Deja Blue

by Walker, Robert W.

  There were six men green-clad cleaners who descended on the stationhouse. Descended like locusts, busy and moving at top pace. They were efficient but not automatons, as they joked and talked of sports scores and local high school teams, sometimes substantiating who was going to tonight’s game at Capitol High.

  Rae became somewhat fascinated spying on this cleaning army, watching from overhead at the second floor landing. The cleaning crew moved quickly, knowing precisely where every trashcan awaited. They made short work of the office areas and the corridors of the Charleston Police Department. The ladies and men’s rooms took most of their time and effort, but even here they were in and out like worker bees anxious to get to their honey; in the case of the men, their free time, perhaps a smoke.

  Rae mentally shook her head for two reasons. She could not imagine the Hammerhead killer coming into police headquarters this nonchalantly, as she’d noticed no hesitation or self-consciousness in any of the men, or the single woman she now spied in their midst. The shapeless green uniform had hidden her figure, and her hair had been in a tight bun beneath a ball cap. Secondly, she couldn’t imagine that the killer would be working for a company that eventually might well be doing the cleanup at the site where he executed his victim. It’d make a hell of a headline, might even seem just crazy enough to be true, but Rae had trouble with it—at least with the body language of those she’d observed. But suppose the killer, if he did work for the Green Machine, simply wasn’t with this team? Surely, there were many others working around the town, and of course, any number of shifts.

  She wondered how much time it would take to get a writing sample from every employee of the Mountaineer Clean Machine group? In today’s climate, she’d likely have to get a warrant to get personnel files handed over for purposes of comparing handwriting samples to the notes left in each victim’s throat. Convincing a judge could take another day or two, and she might not find a sympathetic judge. Being an outside law enforcement agent could cost her dearly in this circumstance, unless she tapped into the field office personnel, as someone there must know the local judges—especially the federal judges—well.

  Then again, it still felt like a long shot.

  Then again, she knew she’d have to run this past Carl Orvison before proceeding, and that if he thought it a good idea, then she’d simply work through him.

  She walked down the hall to Orvison’s office, knocked and entered. Orvison was shouting back at someone on the phone, and soon she gathered it was the mayor, wanting good news even if the chief wished to make it up. Even so, Carl waved her to a seat. Once off the phone, she said, “Anything I can help with?”

  “Only if you have some answers.” She frowned in response and squirmed a bit in her leather chair, unsure any words would help the situation.

  “Sorry, cheap shot,” apologized Carl. “Got people on my ass.”

  “I understand.”

  “What’s up? Rather late. You got some idea where we go from here?”

  “I’d like to check the personnel files of everyone working for that Green Clean Mountaineer Machine.”

  “Really? You’re back to them?”

  “Just a hunch, but I got to thinking that if I worked for so many years cleaning up crime scenes, all the blood of all the victims, that it’d eventually get to me in one manner or another, and if I were slightly off to begin with…well.”

  Orvison frowned, unconvinced. “Get to you if you happen to be off, heh? Is that a psychic conclusion?”

  “No, I am speaking of…as in perhaps maybe our killer wears a green uniform and sees a lot of filth and blood at crime scenes; maybe crime scene cleanup is his specialty, or for whatever reason he’s given the worst cleanup situations, and maybe this one day begins to screw with who he is…screws with his head.”

  There’re a lot of people working for the Machine, and many of them already have their heads screwed on wrong. Fact is, not a year ago, we were called in over a huge fight that broke out among their employees. Some burly brutes.”

  “I’ve observed the ones who clean your stationhouse. Agreed, a big lot they are.”

  The reference to his precinct gave him pause, and she believed from the look on his face that Carl was thinking that if there were a shred of connective tissue between the case and those cleaning his stationhouse, he’d truly feel some rage. “Anything unusual strike you about any of the characters you’ve observed? Because honestly, they may as well be ghost to the rest of us. We hardly see them go about their work?”

  “Which is precisely how most pedophiles, rapists, and murderers go about us,” she countered and shrugged. “One of the cleaning crew is a woman.”

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed. That is to say, Corrine’s not much of a looker.”

  She shrugged again. “Makes my point. Kinda lost in her baggy overalls, but still, cops are cops, and they’d have noticed her but for the way we all ignore service people on contract.”

  “She does my office routinely. We’ve spoken. Small talk. Nothing to write home about.”

  “I admit, I saw nothing in any of the cleaning people that could be called suspicious,” Rae said and yawned.

  “I see, but you want to see more green-clad folks? Not sure a judge would buy that as a credible reason to write out a search warrant.”

  “Yeah, but if you know a good judge. Else I can go to our local field office and make the request through a federal judge.”

  “You sure this isn’t a red herring?” he asked point blank.

  “Possibly…but then maybe it’ll lead to something.”

