by Tim Downs
The deputy thrust the magnifier and forceps into Nick’s hands and raced barefooted down the hallway. Nick rose slowly from his chair, shook his head, and headed back toward the body. As he passed the hallway he caught a glimpse of the mahogany bureau just inside the front door.
The top drawer was open.
Nick ran to the door and leaped out onto the brick porch. There was no sign of the deputy or his quarry—they had already rounded the house, probably headed for the woods in back.
“He’s armed!” Nick shouted. “Your man is armed!”
No response.
Nick looked both directions. He chose left and raced toward the corner of the house. “An amateur cop chasing an amateur murderer,” he said aloud. “Someone could get killed this way.”
He rounded the corner in a wide arc, expecting to lengthen his stride into a long run for the woods—but there, bracing himself against the far corner of the house, leaned the quivering figure of Mr. Allen. In his right hand a .357 magnum dangled toward the ground.
Nick skidded to a halt. The man saw him, straightened, and wobbled out away from the house. He turned to face Nick and slowly raised the weapon. He couldn’t steady it; Nick felt the barrel sweep back and forth across his body again and again. The man’s arm shook so violently that he looked more like he was whitewashing a fence than aiming a firearm. Nick marked the distance between them—fifty feet at least. At this distance, it would take several tries for the man to hit him.
But it only takes one.
“Listen to me, Mr. Allen. You did something stupid. Don’t make it worse. You cannot get away, and you know it. You’re only running because you’re scared.”
The gun swept past twice more, marking Nick with a broad X. “Think, Mr. Allen. Maybe you didn’t mean to kill your wife—but if you shoot someone else, they’ll hang you for sure. Put the gun down. Call a lawyer and see what you can work out.”
The gun began to steady …
Over the man’s shoulder Nick saw a khaki figure step out silently from behind the house. The deputy drew his own handgun, leveled it, then opened his mouth as if to shout. Nick held up both hands and shook his head violently.
You idiot! I’m in your line of fire!
Too late.
“FREEZE!”
The man spun around, firing wildly before he even faced his foe. The officer fired back; the first shot streaked over the man’s left shoulder. Nick could feel it coming, he could sense the air compressing ahead of the bullet as it tore past his left ear.
Nick dove for the ground. The man continued to fire blindly—three shots into the ground, one into the air, two into the side of the house.
The officer fired twice more, shooting for the torso, not trusting his own aim. The first shot caught the man in the lower abdomen and the second hit square in the chest. Nick watched the man take both bullets. It was not at all like the movies—no violent recoil, no sense of impact at all. The man stood motionless for a moment, then his knees suddenly bent in opposite directions, and he sagged to the ground like a crumpling sack.
Nick crawled toward the broken body. He pulled the gun away and tossed it aside; the barrel burned his hand. He placed two fingers on the carotid artery and waited.
Nothing.
Nick looked up at the deputy and shook his head. The officer’s knees buckled, and he dropped to the ground, vomiting.
Nick rolled onto his back and stared up into the April sky.
“Seventy-three cases,” he said.
North Carolina State University, April 22, 1999
“Nicholas? A word, if you please.”
Nick stepped into the office of Dr. Noah Ellison, chairman of the department of entomology and by far the most senior professor in any department at NC State. Dr. Ellison quietly closed the door behind them.
“Nicholas,” he began, wagging a spindly finger, “it has been brought to my attention that you failed to appear for another of your classes yesterday.”
“Sorry, Noah, I had to make a house call.”
“It is my responsibility as chairman of this department to remind you that your contract involves a certain amount of teaching—and your colleagues have reminded me that it is my duty to discipline you appropriately.”
Noah picked up Nick’s right hand and slapped him on the wrist.
“Consider yourself disciplined. Please do not force me to resort to such extreme measures again.”
The old man motioned for Nick to sit.
“I have good news and I have bad news, Nicholas. Which would you like first?”
“Give me both at the same time.”
