by Sharon Sala
Her gaze moved past the breezeway that ran straight through the middle of the barn, and as it did, she saw something swinging in the air above the ground. She stopped, then began to stare, trying to focus on what it could possibly be. No longer interested in the pasture, she began moving toward the barn, but at a slower gait, her mind unready to accept the truth.
She was about twenty yards away, so close she could see his clothing and his shoes and the awful angle of his neck, when her knees buckled, refusing to carry her another step. She was on the ground, rocking and moaning. Twice she tried to get up, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. She kept trying to make what she was seeing turn into something else instead. But it was Dick Phillips’s lifeless body, swinging slowly in the breeze. The sound that came up her throat was more howl than scream, but it was the impetus she needed to get moving.
Trey! She had to call Trey.
She scrambled to her feet and started running back to her car to get her phone, screaming as she went. When she reached the car, she fell into the front seat, grabbing for the cell phone she’d left in the console. Still sobbing and shaking so hard she could barely breathe, she tried to scroll through her contacts and hit three wrong numbers before she finally got through to Trey. The moment she heard his voice, she started screaming again, and this time she couldn’t stop.
* * *
Trey Jakes was not in a good mood. He and the officer on duty, Earl Redd, had gone to serve an arrest warrant on a guy they had grown up with. The man had turned into a replica of the father who’d raised him: stealing instead of working. Only this time the theft he’d pulled was caught on tape, resulting in a warrant for his arrest. He’d been out of town for almost a week, and this morning the police department had received a tip from a neighbor that he was back. At least when they knocked on his door to serve it, he went with them without a fight.
Trey had just finished the paperwork and was getting up to refill his coffee cup when his cell phone rang. When he saw it was from his mom, he forgot about the coffee. The moment they connected, all he could hear was screaming. The hair stood up on the back of his neck, and he began yelling, trying to get her to calm down enough to talk.
“Mom! Is that you? What’s wrong? Where are you? Mom? Mom! For the love of God, what’s wrong?”
It was Trey’s voice that finally pulled her back.
“I need you. You have to come. Oh, dear Jesus,” Betsy moaned, and then got out of the car and dropped to the ground, putting her head between her knees to keep from passing out.
Earl Redd had already come rushing into the room, alerted to the emergency by what Trey was saying.
“Where are you? Are you hurt? What’s wrong?” Trey asked, heading for the door on the run.
“Dick Phillips! Come to his farm! Oh, my God, hurry.”
“Mom! I need to know what happened so I can dispatch emergency vehicles. Who’s hurt? What happened?”
“Dick. He’s dead. Oh God, oh God, he’s dead.”
Trey slid to a dead stop on the sidewalk, and Earl stopped right along with him.
“He’s dead? Are you sure?” Trey asked.
“Yes, I’m sure. He’s hanging from the rafters in his barn.”
The moment those words came out of her mouth, she dropped the phone and started screaming again.
Trey clenched his jaw as he made a U-turn and headed back into the office with Earl at his heels. He found his day dispatcher, Avery Jones, cleaning dead flies off the windowsill.
“What’s up, Chief?” he asked.
“I need you to get on the phone, not the radio, and tell the county sheriff’s office there’s a death at Dick Phillips’s farm. Give them directions and ask if they want you to notify the coroner or if they’re going to do it. Then I need you to call in Carl and Lonnie and tell them I want them on patrol in town until further notice.”
Avery’s eyes widened, but he didn’t question the orders. “Any details you want me to pass on?” he asked.
“Tell the sheriff a man was hanged. We don’t know if it’s a murder or a suicide and I damn sure don’t want that to get out. Dick has a daughter who deserves to know all this first.”
“Yes, sir,” Avery said, then grabbed the phone and a list of numbers. He began making calls as Trey and Earl left on the run.
“God Almighty,” Earl said. “This is awful.”
Trey nodded. “Follow me,” he said, and jumped into his cruiser and ran hot all the way to the Phillips farm.
