Thriller: I Am Sal - A Mystifying Crime Thriller (Thriller, Crime Thriller, Murder Mystery Book 1)

by Abraham Falls

The doctor was looking at the paper again, and he shook his head. “No, it’s not anything dangerous to you, or there would be signs of atrophy in the tissues around it. Other than that little lump, your brain looks perfectly normal.” He ran his finger across the paper in a couple of spots, as if making sure of what he was reading. “Now, as for the reason you got dizzy and blacked out, I’m guessing that you might be claustrophobic?”

  I thought about it, and tried to imagine being in a small confined space, to see if it stressed me out. I didn’t feel anything, but then again, you kind have to actually be in the tight space, typically, to feel claustrophobic, so I shrugged. “Again, not that I know of, but I can’t be sure.”

  The doctor nodded. “Could be that, or there are some very rare cases I’ve heard of where people are highly sensitive to electromagnetic pulses. I read a case not too long ago about a guy who had a compass built into his head, sort of; he was so sensitive to magnetism that he could always tell which way was north. Could just be that you’re one of those people, and just got overwhelmed. I think I’ve actually heard of a case where someone like that did pass out in a scan.”

  He put the paper down on the table beside me, and plugged a stethoscope into his ears. He listened to my heart, then had me take deep breaths while he checked out my lungs. When that was finished, he had me lie on the table and poked around my abdomen for a few seconds. Finally, he motioned for me to sit up as he hung the stethoscope back around his neck.

  “Well, I can’t find anything wrong with you, physically. You appear to be in perfect physical health, so there’s nothing that I can find with a cursory examination that might suggest a cause for your memory loss. We’re going to take some blood samples, and I’ll send those off for analysis, but my best guess right now is that your amnesia is psychological in origin.”

  He told the nurse to draw blood, then walked out of the room. I sat there while she took five test tubes of blood out of my arm, and then she told me I could get dressed. She looked at the deputies, and told them it was okay to chain me up again, and smiled at me one more time before she left the room.

  I took off the gown and got back into the jumpsuit, and two of the deputies stood back and watched while the third one put all the hardware back on. When he was finished, two of them took my arms again, and we did the three-man walk back out to the car.

  None of us spoke on the ride back, and I continued to look out the windows. The thought crossed my mind that this might be as close to freedom as I was likely to get for many years, and I tried to enjoy it. But it just tasted bitter. When we got back to the detention center, the whole procedure was reversed, until I was back in the cell block with Gunner.

  “You got back just in time for lunch,” he said to me with a grin. “How’d that go?”

  I shrugged, and gave him a grimace. “They ran a CAT scan on me, and said they found something in my head that they thought at first was a tumor, but it isn’t. Said it’s probably some kind of bone buildup, but it’s not dangerous and doesn’t have anything to do with my amnesia. Other than that, the doctor says I’m in perfect health.”

  Gunner chuckled. “Well, good,” he said. “If they give you a plea bargain, you got a good chance you’ll live to see daylight again.”

  Somebody yelled at me, and I saw that the inmates were all standing around over by the serving line, waiting for me to get there first. Gunner tapped my arm, and we got up and went to get lunch.

  Cheeseburgers and fries. Finally, something to celebrate about.

  Chapter 15

  I had been canvassing the neighborhood around Sal’s house, trying to get an idea of who might have made the call to the sheriff’s office on the night he was arrested, but I wasn’t having any luck. If there had been such a call, no one wanted to own up to it, and it had somehow gotten skipped by the sheriff’s office’s incoming call-recording system. That’s possible, if it came in as a direct call to one of the extension lines, but that would mean it had to come from someone who knew the other numbers.

  Most people just call 911, or maybe the sheriff’s office’s main number; the only people who call the other numbers, normally, would be family members of the staff who work there. As far as I could tell, no one in that neighborhood who might have heard shouting from that house had any connection to the Sheriff’s office or any of its employees.

  My cell phone rang, and I answered quickly. “Special Agent Decker,” I said like always.

