Elliott watched her sink into desperation. Her smile left and her eyes went blank. Carol felt the cold blade on her inner thigh. She felt it move up her leg. She had believed it would be pushed into her stomach—the pain. She had died in the garage.
“You want to talk about my boogeyman? My imaginary visitor? The monster no one will let exist. Everyone knows the legend is a hoax.”
Elliott watched her slip into her fear. Her pent-up anger mixed with the horrific tragedy. Her trust left when she read the files in Little Rock—they all knew.
“The Bluff City Butcher came for me last night, Elliott. The one Albert Bell won’t talk about. The one Tony Wilcox denies. The one you haven’t been hunting for ten years, and the Memphis police haven’t been hiding from the world for twenty-five years. Yeah, that’s the one.
“I have been kept in the dark, and now you want me to tell you about the man who pulled off my car door like a toy. You want me to talk about the animal with the awful breath—he had his hand on my leg, Elliott. I thought he would pull it out of the socket, like the car door.” Carol threw her hair over her shoulder. “His long, oily, dirty hair stunk, Elliott. But he spoke like an educated man. It made no sense. He used few words. He knows he’s unstoppable, Elliott. He’s not afraid of anyone. We are no threat to him.”
Carol leaned into Elliott’s face. “He said he was good and evil. He wants me to tell his story.”
“He said that?”
“I can’t do this anymore, especially now. I love you. I think I knew the first time I heard your voice. I don’t understand. It just is. And now, I don’t want to lose you to him, Elliott. I don’t want to lose me to him. But no one will say he’s real. I can’t fight to keep people alive anymore. I’m done.”
Elliott touched her trembling arm and ran his hand through her hair. I would have worried if you held it inside. “Darling. This is good. Anger is good. You are a strong lady.” He pulled her close and swallowed her in his arms. “I love you.”
I never imagined how big my love could be, Carol thought. I want you in my life forever. I am strong, but this is so big. You make me feel safe like no other.
“I think we are now official,” Elliott whispered. “I need and want you too.”
“I'm sorry about losing it.”
“I’m happy you did it with me.”
“Elliott, I have been with him two times. I don’t know why I am still alive. I don’t think I will survive the next time.”
“Something must change. This can’t go on.” Elliott said.
They made love and spent the rest of the day in their robes sharing their life stories, their hopes and dreams. Elliott told Carol about his gifts—how they gave him strength, and how they were destroying him. He told her he had almost killed himself, but she did something to him no one else could. She stopped his demons on the September night. She gave him new hope.
They talked about the history of the Bluff City Butcher, Elliott’s hunt, and his determination to stop the serial killer in Memphis. They got closer than they ever thought possible, and they were just beginning.
“How do you know Albert Bell?
“I met him in August after the Panther McGee autopsy. I’ve known of him. Albert knew my stepparents. Alberto Bella—his grandfather and creator of the Bell empire—came to Texas in the early 1900s and set up cotton farmers on the Great Plains. He financed irrigation and they committed their crops.”
“Nice business arrangement.”
“The Bell family sponsors an annual meeting in El Paso with the West Texas Cotton Farmers. I went one year. I was very young. I met Albert Bell there.”
“Are you at all suspicious about his interest in the BCB?”
“Curious is a better word. Now I know why. The night you met the Butcher on the bluff, Tony and I were meeting with Albert and Max Gregory at the Bell mansion.”
“Who is Max Gregory?”
“Albert’s friend, a retired CIA operative. He has a private detective agency in Houston—Spyglass. Albert had asked Max to find someone for him—another story. Max found a whole lot more. Albert thought he better share the information. Tony and I were chosen. We were sworn to secrecy.”
“I understand.”
“Now you’re sworn to secrecy. Albert had an affair in El Paso in 1967. Before you think badly of him, you should know he had been separated from his wife twelve years.”
“I judge nobody.” She leaned on him. He rubbed her back.
“Betty Duncan. When Max said her name, I watched Albert. Carol, I think he still loves her to this day.”
