by Mark Tufo
“When can I expect his return?” he baited, hoping that maybe she’d catch on.
“Very shortly. He is outside shooting and should be back in as soon as he runs out of ammunition,” she said with a pleasant voice.
Anthony smiled. “Very good, Maria. You had me for a moment.”
“Thank you, Mr. Anthony.” He could almost hear her smiling over the phone.
“When he returns, have him call me, please. I have some information for him that I think he may be interested in.”
“Of course. As soon as he…comes in from shooting.”
Chris smiled. “Thank you, Maria.”
He closed his phone and pulled his camo duffle to his side. Pulling the camera from the side pouch, he pulled the dust cover from the lens and focused on the faces of the two unsavory types sitting in the shade below him. He took a number of snapshots of them and checked the screen of his digital camera. “Oh, yeah. You two idiots will be easy enough to identify.”
He shoved the camera back into the duffle and slow-crawled from the crest of the hill back to his truck. They may or may not be the same people who broke into Miller’s place, but they had no business being on his property casing the place. From the looks of the area where they sat, they’d been there before and were making quite a mess. If their being there was innocent, then no harm no foul. But if they were up to no good, Miller could put a good scare into them and maybe a lot of his problems would be over.
*****
Ben approached the taped off area just as the medical examiner was shutting the doors to his van. He watched as Justin and a very pretty woman with shoulder length hair drove away in a hurry and he ducked under the crime scene tape. “Whoa there, buddy!” Eckerson called out. “Where ya headed?”
Ben pulled up short and sighed. “Just thought I’d take a look around, that’s all.”
“You know this is out of your jurisdiction, right?” Jeff held his hand up.
Ben dropped his head dejectedly. “What’s with cutting us out of the investigation? It’s like if we wear a constable’s badge we’re treated like meter readers.”
“Yeah. And?” A smile crossed Jeff’s face.
Foo walked up on the two as he rolled the crime scene tape up on a secondary roll. “What’s up Bennie?”
Ben clenched his jaw. “I just thought I’d come down here and take a look around but Deputy Dawg here doesn’t think that constables are real cops.”
Jon shot Jeff a sideways look, one brow raised. “Is that so?”
Eckerson shrugged. “What? It’s a county thing.”
“Dude, he’s been helpful. What’s wrong with another set of eyes?” Jon asked.
“It’s not his jurisdiction,” Jeff argued.
“Technically, it’s not ours either. DPS is here, remember,” Jon rebutted.
“To assist. Or did you forget?” Jeff countered. “It’s still our case.”
Jon snorted. “Yeah? If we don’t come up with something pretty quick, that won’t be true.” He finished rolling the tape up and dropped it into the trunk of Jeff’s car. He turned to the senior officer. “What’s wrong with letting him take a look? He did get the statement from the first witness.”
Jeff hiked an eyebrow. “Fat lot of good that statement did us.”
“Hey!” Ben pointed a finger at him. “Watch yourself, Eckerson. That kid is family.”
Jeff turned to Jon. “And you wonder why I don’t want to play nice with others.”
“Maybe if you weren’t such a dick,” Gregory shot at him.
Eckerson turned on him, “Me? A dick?” He turned back to Jon, “Will you get a load of this guy?” Jon simply raised his brows at him. “Oh, you can’t seriously be taking his side on this?”
“In this particular case…yeah,” Foo said.
Ben crossed his arms and stared at Eckerson. Eckerson crossed his arms and stared back. Foo looked at both men and threw his hands in the air. “I don’t get it. I seriously don’t get it. The two of you are both acting like children.” Both men turned on him at the same time. “You’re so worried about not getting any respect and you’re worried that somebody might usurp your authority. You’re both sad. We have a case with absolutely no physical evidence and a trail of bodies with no causal links between them other than they were all bad guys and you two are worried about who’s feelings might be hurt or who might have more power. Un-freakin’-believable.”
“Actually,” Ben interrupted, “there is a link.”
