by A. E. Howe
An old Ford sedan was parked up close to the trailer. “Shine the light in there.” The interior had fast food effluvium scattered over the seats and the floorboards. The bags and cups weren’t very old. “Is this Gibson’s?”
“I guess. But I don’t really know.”
We walked around the trailer. At the back door, Cara produced the keys. I pulled some of the crime scene tape off and we went in. An odor of stale beer and old pot smoke permeated the air.
“You can turn the light on. Cyril isn’t going to tell the deputies anything. He’s one of Dad’s oldest friends. When I told him that they were holding Dad, he wanted to get a gang together to go break him out.”
The light was dim and showed a mess eerily similar to Tyler’s place. They were certainly birds of a feather. A few drawers and cabinets were open. It was hard to tell what was the result of Gibson’s bachelor lifestyle and what had been left a mess by the crime scene techs. I rummaged around the clutter. There weren’t many personal items. A couple of suitcases worth of clothes, some car and gun magazines, boots and some tools.
“Is this the co-op’s?” I asked, looking at a professional-quality tool box, tools and tool belt.
“I doubt it. Dad makes sure that the co-op’s stuff goes back in the shop.”
“The shop?”
“That’s what everyone calls it. The big metal building behind our house. That’s where all the tools and supplies are kept. There’s even a place where you can work on a car. A lot of the folks who stop here need some car repairs to get back on the road.”
“Gibson worked around here too? Like Timberlane?” I still felt bad that I was hiding the fact we knew his name wasn’t Timberlane, but that information could be useful when we found a suspect. And even though I refused to think of Cara’s dad as a suspect, I couldn’t just go around giving out information on the case.
“Dad said he did a little bit around here. Helped out Timberlane some, but he mostly got odd jobs doing construction work. Dad said Gibson liked doing… something… framing, that’s it. Gibson liked to do the framing on houses.”
I looked at the tools and they were mostly what you would expect from someone working with wood. Opening the toolbox, there was a professional-grade drill, nails, a hammer, screws, a large folding knife and a partially used roll of duct tape. The duct tape made me think of the Tyler/Timberlane murder. His hands had been bound by duct tape. Was it possible that Gibson murdered Tyler? That could make some sense. They knew each other well enough that Gibson could have had a motive.
Could the duct tape around Tyler’s wrists have come from this roll? Mind you, there is a roll of duct tape in just about every house in America, and it’s often used by the big three—rapists, murderers and kidnappers—so there was little reason to think that there was a connection between this roll and what was used in our murder. But I had to check. I couldn’t take it now. I’d have to wait until I came back here with Chavez or one of his men. But I was definitely going to send it to our lab to compare it with the tape taken off of Tyler.
I didn’t see anything else of interest in the house. Again my mind tried out the idea of Gibson as Tyler’s murderer. Of course, that begged the question of who killed Gibson. The answer to that question was probably not the ghost of Tyler. It would require more thought and didn’t solve the problem that we still needed a suspect to take Henry’s place in jail.
“Is this a good time to talk to Cyril?” I asked as we walked away from Gibson’s trailer.
“He’ll be glad to talk to you if he knows that you’re trying to get Dad out of jail.”
As we headed toward Cyril’s house my phone rang. It was Mrs. Perkins from the motel.
“Mauser is barking and whining,” she said flatly.
“I’m really sorry, ma’am. I’ll be done here shortly and I’ll get back as soon as I can.”
“He sounds very unhappy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll go in and check on him. I could read him a bedtime story.” She said this in a completely serious voice.
“I guess. If you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. It’s the poor boy’s first night in a strange room. I’ll see about him. You get back when you can.”
“Okay, thanks.” Mauser had that effect on people. They’d bend over backwards to make excuses for him and go out of their way to make life easy on him. If I only had half his charm, my life would be a lot easier, I thought.
Chapter Fourteen
Cyril Riggs looked like the world’s oldest hippy. After Cara introduced me, Riggs invited us into his small house. He might have been a hippy, but from the looks of his house he was on the OCD spectrum. It was minimalist and clean. The few art pieces around the room were Oriental.
He pointed us to some cushions neatly arranged in the middle of the floor.
“We can stand.”
“No, please,” he insisted. I struggled to get to the ground and sit on the pillows with my legs crossed and watched as he seemed to magically lower himself to a lotus position. His shoulder-length hair and beard were grey with streaks of a darker color, a mere memory of his original hair. He smiled at us with a calm demeanor.
“I need to know everything you can tell me about the men who were killed, Timberlane and Gibson.”
“They were bad news.” He looked at Cara, “I’m sorry, but I told your father that they were both rotten. But he was always willing to give people a chance. I should have just kicked their asses and booted them down the highway.”
He said this last so calmly that it took me a minute to register what he’d said. I took a better look at him. He was probably in his seventies, but his arms were toned and the muscles looked like they got regular workouts. Be careful judging books, I told myself.
“How did you know they were bad?” I asked him.
“Because I’ve been rotten myself. Or at least I spent too much time in my youth around people who were no good. You know, I met Charles Manson before the murders? I even went out to the Spahn Ranch a couple of times when the Manson family was there. Later I spent a couple years with some pretty ugly biker gangs. These guys were dangerous.”
