Death in West Wheeling Read online

  When I got bored with the free show, I checked the loads in my .38, then tested the batteries in the flashlight I keep in the glove box. Rye openin’ the passenger door suddenly scared near two years off my life.

  “Dammit, Rye. Don’t do that!”

  He made a Do-What? face but couldn’t play innocent long. He was bustin’ to tell me what he’d learnt.

  “I just found out somebody was through here ’bout a month ago—went back out lighter’n they went in.”

  “Who?”

  “My informant couldn’t say.”

  “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

  “He never seen ’em—just their tracks. Figured they must’a been up to no good—illegal dumpin’, mebbe.”

  “What’s this informant’s name?”

  “I promised not to tell.”

  I gave Rye a look, an’ he said, “Oh, all right. Charlie Reelfoot. But you didn’t get that from me.”

  I’d heard of Charlie. Not someone I’d like to have testify in court, but likely he knew his swamp. “What’d he say about who these mysterious strangers was that he didn’t see?”

  “Said he guessed it was a man an’ boy—from the tracks.”

  It could have been Ash an’ one of his younger brothers. I wondered what Skip’d been doin’ the night this all went down, an’ would he tell me what he knew if Ash or he was in on it. Somethin’ to look into.

  So I fished out my county ordnance map an’ put Clyde’s cousin, Maude, on the seat of the truck. We locked it, an’ put our lunch an’ waders, the rest of the white lightnin’, an’ my camera an’ radio in the canoe.

  We headed downstream. It took us a hour paddlin’, an’ fightin’ our way through weeds an’ under tree branches to get to a place we could’ve drove to if Rye’s informant’d been a tad more helpful. The streambed widened out an’ was crossed by a ford some civic-minded local’d improved with a truckload of crushed rock.

  I said, “Rye, why’n hell didn’t you tell me about this?”

  “I didn’t know, Homer. Or you think I woulda let us come all this way …?”

  “Why the hell didn’t Charlie tell you?”

  “Guess ’cause I didn’t ask.” He shrugged. “This must be where Ash an’ his buddy dumped him.”

  “Devon?”

  “That’s who we’re lookin’ for, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah. Let’s get on with it.”

  We grounded the canoe, an’ I located where we was on the ordnance map.

  “Charlie said ’bout the length of a tanker truck sun-side of the ford.” Rye pointed south. “That way.”

  I rolled up the map, slung the camera round my neck an’ clipped the radio on my belt. The two of us started workin’ our way downstream. Maybe fifty yards past the ford, the water was deep an’ fast runnin’. After more’n a month, there weren’t no tracks left, but the feel of the place fit the scenario we was workin’ off of. I looked back at the ford an’ axed Rye, “Sure Charlie didn’t mean a tanker convoy?”

  “He may’ve. He ain’t had much education. What’re we gonna do now?”

  We unloaded the canoe an’ carried it around the ford, then reloaded it an’ started downriver. I felt like I was in a West Wheeling version of Deliverance, only instead of duelin’ banjos, we had duelin’ red-wing blackbirds, an’ in place of yahoo locals we had to watch for cottonmouths an’ skeeters carryin’ encephalitis. Instead of searchin’ for our disappearin’ youths, we was lookin’ for a missin’ person.

  Still, the sun was warm an’ golden where it filtered through the trees, an’ the smells an’ sounds of the river made you think of birth an’ death an’ all life’s beauty. I was struck by the notion that city folks work all their lives to retire to places like this.

  Rye must’ve been thinkin’ along the same lines, ’cause he said, “It don’t get much better’n this.”

  “All we need is some cold beers an’ a couple fishin’ poles.”

  “Speakin’ of cold, I wish we had some ice.”

  “I believe we do.” I got out the lunch Charity’d made us. Tucked away between the ice cubes an’ the foil-wrapped chicken was cans of Classic Coke. Bless that woman.

  As we moved along, we kept our eyes on the riverbanks for places where a body might’ve washed or been dragged ashore. I spotted a snake as big around as Nina’s ankles an’ said, “Rye, what’s worse’n seein’ a cottonmouth on your trail?”