Jeff turned on him, “What do you mean?”
“Oh no. I’m not good enough to be a part of your investigation, remember? I had to go out and start my own. I had to conduct my own interviews, do my own research, everything. Now you want me to share my findings when you guys won’t even let me do a walk through on a crime scene as you’re shutting it down?” He planted his hands on his hips and glared at Eckerson.
Jeff tried to read the man to see if he was lying, but his best instincts told him that he wasn’t. He watched him, studying his eyes, his body movements, the way he held himself. “Fine!”
“Fine, what?” Ben asked.
“Meet us at Ruby’s in twenty minutes,” Jeff said. “Jon, go pull our working copy of the case files so we can go over it with Constable Gregory.” Jon nodded and headed to his SUV. Jeff turned to Ben. “You better have something concrete, Bennie. Cuz I promise you, if you’re jerking my chain, I’ll plant my foot so deep in your ass, you’ll taste my Kiwi shoe shine.”
“I got something alright. You may not agree with it, and you may not like it, but I got something.”
Jeff studied him a moment. “What does that mean?”
“It means I can tie all of the victims together. You’re just not going to like HOW.”
*****
“You ever see anything like that before?” Justin asked as they traveled out to a previous crime scene.
Sheryn shook her head. “Not like that, no. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some pretty strange things. Some pretty sick and twisted things. Some pretty nasty things. Some pretty gross things. But things like that?” She shook her head again. “I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“Sort of ruins lunch for ya, doesn’t it?”
“And supper,” she replied, staring out the window.
“I’ll be sure and scratch ribs off the menu then.” He turned to watch her reaction.
She smirked and nodded. “Yes, please. And rump roast, too.”
They continued on in silence until he pulled into the Davidson residence. “They’re supposed to be out so we can do this without disturbance. They’re good folks. Real cooperative,” Justin said.
Sheryn flipped through the file again. “What about the daughter? Her tox screen came back negative, but her statement…”
“Yeah, I know. Doesn’t exactly make sense.” He turned off the ignition and stepped out. “Of course, she was in the middle of being attacked, so, make what you will of it.”
“So she says.”
“Physical evidence on her and in her room corroborates her story. Well, all except the whole ‘mist’ thing. It’s sort of hard to corroborate a ghost.”
Sheryn flipped through her copies again. She paused at the porch and Justin waited for her. She turned and looked across the yard at the large oak tree. She leaned across the porch and looked up at the branch. “How high up was he?”
Justin flipped through the report and pointed to a photo that had been copied. “Holy smokes. How could she have gotten him up that high?” Sheryn asked rhetorically.
“Good question. Another good question would be, how could anyone do it and not leave marks in the yard.” Sheryn gave him a skeptical look and he shrugged. “I was there that night, and their yard was like an untouched showpiece ready for a photo shoot until we tromped all over it. Every step we took left indentions. Yet, somehow, somebody dragged that kid out here, hung him in that tree, and did it without stepping on the lawn.”
; Sheryn hiked an eyebrow. “So we’re looking for Chris Angel.”
“Or a ghost,” Justin said as he opened the door.
He escorted her through the house and replayed the events of the night, leading her up the stairs and to the guest room where the attack took place. The window still had plastic over it, taped to the inside. The desk where Brian Culley had smashed into the wall was still damaged and exactly as Deputy Zimmer remembered it being.
He pointed to the ceiling and showed her the cracked plaster. “Her statement said that ‘something’ held the boy to the ceiling, squeezing the air from him. You can see the ceiling for yourself. She’s all of…what? Five foot five? The ceiling is at least seven feet tall. She’s about what? A buck…buck and a nickel? That kid was a star football player pushing over two hundred pounds.”
Sheryn nodded. “There was no way she did this. Not by herself anyway.”
“So you’re thinking she had help?”
