Char-Chapter Two

      Sheriff Francine Hart saw the coroner heading out the door of the Davis farmhouse as she got to the head of the basement stairs.  “Weren’t going to leave without saying goodbye, were you?”

       “I thought you were tied up with the questioning.  Preliminary report’s done.  I left a copy for you.  I’ll send you the details after the autopsy.”

       “I like hearing things straight from the horse’s mouth.  Let’s go upstairs and walk through what happened.”

       The coroner looked at his watch, shrugged and walked upstairs to the bedroom with her.  “The deceased is tentatively identified as Bruce Golden, twenty-six years old, six-feet two-inches tall, weighed two hundred and sixty pounds.  He was carrying a wallet.  Money and credit cards appear to be intact.”

       “So what happened?”

       “This is all tentative.  It may change with the autopsy.”  The coroner pointed to a bookcase by the door.  “The deceased was standing over here.  He was facing his assailant.  His injuries are consistent with the murder weapon being the million candlepower flashlight we found downstairs.  He partially blocked one of the hits, almost certainly the first one.  He took it on his left arm, but the momentum carried the flashlight into his head.  Second hit was probably to the Adam’s apple with the flat of a hand.  Caused quite a bit of damage.  Third hit caught him in the side of his head and probably killed him instantly.”

       The sheriff looked at the bookcase, then at the body.  “Let’s see if I can follow that little bit of Sherlocking.  Body had two wounds on the head from getting hit with the light.  One was a lot more damaging than the other.  There was a wound from the light on his arm.  Blood on the bookcase says it happened over here.  Right so far?”

       “Yep.”

       “How did he get over by the bed?”

       “Assailant picked him up and put him down.  Couldn’t have dragged him.  No drag marks and not enough blood.”

       “Why do that?”

       “There’s a rug there.  Less chance of a thump.”

       “Bruce would have weighed a good 260 pounds.  Fireman’s carry?”

       “Nope.  Not enough blood.  Assailant picked him up and shifted him.  You’re looking for a very strong man.”

       “Or woman.”

       “Or a woman Olympic-class weight-lifter.”

       The sheriff grinned.  “Sexist.  A semi-pro football player would be a pretty strong guy, wouldn’t he?  Anything else?”

       “Time of death was around midnight—give or take enough time to make it pretty much useless in ruling people in or out in this case.  Rest is in the report.”

       The sheriff walked the coroner out, then went down to the main area of the basement and took over from the deputy questioning Erik Davis.  After a couple of minutes she yawned.  The deputy taking notes beside her tried hard but unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn of his own.  Sheriff Hart studied the young man sitting across the desk from her in the improvised interview room she had set up in the basement of the Davis farmhouse.  His driver’s license put Erik Davis at twenty-six years old.  He looked quite a bit older and somehow weather-beaten, though Sheriff Hart didn’t see any gray in his blonde hair nor fat on his wiry 6-foot frame.  He looked tired and shaken. The side of his head was swelling.

       The sheriff looked at her notes.  “So the four of you were playing paintball.  How do your cows like it when you do that?”

       “They don’t.  We keep them in the barn when we play.”

       “Do you play paintball out here often?”

       “Not much anymore.  I’ve been too busy since Mom and Dad died.  Actually, this is the first time Ken has been up here.”

       The sheriff looked at her notes again.  “I was wondering about that.  You and your cousin—Rick Blair is it?”

       “Yes.”

       “You two and the deceased have an apartment together in town, but I’m not sure where Ken List fits in.”

       “It was Bruce’s idea to bring him up here.  Rick and Ken knew each other in high school and didn’t particularly like each other.  Bruce knew them both and I guess he figured they’d get to be friends if they got to know each other.”

       The sheriff nodded.  “How badly did they not like each other?”

       Erik said, “Not seriously—just high school stuff.  Ken was the star running back and Rick didn’t give him the worship he thought he deserved.”

       “Nothing more recent?”

       “Nothing serious.  Ken’s dating the girl Rick would like to be dating, but Rick’s pretty laid back about things like that.”

       “What’s the girl’s name?”

       “Dawn Regan.”

       The sheriff yawned again as she looked at her notes, then shook her head.  “That’s the difference between twenty-seven and thirty-something.”