“Was there anything specific?” I asked.
“If they weren’t ogling the women, the two of them always had their heads together plotting something. I tried to keep an eye on them. Figured they’d steal anything that wasn’t tied down. Not that most of us keep anything that could easily be turned into cash. Mostly it was the way they treated women. I warned them once about Terri. She was collecting wood and stuff for her art projects and I caught them watching her. Told them to keep their eyes on something else.”
“How’d they take that?”
“We’d already had a couple of run-ins. They tried to intimidate me. Gave me the squint eye.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. You can’t intimidate someone who isn’t afraid of you. Both of them were cowards at heart. I just had to make sure they didn’t get the drop on me. I was glad when Henry finally read Timberlane the riot act and chased him off.”
“You said they gave a woman named Terri a hard time?”
“I’m not sure if she noticed or not. I just caught them watching her. It was just a couple days after that that Henry sent Timberlane packing.”
I turned to Cara. “I’d like to talk to Terri.”
“She’s in Europe taking some art classes or something. But her parents are here. They were in a car accident not too long ago and are staying here while her father’s been in and out of Shands for treatment,” Cara said.
I turned back to Cyril. “You ever see anyone else hanging out with Timberlane and Gibson?”
“Some of the guys from the community went over when they first showed up, but most of them drifted off eventually. Too much crazy. I saw a couple men that I didn’t recognize. I think I saw one guy several different times. A scraggly-looking fellow. He fit in with those two. Looked more like he should be hanging out in the ya
rd at Raiford.”
“Hair, height?”
“Dirty red hair, receding in front. Not too tall. Shorter than me. I’m 5’11”. I think he was Gibson’s friend ’cause I saw them together a couple times without Timberlane. We’d already established the fact that we weren’t going to be friends, so they didn’t exactly introduce me to him.”
“What kind of car?”
“That I remember. Real old little red pickup. Said Datsun on the tailgate. Had some Bondo spots on it like he was fixing it up.”
We talked for a little longer before Cara and I left. Walking around the circle, Cara pointed out who lived in each of the houses.
“How old are most of the folks here?”
“The owners are mostly Mom and Dad’s age. A few of them are younger. But the folks who are passing through, some of them are old and a lot are young. So you think someone from here killed both of them?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s safe to say the two killings are related since they were both hung, albeit in different ways. The knots looked similar to me, but I’ll have the state guys compare them. I think it’s safe to say that a man did it.”
“You don’t think a woman could have killed them?” Her voice held a bit of a challenge.
“Not that. Both of the victims could have been made to do most of the work themselves if the killer had a weapon to threaten them with. No, I was thinking about the phone calls that your father got.”
“Good point. I guess you are a good detective,” she said, bumping into me playfully.
“We’ll get your dad out.”
“I know you will.”
When we got back to her parents’ house she grabbed a map of the co-op from her father’s office and wrote in the names of the residents.
“Which one is Ellie’s family?” She pointed to one and put a check by it.
“Okay, go ahead and draw a circle around the names of the folks under the age of sixty. Not that it couldn’t be someone older, but we want to narrow the field a little. These guys had a thing for women, so let’s put a check mark next to women under the age of forty-five. Again, not that older women don’t get raped, but we’ll start off playing the odds.” Cara marked up the map as I talked.
“Put a mark next to Terri’s house. I want to ask her parents if she ever said anything to them about Gibson or Timberlane bothering her.” She marked a house and wrote Terri Andrews next to it.
“That’s the best that I can do from memory. I’ll ask Teddy tomorrow. He runs the co-op’s board. Dad and he have butted heads a few times,” she said, looking at her handiwork.
“Which brings us to another aspect of the crimes. Can you think of anyone who has a grudge against your father?”
“Not really. Dad’s as stubborn as a mule, and it’s not unusual for him to have contests of will with people. Friends and family mostly, but he never lets it get out of hand. I’ve seen him come home and rant for an hour and then he calls the person he disagreed with and apologizes. Even when he’s right.”
“The argument with Timberlane?”
“That’s different. If he saw Timberlane hurt someone… Dad wouldn’t stand for someone being hurt. The only other time I’ve seen him in real trouble was about ten years ago. We were helping someone move out of an apartment complex in town. I was upstairs getting some boxes when I heard a guy screaming. I came running out and found Dad holding a puppy. There was a big guy, bigger than Dad, lying in the parking lot cradling his head and whining. Cops showed up about fifteen minutes later. Dad had seen the guy kick the puppy, so he grabbed the guy by his shirt and threw him down on his back. Cops came and one of them took the puppy to a vet. Turned out he’d broken three of the poor thing’s ribs. Cops gave the guy a choice: first-degree felony animal abuse, and my dad gets arrested for assault, or everyone just walks away. Not surprisingly, he chose to walk away.”
“So you think your dad could have hurt Timberlane?”
“The day Dad caught him grabbing Ellie, yes. In fact, I’m surprised that Dad didn’t do more. But I don’t see him doing anything in cold blood.”