“Nothing else makes sense,” Sanders said as she walked around the room. “Maybe she brings the boy up here to play a little slap and tickle, her real boyfriend is hiding in a closet ready to spring out and ‘save her’? I don’t know,” she said absently as she continued through the room, studying the damage. “I’ve seen stranger things.”
“I don’t know, Sheryn. I was here that night. That kid was scared shitless. And even if she did have help, how could they have hung him without walking on the grass?”
“I don’t know…yet.” Sanders stared out the other window and into the neighbor’s yard. “How far do you think it is from the neighbor’s yard to that branch?”
Justin stepped to the window and looked. “I don’t know. Maybe twenty feet?”
“Possible they accessed the tree limb from the neighbor’s yard, hung the Culley kid avoiding her lawn, and then cooked up the ghost story…just to throw you off?”
Justin shook his head. “Why a ghost story though? Surely they’d know that nobody would believe them.”
“Why not? You can’t arrest a ghost. You can’t give it the death penalty. It’s already dead! Are you going to ask for an arrest warrant for Casper?”
Justin laughed. “Not in this lifetime.”
“Me neither.” Sanders continued to stare at the neighbor’s fence and shook her head. “I don’t know. It faces the main windows on the living room. It would be awfully risky.”
Justin nodded. “It was late, though.”
Sheryn nodded. “We can take a closer look from the ground.” She looked around the room again. “On our way out anyway. We have another scene to look at, don’t we?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Justin opened the door for her and allowed her to exit first.
*****
“Roger, I can’t tell if he’s there or not,” Casper said as he looked through the binoculars again. “And it’s getting really hot out here. Can’t we just go back and come another time when we know he’s gone for sure? He’s got that little Mexican lady that’s almost always here and I don’t want her to get hurt. She was nice to us and—”
“Shut yer pie hole,” Roger warned as he popped the top on another cold beer. He lit a cigarette and slid down into the dirt behind the large boulder. “That little Mexican gal looked at us like we was something to be scraped off the bottom of her shoe. Bitch is probably illegal, too.”
“Well, so? You know they just come here to make a better life for themselves and there ain’t nothing wrong with—”
“I said shut up, stupid!” He threw the nearly full can of beer at him. “Jesus, look what you made me do.” Roger grumbled as he dug another can out of the cooler. “Now we’re almost out and we still don’t know if captain numbnuts is home or not.”
Casper rubbed at his elbow where the can had impacted him and fought the urge to whimper. “Why’d you do that, Rog? I wasn’t saying nothing bad.”
“Your voice is like nails on a chalkboard sometimes. It just gets on my nerves.” Roger cracked open the beer and took a long pull from it. “God, I wish you’d grow some balls.”
Casper sighed and slid down next to him. He reached into the cooler and Roger slammed the lid down on his fingers. “I didn’t say you could have any of my beer, you little fart stain.”
“Dammit, Roger. Now you’re just being mean,” Casper said, standing up. He stood trembling and staring at the larger man sitting on the ground below him.
“Yeah? So?”
“So?” Casper could hardly believe that he didn’t care that he was so hateful. “I don’t know why I’ve stayed your friend so long.” His lower lip began trembling. “You’re just…just…mean.” He turned and marched off.
“Where the hell you think you’re going?”
“Away from you,” Casper called back as he made his way through the woods. “As far away from you as I can get.”
“You’ll be back! Nobody else can stand to be near you. They all know you’re a druggie, Casper, so they don’t want anything to do with you. You’re a meth head and they can’t stand to even look at you!”
Roger waited for him to return. He knew that Casper would realize that he had nobody else but him and come crawling back on hands and knees any moment. He waited a while longer, drinking his beer while he waited. He finished the one he held and cracked open the next one. When he hit the halfway point on it, he got the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that perhaps Casper wasn’t coming back. He stood up and peered through the bushes that Cas had marched through, but nobody was there.