  “I’ll do what I can, but I hope you know what you’re doing, Rae.”

  “Tell the judge we’re not looking for DNA or fingerprints here, that the only samples we’re looking for are harmless handwriting samples.”

  He nodded. “I see, present it as no big deal.”

  “Exactly…exactly.”

  “Got it. Not like we’re asking for DNA samples.”

  “Or anything invasive.” “Exactly,” Carl said, smiling again. “That’ll come later maybe, huh?”

  “Hopefully, before I’m fired?” He managed a stuttering laugh.

  She replied, “Trust me, in the right hands, handwriting analysis can be as effective as DNA.”

  “Amos Kunati’s gonna wanna be on hand for this.”

  “More the merrier. Besides, I’m sure he finds handwriting analysis far more scientific and believable than say reading a haunted trailer.”

  “Likely so. I just hope you’re right about the pool of prospects. Green Machine is a big name around here locally. Was begun as a mom and pop operation out of a garage and now has spawned several locations throughout the state.”

  “But their main operation remains Charleston?”

  “That’s right.” “I’d imagine an extensive background check is done on every employee hired?”

  “Can’t say for sure, but I know the owners, and they’re pretty selective.”

  “That’s commendable, but I also noticed they’re headquartered beside the local bad boy club—the state parole office.”

  “You do have a lot of detective in you, don’t you.” He glanced at the notes she’d handed over.”

  “Not two doors down on Capitol Street.”

  “Could be our man is a former ward of the state.” She nodded, “A state, I might add that ought to look more closely at the death penalty issue.”

  “We’re in agreement there, Rae. This place is bordered on all sides by five other states if you count Baltimore, Maryland which kisses us right here.” Orvison pointed to a map on the wall to indicate how close Baltimore was to a beak-like projection of West Virginia. Cops in Baltimore call rouges who hide out in our state goats…the Appalachians who cross over the border, run down to Baltimore from the foothills, commit a bank job or convenience store robbery, then race back to the sanctuary of the mountains.”

  “Goats, huh?”

  “That’s not the worst of it. Look here.”
He pointed out the Virginia line, Kentucky border, Ohio and Pennsylvania. “Four other states bordering us. We’re a land-locked state and a runaway’s haven, a supposed cure all for whatever ails the guy on the lamb, running from whatever or whomever—often a crime committed elsewhere. All major arteries lead to West Virginia.”

  “I see.” She studied the map and he was right. “No, you don’t see, Rae. It’s a perceived haven for some, heaven for others, neither of which is entirely true. There’s a perception as far away as Chicago and Detroit, Canada even that West Virginia is a safe harbor for criminals and drug dealers, that we tolerate them.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because historically, we have! Hell since before the Civil War.”

  “I see.” She let him vent.

  “So trust me when I tell you, every kind of sick criminal sets up shop here, and have for some time, until places along our border and our capitol city have turned into drug-infested ahhh…drug dens!”

  “So your meth lab problem is just the latest in a long line of similar problems, heh?”

  “It is, just as it is for Indiana and most any other state you can name. Why’re you bringing up g’damn meth labs?”

  She shrugged. “Blame it on your local news stations. Aside from house fires, I’ve heard little else except the problem with meth labs.”

  “Come on we have drive-by shootings, murders, domestic violence, child snatchings too.” He sounded a bell of pride here as if he wanted her to know that anything she had in the big city, he had to deal with here. “OK…got it, Chief.”

  He simmered. “OK, not saying we don’t have our home-grown problems and in-breds, because we damn sure do. But so does each of these surrounding states along with Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida. Take your pick.”

  “Sorry if I offended you,” she offered a word of peace.

  “We like to think we’re out of the cave, you know? But while you can take the caveman outta the cave, you can’t take the cave mentality outta the man, so far as I’ve seen.”

  Now he sounded defensive. Rae wondered how exhausted Carl must be. How frustrated. A pent up rage had become obvious.

  She half-joked that he might need a stiff drink, but when this remark gained only a glare from Carl, she added, “I’ve had this feeling since arriving in your fair city that everyone has a chip on his shoulder toward the outsider—”

  “Hold on right there,” he countered.

  But she went on, saying, “—which is presently me.”

  “Give me names!”

  She countered, “It’s not any single person. It just feels like a…a, a kind of paranoia or fear of the unknown, perhaps? Xenophobia?”

  “Don’t know anything about this place Xenophobia, but paranoia, yeah, and it’s due to outsiders. Outlanders, they’re called, and it’s been a long time coming and nurturing, Doctor. Outsiders are always seen as the problem here, even when those arrested are good old boys—since they’d’ve never, never gotten involved in illicit drug traffic if it hadn’t been for those Detroit scumbag outsiders. Leastways, that’s how the thinking goes here.”