His phone was still connected to his mother’s call, and he could still hear her screaming, but as he drove the sound became fainter, and then finally it stopped. Even though he kept yelling in the phone for her to pick up, he got nothing.
He was worse than worried. He’d never heard her like that. And even more upsetting, he was going to have to contact the only woman he’d ever loved and tell her that her father was dead. This day just kept getting worse.
Ten minutes later he arrived at the Phillips farm to find his mother in the fetal position next to her car, her hands over her head as if trying to ward off a blow. He knew what she’d seen was shocking, but this reaction was not like the woman he knew. He got out on the run, then scooped her up into his arms and sat her on the hood of her car.
“Mom! Talk to me. Are you okay?”
She was limp, her eyes wide and fixed, and when he spoke, she didn’t respond. He shook her, then put his arms around her waist and pulled her close.
“Mom, Momma, it’s me, Trey. I’m here. I need you to talk to me now.”
He felt her shudder, then take a slow, deep breath. Relief washed over him when her arms snaked around his neck. She was back.
“Mom?”
She pointed toward the barn.
“He’s in there,” she said. “I saw him. Why would he do that? Oh, my God, why would he do that?”
He could hear Earl’s siren.
“I don’t know, but I need you to wait here. Since you’re the one who found the body, you can’t leave. The sheriff will want to talk to you.”
She blinked. “I need to go home. Tomorrow is your birthday. I wanted to bake—”
“Hey, Momma, you know I love you, right?”
She nodded.
“So don’t worry about a cake, okay?”
She clutched the front of his shirt in panic.
She almost looked like a stranger to him.
“Okay, Mom? You have to stay here, understand?”
“Yes. No cake. Stay here.” Then her face crumpled as a fresh set of tears began to roll. “Poor Dick. My heart hurts for him.”
Trey sighed. “I know, but here’s the deal. No need to hurt for him. He’s past concern. You need to be feeling sorry for Dallas. She’s the one who’s been left to suffer.”
And just like that, the mother in Betsy stepped in.
“Oh, Lord, Dallas. I didn’t even think.”
Trey turned around, wondering what had taken Earl so long, and how much of the crime scene his mother might have disturbed.
“Here comes Earl. We’re going down to the barn, and I need you to stay here, remember?”
“Yes, of course I remember,” she said shortly, and combed her hands through her hair. The hysteria was gone, and she was digging out a tissue to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.
“I need to ask you something,” he said.
“Ask.”
“Did you drive your car down to the barn?”
“No. I was heading toward the trees, looking for him, when I passed and saw him. I didn’t even go all the way in.”
“Okay, good,” Trey said, and then added, “Oh, don’t call anyone. I don’t want any locals out here in the middle of this investigation.”
“I won’t. I understand,” she said, and then slid off the hood, stumbled up to the house and sat down on the porch in the shade.
Trey frowned. He should have told her to go wait in the car, but it was too late now.
“Hey, Mom, don’t go in the house, just stay
on the porch. I don’t want anything else disturbed.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t think,” she said.
“It’s my fault. Just don’t go any farther,” he said.
She nodded.
Earl killed the siren and lights as he parked beside Trey, and then they started toward the barn.
“What took you so long?” Trey asked.
Earl looked embarrassed. “Gas gauge was sitting on empty. Had to stop and fuel up.”
Trey nodded, and then pointed to the area in front of the barn. “Look for fresh tire tracks or anything off,” he said.
Earl’s surprise showed. “I thought this was a suicide?”
“Until the investigation is over, nothing is certain. And when you hear sirens, run back to the house and stop the crew from the sheriff’s department from driving down here, too. They’ll want to see the crime scene intact.”
“Yes, sir,” Earl said, and followed Trey down to the barn.
Two
Trey’s gut knotted as he looked up at Dick Phillips’s body. Because of Dallas, he knew this man almost as well as he knew his own family. As his mother had said earlier, it hurt to see him this way.
