Black Bird

by Greg Enslen

  Just as she figured. “Yeah, Joyce, I know that can happen - I’ve been there, remember? Will the press be allowed in the town meeting?”

  “Well, most of the media has already left town after that press conference. And that was before Foreman and Thatcher turned up dead. All of the TV people are gone, and there are only like two or three print journalists left. One of them is a lady from Pittsburgh who’s been digging around, hard. I know Brown loves attention, but I don’t think he likes the kind of attention he’s getting from her. The other media outlets might send people up for the thing on Saturday or Sunday, but most of the media headed to Virginia Beach to cover the hurricane evacuation.”

  Norma was thinking that an anonymous tip to the right person could make Brown’s day pretty bad, but she could never betray Joyce’s trust like that. Of course, sometimes the ends justify the means...

  “Mmmm. What about the Stevens girl?” Norma asked.

  “Oh, that’s a bad one. Strangulation, multiple sexual assaults, both pre- and post-mortem, and the missing parts...”

  Norma gripped the pay phone a little tighter, feeling her angry stomach clench up like someone had just punched her. “What?”

  “Yeah, the thumb on the right hand was missing, the hand she was pointing with. It had been propped up on the steering wheel like it was pointing at something, and the first people on the scene didn’t even noticed it was missing. The tongue had been removed and placed inside her left hand, which was curled up into a fist in her lap. The scene was way too gruesome to make it into the paper, but even some of the cops were shocked at the brutality of it, Norma. And they say that Simon Jeffers, the off-duty fireman that found her, he’s started counseling.”

  Murders in Liberty. And a missing finger.

  Norma found her voice after some silence. “Did they find it...at the crime scene?”

  “Nope, gone.”

  Her mind raced with the possibilities. It all sounded so familiar, so much like before. Of course it was far too much of a stretch, but in those other two murders, back 18 years ago, there had been missing body parts. And Norma remembered Sheriff Beaumont mentioning the fact that murders where parts of the victim were taken were supposed to be pretty rare. And the guy had killed twice, and twice taken pieces of his victims. And now there was someone in Liberty, someone who had killed a young girl and taken...

  No, it was impossible.

  “Norma, you there?”

  She cleared her throat. “Yeah, Joyce, I’m here. I was just thinking about that poor girl, and what her last hours must’ve been like.” She was quiet for a moment, then continued. “Thatcher and Foreman, were they...missing anything?”

  Joyce was quiet, too, and after a long moment, spoke again. “Yeah. I really can’t get into it, because that information is being held really close. But that’s what’s sending everybody in the Department into a tizzy. Brown is freaking out, thinking we’ve got some kind of serial killer on the loose in town, and Lieutenant Blake is getting fidgety, like he’s wanting to take over. The others victims were...not all there, either. That’s as much as I can say, Norma.”

  Norma nodded, even though Joyce couldn’t see it. “What about the crime scene? Do they have deputies over there, looking around still?”

  Joyce answered suspiciously. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

  Her stomach wrenched suddenly, but she ignored it. “I want to see it. I want to see where they died. Joyce, I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.”

  Nothing for a little while, and then Joyce came back. “Look, Norma, I’m not feeling well at all. What do you want me to do, get up and let you into a sealed crime scene so you can poke around? And what do you expect to find, anyway?”

  “I don’t know, but I know something is going on here, and I think looking at the scene might help.”

  “Norma, you’re not a cop anymore! You drive a bus, for Christ’s sake! What could you contribute to the investigation that the three dozen other cops in town, including me, could not?” Norma could hear the anger in her voice, and probably some frustration. No one wanted to be a cop in a town where homicides were a daily occurrence.

  “Joyce, I’ve been there before; I’ve investigated homicides, and I know what to look for. And besides, you just said that Brown has no idea what he’s doing. I was on those cases with Sheriff Beaumont, and I helped him investigate and we almost caught the guy. I think I could help.” She kept her crazier notions to herself, offering only her long-unused investigation expertise. To tell Joyce what she was really thinking would’ve just made the sick woman hang up and go back to bed...

  Joyce was quiet, and then Norma heard rustling of sheets and blankets. “Okay, but this better not take long, okay? I am sick and don’t feel like doing this. Meet me over there in ten minutes, and I’ll get you in. And don’t park too close.”

  Norma thanked her, but Joyce was already gone.

  Norma’s mind started trying to discount the utterly crazy theory she’d come up with, but so far she wasn’t having much luck. But Jasper Fines, or whoever he had been, was most likely dead now, dead for many years. Most criminals had a tendency to end up dead in a gutter somewhere, so the chances that a killer was still out there running around loose were pretty slim.

  And even if he was alive and not in jail, why would he come back here, especially after so many years? What possible motivation could he have?

  No, it was just not possible. People died all the time, and people were killed all the time, though not here in Liberty. There were crazy people out there roaming the country, and one of them had killed in Liberty. Maybe the town was just having a twenty-year string of bad luck. Two different killers could have the same M.O., or maybe Jasper Fines had ended up in prison somewhere and related his story to the wrong set of ears, and the listener had come back to try his luck here, too.