“He probably does. Albert Bell is a disciplined man. He would not just have an affair. He’s not that kind of man. But how does a man honor his vows for twelve long years and then cross the line? It must have been powerful. Up until I met you, I would be unable to understand. But now I do.
“He met the one. But it gets even more complicated. When he returns to Memphis his estranged wife is waiting. She wants to reconcile.”
“And Albert Bell, being a man of honor, agrees.”
“Yes. Albert returns to El Paso to end his relationship with Betty Duncan. He learns she is pregnant with his child. She soon disappears. All efforts to find her were unsuccessful. She did not want to be found.”
“That is the action of a girl in love, Elliott.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She knows he loves her. His decision was an act of loyalty. She understood. And she did not want Albert to be hurt. May I ask if Albert had children with his estranged wife before the 1968 affair?”
“No. They had a daughter in 1973 and son in 1982.”
“Was Betty Duncan carrying a boy?”
“Yes.”
“Reconciliation days after an affair was no coincidence. This could be about the next Bell patriarch and the transfer of wealth.”
“Albert’s daughter, son, and wife are now dead, and Betty Duncan is dead or missing.”
“You know something you’re not saying.”
“I know who is the Bluff City Butcher,” Elliott said. Their eyes met. “Albert Bell’s illegitimate son, Adam Duncan.”
“Oh God, Elliott.”
“We think he killed his mother.”
Thirty-Six
“God shows his contempt for wealth by some of the kinds of persons he selects to receive it.”
Unknown
* * *
The iron gates at the entry of the old Brent Estate were taken down the first week in February 2009. The county put the new signage in front of the foreboding stone wall on Pleasant Ridge Road east of Austin Peay Highway: WELCOME, North Substation Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, NOW OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
The mansion and surrounding twenty-five acres were donated to the county seven years after old man Brent’s death. The strange man did odd jobs around town and lived in the woods until he saved enough money to buy land in Desoto County. His eventual wealth had nothing to do with intelligence, work ethic, or character. It had everything to do with dumb luck. Brent kept buying and selling land until the day Walmart wanted some—it fit the giant’s expansion model.
They found him on August 2002, in his eight-car garage lying in vomit on the front seat of his Mercedes. The garage was locked from the inside, keys in the ignition and gas tank bone dry. Toxicology confirmed carbon monoxide poisoning, oxygen deprivation.
The garage acted like a big oven. Brent had baked a week under the hot Memphis sun. It looked like suicide, but there was no note or medical history of depression. Decomposition made it impossible to examine the body and to rule out homicide. The ME concluded Brent’s death could not be finalized and ruled it undetermined. Two years later lack of new evidence moved it to cold case status.
Sale of the Brent mansion and surrounding acreage proved to be problematic. The impracticality of the mammoth structures, the rural location, and a declining real estate market forced the estate handlers to adopt a donation strategy in October of 2007 so they could close th
e books. The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office needed to open a substation in the northern county. They took a look and struck a deal. They were convinced renovation instead of building would save the county millions. The new sheriff—G.E. Taft—wanted it operational by February 2009.
On the other side of the long foreboding stone wall, a crumbling, asphalt road crossed a flat, open field. The fresh-cut hay and white sunlight ended at the front doors of the Pleasant Ridge North Substation. The enormous Victorian mansion sat in the middle of winter brown lawns, tall elms, and endless hedges. The sweeping porches, fat pillars, ornate spires, tall windows, moss-covered brick, and slow moving porch ceiling fans made a visitors first encounter a journey back in time.
The Shelby County Sheriff's Office seal met guests at the front steps after metal detectors. Tall oak doors opened into the main reception area. The large room had dozens of windows on three long walls. The shiny wood floors and rich library paneling were populated with expensive, green leather chairs left behind.
The remodeled first floor of the mansion accommodated all administrative needs of the county sheriff’s office. The redesign handled people and paper—traffic tickets, court dates, summons, complaints, media, questions, and everything below felony. Felons brought to the north substation were put in holding cells and transferred to the downtown facilities every night.