  “Agent Decker, this is John Armstrong, with Montana CSI. Thought you’d like to know that we found a second body in the ashes of the house, over here.”

  My eyebrows went up. “Sure enough,” I said. “Any clue who it might be?”

  “All I can tell you at the moment is that it was a male, probably between five ten to six foot, hundred and sixty to maybe two hundred pounds before the fire got to him. But it’s honestly pretty hard to tell. The body was not quite as badly burned as the deputy’s was, probably because he was underneath a lot of the rubble from the house above, so we’ve got enough for an autopsy. That may give us more information. We’re bagging him up right now, so the ME can get started on it.”

  “Very good; keep me informed, please.” I ended the call, and sat there in my car thinking it over.

  The news that there was a second body in the burned house was a surprise, because from everything I had learned from Sal, he and Johnson had seemed to be the only ones there until the sheriff arrived. If there was another person present, then the question that had to be asked was why that person had not escaped from the fire. I had to consider the possibility that good old Sal was simply a very good liar after all, and that he might have had a second victim. With the way the fire was burning, he might actually have thought he could get away with not mentioning another person being there, thinking that the fire would destroy any evidence of another body.

  Fortunately, most house fires don’t get hot enough to burn a body up completely. They had already found Deputy Johnson’s remains, though there was little left of him but bone, and even those had been found scattered from when the house caved in. He was probably already charred to a crisp by that time, and had broken into several fragments. They had been bagged, so that DNA could be used to confirm that they were his remains. Without positive confirmation, it might not be possible for his family to get a death certificate for years, which would keep them from collecting on his life insurance and survivor benefits.

  I wondered how Sal was going to react to the news, so I started the car and headed for the detention center. I called ahead, to let them know I was coming and that I wanted to speak with him when I arrived. I also told the dispatcher to notify the sheriff that I wanted to talk with him again, as well.

  The ride back into Clement took some time. It was almost two thirty in the afternoon by the time I got there. I parked my car and went in through the front door, flashing my ID to get access to the jail itself.

  Sheriff Branson saw me and called out. “Decker! I got a message you want to talk to me.”

  I turned and looked at him, and put on a smile that I didn’t really feel. “Yes,” I said. I stood and waited until he caught up with me in the hallway. “You were notified that there was a second body in the ashes of the house where Johnson died?”

  “Yeah, I just got the word a few minutes ago. Medical examiner says he’ll get the autopsy done as soon as he can, and then let me know what he finds.”

  I nodded. “Okay, and be sure to share that information with me. This case is getting stranger and stranger, and frankly, I’m not sure what to make of it.”

  The sheriff barked a laugh. “Then get your head out of your ass, because I know exactly what to make of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they find a few more bodies, and it turns out that our boy Sal is some kind of serial killer.”

  I looked at him askance. “Serial killer? Seriously? Have you had so many people go missing lately that you’ve begun to think there might be a serial killer on the loose in Stevens Count
y?”

  He sneered at me. “You know, a lot of serial killers don’t pick their victims in their own backyards. They go out away from home, grab somebody and bring them back. That could be what were dealing with.”

  “I’ll allow that as a possibility,” I said, “even though I think it’s a pretty big stretch of the imagination. Has it occurred to you that it could be Sal who was an intended victim? Now that we know there was a third person in that house, it’s always possible that Sal is telling the truth, and had nothing to do with Johnson’s death. There’s another potential suspect, right?”

  “Suspect, my ass. That’s a body they found, not a suspect.” He folded his arms over his chest, a classic defensive posture. “So, what are you doing here, anyway? If you wanted to talk to me, why didn’t you come to my office?”

  “Oh, I was planning to,” I said. “I’m on the way to speak with Sal again at the moment, and was going to look you up after that.” I turned away and started on toward the jail’s interview room, but Branson followed.

  “Have you taken over this investigation?” Branson asked, his voice brimming with bitterness and anger.