“Very well. The good news is the National Science Foundation has granted funding for your summer research proposal—continuing study in your beloved field of forensic entomology. The bad news is that the grant is woefully inadequate, hardly more than a one-way ticket out of town.”
Noah slid a check across the desk. Nick glanced at it and rolled his eyes.
“Can’t we do any better than this, Noah? Aren’t there any departmental funds?”
He shook his head. “I control the purse strings, Nicholas, but not the size of the purse. I’m afraid that’s it; take it, as they say, or leave it.”
Nick studied the check again, hoping to discover a floating decimal point. “What am I supposed to accomplish with this?”
“You have the faculty committee’s permission to spend the summer at our Extension Research Facility in Holcum County. And you may take your research assistant, Dr. Tedesco, along with you.”
“Holcum County? Is that in North Carolina? Please, tell me it’s not.”
“Forgive me, Nicholas.” Noah smiled. “Sometimes I feel like the poet Virgil, leading you to ever deeper levels of hell.”
“Holcum County.” Nick groaned. “Just the sound of it.”
“Try not to think of it as a place, but as an opportunity—an opportunity to get away from the university, away from the classroom, away from students … and, I might add, away from the authorities.”
“The authorities?”
“I received a rather belligerent phone call this morning from the Wake County Sheriff’s Department regarding the way you—how shall I put it—expedited one of their investigations. I’ve spoken with the chancellor; he agrees that this would be a propitious time for you to take an extended leave. Purely in the name of science, of course. May I make a suggestion, Nicholas? As a friend? The next time you desire to assist the authorities, you might consider—just once—asking them first.”
Nick grinned at the old man, slid the check from the desk, and headed for the door.
“One more thing, Nicholas. This is to be a summer of theoretical research, not applied science. Please … for the sake of the university, the department, and your weary old mentor—for the sake of your job—try to stay out of trouble.”
“Noah,” Nick said yawning, “what kind of trouble can you get into in Holcum County?”
Holcum County, North Carolina, June 1999
Sheriff Peter St. Clair stood in the center of the knee-high meadow, staring at the decomposing body of his oldest friend. The cadaver lay on its back, fully stretched out, both arms extending down and to the sides. It was dressed in khaki pants and a mottled blue corduroy hunting shirt. The torso was bloated and distended, causing the seams of the shirt to split apart between buttons as if the shirt were three sizes too small. The skin was stretched and shiny, and the face was badly decomposed around the eyes and mouth. The only thing that looked at all natural about the corpse was the hair, which still lay neatly and almost comically combed to one side. The left hand was missing almost entirely, thanks to occasional visits by some forest scavenger; the right hand held a gleaming chrome handgun bearing the single engraved word, AIRBORNE, followed by the twin AAs of the All American Division.
The sheriff turned and stepped a few paces from what remained of his childhood friend and comrade at arms. He stood facing away, staring at the ground and grimly shaki
ng his head.
“It’s Jim, all right.”
On the other side of the body three hunters stood watching. The first hunter, Ronny, nudged Wayne and nodded silently toward the sheriff; Wayne passed the observation on to Denny, who reached up and slid the bright orange cap from his head. They all stood silently until the sheriff turned back to face the decomposing carcass once again.
“Sorry to have to call you like this, Pete,” Denny said. “What with Jim being an old friend of yours and all, we thought you’d want to know straightaway.”
“You did the right thing.” The sheriff paused. “You boys didn’t touch anything, did you?”
“Hey, give us a little credit, Pete. We didn’t even move the gun. See? It’s still in his hand. He didn’t even drop it after he …”
An awkward silence followed. No one wanted to finish the sentence.
“Let’s get something straight.” The sheriff glared at two of them. “I don’t want to hear any more talk about ‘suicide’ until the coroner has a chance to look things over. All we know for sure is that Jim McAllister is dead.”
“I s’pose we know what suicide looks like,” Wayne grumbled.
“It’s not a suicide until I say it’s a suicide. That’s the law.” Sheriff St. Clair folded his arms and kicked at the ground. “As far as we know, it might have been an accident. Maybe even murder.”