       “What?”

       “Just thinking out loud.  Ten years ago I would have still been up at one o’clock in the morning,” Sheriff Hart said.  “Now you didn’t try to follow the person you saw jump down from the balcony?”

       “No.  I think I passed out shortly after that.  He hit me with the flashlight just before he ran, and I fell down the stairs.”

       The sheriff nodded.  “You said ‘he hit me with a flashlight.’  Did you see this person well enough to identify them?”

       “No.”

       “Well enough to know it was a man?”

       “Not really.”

       “Why not?  Why couldn’t you see well enough to identify him or her?”

       “He—they flashed one of those big car-headlight flashlights in my eyes.”

       ”And then shot you with a paintball.”  The sheriff looked at Erik’s shirt.  “Looks like they hit you right where your heart is.  Why did they do that?”

       “I don’t know.”

       The sheriff looked at her notes.  “You’re a farmer and a mechanic.  You look like you’re a pretty strong guy.  Any reason you couldn’t kill somebody by hitting them over the head with a big flashlight?”

       Erik said, “I didn’t.  I don’t have anything physically wrong with me, if that’s what you’re asking.”

       “Ever see the woman that was here before?”

       “No.”

       “Any idea how she got out here or what she was doing on your farm?”

       Erik shrugged.  “I’m figuring she was some kind of live-off- the-land survivalist, but that’s just a guess.”

       “Was she Indian?”

       “I don’t think so.  If anything, she looked like she might have had a little Australian Aborigine in her, but her skin was lighter than mine.”

       The sheriff looked at her notes again.  “Hair dyed red.  Shaved up the sides.  Hair thick and long at the top.  Bigger-than-life tattoo of a wolf on her chest.  Wouldn’t be too out of place in Chicago, but people would notice her out here in the sticks.  Notice anything else about her?”

       “Yeah.  She moved wrong.”

       “Your cousin said that too.  He couldn’t explain it though.”

       “Neither can I.  She didn’t walk right and she didn’t run right either.”

       “Was she hurt?”

       “Yes, but it didn’t slow her down.  Moved fast.”

       The sheriff shrugged.  “Did the deceased have anybody special female-wise?”

       “This week?”  Erik asked.  “Bruce had a problem.  He would get into relationships and then he’d get scared and want to get out, but he hated conflict, so he’d just not be available.  Eventually the girl would get the message.”

       “Sounds like a jewel of a guy.  Any of these girls mad enough to kill him?”

       “Not that I know of.”

       The sheriff nodded.  “Fair enough.  Now you told one of the deputies that some items were missing from the room upstairs.  A laptop computer, paintball guns, night vision goggles, and a blanket.  Anything else?”

       “Not that I noticed.”

       “If you notice anything else let us know,” Sheriff Hart said.  “So somebody jumped off of your balcony and just kept running.  How high would you say that balcony is?”

       “Eight feet.  Maybe a little more.  Ken is an athlete.  He could probably do it.”

       “Maybe.  How heavy was this woman you found by the river?”

       Erik shrugged.  “A lot heavier than she looked.  Maybe a hundred and fifty pounds.  Maybe more.”

       “So you think Ken List jumped eight feet down from your balcony carrying an unconscious 150 pound woman, plus a laptop, plus the other missing things and just ran on like nothing happened?  I can’t quite picture him being able to do that. Can you?”

       Erik shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Whoever I saw was carrying something big, too big to be a laptop.”

       “Big enough to be a person?”

       “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

       “And Ken was in the house when you woke up.  Do you have any reason to believe he left the house at any time?”

       “No, but the balcony door was unlocked.  Maybe he climbed back up to cover his tracks.  Rick said he saw someone go in the balcony door as he pulled up the driveway.”

       Sheriff Hart shrugged.  “Maybe.  Speaking of tracks, this guy supposedly jumped eight feet down off of a balcony.  He weighs over two hundred pounds.  He’s supposedly carrying a woman.  That’s hard dirt out there, but close to four hundred pounds landing from eight feet up would leave a mark.”

       “And it didn’t?”

       “Not four hundred pounds worth of mark.”