He eyed the rope tied to the ladder leading up to the loft, then studied Dick’s clothing. The back of his shirt was very dirty, as was the back of his jeans, while the front of both was noticeably cleaner. It would take an autopsy to make sense of this.
The floor of the breezeway was concrete, so there weren’t going to be any footprints. If more than one person had been in here when this happened, it wouldn’t show up that way.
He walked all the way through the breezeway to the back of the barn and saw no sign of any footprints there, then walked back to the front, looking for signs of fresh tire tracks, but the ground was hard and graveled. Then he went into the egg room off to the right.
The shelves and tables were all in place; nothing appeared to have been moved. There was no sign of a fight or a disturbance of any kind. The deep sink where Dick cleaned the fresh eggs before sorting was clean, and the new cartons yet to be filled were all in place. There were at least a dozen large empty plastic boxes, about the same size as a child’s toy box, stored beneath the shelves, with a stack of lids to fit leaning up against the wall. There was nothing out of the ordinary but the body hanging from the rafter. Nothing made sense. He walked farther back into the cooler where Dick kept the eggs, and turned on the light.
There were shelves lined with cartons of eggs, each marked with the date they’d been gathered.
Earl came walking back from checking the perimeter.
“Find anything?” Trey asked.
“Well, if he killed himself, he fed the chickens before he did it. There’s still some fresh scratch out in the coop, and the eggs have been gathered. However, the cows weren’t fed. There’s no fresh hay or ground feed in the troughs.”
Trey frowned. “That’s weird. If he cared enough to feed the chickens before he took his own life, then he would have fed the cows, too.”
Earl shrugged. “Unless he counted on them grazing. The grass is a little short, but it’s still good.”
They began hearing sirens.
“Sheriff’s on the way,” Earl said, and took off toward the house on the run.
* * *
Betsy watched her son walking down to the barn, then mentally rejected the sight of what she’d seen earlier and looked off toward the mountains for solace. She had always felt a measure of peace in being surrounded by the ancient peaks, but today it wasn’t working. Her head was throbbing, her eyes red and swollen from crying, and she felt like she’d been kicked in the gut. She shoved her fingers through her hair, absently rubbing the five-inch scar on the side of her head. Her hair hid its presence, but when she was upset it throbbed with every beat of her heart, and today was no exception. The shock of seeing Dick’s body had created a feeling of déjà vu, which made no sense. She’d never seen a traumatic death before.
She stood abruptly, unable to sit still any longer, and began to pace the length of the porch and back, anxious for the sheriff to arrive so she could give her statement and move on.
When her phone began to ring, she glanced at the caller ID and then let it go to voice mail. It was her daughter, Trina, and she would never be able to hide anything from her.
She heard a phone begin to ring inside the house and felt like crying all over again. Someone wanted to talk to Dick. Would they weep when they found out, or would they feel nothing more than a passing moment of regret for a good man gone, then forget he’d ever existed?
When she began hearing sirens, she actually breathed a sigh of relief. All she wanted to do was go home and be grateful for what she had.
The sirens grew louder, and she saw the officer come running toward the house. She glanced down at her blouse, and when she saw how dirty she was, she began brushing at the dust and grass on her clothes, then wondered if her hair was just as bad. After she took it down and shook it out, and then combed it back with her fingers, she once again fastened it at the nape of her neck. She was as ready as she’d ever be.
* * *
Sheriff Dewey Osmond arrived on the scene with a knot in his gut. Dick Phillips was a fishing buddy, and he couldn’t believe this had happened. When he saw the police officer waving for him to stop, he braked and rolled down the window.
“What?” he asked.
“Chief Jakes figured you would want to park up around the house so as not to mess up any tracks or stuff you might find on-site.”
Osmond nodded, wheeled up beside the city patrol car and killed the engine. He saw the woman on the porch when he got out.
“Who’s she?” he asked.