  Besides, it didn’t make any sense for Jasper Fines to return now, after so long. No sense at all. Norma got her stuff together, went out to her car and climbed in, heading over to the Beaumont’s old house. She hadn’t been there in a long time, but the Sheriff had had her over a couple of times, including once for the baby shower. That was only a couple of weeks before the man had been killed, and Norma hadn’t been back since.

  She was sure that the crime scene had been gone over carefully, and the chances of her finding anything important were slim and none, but she wanted to do something to help.

  And for the first time in a long time, the pain in her stomach dulled to the point where she could not feel it. But she did not notice - her mind was far too busy, pondering other things. Pondering other courses of action, other memories from the past. Other possibilities.

  David was driving, but it was early morning and the sun was in his eyes, blinding him. He was cranky and didn’t feel good - the soda from this morning’s McDonalds breakfast wasn’t sitting well, and that combined with the hundred other things going through his mind made for a bad morning. The Rush was cranked, helping him concentrate. It was pounding in his head, but he could hardly hear it.

  He was driving as fast as he could, trying to get back quickly, but that also made him very nervous because he expected to be pulled over at any moment. The cops had to be around here somewhere, and if they saw an out-of-state car speeding along like his was, he didn’t think they would even hesitate to pull him over.

  Bethany. He couldn’t get the picture out of his head of her going down to his Aunt’s house to identify... her body. The cops couldn’t locate him, she had told David on the phone last night, so they had collected the only person they could think of to quickly identify the body. They needed to have it identified quickly because that had to be done before they could do an autopsy and determine cause of death. And since the body would have to go to Fredericksburg for autopsy, they wanted to identity verified before the body left town.

  But David couldn’t get over the pictures in his head, trying to figure out what had happened. Abe dead, but had he fallen? B
ethany hadn’t known, but the chances of his falling off of the balcony were pretty slim - it was a high railing and hard to get over.

  And his Aunt, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning? What had happened to her - had she gotten drunk and fallen asleep in the car, starting it up but forgetting to open the garage door? She didn’t even drive that much anymore - David knew that car could sit for up to a week in that garage and never go anywhere. And what were the chances of that strange series of events occurring and leading to her death? He didn’t know. He didn’t know a lot of things, like what Bethany had meant by the burns she had noticed around his Aunt’s wrists. Bethany had wanted to know if Aunt Gloria had ever tried to kill herself, ever cut her wrists or anything like that. What had that meant? Was it important?

  The driving was starting to get to him, and he pulled off the road for a stop in western Indiana, near some town called Evansville. The roads were busy for some reason, or maybe they just seemed busier because he was so tired. The parking lot at McDonalds was full, but he managed to find a spot and locked his doors and lay out on his front seat to sleep for a couple of hours. Just a little sleep, he told himself, and then he’d grab a big soda and be back on the road.

  Norma pulled her car to a stop a little ways down the street from the Thatcher house, parking on the opposite side of the street. It was just sprinkling now, but the weather report this morning had said that it would start to rain heavily by Friday morning and then really get bad by Saturday. The Hurricane had slowed to a crawl as soon as it had hit land this morning somewhere in North Carolina, and now the experts thought it would take several days for the storm to move offshore. That meant that the storm would pull moisture up out of the Atlantic and dump it on the eastern shore states from New York to South Georgia - the storm was so big! - and that would make for days and days of rain. And flooding, most likely, and maybe even enough problems to close school down for a couple days next week.

  Joyce’s little green car was already out in front, and Norma could see through the rain-streaked window the woman on the front lawn of the house, talking to a couple of uniformed deputies as they leaned on their patrol car. They were wearing bright orange raincoats and were very easy to see, even from halfway down the block. She was chatting with them and raising her hands every minute or two, and Norma noticed that Joyce was wiping her nose with a tissue a lot.

  After a few minutes, the two uniforms climbed into their cruiser and pulled out, driving past Norma’s car as they left the neighborhood. She ducked down as they passed, and after they were gone she moved her car a little closer and got out, pulling her coat close around her, and walked quickly over to where Joyce stood, waiting.

  “They’ve gone to get coffee, so you’ve got about ten minutes.” Joyce’s voice was low and nasally, and Norma saw that she looked a lot sicker than she sounded, suddenly feeling a little guilty for dragging her friend out of bed.

  Norma leaned in a little closer. “Okay. You sure you want to do this?” The question was a simple one with a difficult answer. Joyce was risking her career on this, and a lesser person might have backed out. It went without saying that bringing a civilian to a crime scene without the knowledge of or approval from the case officer was enough for someone to get fired. But the Sheriff’s Department was getting nowhere fast on these cases, and if Norma could find any answers, Joyce would help her.

  And she loved the idea of Norma finding something that the others could not, and so the risk was worth it. “Yeah, I’m cool with this. Let’s get inside before someone sees us.”