Ronny and Wayne stood with heads hung low and hands in pockets, looking suitably repentant. Denny, suffering from a lifelong case of what his childhood friends referred to as “diarrhea of the mouth,” was the only one foolish enough to respond.
“C’mon, Pete. I know you and Jim went way back and all, but … an accident? Shot in the side of the head? Nobody has an ‘accident’ like that—least of all an Airborne ex. And who would kill Jim? Nobody liked him—but at least he stayed to himself, stayed out of everybody’s way. Besides, we just don’t have many murders in these parts.” Then he added for good measure, “Look who I’m telling.”
It was true. The last murder in Holcum County was over a year ago, when old Mrs. Kreger decided to stop feeding her invalid husband. Her attorney got her off on the grounds that she just might have had a touch of Alzheimer’s herself, but the people who knew Mrs. Kreger best weren’t so sure. In any case, Denny was right; there weren’t many murders in Holcum County, but the sheriff was not about to surrender the point. He took a step closer and spoke quietly, as though he might be overheard.
“Look. You boys know what it’s like in a town like this when somebody does hisself in. Remember when they found Alvin Rafferty in his garage a few years back? I don’t think his family ever got over it—the way people look at you, the way they talk behind your back. Well, Jim’s got a sister, remember? I don’t want that to happen to her. Let’s keep this quiet, okay? Can I count on you? Ronny? Denny? Wayne? For Jim’s sake.”
Each man nodded gravely. They were a part of the inner circle now, Keepers of the Secret—certainly one of the best secrets in Holcum County for quite some time.
They were interrupted by noise from the edge of the clearing—the heavy, clumsy, crashing footfalls of someone obviously not at home in the woods. From an opening in the small pines emerged the figure of a deputy, a young man of startling stature. He was a full head taller than the sheriff. His shoulders were heavy and rounded, and they hung down over a hulking torso. His arms were shapeless and pale but as thick as an average man’s thigh. His blunt-fingered hands swelled into two great drumstick forearms that belied the overall softness of his appearance. His pale blue eyes were set narrow but were large as buckeyes, and he seemed to wear a constant grin. It was the body of a man—an enormous man—but it was the unmistakable face of a child.
He grinned at the sheriff as he approached, and each of the hunters greeted him in turn.
“Hey, Beanie.”
“How’s it going, Beanie?”
Now there was another sound from the edge of the clearing, and a short, stout, white figure stepped out, panting and mopping his forehead from the early morning humidity. He ran a finger around his collar, peeling it away from his glistening stump of a neck, and stepped toward the already assembled party.
“Mornin’, Sheriff. Deputy. Boys. I came as soon as I got your call.”
“Mr. Wilkins.” The sheriff nodded and extended his hand. “Thanks for coming so quick. I think you know the boys here—Ronny, Denny, Wayne. Boys, you all know Mr. Wilkins, the county coroner.”
They all knew Mr. Wilkins, of course, but not as county coroner. They knew him as Mr. Wilkins the drugstore owner or Mr. Wilkins the American Legion coach, but few people knew Mr. Wilkins in his official capacity. There was very little for a coroner to do in a county the size of Holcum.
“Where is the decedent?” Mr. Wilkins asked impatiently.
The four men turned and pointed to a spot at the crest of the meadow where a cloud of black flies hovered in tight circles just above the grass. The group approached cautiously, carefully seeking the upwind side, and formed a line to the left of the body—all except Mr. Wilkins, who, having caught the brunt of the stench, was still ten yards back, doubled over and retching into a stand of foxglove.
They waited awkwardly until Mr. Wilkins recovered and approached again with far more caution. The sheriff and the three seasoned hunters braced themselves against the odor and stood motionless. The deputy pinched his nose and winced in his childlike way, as all of them secretly wished to do, and Mr. Wilkins gagged and covered his mouth and nose with his dripping white handkerchief.