  “Not officially,” I said. “I haven’t decided yet whether or not it’s warranted. That’s why I want to speak to Sal again.” I kept walking.

  Branson followed me silently for a few steps, then asked, “Well, you don’t mind if I tag along then, do you?”

  I grinned, knowing he couldn’t see my face. “Not a bit,” I said. In fact, I was delighted; I wanted to see these two men face-to-face again, and delivering the news of the second body might be the perfect opportunity to gauge their reactions to each other.

  I stopped at the jailers’ desk to let them know I was there, and to bring Sal to the interview room. Branson told them to hurry it up, because he was a busy man, and I noticed that the jailers all scrambled to honor his demand. I looked at Branson, who was chewing his bottom lip rather furiously.

  Branson and I went on to the interview room and took our seats, and Sal was brought in a few moments later. The jailers who brought him parked him in a chair, then left the room.

  Sal nodding politely at both of us. “Gentlemen,” he said.

  I knew this probably pissed off Branson, and it made me like the kid a little more.

  Branson started to speak, but I put a hand out to cut him off. “I’ll handle this,” I said. I turned back to Sal. “Sal, we just found out that a second body has been found in the ashes of your house.”

  Sal’s eyes went wide, in a very genuine expression of surprise. “A second body? Do we know who it was?”

  He hadn’t even looked at Sheriff Branson. “Not yet,” I said, “although the CSI team tells me that it should be possible to get an identification. The body was in the basement, and was buried under a lot of rubble, so it didn’t get burned as badly as it might have. I was wondering if you have any idea who it could be?”

  Sal glanced around the room, then focused his eyes on mine. “I—I can’t seem to remember anyone else being there,” he said. “Do you know whether this guy was already dead when the fire got to him?”

  “Again, not yet, but the medical examiner is doing an autopsy, and they’ll be able to tell that by whether there’s any soot in his lungs. If he was still alive and breathing, there will be; if not, then there won’t.”

  Sal started to say something, but Branson interrupted. “So maybe you killed a couple of people, you think? Are we gonna find any more bodies down there?”

  Sal looked at Branson, and suddenly he was glaring. “I don’t think I killed anyone,” he said. “I was thinking this over, and it’s absolutely impossible for me to have cut that deputy’s throat, gone down into the basement and stripped, then come back up, got dressed, and found him in the floor still alive. His jugular vein had been cut, badly, so in order for him to have still been conscious when I got there, that had to have happened less than a minute before I found him. Look it up. When you cut the jugular, a person bleeds out within no more than a minute or so.”

  I had been looking at Sal, but I spun my eyes toward Branson, and caught the look on his face. If I’ve ever seen guilt on someone before, I knew I was seeing it right then. Branson knew more than he was telling, but he wasn’t about to give it up. The expression passed as quickly as it came, and was replaced with pure anger.

  “Just what the hell are you trying to say, you lying sonofabitch?” Branson yelled. A split second later, he got his face under control, cast one sideways glance at me, then turned back to Sal. “You gonna try to say this other dead guy was the killer?”

  Sal leaned toward Branson, but kept his hands flat on the table. “Couldn’t be,” he said, “not if they found him in the basement. I didn’t see anyone in that basement when I woke up, but the whole time I was going up the stairs and getting dressed, I could see the stairway door that led down there. No one went through it, so he had to have already been there before I came up. That’s the only way it could be. That means, Sheriff, that you and I were the only two on the main floor when Johnson got his throat cut, and since I didn’t do it…”

  Sal trailed off, and Branson bounced to his feet. He reached toward Sal across the table, but I grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him back down into his chair.

  “Sit your ass down,” I ordered, and Branson sat, his eyes bouncing back and forth between me and Sal. The rage in his face was palpable, but there was something else in it, as well. To me, though it was faint, it looked like Sheriff Branson was just a little bit scared.

  “This is bullshit,” Branson said, and a second later, he got up and walked out of the room. I turned my attention back to Sal.

  “That’s an interesting theory,” I said. “The only problem with it is that we can’t prove whether you were actually down in the basement or not.”