  “A convenient scapegoat?” “Convenient? Certain amount of truth in it makes it so.”

  She smiled at this and said, “Along with the fact that illegal drugs in the form of moonshine has always been a way of life in these mountains?”

  “You’re dealing with people who, in large measure, do for themselves and have never wanted or asked for government assistance or interference. It’s why a lot of these survivalist types and racists settle here.”

  “Survivalists? Racists?”

  “They buy into the local legends and the local lifestyle. They buy up a small parcel of land and turn it into a base camp for Armageddon just as many have turned to Idaho for the same reasons, the coming race war, or the coming doomsday. These types are generally outsiders as well.”

  “Hold on. Are you saying our guy could be an outlander?”

  “Why not? The woods’re full of ‘em.”

  “That he’s maybe trying to bring on a race war or his actions are to welcome the end times?”

  “It’s crossed my mind, yes, many times in fact. What with all this talk of doomsday nowadays.”

  She scratched her head. “All I’ve heard since I arrived is how families here have the worst, most god awful relations, and how common it is for relatives to be feuding within the family for an entire generation.”

  “True enough,” Carl acceded, “and often outside the family or with the extended family. Knew of two brothers who didn’t speak to one another for twenty seven years until they met at their mother’s funeral.”

  “Really?”

  “One pulled a knife, the other a gun, right there at the reading at the casket. The gun won the day, the knife wielder was then buried alongside his mother. Not sure but they say his tombstone read: Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. A week or so after the killing, the gunman, while on bail, still so hated his dead brother that he dug his brother’s grave up and threw him and casket into a nearby river. When asked why, he said, ‘Cause I didn’t want that scum beside my mother.”

  “How the hell did he make bail for murder?” “Happens in a lot of these backwoods

  municipalities. They need the money more than the justice, and truth be known, sometimes the judge is related to the defendant.”

  “Unbelievable. Was the man ever brought to justice?”

  “Found innocent; it was called self-defense since his brother came at him with the knife.”

  “What about the desecration of his brother’s grave?”

  “He got community service for that awful breach of his bail, and the rest of the family decided to bury his brother where the shooter could never find it.”

  “This sounds like something out of 1820!”

  “Well it was a few years ago, 1979.”

  “Things have improved some since then, I hope.”

  “On the surface, I’d say so. Bubbling beneath the surface, it’s still the wild wild West out there.” He pointed out his window.

  “Wild and Wonderful, heh? She quoted the state license plate on every West Virginia car. “I keep hearing about this Hatfield-McCoy mentality of a blood feud, an eye-for-an-eye, and how many of your own cops believe this maniac is ‘taking eyes’ or putting out eyes for this very reason?”

  Carl raised a hand and dismissed this notion with a gesture, saying, “Oh, please, that damn legendary feud crops up like a bad penny every time a murder’s committed in places like Logan County and Pike County, Kentucky where it began, but nowhere in the history of the HatfieldMcCoy feud was a woman killed—murdered outright that is, despite the romantic Romeo and Juliet twist put on it years later.”

  “You sound like an expert on it, Carl.”

  “I grew up here. Every kid gets a hefty dose of it from grade school on. It’s like the State Passion Play.”

  “And you think an embarrassment? It’s history.”

  “It’s history dressed up. Hell they’ve turned a murderous bloody feud into a tourist attraction.”

  She shrugged. “Why not? Every area of the country has its folktales and folklore immortalized in one way or another. Pecos Pete in the Southwest, the Northwest has Paul Bunyon, and—”

  “And we have two families taking the law into their own hands and killing one another over a stray pig or a slaughtered stray calf, a feud that lasted some thirty years— for generations.”

  “Our first victim in this case was a Hatfield,” she countered, “but this wasn’t played up or blown out of proportion by the press.”

  “Only because we kept the name out of the press. It was a no-brainer to do so, and Dr. Hatfield agreed. Look, these killings have nothing to do with the legendary feud. Of that I’m convinced.”

  “Because the other victims had no connection to the Hatfields, I understand. But suppose for a moment, just suppose that the killer’s original intent was to reignite this feud?”

  “Fo
r what devilish reason?”

  “I dunno…in order to let loose a war of retribution of sorts…I mean, if his grandiose thinking failed, he may well’ve simply moved on to become the Hammerhead killer instead of a man intent on creating a war of sorts among others, one of your survivalists, perhaps?”

  “Geeze, Dr. Hiyakawa, we’re all over the place with speculation and no facts.” Carl frowned. “I dunno…this last theory of the crime…sounds doubtful.”

  “But if he is a home-grown boy, he’d have had the same steady diet of the story as you? And if he’s nuts to begin with…well?”

  “We’re all of us hoping he’s not a local. Our hope is that he dropped in from say Chicago.”