The Brent mansion basement presented too many cost prohibitive challenges to justify county time or dollars. The dark, dank space under the house lacked electricity, plumbing, and structural continuity. Fifty-year-old catacombs, cut in dirt and rock, were uncharted, unsafe, and off limits. Like the Brent attic space, portions of the acquired property would never be used. All entrances were sealed and forgotten.
The sharp, pungent smell of onion made its way into the sheriff’s office through a cracked window. From the second floor, G.E. watched the mowers glide over the grounds of his new home away from home. Wearing his favorite tweed coat, he looked more like a college professor than a county sheriff. The sheriff, elected by a wide margin, got a majority of the black and white vote. Taft cut across all barriers with his honest approach to issues and commitment to all citizens. He had the support of all sectors and his good friend Albert Bell. Taft said if Albert ran for sheriff, he would step down because he would be able to sleep at night.
At the beginning of his second year, he lost Sophia to ovarian cancer. His wife of thirty-five years felt ill one morning. She died five weeks later. Not long after, G.E. started sleeping at the office. He would doze off with case files, reports, and newspapers balanced on his belly or gripped in his hand. One night in February, G.E. fell asleep with the Medino file and newspaper clippings.
The sun came up as G.E. watched from a window at the north substation. With a fistful of news clippings, he broke the morning silence and read; “‘Crash Kills Five in North Memphis, December 22, 2008.’”
Everyone in the office sat up.
“‘Around 11:30 p.m. an automobile traveling south on Austin Peay left the road at a high rate of speed north of Pleasant Ridge Road exit.’” At the end of the article G.E. peered over his latest pair of Walmart reading glasses and scanned the room. Both deputies were looking at him.
The administrative staff shuffled papers. G.E. took a large swallow of black coffee and replanted his mug on the windowsill. He watched the mowers disappear into the garage where Brent had decomposed eight years ago—still a cold case.
“This one smells real bad, gentlemen. Have we made any progress over the past thirty days since this so-called ‘accident’ occurred?”
Marty Pilsner, the best deputy in Shelby County, shifted papers on his desk working up to saying something. G.E. knew Pilsner better than Pilsner knew Pilsner. That’s why he put the introverted sleuth closest to his office door. Gerald Bon, Pilsner’s rookie partner, sat next to him. He got the top scores on all the tests the county could throw at him. The high IQ and inexperience made him perfect for Pilsner’s tutelage. Bon was like a Greyhound puppy looking for a rabbit. He needed to be raised right, or he would chase everything and never last.
Marty’s long, skinny body hid behind a stack of files on his desk. With his nose in a report, he cleared his throat and answered G.E. “We’ve gotten down the road on it. But we got a real puzzle to work through.”
“Go on, deputy,” G.E. barked.
“If you remember, December 2008 we had a bunch of problems with the scene.”
“Hell yes, I remember.”
Pilsner lifted his nose out of the file for the first time and jumped when he met G.E. a foot away. “We got a lot of peculiar things there. Things I hope we did not share with the press.”
“That’s right, sheriff. We had another vehicle. Someone ran Dr. Medino off the highway with great determination. We can separate farm equipment damage from damage created by the mystery car.”
Pilsner sucked a match with a Camel. “We have a first set of skid marks two hundred yards from where Dr. Medino and his family left Austin Peay. We have a second set of skid marks fifty yards out. They run solid all the way to the launch point. Dr. Medino had both feet on his brake pedal the last fifty yards. We estimate speed at seventy plus when he went airborne.”
“What else ya got?” G.E. pushed.
“We’ve got witnesses who claim they saw the fire start. The Medino family was in the field for almost thirty minutes before the fire.”
“What’re you sayin’, Pilsner?” G.E. asked, his eyebrows touching and Bon inching his chair over.
Pilsner took a long drag and started talking with smoke coming out his nose. “We got us a homicide for sure, G.E.”