  The door was barred by yellow POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS tape, and Norma held it up and out of the way for Joyce to step in and unlock the door. She’d gotten the key from one of the uniforms, telling him she had to use the restroom before sending him and his partner off for coffee and doughnuts.

  The cause of death for Abe Foreman was immediately apparent as soon as anyone walked into the living room - massive blood loss. There was a huge puddle of the dried stuff all around the remains of the coffee table, and spatters and drops of it decorated the walls and couch and the numerous stacks of brown boxes. Norma glanced up at the balcony and saw that it was a fairly high railing, very hard to accidentally fall over. That, in her mind, went a long way towards suggesting foul play.

  Joyce cleared her throat. “The garage is out here.” She led Norma out through the kitchen past a small dining area to a door that led out to a small garage. When they stepped out into the garage, Norma imagined that she could smell the gas, even though carbon monoxide was such a deadly killer partly because of its odorless and tasteless nature. The car was unlocked and didn’t seem to show anything out of the ordinary except for the garden hose jammed into the tailpipe, secured with rags, and the other end of the hose caught in the slightly-lowered window of the door behind the passenger seat. The rain pounded on the roof of the garage above their heads, sounding deep and hollow.

  Joyce’s voice came from behind Norma as she looked at the car. “The woman was in the front seat. Her hands and feet had been bound and tied together, so it was definitely a homicide. But if the guy inside killed her, was his death just an accident? The scenario they’re working with now is this: Foreman kills the woman but tries to make it look like suicide. Something goes wrong and he freaks out, goes back inside and searches her room, looking for something. Comes out to go downstairs and trips and falls over the railing.” Joyce saw the look on Norma’s face and nodded. “Yeah, I know. Pretty wild.”

  “Sounds like Jes Brown is reaching,” Norma said, continuing to look around. He had never been a very good cop, and she had, for a long time, blamed him for Beaumont’s death. He was impulsive and not very bright, and had been ever since she had known him on the force 18 years ago. And he was manipulative and opportunistic, always looking for the angle that could help him - that was the main reason he had managed to weasel his way into the office in the first place. And though he wasn’t very good at doing his job, he was very good at keeping it. But years ago she had realized that the blame for Beaumont’s death was solely hers, and Jasper Fines’. She should’ve gotten up off the wet pavement that night and stopped him. Even if the guy had killed her, at least she could’ve gotten a shot or two off at him. And maybe, in the process, could’ve saved Beaumont’s life.

  They headed back inside and ended up back in the living room, with its broken table and the dried blood, seemingly everywhere.

  Joyce spoke up, watching Norma’s eyes take in the room and its contents. “I really did have to use the restroom. Back in a second.”

  Norma nodded and wandered around the other side of the table. There were several sealed boxes sitting around in short stacks, but on the floor next to one of the chairs was an open box filled with papers and letters. She glanced at the side of the box and was surprised to find the box was marked full of Beaumont’s’ case files. What were they doing here?

  Norma squatted down next to the box and flipped through the top few files, but suddenly realized that what she was looking for was right on top. The file on the case that killed Beaumont was sitting right up on top, a few spots of blood dried on the cover. The box must’ve been open when Abe Foreman fell.

  She heard the toilet flush and a door open, and in one swift and impulsive moment picked the thick file up from the box and stuffed it into her jacket. She turned just in time to see Joyce come around the corner, and something else caught Norma’s attention.

  “Find something?” Joyce asked, pulling her jacket on.

  Yeah, but nothing I can tell you about. Not nice to remove crime scene evidence, even if no one else would be interested in it. “That picture frame. See it?”

  Joyce stepped around in front of the fireplace, something you could not see when you came into the house - you had to move down into the living room proper and turn around to look at the fireplace and the mantle above it. “Yeah. Who leaves an empty frame on a mantle like that?”

  Norma shrugged, careful to hold the file insid
e her jacket. “Don’t know. Looks like she was packing to move, so maybe she had already boxed the picture but left the frame. Strange, though. There are other pictures there, still in their frames.” They were all pictures of Beaumont and Grace and her sister Gloria, and they looked like they had been sitting there in the same place for the past twenty years. They looked so happy, and Norma’s stomach rolled over nauseatingly. She noticed that there were no pictures of the boy, which was strange, unless they had already been boxed up. So why not box the rest at the same time?

  “So who else would take it?” Joyce asked.

  Norma shrugged as she walked past Joyce and pulled the front door open, stepping out into the rain.

  “Maybe the real killer.”

  Jack slept in his room until around 10 a.m. and then got up, showered, and went out for a nice breakfast at Denny’s. He read the paper and enjoyed his Super Slam and coffee and wondered what he should do next.

  The town was restless, as far as he could tell. The paper was full of information on the one homicide and two other mysterious deaths that had occurred in Liberty over the past three days. The Sheriff’s office was ‘investigating’ the cases ‘with assistance from State Police officials’, and to Jack that sounded like they weren’t really getting anywhere. But the woman was dead and surely the kid knew about it by now. Hopefully, that meant he was on his way back.