  “Not seein’ ’im.” We both laughed. Rye said, “Homer, I think you should pay me for this trip.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “If I was servin’ jury duty, I’d get fifteen dollars a day.”

  “Yeah, but you wouldn’t get to bring your white lightnin’ along to peddle.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  “Okay. I’ll pay you fifteen dollars.”

  “For yesterday, too?”

  “You drive a hard bargain.”

  Rye grinned. We slowed to check a turn in the stream where floatin’ trash collected. We were both relieved not to find any bodies. Rye’s comment was, “Looks like we might’ve lucked out here, Homer.” After a few more minutes he axed, “How’re we gonna get back to the truck?”

  “I’m workin’ on— What the hell …?”

  Rye spotted the “what” an’ said, “Dammit!”

  The what was just below the water surface, on the inside of a meander where the stream slowed an’ the bank sloped gradual. It was just big enough that there was no mistakin’ the white curve of it—bone. It was without doubt part of a skull. Rye, who was in the front of the canoe, steered it closer to the shore.

  I said, “Don’t disturb the bottom ’til I get pi’tures.” I unpacked my camera an’ checked the date setting.

  Rye swung the boat around so I could snap a few, then paddled back to midstream. “Now what?”

  I been to police academy an’ been trained on how to secure crime scenes. The course didn’t cover what to do when your crime scene is a entire swamp. I decided to let the state cops handle it. “I think we’ll get some backup, startin’ with the state police.”

  I picked up the radio an’ raised Martha Rooney, told her to send in the cavalry.

  While we waited, we carefully doped out what’d happened, an’ searched the riverbanks on both sides for remains. We found a nearly perfect footprint, half filled with a month’s settlin’ of silt. It told the tale. The body’d washed downstream to the meander, where it floated near shore in the lessened current. A black bear’d found it an’ drug it up on the bank. There were bits an’ bones scattered over an acre, all of ’em gnawed clean an’ polished. There was no clothes or fingerprints or teeth. It was a hell of a crime scene. I wasn’t sure where to begin.

  The state cops weren’t a whole lot clearer on the subject. They come upriver by boat from a popular launchin’ spot near the road. The man in charge turned out to be Dan Underhill. He kept a perfectly straight face as he took in the situation, then said, “Looks like your missing man kinda went to pieces, Deputy.”

  picking up the pieces

  “What we got here,” I said, “is a probable homicide—no body. Seems our victim an’ scene are spread out all over Goode Swamp.”

  Rye didn’t say nothin’. Underhill snorted.

  Trooper Yates looked disgusted. “What’s wrong with an old-fashioned murder, where a couple of good old boys get liquored up and shoot each other, or stomp somebody to death? With a nice, tidy scene. Indoors somewhere? This—” He waved his arm around. “Is criminal!”

  “Yessir,” I said.

  We decided not to make a federal case of it. We took “before” pi’tures of everythin’ ’til I was beginnin’ to wish I had stock in Kodak. Then we marked off the “scene”—what wasn’t underwater—with strings, in a grid pattern, an’ diagrammed an’ measured the location of every bit of our victim. Since we had to write everythin’ down, it took a long time. Then we took a second set of pi’tures of the scene with markers—we used paper cups with numbers wrote on �
�em with Magic Marker ’cause that’s what we had on hand.

  Not long after we started, Trooper Yates stopped an’ shook his head. “Grizzly.”

  “No,” Rye told him, “it was black bears.”

  When we’d pretty much got the scene processed, we took a break. I called Martha on the radio to ask her to send out Sherlock with Holmes, his trackin’ dog, so when we thought we’d got all the pieces, we could have ’em go over the place for any we might’a missed.

  The next question was who was gonna pick up the “body.” Ordinarily that’s the coroner’s job an’ he delegates it to our local undertaker, who takes the deceased to his funeral parlor. Boone County ain’t big enough to have its own morgue. In the rare case of murder, suicide, or death in suspicious circumstances, I ride in the hearse with the driver an’ his cargo an’ we detour to the state pathology lab, where they make do with a walk-in cooler. ’Cause there’s a chain of custody to maintain, Doc Howard, who runs the place, puts a padlock on the door. In this case, I couldn’t really see the undertaker gettin’ involved.

