Death Benefits

by Jennifer Becton

  “When you saw the van in your driveway, you knew it was the police? How?” I asked. The vans had been unmarked.

  “I know a police van. Plus, there was a sheriff’s car behind it.”

  “And no one called to warn you we were coming?” I pressed.

  Kathy met my gaze, and I could see she was surprised by my accusation. “No. Who would have done that?” she asked.

  “Sheriff Harper,” I said.

  Kathy’s brow furrowed. “Sheriff Harper?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “No,” Kathy said. “Not really.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I don’t know him.”

  “You’re not having an affair with him?”

  Kathy’s jaw dropped slightly. “No! With Sheriff Harper? No way.”

  “Then how do you explain your frequent presence at the sheriff’s office?” I bluffed. All we had were rumors, but it never hurt to test them with a good lie.

  Kathy looked down at her pants again, but this time her eyes didn’t return to Vincent or me. “I can’t tell you.”

  And she stuck to that story until we finally left the interrogation room.

  Twenty-three

  After we finished questioning Kathy Vanderbilt, Vincent left for the DOI. Because we were still largely stalled in our investigation, he seemed ready to call the medical examiner and force the autopsy results out of him.

  And I was no less anxious to be about my own tasks, but since I was at the MPD, I checked Tripp’s office, intending to say hello. When I saw he wasn’t there, I collected my SUV from the MPD parking lot where it had been waiting since the SWAT raid and returned to the DOI.

  Now that we’d spoken to Kathy, we were simply waiting on the ME’s information, and since I had a few questions for Sheriff Harper that needed to be cleared up, my next task was to give him a call. There was something between Harper and Kathy Vanderbilt, but I had a difficult time suspecting the sheriff of slaughtering Theo Vanderbilt and leaving his body for us to find. It didn’t make sense.

  Still, Kathy was hiding something about the sheriff, so I had to follow up. Instead of carting myself all the way to Cranford and insulting Sheriff Harper by interrogating him in his own department, I thought I’d give him the courtesy of a phone call instead.

  The call was answered by none other than Deputy Marston.

  I identified myself and then asked, “Desk duty, huh?”

  “Oh, hi, Special Agent Jackson,” Marston said, sounding both happy to hear from me and slightly ashamed. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “How long are you trapped as receptionist?”

  “Well, Sheriff Harper didn’t look too kindly on me being disarmed and then tasing another LEO, so it’ll be at least a month. Maybe more, depending on his mood, I guess.” I heard papers rustling in the background. “But it’s okay because I love filing.”

  I laughed.

  In a quieter voice, he asked, “Got any more info on who killed Theodore Vanderbilt?”

  “No, nothing yet,” I said, not interested in starting any rumors. We already had enough to deal with.

  “Three murders in one week in Cranford,” Marston said, clearly speaking as softly as he possibly could. “Everyone’s saying we’ve got a serial killer on our hands. Is that true?”

  I raised an eyebrow at this new information. “Three murders?”

  “You haven’t heard?” he asked. “Fred Thomas went missing this weekend, and when we searched the Bait and Tackle, we found blood all over, just like the scene of Theo Vanderbilt’s murder. Only there was no body at the Bait and Tackle.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Everyone’s saying we’ve got a serial killer on our hands.”

  Even though I had no more idea of what was going on in Cranford County than Deputy Marston did, my gut told me he was overreacting.

  “Three suspicious deaths does not a serial killer make,” I said. “We may not know the full story yet, but the body in the car is different. She was burned, not knifed. And we found Theo’s body at the scene, remember?”

  All true.

  Still, while the MO was different in the fire case, I did not add that I strongly believed that the body in the car was the key to Theo Vanderbilt’s death and, now, to Fred Thomas’s disappearance and likely murder. Theo had procured the woman’s body from somewhere. Perhaps he had killed her himself. If one of the woman’s relatives were bent on revenge, Theo’s death made a kind of twisted sense.

  But Fred’s connection? He had been the first on the fire scene. Had he seen something or someone and not realized it? Did the killer suspect he might be able to identify him? Or did Fred have some connection to the body? Had he helped Theo and Kathy set the fire? I knew some firemen enjoyed lighting a good blaze almost as much as they liked putting one out.

  I wasn’t sure about Fred.

  “So it’s not a serial killer?” Marston asked, sounding slightly disappointed.

  Though annoyed that I hadn’t been told about Fred Thomas’s disappearance, I had to laugh. “Cheer up. This is not necessarily a bad thing. But why didn’t anyone inform the DOI of Fred’s disappearance?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” Deputy Marston said. He was speaking normally now that we were off the serial killer topic. “I guess no one thought to call. All hell has truly broken loose, Special Agent Jackson.”

  I would definitely be speaking to Sheriff Harper about that, but first I needed to verify his whereabouts the morning of the SWAT raid, just to be sure he wasn’t covering anything up.

  I asked in a purposefully offhand tone, “For our report, we need to verify the locations of all the officers involved in the raid on Thursday morning. Can you work on that for me?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” he said, sounding grateful that I’d offered him a task other than filing. “It won’t take long. There weren’t many people involved that morning.” He began to tick off a list of officers, including the sheriff.