Pilsner butted out his cigarette and lit another. “The timing is what got me wondering. How could a car sit thirty minutes and then burst into flames? I’m told by the experts it’s possible under some conditions, but unlikely. So, we checked. We spent time with the boys down at the fire station on Front Street—the arson boys. We all went to the scene. They said no way the fire happened on its own. Someone set it.”
“I felt it in my bones,” G.E. said.
“In spite of the high speed trip off the road and collision, the gas tank and lines were intact—no leaks. Lincolns are tough cars. We had it hauled to the county lot for inspection. Just got the report. The car had a half tank of gas even though it looks like a three ton piece of coal.”
“What’s the burn evidence tell us?” G.E. asked
“We think the fire started near Dr. Medino.”
“Do we have anything on the mystery vehicle?”
“The paint’s been identified; 1989, 1990 and 1991 Ford. Used for utility vehicles and pickup trucks.”
“What about the medical examiner?”
“The ME passed on autopsies.”
G.E. took off his glasses and slid them into his breast pocket, his eyes staring out the window. Pilsner knew they had a big problem. “Keep me posted, gentlemen.”
“Yes sir.” Pilsner and Bon nodded in unison.
A few minutes later, Pilsner heard the sheriff on the phone with the medical examiner. They would have a meeting in an hour. Standard protocol called for a full autopsy on accident victims—no exceptions. The ME did not do his job. The evidence suggested Dr. Medino and his family died at the hands of professionals. G.E. would have the bodies dug up.
Thirty-Seven
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Edmund Burke
* * *
By order of the Shelby County Medical Examiner, five muddy coffins arrived at the morgue on Madison Avenue at 5:35 a.m. Sheriff Taft and Deputy Pilsner beat everyone from the cemetery in spite of Monday morning traffic; they sipped coffee at the back doors when the unmarked county vans pulled up, each carrying a member of the Medino family. Taft demanded the Medino family be dug up and autopsies performed with Dr. Elliott Sumner present. Also attending were Voss, Wilcox, and Mason along with Dr. Bates and his staff.
Deputy Pil
sner banged on the metal doors. They rolled up with the rhythmical clanging of an old roller coaster climbing the first hill. Dr. Henderson Bates stood on the other side in surgical scrubs with a frown. The sheriff did a lot of chewing. The proud medical examiner did not like it.
The dismal morning behind the county morgue added to the somber mood. In a quiet, courteous, and efficient manner the five heavy coffins moved from vans onto the loading dock, each placed on its own flatbed. The morgue clerks loaded the Medino family data into the ME system and loaded the bodies into the walk-in refrigerator. Each family member would stay in their sealed coffin until Bates wanted them. One at a time, they were wheeled into the decomproom. Laminar airflow fans and ultraviolet and antimicrobial lamps could not stop the putrid smell of a decaying and burned corpse, or the eye-stinging embalming vapors.
Dr. Bates specialized in forensic pathology, graduating from the Tennessee Medical School program. He had limited exposure to bizarre homicides. Unlike the large cities, he did not get them. Although Bates hated Sumner poking around his turf, he knew he needed the help.
Bates stood over the sealed coffin in the decomproom. “Before we get started, Sheriff Taft, would you like to say anything?” Bates asked.
“Yes. On December 22, 2008, my deputies responded to an accident on Austin Peay—a car burning in a field. No one thought a family would be executed. Here we are today. These people were taken from their final resting place because we have damning evidence—their Lincoln got run off the road. We also have physical evidence suggesting the fire was set after the Lincoln came to rest in the field. We want some of you smart people to look at the forensics and tell us what you see.”
Bates looked at Sumner. “Shall we begin with Dr. Enrique Medino?”
Elliott nodded as he pulled on gloves and adjusted his mask and mic, his head already in the game. Elliott glanced over at Carol standing quietly in her scrubs. In his eyes—she was stunning. Carol winked under her visor. He drew the strength he needed to keep his demons under control.
The Bluff City Butcher Page 19