       The sheriff motioned for the deputy who had been witnessing the interview to come over.  She stepped out of Erik’s earshot and said, “Get someone in here to witness and take over.  Get names and contact info on next of kin and whoever else needs to be notified.  Get a detailed list of what he thinks is missing, then take him down to the river and diagram what he says happened.  Be careful with my crime scene.  When you get done with him, take Rick Blair down separately and diagram what he says happened.  Oh, and get names and addresses of any girlfriends the deceased dumped in the last year.”

       “Aren’t many women strong enough to do what they did to him.”

       “You’d be surprised at what a woman who’s been dumped can do.”

       “Maybe.  Am I doing an interview or an interrogation?”

       “Don’t know yet.  I hope he’s a friendly.  He’s either a world-class actor or he’s pretty shaken up.  Have you seen Deputy Brantley lately?”

       “Yeah.  I saw him poking around the corners of the basement.  He’s probably looking for you.”

       She slapped the deputy on the back and walked on.  She grinned when she saw Deputy Al Brantley coming out of one of the side rooms.  The lanky deputy walked up to her, a little too nonchalant and asked.  “Been back in the side rooms?”

       “The ones with the doors that blend with the basement walls and the electric outlets two feet apart?  Yeah, the previous owners had a little basement hydroponics operation.  They got careless distributing the drugs.  That’s why the house was for sale.”

       The deputy showed no sign of deflation.  Pity, the sheriff thought.  Out loud she asked, “Ken List still not talking?”

       “Not a word.  He has a nice goose-egg of a bump on the right side of his head.  I made sure that was in one of the room pictures we took.  I noticed that Rick Blair has a pretty nice lump on his forehead too.  Are you buying this story about the girl with the tattoos?”

       The sheriff shrugged.  “If there was a girl, here we’ll find evidence of it.  Supposedly she bled on the sheets, so that’ll prove it one way or the other if nothing else does.”

       “Are you buying them just finding her wandering around in the woods?”

       “Don’t have enough evidence to say.”

       “Give you five to one that she came out here with them if she existed at all.  Things probably got too rough for her and she tried to leave.”

       “That doesn’t explain how Bruce died.”

       “Others may have been afraid he would talk.  Or maybe it was all this Ken List’s idea to get rid of the girl’s body and Bruce wouldn’t go along with it.  Then again the other two are cousins and they may be protecting each other.  Could have even been a ‘most dangerous game’ scenario.”

       The sheriff laughed.  “Not in my county.  You’ve been watching too much TV.”

       Deputy Brantley said, “Well, one thing I can tell you is that someone’s built a nice little crime scene for us to find down by the river.”

       “You’ve been down there?”

       “Yep.  Don’t worry.  I was careful.  There are bare footprints out there leading into the river, and they’re good fakes, but they are fakes.  Big toe’s too big.  Other toes are too small.  Feet didn’t land quite right.  Stride’s too long for a short woman.  Whoever made the tracks had to weigh almost as much as I do.  Some other things don’t fit either.”

       “You need to stop traipsing around in my crime scene.  We do this systematically.”

       Deputy Brantley shrugged.  “I know enough not to destroy evidence.”

       “You do realize there may be a murderer out there.”

       “I think the murderer is sitting right here in this farmhouse,” Deputy Brantley said.  He turned and started to walk away.

       The sheriff asked, “Have the guys in town searched the apartment there yet?”

       “Bruce’s part of it.  They found some hot e-mails on his computer, but they may have just been Spam come-ons.  Nothing threatening.”

       “Odd about the faked footprints.  That would make Rick and Erik both liars.  Neither of them are strong enough to be our murderer, though, unless they did it together.”

       Deputy Brantley shook his head.  “If you need your suspect to be strong, don’t rule out Rick Blair.  Just between you and me, one of the town guys peeked into his room.  He’s got quite a set of weights, including 80-pound dumbbells.”

       “That doesn’t sound like too much.”

       “Until you figure that you lift dumbbells with one hand, and according to the chart in his room he does sets of twenty.”

       “I’ll keep that in mind.  Hang tight a second or two.  I’ll be back.” 