  Once I heard Harper’s name, I stopped him.

  “All those people, what time did they arrive at the sheriff’s department?”

  “Sheriff Harper had us here at 4 AM.”

  “And everyone was here?”

  “More or less. Some people drifted in a bit late.”

  “Including the sheriff?”

  “No, we pulled into the parking lot at the same time, a little before four, and he commended my promptness.” Marston paused. “Too bad I screwed it up later.”

  “Everyone makes mistakes,” I said. “You’ll learn from it.”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. I already have,” he said. “I learned it’s never a good idea to tase another cop.”

  “Indeed,” I said. “Now, is Sheriff Harper available?”

  “I’ll transfer you.” He paused again. “And I’m sorry about tasing you.”

  As I waited, I pondered Deputy Marston’s words. Given the tight timetable, Sheriff Harper would not have had time to murder Theo Vanderbilt, clean himself up, and arrive at the precinct in order to oversee the SWAT raid.

  But there was also Kathy’s mysterious connection with the sheriff and her story about the bloody-faced man in the shed to sort out. Was the killer in the shed a concoction to protect her lover Sheriff Harper? If so, how had she gotten Theo’s blood on her arm? We had to know for certain whether or not the sheriff had anything to do with the death benefits fraud or Theo’s murder.

  When I’d made the phone call, I hadn’t decided exactly what technique I was going to use with Sheriff Harper, but after hearing his honest voice over the phone line, I knew that the straightforward approach would be best.

  Plus, it would catch him off guard.

  “How well are you acquainted with Kathy Vanderbilt?” I asked after we’d exchanged brief pleasantries.

  “Her son’s in my jail,” he replied. “So I’m acquainted just enough to incarcerate her firstborn.”

  I didn’t smile at his
blithe response. “Do you know her personally?”

  “Personally?” he repeated, his voice level and even. “Yes, I know her, but not personally. Not really.”

  “How well do you know her then?” I asked.

  There was a long pause, and for a moment, I thought he was going to confess to an affair, but he said, “I know her through her son Carter Hashaway. I busted him a few times for possession, but I think he’s a good kid. I’ve been trying to save his ass—you know, show him some tough love—but seeing as how he’s sitting in my jail again for possession, I don’t think it’s working out so well.”

  “You’re trying to rehab Carter?” I asked in an incredulous tone. I had nothing against the kid aside from the fact that he’d tried to hit me, but I sure wouldn’t have picked him as a charity case.

  “Yeah,” the sheriff said with a sigh, “but frankly I think he’s a lost cause, and his momma is just mortified about the whole thing.”

  “So you do know her?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “She came to my office after both of his arrests.”

  “What have you done so far for him?” I asked.

  “I let a few things slide is all,” he said, his voice laced with shame. “I know he has information on who’s cooking meth in this county. I thought if I could turn him—and save him—I could do some good here in Cranford.”

  I lowered my eyebrows in thought. “So you’re not having an affair with Kathy? You’re trying to take out meth dealers?”

  “An affair with that little witch?” Sheriff Harper sounded totally appalled. “Hell, no. I’m a happily married man.”

  “And you didn’t call to tip her off about the raid on Thursday?”

  I heard a loud thump, and I imagined Sheriff Harper standing up to yell at me. “Just what the hell are you accusing me of?” he demanded. He didn’t sound calm or kind now. “You use my department resources and then insinuate I’m perverting justice in my own county? I won’t have it.”

  “Look,” I said, rising too, even though he couldn’t see me. I leaned forward as I pressed my palm into the cool, flat surface of my desk. “We had information that you were possibly involved in an affair with her, and that might have given you a reason to help her fake Theo Vanderbilt’s death. Did you?”

  “I’m trying to save Carter for her,” he said firmly. “That’s all.”

  “Where were you just prior to the raid?”

  “Here,” he said. “Right here in the department waiting to meet you and the MPD SWAT.”

  “Can anyone corroborate that?” I asked, knowing that Deputy Marston already had but pressing anyway just in case.

  Sheriff Harper growled, “Any damn person in the department will tell you where I was.”

  Convinced that he was telling the truth about everything, I sat down, crossed my legs, and said, “I believe you.”

  “What?” he asked, sounding confused at my sudden shift.

  “I said I believe you, but I had to check. The timing of Theo Vanderbilt’s murder was awfully close to our raid, and if you were having an affair with Kathy, then maybe you were involved in the fraud, and knowing that we were going to figure out the crime, you might have wanted to get rid of Theo for real.”

  “I would never kill a man that way,” he said. “Whoever did that was a monster, and I’m no monster.”

  “Speaking of monsters, Deputy Marston said Fred Thomas was missing.”

  “Yeah,” the sheriff confirmed. He seemed relieved to have the attention off himself. “His wife called yesterday and said there was blood all over the Bait and Tackle. I’ve been up all night trying to find him.”

  “Apparently, there has been some concern about a serial killer. Why? Were there similarities to Theo Vanderbilt’s murder?”