“Betsy Jakes, Chief’s mother. She came to buy eggs and found the body in the barn.”
Dewey broke out in a sweat. He was going to have to go down there, and he was dreading it in the worst way. He decided the best way to begin this investigation was to take the witness’s statement.
Unfortunately, as fate would have it, she had next to nothing to say that was going to help them figure this out. He took down her information and said for her to call him if she remembered anything else.
“Am I free to go?” Betsy asked.
“Yes, ma’am, and thank you for your help.”
Betsy shuddered. “I would give anything to have never seen that,” she said. “Will you tell my son I’m leaving now?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and headed for the barn as Betsy got in her car and drove back to town for eggs.
* * *
Trey watched the sheriff’s team work the crime scene without comment. It wasn’t his case and he didn’t want to step on toes, but he had a personal request, and as soon as the sheriff stepped outside of the barn to take a call, Trey followed him. He approached after the sheriff disconnected.
“Hey, Dewey, I need a favor,” Trey said.
Dewey turned around, eyeing him curiously. Dick had talked about Trey Jakes like he was family. He wondered if Trey felt as gutted as he did.
“Like what?” Dewey asked.
“Notifying the next of kin. I’d like to do that, if you wouldn’t mind. Dick’s daughter, Dallas, and I go back a long way, and this is going to hit her hard.”
Ah, the daughter. So that’s where the connection came in.
“I don’t mind,” Dewey said. “That’s the worst part of the job, isn’t it?”
Trey nodded. “I know the autopsy and your investigation will all play into the cause of death, but how do you want me to state it to her? Apparent suicide?”
“Yes, that’s how I read it, but make sure she knows the final ruling will depend on the autopsy. The coroner is on the way to claim the body. He should be here shortly.”
“I’ll give her your contact information if she has further questions, okay?”
“Yes, and give her my condolences. Dick and I were good friends. I can’t believe he did this. I don’t want to believe he did this,” he muttered
.
“Are your men through inside the house?”
Osmond nodded. “There was no suicide note. The coffeepot was still on, and as usual, the house was spick-and-span.”
“Then it’s okay if I go inside?”
“Yeah, but why?” Osmond asked.
“I need to get a new contact number for Dallas. I haven’t talked to her in several years, not since she moved to Charleston.”
“Okay,” Osmond said, and then wiped sweat off his forehead and headed back into the barn as Trey went to the house.
Trey entered through the back door of the utility room and, out of habit, cleaned his feet on the throw rug at the threshold. The layout was exactly as he remembered, and he headed straight through into the kitchen, then into the living room to the landline by the recliner. He could picture Dick kicked back in that chair and talking on the phone with the television on mute. He’d seen him do it a hundred times. He wondered if Dallas would keep the place. It had been in the Phillips family for over a hundred and fifty years. It would be a shame for that heritage to be lost.
He sat down in the recliner to use Dick’s phone book and turned to the back page where special numbers were listed. Dallas’s number was the first one.
He started to call her from that phone, then added it to his cell phone instead and left the house. It didn’t seem right to call the daughter on her daddy’s phone and then tell her he was dead.
He got in his cruiser, reached for the radio and told Avery he would be back in town shortly, then put in a call to his mom to make sure she was okay. He drove away while waiting for her to answer, and when she did she sounded breathless.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Mom, I’m just checking in with you. How are you doing?”
“Honey, I’m fine. There’s a big knot in my stomach, and I wish to God I hadn’t been the one to find him, but it happened. It’s over. I’ll be sad for him and life will go on. I’m on my way home now. I went back to town to get eggs.”
“Okay, and don’t feel bad for freaking out. It rattled me, too, and don’t think it didn’t. I thought a lot of Dick, and I’m having a really hard time believing this happened.”
“Me, too,” Betsy said. “It’s unlike the man I thought I knew. Look, I haven’t said a word to anyone, and I’m not going to, but has anyone notified Dallas yet?”