       The sheriff turned and walked out to the front yard.  She touched base with the deputy in charge of searching the nearby roads and driveways for any out-of-place cars.  She also sent a deputy to contact nearby farmhouses and alert the neighbors to be on the lookout for the woman.  She looked at her watch.  She wasn’t surprised to see that it was after four in the morning.  She saw lightning in the distance and delegated someone to gather tarps to cover the important parts of the crime scene if necessary.  She went back over to Deputy Brantley.  “Let’s take a look at this phony crime scene of yours before the rain wipes it out.”

       They walked toward the river.  Deputy Brantley pointed with his flashlight, “That’s where they supposedly crossed paths.  All four of the guys were moving around down here tonight.  Pattern’s consistent with Ken List hiding and the other three hunting for him.”

       “And the woman?”

       “Well, there’s a trail.  It just isn’t real.”

       “Show me.  Just don’t get too close until I get pictures and sketch it out.”

       Deputy Brantley walked over and pointed.  “Best tracks I could find.”

       Sheriff Hart took pictures from several angles, and then sketched the scene, working in from the periphery.  She pointed at a set of tracks that came within a couple of feet of the trail.  “Yours, I assume.”

       “Had to get there somehow.”

       Sheriff Hart asked, “Trace it all the way down to the river?”

       “Yep.”

       “And it looks like whoever made the trail went into the river?”

       “Yeah.”

       Sheriff Hart stood up and looked down Deputy Brantley’s trail.  “Somebody shoot a bunch of paintballs down there?”

       “Yep.”

       “So you’ve tramped all over my crime scene?”  Sheriff Hart asked.

       “Found the key evidence.  Did my job.”

       Sheriff Hart shrugged.  “Not much we can do about it now.  Did you follow the trail back from here?”

       “Not yet.”

       “And not ever.  I’ll follow it back.  Did you check out the tree where the sap or blood was dripping?”

       “Not yet.”

       “That’s next on our list, then get down to the river and cover up as much of the scene as you can with tarps in case the rain hits.  Take somebody with you so this imaginary girl doesn’t kill you.”

       Deputy Brantley climbed the tree while Sheriff Hart looked for footprints and blood around it.  She looked up.  “Find anything?”

       “Wet spots.  Could be blood.  Nothing dead.  I took samples.  What do you think actually happened here?”

       Sheriff Hart shrugged.  “If this really is a fake crime scene then Erik and Rick are lying.  Question is, why?  I don’t know why someone went to all of the trouble, or why they didn’t get the foot right.  Maybe it’s real and she had a deformed foot.”

       “Those tracks aren’t real.  Count on it.”

       “Maybe,” Sheriff Hart said.  “If they aren’t, then maybe four twenty-something guys brought some little bimbo up here and she decided she didn’t want to play their games.  Things got out of hand and she died.  Maybe Bruce died then.  Maybe he got a conscience and died later.  Then somebody got entirely too smart for their own good and built a crime scene for us to find.  Thing is, Rick and Erik don’t seem like the bimbo-bringing types.”

       “They’re guys.  They’re twenty-something years old.  They don’t have girlfriends.  They like girls.  Yeah, they’re the bimbo-bringing types.”

       “Sure enough of that to arrest them?”

       “No point.  The district attorney’s too lazy to pick his own nose.”

       “That’s an image I could live without,” Sheriff Hart said.  “I thought he was just too dumb to find his own nose.”

       “Either way, you’re going to have to gift wrap this for him, and it isn’t gift wrapped yet.  What are you going to do?”

       “Not sure yet, but they aren’t going anywhere without a leash,” Sheriff Hart said.  “Some things still don’t fit, though.  I talked to Rick and Erik.  I could swear that they were shocked, bewildered, and barely holding it together.  If they were acting, they both did a world class job of it.  Erik is going to have a couple of world-class lumps on the side of his head in a few hours, so something did hit him, almost hard enough to cause a concussion.  Also, why would they set up a story that puts them up for possible manslaughter?  Why spend half the night setting up a fake crime scene when they could have just said they found the woman’s body in the river, or let it drift down and be found somewhere downstream?  And where did the woman come from?  No one’s been reported missing around here.”

       “And you don’t think they’re the type to bring her up here.”