  “I’ll send you the information we have,” he said. I heard him tapping at his keyboard and assumed he was emailing me the reports. “There were a lot of similarities in the blood spatter and amount, but we don’t have a body yet. Frankly, I’m still hoping Fred’s alive, but the coroner doesn’t think so. There was a lot of blood.”

  Twenty-four

  We already had the fraud charge locked down. Kathy had confessed, but there were still the issues of Theo’s actual murder, the body in the car, and now Fred Thomas’s disappearance. My suspicion that the three were connected and somehow hinged on the old woman in the car meant we needed to find out the victim’s identity pronto. It was certainly important that we figure out what the hell was going on in Cranford County, but we also needed to inform the woman’s family of her death and lay her to rest properly.

  So when Vincent came into my office with his phone in hand and said, “The ME wants us at the lab ASAP,” I leapt from my chair and grabbed my bag, and we were off.

  On the way, I told Vincent of the news from Cranford, beginning with Sheriff Harper’s alibi for the time of Theo’s murder.

  “And I now understand that little interchange between him and Kathy when we arrested Carter,” I said. “He’d been trying to keep the kid out of jail in hopes of convincing him to give up information on the local meth dealers.”

  “So they weren’t having an affair,” Vincent said.

  “No,” I confirmed.

  “Well, that’s one more possibility ruled out, and that means we’re running pretty short on theories right now. Let’s hope the ME has something big for us.”

  One of the newest facilities in the country, the state crime lab for the central part of Georgia is located about twenty minutes from Mercer. This particular building houses the region’s medical examiner as well as labs that test everything from firearms involved in murders to blood alcohol levels of average drunks.

  All the scientists at the lab are civilians charged with the task of impartial testing of evidence from around the area, and there isn’t a lot of interaction between lab workers and police officers. In fact, the lab is largely inaccessible to officers. This ensures that the scientists don’t receive any information about the cases associated with the tests they’re running, so their findings are as unbiased as possible.

  I’d dropped off evidence for processing before, but I’d never had reason to go into the lab. This would be my first visit to autopsy, and if I hadn’t felt so sure the information we received there would break our case wide open, I would have dreaded the trip.

  I was at the point where I was ready to endure almost anything to unravel the case.

  Vincent and I entered the rotunda and informed the front desk attendant, a young man with a blond crew cut, that we were there to see Dr. Kelly Greene.

  “You can wait over there.” He gestured at a bench across the room. “He’ll be with you shortly.”

  Within five minutes, Dr. Greene, a rather large dark-skinned gentleman with a pleasant expression and a heavy step, appeared before us.

  “Special Agents?” he asked, and I recognized his deep, velvety voice from our previous phone conversations.

  Vincent and I stood and introduced ourselves.

  “Pleasure to meet you in the flesh,” Dr. Greene said. “Come on back.”

  He led us down a long, plain hallway and stopped at a door with a large, orange sign alarmingly marked “biohazard.” I willfully hid my unease as he used his security badge to open it.

  Here we go.

  Vincent and I signed in at the administrative desk, and then Dr. Greene escorted us into a room so large it encompassed one full wing of the building. It was bordered by dozens of sturdy metal- and glass-framed cubicles, which seemed to be filled exclusively with young, attractive women.

  I don’t know what I was expecting to find in a medical examiner’s office, but it wasn’t a bevy of hot babes. I guess the career path had increased in popularity since the advent of forensics-focused TV shows. Probably, they all thought they were going to meet some hot male cop-scientist and solve crimes together in blissful happiness for the rest of their lives.

  Or maybe they were like me. Maybe they had come to the foren
sics world because of something that had happened in their past. Were all these women as damaged as I was? Now that was a scary thought.

  Or maybe they had taken this job because they liked science and it actually paid a decent salary.

  “This way,” Dr. Greene said, handing us nitrile gloves and surgical masks. “We’ll head into the lab and discuss the bodies. You’re in luck,” he added with a smile. “It hardly smells in there today.”

  Dr. Greene used his swipe card to gain access to a lab marked “autopsy.” As I walked inside, I sniffed cautiously.

  Not so bad.

  Not nearly as bad as the wastewater treatment plant Vincent and I had visited on our last case together.

  Cleaner too. I took a look around at the autopsy suite, which was all nonporous surfaces and stainless steel. Plain and functional, the decor was more like that of a high school science lab than a set for a TV series. Not one fancy neon light or touch-screen computer in sight.

  What it lacked in visual appeal, it more than made up for in top-of-the-line ventilation. Though there was no breeze, the air in the room was constantly moving, and the cooler temperature seemed to give the area a more sterile feel. I was glad I’d worn my wool blazer to cover my M&P. I buttoned it as Dr. Greene led us to two stainless steel tables whose subjects were draped in white sheets.

  I wondered which body we would see first, and I almost expected Dr. Greene to whip one of the sheets off, like a magician doing a trick, but he ignored both bodies for the moment. Instead, he leaned his hip against a counter and crossed his arms in front of him.

  “I know you’re probably most curious about the female victim, but I’d like to begin with Theodore Vanderbilt. The real Theodore Vanderbilt.” He looked between us, and hearing no objections, he continued. “This autopsy was much more straightforward since we already know that he was the victim of foul play, but it did reveal something rather unusual.”