  Sal’s face began to calm itself, and he let out a sigh. “I know,” he said. “I mean, I know I didn’t kill that man, now, so I feel a little bit better, but there’s still the problem of being able to prove it, isn’t there?”

  I nodded. “That does seem to be an issue,” I said. “You don’t have any ideas on this second body?”

  Sal shook his head, and once again, I felt certain he was telling the truth. “No, sir, I don’t. I sure wish I did, though. Maybe it would tell us more about what really happened that night.”

  I sat there and thought about it for a moment. “Sal, for what it’s worth, I think you’re telling the truth, that you didn’t kill Johnson. Have you remembered anything at all that might help me learn more about you and who you are?”

  Sal shook his head, but then looked up at me with a slight grin. “Maybe one thing,” he said. “Earlier today, they took me to a doctor for a CAT scan, and while I was in the machine, something happened. I got dizzy, blacked out, but just before I did, I saw these flashes of what I think must be memories. The only one that wasn’t just something everybody would know was a mental image of my own face, but with longer hair, like almost down to my shoulders.”

  I smiled sadly. “Yeah, when I showed your picture to some of the neighbors around your house, the ones who admitted they’d seen you all said your hair used to be longer. Any idea when you got it cut?”

  Sal just sat there for a second, but then he shook his head. “No, but if I went to a barbershop, then maybe you might find someone who knew me.”

  I shrugged, then grinned at him. “That might be worth a try,” I said. “So, tell me, how did you figure out that Johnson would’ve bled out before you could get to him? What made you think of that?”

  “I was talking with my cellmate, and it suddenly hit me. If you actually cut someone’s throat, or manage to cut the carotid artery, they’ll lose consciousness in a matter of seconds because of a lack of blood getting to the brain. Johnson’s jugular was cut, not his carotid; that means blood was still getting to the brain, but he was leaking it after it came back out. It would take something less than a minute for him to lose enough blood and blood pres
sure that the brain would start to starve for oxygen and black out that way. So, since I found him still partially conscious, it had to have happened no more than thirty or forty seconds before I came out of that bedroom and ran into the living room to try to get to the front door.” He shrugged. “When I first told my story, I thought Branson came into the house after I found Johnson, but when I thought about it, he was standing behind me in the living room when I saw him. The front door was still closed, so he had to have been in the room when I entered it.”

  I looked him straight in the eye. “You do realize that you are accusing the sheriff of this county of murder, right?”

  Sal grinned. “Yes, sir, I sure do.”

  “Like I said, I believe you’re telling me the truth. Now, whether that means you can accuse Branson or not, I don’t know; and frankly, the presence of a second body does mean there’s a potential third suspect, because it’s always possible he cut Johnson just before Branson came in, while you were getting your clothes on, then hid somewhere on the main floor and went to the basement after you and Branson left the house. I’ll admit that sounds a bit far-fetched, even to me, but it’s possible. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough to prove any of these theories, other than the circumstantial evidence that seems to implicate you.”

  Sal nodded. “I know,” he said. “But I’ve got a hunch that if you dig deep enough, you’ll find a motive for Branson to get rid of Johnson. What that has to do with me, though, I don’t have a clue.”

  I looked him in the eye for a moment, thinking over what he had just said. “Then I guess it’s time I take a good look at Mr. Sheriff Branson.”

  Chapter 16

  It only took Gunner about ten seconds after I got back from my interview to figure out that I was excited.

  “What gives? How come you so happy, now?”

  “Because I just got to give Sheriff Branson a great big dose of reality. That FBI agent, Decker, he wanted to talk to me and Branson came along. It seems they found a second body in the house that burned down, and this one was apparently down in the basement. They wanted to know if I knew anything about it, which of course, I don’t, but it left an opening for me to bring up the fact that I couldn’t have killed Johnson and found him still alive when I came up from the basement. Decker was fascinated, especially when Branson freaked out when I pointed out that he was the only other person who could’ve done it.”