       “No I don’t.  Well, at least Rick and Erik aren’t.  We’ll have to see if they’re really as clean as they seem.  I know that Ken List isn’t.  He’s had his share of problems—drugs back in high school, several fights, women who found his wooing techniques a tad too coercive, and of course the battered wife bit.”  Sheriff Hart shrugged.  “We can safely say the boy has an impulse control problem.  Heard anything on the grapevine about Rick or Erik?”

       ”They seem so squeaky clean that I’m pretty sure they’re dirty.”

       Sheriff Hart said, “Over the years I’ve learned to ignore those instincts of yours.  Who are they?  What do they do?  Is either of them smart enough or cocky enough to try to make us jump through hoops?”

       “Rick Blair’s a loser.  He’s a college graduate—good grades, good degree.  Then he came back to Applebury and he’s been doing dead-end jobs for four years.”

       Sheriff Hart shrugged.  “According to my notes he stocks shelves for a department store.  Works third shift during the week.  Doesn’t make him a loser.  He’s in his twenties.  He pays his bills and keeps his nose clean.  If he’s still doing the same thing in five years, then he’d be a loser.  Any sign of drugs or ties to the dark side?”

       “The dark side?  One of Rick’s great-grandfathers--or maybe it was a great-great-grandfather—was a small time bootlegger.  Does that count?”

       “How do you know that?”  Sheriff Hart asked.  “Actually, forget I asked.  Anything more recent?”

       “No.  Boy has a weird sense of humor, though.”

        “A sense of humor.  Very suspicious.  What about Erik?”

       “Blue collar kind of guy.  Auto mechanic.  Good one from what I hear.  Went out to California for college.  Couldn’t make the grade.  Works hard.  Pays his bills on time.  Helps little old ladies cross the street.  Loser.”

       Sheriff Hart grinned.  “In other words, they’re exactly what they seem to be.  Nice couple of young guys who haven’t quite figured out what they want to do in life.  What about the women in their lives?”

       “Losers.  Dawn Regan’s not bad to look at if you like short women--”

       “She’s about an inch shorter than I am.”

       “Yeah,” Deputy Brantley said.  “Not bad looking, but she hasn’t figured out that the looks could give her a big edge in life.  No record—not even a parking ticket.  Nearest thing to a criminal connection is the fact that she’s dating Ken List.  Wants to illustrate childrens’ books but works retail.  Loser.  Rita Fairfax seems clean too.  No criminal connections.  Teaches English to people who don’t know it.  Erik thinks she’s too good for him, and unless she’s dog ugly she is.”

       “None of which points anywhere, but it’s about what I had heard.”

       “So what do we do?”

“We finish processing the crime scene, then we wait.  We don’t make any accusations, but we let them know we’re skeptical.  Maybe they’ll decide to improve the crime scene.   Erik claimed that he took a picture of the woman with a webcam. Maybe the missing laptop will show up with the woman’s picture in it.  That doesn’t make an awful lot of sense from their point of view, but if they’re trying to lead us somewhere they’ll make it more obvious,” Sheriff Hart said.  “Give them rope and let them get tangled up in it.  If there’s another body, we’ll find it. ”

       “Interesting that Ken lawyered up and won’t say a word.  Other two are pointing to him as the guy.  He may rat them out too when the time is right.”

       “That’s what I figure.  But will he be telling the truth?”

       “Probably not all of it.

       After they finished, Sheriff Hart took a deputy and worked her way back along the trail away from the river.  She found and collected two spots of dried blood, then followed the trail back to a mudhole around twenty-five yards in diameter.  By now it was five in the morning, and the forest was starting to get light.  She worked in from the outskirts of the mudhole, first circling and looking for any point where someone might have entered or left.  She found one other point where the grass appeared to have been disturbed on a trail either to or away from the edge of the mudhole, and the print of a large bare foot in the mud.

       She finally worked her way into the mudhole, following the trail.  It was easy to follow, but the trail ended abruptly in the center of the mud.  Sheriff Hart systematically photographed, measured, and charted the scene.  She re-examined the footprints, looking for any hint of overlaps that might indicate that someone had walked backwards into the mud and then walked back out stepping in the same footprints.  Finally she stood up and looked around.  She shook her head.  “I hate mysteries.”