Denny broke the silence. “I’m the one who found him, Mr. Wilkins—that is, we all did. We come through this way a lot in the summer, getting ready for deer season.”
“Deer season? That’s not till September.”
“Georgia Pacific leases out these woods to a group of us to hunt on. They timbered a couple hundred acres last month and they tore the place up real good—and right near where we got our deer stands too. So we were out planting clover and beans, laying out salt blocks, you know—trying to draw the deer back in.”
The sheriff nodded.
“To get to our deer stands we got to cross this meadow. Right in the middle we spotted that big cloud of flies. Figured maybe it was a deer carcass, maybe somebody poaching on our lease. Thought we better check it out—and here was Jim McAllister stretched out on the ground. Shot hisself right through the head. At least”—he glanced quickly at the sheriff—“that’s what it looks like. Appears he’s been dead a long time.”
“I’ll decide how long he’s been dead,” Mr. Wilkins said in utter misery, still tugging at his collar. As coroner, Mr. Wilkins was not required to visit the death scene—but as it was only his second opportunity in his three-year term as coroner to exercise his official duties, he had gone the extra mile. The sheriff hadn’t told him it would be more like a mile-and-a-half, through thick North Carolina woodland on a sweltering summer morning.
Sheriff St. Clair opened a chrome case and pulled out a 35-millimeter Nikon and two rolls of film. He handed a bright yellow roll of barrier tape to the deputy. “Benjamin—secure the perimeter of the death scene.” The deputy looked bewildered; he started off one way and then the other and finally just stood staring at the roll of tape as if it might offer some explanation of its own.
“Find some branches,” the sheriff said quietly. “Long, straight ones. Stick one there and there and there and over there. Then stretch this tape around ‘em.”
Beanie smiled gratefully and bounded off toward the woods.
“Take a look, Mr. Wilkins. What do you make of it?”
Mr. Wilkins slowly approached the body for the first time, his handkerchief still clutched tightly over his face. He turned his head away, sucked in a deep breath, then took a few quick steps toward the body. He poked and prodded and probed until his face began to grow red, then took several quick steps away to explode and pant and then once again fill his lungs with air. Wayne began to snicker, but the sheriff shot a burn
ing look his way, and Wayne thought better of it and struck a more solemn pose. Mr. Wilkins repeated this process several times, until it became obvious that he was in danger of fainting dead away. Finally, still facing away from the body, he spoke.
“Suicide. Plain and simple.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Single gunshot wound to the side of the head—two wounds and you might have a murder. Entry wound is on the right—he was right-handed, wasn’t he? Exit wound on the left. No chance of ever finding the slug out here, but the angle of entry and exit look about right.” He spoke with more and more authority as he continued. “Classic suicide scenario. Most suicides are with handguns, you know, and almost always to the head. Never seen one otherwise.” In point of fact he had never seen another suicide at all, and everyone knew it—but they all held their tongues. “The weapon is still present, no signs of struggle or conflict, no indication that the body was moved or disturbed in any way. Yessir, a classic suicide.”
The sheriff put his hand on Mr. Wilkins’s shoulder and turned him aside. They walked several steps away, much to Mr. Wilkins’s relief, but they were still easily within earshot of the others.
“I hate to admit it, Will, but I think you’re right,” the sheriff said. “You know Jimmy McAllister and I go way back. We grew up together here in Rayford. We were both at Fort Bragg, and we served together in the Gulf. But the fact is”—he glanced over to be sure that no one overheard—“things didn’t go so well for Jim after Desert Storm. A lot of chronic fatigue, long bouts of depression. He even made a few trips up to Walter Reed to be treated for Gulf War Syndrome. Nothin’ helped for long. He started stickin’ to himself more and more, went on hunting trips for weeks at a time. Some of us were beginning to wonder how long it would be before something like this happened.”
“That settles it, then,” Mr. Wilkins said. “A definite suicide. I’ll notify the medical examiner’s office in Chapel Hill that no autopsy is necessary.”
“You’re the expert. What else do you need to do here?”