Roger poured out the last of his beer and dropped the can. He retrieved his field glasses and his pack and slipped through the bushes himself. When he got to his truck there was no sign of Cas. He looked all around, but there was no indication he had even stopped by to pick through the stuff in the back. Maybe he’d gotten a ride once he hit the road? Or maybe Roger would run into him as he headed back into town.
Roger slid behind the wheel and belched. Putting the key into the ignition he started the truck and the resulting smoke killed a few hundred mosquitoes as the engine roared to life. He tossed the truck into gear and pulled away slowly, keeping an eye open for his friend as he made his way back home.
*****
Quinn paced nervously through the RV waiting for Ginger to return. She kept glancing at her watch, then staring at the clock on the wall, peeking out the window of the RV then opening the door. When Calvin opened the bedroom door and cleared his throat, she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“What’s going on out here?”
“Calvin, you scared a year off my life!” She pressed a hand to her breast. “Don’t do that to me.”
Calvin stared at her a moment as though she had lost her mind. “Don’t do what? Wake up because you keep slamming the door and stomping around like a foot soldier?”
“What?” She shot him a puzzled look, honestly confused.
“You,” he said simply. “You keep opening the door and slamming it, and marching around the RV as if you’ve got ants in your pants. What gives?”
She glanced to the side and avoided his gaze. “I, um, have…uh…what?”
Calvin planted his hands on his hips and glared at her. “What is going on?”
Quinn shrunk where she stood. She knew she was busted and that Calvin would be irate for not only allowing Ginger to go to the crime scene alone, but without his knowledge. She turned to him and was just opening her mouth ready to throw herself at his mercy when the door opened and Ginger came bouncing in to the RV.
“OH MY GOD! I met the cutest cop today!” she squealed.
Quinn suddenly turned and bounced up and down, “Really?!” She pulled Ginger to the dinette and sat across from her, “Tell me all about it!”
“His name is Foo, or, at least that’s what his nametag said, and he’s Asian and, oh, my God, he has the cutest butt. I could just sink my teeth into it!” she shot out at rapid speed.
“Wait, hold on,” Calvin interrupted. “Where did you meet a cop?”
“At the c
rime scene, duh,” Ginger said before turning her attention back to Quinn. “So anyways, when I get there, he’s standing guard at the alley, right? And so he’s like, ‘you can’t be here’ and I’m like—”
“Wait, what?” Calvin interrupted again. “What crime scene?”
Ginger sighed animatedly and turned a glare at him. “Really?”
Calvin returned her glare and shot back, crossing his arms. “Yes, really! What crime scene?”
Ginger turned to Quinn. “You didn’t tell him?”
Quinn shook her head, “He had just woke up when you walked in. I never really got the chance.”
“Oh.” Ginger lightened up. “There was another murder,” she said matter-of-factly. “So I went and checked out the scene.”
Calvin’s mouth dropped open. “And nobody thought to wake me up? Or get my input? Or—”
“There wasn’t time,” Ginger quipped. “But I got you some data to crunch.”
Calvin stared at Ginger then turned to Quinn. “Anything else I might should know about?”
Quinn smiled at him, “Apparently Ginger’s found a cutie-pie.”
“Oh joy.” Calvin muttered as he turned and poured a cup of coffee. “At least her risking everything wasn’t a total loss.”
“So, tell me more,” Quinn said.
“As I was trying to say,” Ginger purred, “he’s tall, he’s dark and he’s oh-so-good looking.”
“Did you get his number?”
“I gave him mine,” Ginger said waggling her eyebrows.
“Yeah?” Quinn was practically salivating.
“I may have dropped him my card.”
Quinn’s jaw dropped. “Girl, that is NOT the same.”
“What? It has my cell number on it,” she said defensively.
“And your card says what exactly? Psychology Department? He’s going to think you’re a head shrinker!”
Ginger sat back, wide eyed. “Oh no…”
“Relax,” Calvin said, sipping his coffee. “Guys aren’t that deep.”
“What do you mean?” Ginger asked.
“He won’t read that much into it.”