She walked me out to the van and we held hands for a few minutes. Finally we said our goodnights with a small kiss and parted.
The light was on in my motel room as I approached the door. No sound came from inside so I assumed that Mauser had finally gone to sleep. When I opened the door I was surprised to see Mrs. Perkins asleep in a chair next to the bed while Mauser was snoring with his head on a pillow. I closed the door loudly and both of them woke up, looking at me with dopey half-asleep looks on their faces.
“Oh, I must have dozed off reading.” Mrs. Perkins raised the book in her lap to show me a Nancy Drew title. Mauser crawled across the bed to the foot and yawned, wide and long.
“I really appreciate you looking after him.” I meant every word.
“He’s such a sweet boy,” she said fondly. Mauser rolled over and stretched out his legs.
I picked up his leash and harness. He jumped off the bed, ready for his late night “walkies.” Mrs. Perkins waved as she headed back to her place. There was a small cottage on the other side of the main building that I assumed was her residence.
I called Chavez early the next morning. “I’d like to search the Gibson trailer for anything that might relate to the Tyler murder,” I said, trying to sound as business-like as possible. “And interview some of the locals.”
“Our crime scene people got what they needed from the trailer. I’ll meet you out there and you can take what you need. I’ll just make a note of it,” Chavez told me. I’d hoped that he’d let me go in on my own, but I could have figured that wasn’t going to happen.
The day was going to be cool and cloudy so I packed Mauser a bag for the day and loaded him into the van. He could help me interview people. Actually, I was learning that having Mauser along was a good way to get someone to let down their guard.
I met Chavez at the trailer and pretended that I’d hadn’t already been there once. I looked through the place again, finding the duct tape in due course.
“We looked at that, but it wasn’t even close to what was used on our victim. Different brand.”
“May not match ours either,” I said, bagging it up. “Worth checking though.”
Locking up the trailer, Chavez asked me who I wanted to interview. I showed him the map that Cara had made up the night before and explained the various marks. “I asked Laursen’s daughter to mark this up for me.”
He looked at the map. “I had deputies talk to these folks yesterday, right after we identified the body.” He pointed to several houses that were closest to Gibson’s, including Cyril Riggs’s. Which was good because I didn’t want to run the risk of Riggs letting on that I’d been there the night before.
We agreed we’d do in-depth interviews with five of the residents today while he had deputies go door to door with the rest, just to make sure that we didn’t miss anything. The five we’d picked included Ellie’s family; they had to be considered prime suspects. If she told her parents about Tyler grabbing her, then maybe they were angry enough to take out their revenge on him. It seemed a stretch, but it had to be considered. We’d also talk with Terri’s folks.
I offered to drive and Chavez accepted before he realized that Mauser would be joining us. He got into the passenger seat and Mauser, wagging his tail excitedly, stuck his face into the front of the van to greet him. I could tell that Chavez was thinking seriously about getting back out when he saw the drool hanging off of Mauser’s flews.
I took a few minutes to bring Chavez up to speed on what we had on the Tyler murder. I handed him my iPad to review the crime scene photos. He scanned them, paying particular attention to the rope and knots used.
“Very likely it’s the same person, or someone who had a lot of knowledge about the first hanging.” He shrugged and handed me back the iPad.
The first house we came to was a log home, rustic but very nicely built. The door was answered by a woman i
n her late thirties.
“Hello,” she said brightly, as though she’d never met a person she didn’t like. Kay Landry was tall and blond, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and wearing a wide smile. She was very attractive in a girl-next-door sort of way. Chavez introduced us. Our profession and purpose for being there got a slight downturn of the lips, but the smile quickly returned.
“I heard about that. The co-op has a very well developed grapevine. It’s horrible. I didn’t know the man very well, but I’d seen him around. In fact, he’d done some work for my husband.”
“Here?” I asked.
“No, John has a small construction company. They build greenhouses and he sometimes needs a few extra hands on a job site.”
“Is your husband at home?” Chavez asked.
“No, he pretty much works six days a week unless the weather won’t let him.” Chavez and I both made a note to talk to the husband first chance we got.
“What interactions did you have with Mr. Gibson?” Chavez was watching her carefully as he asked this question, but there was no noticeable reaction.
“None really. My husband introduced him at one of the co-op’s get-togethers. And I saw him around a few times. That was it.”
“Did you ever feel like he was being inappropriate?” I asked.
“I don’t know what… Oh, I see. No. Nothing like that.” She seemed very innocent.
“Did you know a fellow by the name of Doug Timberlane?” I followed up.
Mrs. Landry seemed to think for a moment. “Maybe, there was a guy that did odd jobs for a while. I think that might have been his name. He did some work on the Davis’s house. They had some dry rot. They’re pretty old and the co-op helps take care of their house. I went over there one day with some figs for them, and he was working on their porch.” She said this slowly, as though she was trying to be certain of her memory.
“Anything you can remember about that meeting?”
“Why are you asking about him?” she asked back. It was the first time that she’d seemed reluctant to answer a question.
“He’s part of the inquiry into Mr. Gibson’s death,” I said vaguely, not wanting to color her answer by letting her know that he was dead too.