  Martha Rooney solved the dilemma for us. “Homer?” Her voice sounded farther away than usual over the radio.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I was restin’ my rump against the trunk of a big old willow that leaned out over the river. Rye was balanced on a huge sideways branch that the state police boat was tied up underneath. Underhill was sittin’ in the boat an’ Yates straddlin’ the big cooler he an’ Underhill’d brought along. All us was listenin’ for Martha’s instructions.

  “The coroner has just deputized you to take charge of the body,” she told me. “You’re to take it to the state medical lab for autopsy.”

  “Ain’t no body.”

  “Well, take what you’ve got.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But ain’t that a conflict of interest?”

  “We all have every confidence you’ll do the right thing.”

  The state troopers sniggered.

  “Well, don’t laugh yet, boys,” I told ’em. “I’m hereby officially requestin’ your assistance with pickin’ up this here homicide victim.”

  “You don’t even know for sure these bones are human,” Trooper Yates said.

  “They’re human.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “I found a toe.”

  Underhill said, “I don’t suppose it’s got a printable surface attached?”

  “That’d be contrary to the first law of criminal investigation.”

  “Which is?”

  “Murphy’s Law.”

  “Right. So it’s doubtful you’ll ever be able to identify this victim, let alone determine the cause of death.”

  “You may be right about identifyin’ him, but the cause an’ manner of death’re clear.”

  Yates sneered. “In your crystal ball!”

  I pointed out a skull fragment Rye an’ I had located, one that had a neat hole through the middle, with the inside edges beveled toward the concave side. “Wanna bet?”

  We’d just about got all the pieces of our victim bagged an’ tagged when the Chicago detective showed. He’d hiked half a mile through God-knows-what in the way of swamp an’ snake-infested thickets to get there from the road, an’ he didn’t waste any time on courtesies, just jumped right in. “I heard you found a body. Is it Devon?”

  “Can’t say yet,” I told him, though I was thinkin’ it’d be stretchin’ things too far for it to be anybody else. An’ anyway, there wasn’t anyone else missin’. “But don’t go gettin’ all fired up ’til the pathologist’s had a look-see. We ain’t got enough of a body to be sure this weren’t a dead bear.”

  Peter looked disappointed. I don’t know why—he was prob’ly gettin’ paid by the day an’ the most work he’d been doin’ was channel surfin’ back at the Motel Six.

  I said, “This is a official crime scene. You’ll have to clear out. If it turns out we found your man, we’ll let you know.”

  “You just said it could be a bear.”

  “In that case, it’d be huntin’ outta season. Which is also a crime.”

  Peter looked like a man who’s just found hisself in the twilight zone. I had Rye escort him back to his car.

  It was nearly dark by the time we was ready to have Holmes go over the scene. Thank God all he found was a bit of skull bone up in the crotch of a tree, where it fell when the crow that was nestin’ there dropped it. We duly photographed an’ diagrammed the tree, then sent Holmes home ’fore he could find anythin’ else.

  After we had all the bones an’ bits packed in the cooler an’ loaded in the boat, Trooper Yates got in the last word. “Deters,” he said, “let me know next time you-all are fixin’ to have a homicide in Boone County, so I can call in sick that day.”

  Child Welfare

  It was nearly midnight by the time I delivered our victim to the state medical lab an’ picked up my truck back in the swamp. I decided the paperwork’d keep ’til mornin’.

  I didn’t sleep real good. After eatin’ breakfast at Denny’s—on the interstate, where I wasn’t knowed an’ wouldn’t be axed bout yesterday’s goin’s-on—I drove to the nearest One Hour Photo an’ got my film developed. Then I headed back to West Wheeling to go to work.

  Child Welfare, in the person of my sister, Penny Deters Evans, was waitin’ in my office when I got there. Penny’s a thin woman, near as tall as me, an’ tougher’n a Marine. She said, “Homer, I got a crime to report.”

