but easily identifiable page from the senior photo section.

  And in the middle of the sheet, with a big red circle around it, was the smiling teenage face of yours truly, Jolene Janette Jackson.

  Chapter 4

  “

  Sorry, Jolene," Rick said, putting the page back in the stack. "I know this is the last thing you need right now."

  Well, yeah, probably so. Last week, being targeted for murder would have been no big deal at all. I could have handled it just fine then. Next month would probably be okay too. But now? Yep, it seemed like a real bad time for that sort of thing.

  "You aren’t necessarily next," Jerry said. "There are other pages and other circles, but it does appear that you could be targeted for some reason."

  Oh, please. "Does appear" and "could be" are weasel words. If there were other marks, I wanted to see them, then I could decide for myself how worried I needed to be. "Can I see the other pages?"

  "Sure." Rick fanned out the bags of soggy pages like a deck of cards and smiled a little. "We’re operating under the Jolene Jackson chain of custody rules today."

  That might have been mildly amusing except that I couldn’t recall tampering with any evidence back in July, unless you counted Deputy Leroy Harper, which I preferred not to. I smiled and nodded as if I got the joke.

  Rick glanced around at the growing crowd then pointed at the pages. "Take a quick look, then you both need to get out of here," he said, back to his serious voice. "We’ll talk later."

  Fine by me, but I didn’t really understand why Jerry needed to hurry off, except maybe to keep me company or to see to it that I actually left the scene of the crime. Long shots, both, but when Rick pulled out the page behind mine I grasped the problem very quickly. Jerry’s face was circled in thick red marker just as mine had been. I think Rick showed me the other pages as well, but I didn’t really see them. I was still hung up on the fact that whoever killed Calvin Holt also wanted to kill Jerry. And me.

  Jerry must have understood my glazed expression because he said, "That’s okay, Jolene. We’ll go over everything again later."

  I’d been paying attention, hadn’t I? Apparently not, because Rick had already given the bags of evidence back to one of the investigators and yet I was staring at where they had been. Hard to make a decent excuse for that so I didn’t try. It was getting mighty hard to keep my distance from the reality of the situation, and as much as I hated to admit it, I was running out of both wisecracks and bravado. "I didn’t even really know Calvin Holt," I mumbled. "How can there be any kind of connection to me or Jerry?"

  "That’s what we plan to find out," Rick said. "Right now, the priority is keeping you two safe. Jerry drove his department vehicle so you’re going to follow him out to your mother’s house. A patrol car will follow you."

  Great. Just great. A parade.

  "Where’s Lucille?" Jerry asked, looking around.

  "She was up near the front by the railing when I left. She shouldn't be far so it shouldn't take me long to find her."

  Well, I was sure wrong about that, as I belatedly discovered after winding my way through the throng of people lined up behind the police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances. Lucille had apparently migrated with the excitement seekers and was no longer where I’d left her. A large number of umbrellas had popped up during the extended festivities, entirely too many of them purple, which didn’t help matters either. Finally, I found the correct umbrella in the mass of spectators, and the face beneath the purple shade did not look pleased to see me, meaning she was not happy that I’d been in the middle of things and she’d gotten stuck on the sidelines. I shrugged a helpless shrug, but she didn’t soften even a little.

  I glanced over at Jerry, who knows my mother better than he would like, hoping he would detect the impending crisis and rescue me.

  As if he’d read my mind, he stepped around me and walked up to Lucille, leaned down and whispered a few words. Her eyes rounded, then narrowed, and I could only assume he was telling her about the body and the possible next victims, namely her r good-hearted daughter who wouldn’t do a thing in the world ever to upset her dear mother.

  I smiled just a little and tried for the "poor little ol’ me" routine, but I’m not good at that sort of thing and Lucille looked wholly unimpressed. She did, however, look mad.

  She snatched her purse around from her elbow and unhooked the clasp.

  Unpleasant rapid-fire flashbacks kicked my reflexes into gear and I lunged forward, reaching for the handbag, trying to snap the top closed. Jerry apparently had the same idea and we arrived at the same spot at the same time, banging together like two of the Three Stooges. Only it wasn’t funny.

  We both straightened and rubbed our heads, still eyeing the purse to make sure it stayed closed and its contents well concealed.

  Mother glared at us as if we were complete fools. Gun-shy knee-jerk reactive types, yes, but not fools. We have both learned the hard way about the purse. I was grateful that all she shot us was another disgusted look as she collapsed her umbrella and stuffed it inside her handbag. There was no need to ask if she had her gun any more than if she had her lipstick. Lucille carries her essentials at all times.

  Now, it’s not that my mother doesn’t have a concealed permit for the Glock. She does. It’s also not a question of her knowing how to use the pistol. She knows. In fact, Lucille has an official training certificate attesting to her prowess with a variety of handguns, not to mention a wallet-sized card proclaiming her a lifetime member at the Redwater Falls Gun Club. All that’s well and good, I suppose, as long as I don’t have to be a witness to it, which was the point in grabbing the purse in the first place.

  "We better go now, Mother," I said, still rubbing my forehead. "We’re going to follow Jerry out to the house."

  Lucille narrowed her eyes and looked down at me. "It is very well time we went home. This outing has just been a disaster." She spun on her heel and stomped away in the general direction of the Tahoe. Her very presence parted the milling mass of humanity before her and she marched toward my car, chin held high and purse swinging from the crook of her arm.

  I made quick arrangements to meet Jerry at the exit to the park then followed along behind her Queenliness.

  Once we made it to the Tahoe, it was no trouble backing out or heading to the exit because everyone else was staying put now that the emergency equipment had showed up. A Channel 3 News van jerked to a stop beside a fire truck and people with cameras and cords and things starting piling out. Before I could drive past, I was within spitting distance of a real live local TV star. The anchor babe who’d told me all about the falls when I
first arrived was now on the scene and ready to report. Wow.

  I was mentally picturing the spandexed starlet in her short skirt and spiked heels tippy-toeing down the steep riverbank for an up-close live report, when I saw a girl with long blond hair standing a few feet behind the van, staring open-mouthed at my car. I groaned. "Kimberlee Fletcher."

  Lucille jerked around in the seat. "Where?"

  I nodded in the general direction of the young newspaper reporter who had written more than one unpleasant article about me, my mother and her private affairs, meaning her relationship with the married dead mayor. Mother had not taken kindly to the tabloid slant nor to the fact that the words "Jolene Jackson said" had appeared in every other paragraph. Specifically, Mother had wanted to shoot her.

  I glanced at the purse. "Forget I said anything. Just stare straight ahead, okay?"

  "Why, would you just look at that!" Lucille said, rapping a long nail on the side window. "The little twit doesn’t look any older than a third grader and we already know she’s not half as smart as one. Just look at her gawking over here at us." Mother jabbed at the buttons on the door, trying to roll the window down, which it would not because I had clicked on the lock switch about the time I recognized Kimberlee. Ditto for the doors. I didn’t figure either one of us needed to be tempted.

  "You stop this car right now, Jolene. I’ve got a thing or three to say to that little snot-nosed brat, printing those lies about me before. Why, the very nerve."

  I stepped on the gas. "Not now, Mother. We’ve got to get out of here."

  She huffed and puffed for a second or two, then wedged herself around in the seat, facing the window, and gave little Kimberlee the finger. With both hands. Vigorously.

  Lovely. Just lovely. "How do you suppose she’ll write that up, Mother? ‘Flipped me off,’ or ‘made vulgar hand gestures’?"

  "She wouldn’t dare," Lucille muttered, apparently considering the possibility. "Besides, she doesn’t know me from Adam. And we’re in your car anyway."