  I resisted the urge to tell her, Git in line. Instead, I said, “Yes, ma’am. What kin I do for you?”

  She blinked. She’s not used to me givin’ her what she wants without a fight. “You can uphold the law.” I waited. “Mavis Thistle is keeping her older girl out of school to babysit her younger ones.”

  “What’d you expect? You told her you was gonna take them kids away if she left ’em alone again.”

  “I expect her either to stay home with them herself or hire a competent adult to watch them.”

  Knowin’ Mavis, I knew Penny was dreamin’, but I didn’t argue. “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “You’re the truant officer. Do your duty!”

  I got out the truancy notice forms an’ handed one to her. “Get this filled out by the kid’s teacher an’ bring it back.”

  After she left, I cataloged my developed film, an’ put the date, roll number an’ case number on all the negatives from each roll, then put the date, roll number, negative number, an’ case number on the back of each pi’ture. The negatives went into labeled archive pages in a big notebook in the office safe, an’ the prints—in sequence—went into labeled 8 1/2” × 11” album page sheets in the proper case files.

  I had two of ’em. One was labeled ROGER DEVON. I decided it would be fittin’ to call the other case PUZZLE MAN ’cause of the victim’s condition. I figured I could add “WO” to the file label in front of MAN if he turned out to be a she. I had just started typin’ a list from my field notes of what each photo was a pi’ture of, when Penny come back.

  She slapped the form I’d given her down on my desk. “Here you are, Homer. Sic ’em!”

  I looked it over. On it, the teacher stated that Dotty Thistle hadn’t been to school in over a week, an’ that her mother claimed she was sick. “This doesn’t say nothin’ about baby-sittin’ young ’uns,” I told Penny.

  “Of course not. She told me she sent Dotty to stay with her sister, Eloise, in the city, where they have better schools.”

  “Well, you write out a statement that says that an’ I’ll have grounds to go out an’ talk to her about it.”

  “Have you a form for that?”

  “Not yet. This is the first time it’s come up.” I handed her a sheet of paper an’ a pen. “Your lucky day. You get to make up your own form.”

  Penny went back to her office to make out her report, an’ I put the truancy report in a file I called DOTTY THISTLE. Then I went back to my field notes. Penny was back long before I finished. I looked over her report an’ put it
in the Thistle file, on the corner of my desk.

  She said, “Aren’t you going to do something now?”

  “Are these kids in imminent danger of physical harm?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll get to it soon’s I got time.”

  “Homer!”

  “I happen to be workin’ on a death investigation here, which—like it or not—takes precedent over truancy.” I folded my hands on the desk in front of me an’ looked at her like I was waitin’ for her to come up with some new, bigger problem.

  I could see the wheels turnin’ as she thought about it, an’ I could almost see her decide she’d get my back up if she pushed it. She finally said, “Well, I appreciate your taking the time to talk with me, Deputy. I certainly hope you can fit us into your busy schedule sometime soon.”

  I decided to really throw her for a loop. I just said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  I finished typin’ up my reports an’ filed ’em just about lunchtime. I hadn’t et in town for nearly a week an’ I hadn’t seen Nina for two days, so I decided to stop by the post office an’ feel her out about goin’ to lunch with me. I called Martha to tell her I’d be ten-seven, an’ headed across the street.

  Nina was wearin’ a dress that fit like it was painted on. She was standin’ behind the counter, so I couldn’t see her legs, but the rest of her looked fine. There weren’t no bumps or ridges I could see to show she was wearin’ nothin’ under the dress. The lump I suddenly felt in my throat was as big as a man’s heart. I swallowed. I took off my hat an’ held it by the brim, in front of my fly. Just to distract Nina—in case she was noticin’ the stir her outfit was causin’—I nodded at the stack of Wanted posters. She’d used an orange marker to draw bull’s-eyes over the faces, along with enough circles around the bull’s-eyes to make each poster into a dandy target. The felon of the day was Ransom Thomas, bank robber, strong-arm bandit, an’ escape artist.

  “Looks like what they say about the devil is true,” I told her, noddin’ at the posters.