Thursday Afternoon, October 15th, 2014
Gatlinburg, Tennessee
I was grilling a couple of great looking steaks we’d bought at a market we stopped at in Sevierville on our way back to the cabin from a day at Douglas Lake when my cell rang. I checked the number before I bothered to answer it.
“Sorry babe. It’s Izzy from the lab.” Dana was standing at the table by the deck rail. She stopped breaking up lettuce for salad and nodded for me to go ahead and take it.
“Izzy?”
“Yeah Mel; it’s me.”
“I sure didn’t expect to hear back from you so soon.”
“Your prints came in on the early FedEx run this morning and it’s been a slow business day here.”
“Really? Slow?”
“No. I lied but I worked you in. You owe me Mel.”
“Gotcha. Any hits?”
“Yeah; like I said, you owe me.”
“I know it and you know I’m good for it. What did you find?”
“What are you really doing down there in Tennessee?”
“You know I’m on my honeymoon. Why? What does that have to do with anything?”
“You didn’t head down there on purpose to work a case, honestly?”
“No; I didn’t.” I was suspicious now, “Tell me what you found.”
“Mel, the prints came back as belonging to a Terry Ford, last known address, Morelville, Ohio. He’s in AFIS due to a DUI arrest way back in February of 2003.”
Dana was incredulous, “What are the odds?”
“Slow down babe; way, way down. Look, I got the cabin company recommendation for down here from Terry. I told you that. You know this area but I didn’t and he’s originally from around here. He has family, including his brother Pete, still in the area somewhere near here.”
I took a deep breath and gathered my thoughts. “I wasn’t sure exactly where but I knew Terry would come down here to hunt and sometimes, when family stuff was going on, he said he would even bring Sheila down if she wanted to come. It’s plausible that he or both of them may have stayed in this cabin at some point in the very recent past. I’d have to look at that a lot closer.”
“Let’s look at it logically: what would Terry have come down here to hunt for in September? We’ve already checked, nothing was technically in season. Don’t you think if he was coming to hunt he would have just waited until bow season opened in October or gun season in November? Is he the type that would he risk taking game out of season or is he the type that would have come here just for the coyote hunt?”
“I don’t know. I can’t answer any of that. On the flip side, maybe him being here wasn’t about hunting at all. Maybe Sheila was here and they were having a little get-away before Patricia came along and rented this cabin too.”
“You know, I don’t buy it. It’s very odd that an Ohio woman died here; a woman that, may I remind you we know was often seen around here with a man and that Terry’s prints are here – very near to the Jacuzzi tub where the woman died – and now, on top of it all, Terry’s dead back in Morelville.”
“It could all be a very strange coincidence.” I shrugged. Without access to anything that had been found back in Morelville, I was at a total loss.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence Sheriff Crane?”
She has me there. I sighed, “No; I have to admit, it seems pretty fishy. Where would we even begin though? The local yokels are no help. Sad to say, but I don’t trust Sheriff Trainor as far as I can throw him. And now, given Terry’s death, all signs would seem to point toward Sheila Ford. That said, for the record, Sheila’s a good woman. I can’t picture her doing anything untoward. There has to be an explanation for Terry’s prints being here that doesn’t involve anything more sinister than maybe an extramarital affair and his death now is probably just a freak accident.”
“Mel, think about what you just said.”
I spread my hands, “What...what did I say?”
“If Terry was here, having an affair with Patricia, he may have killed her, staged the scene and then left before Trainor and crew got here. Hell, maybe he was in some sort of cahoots with Trainor and that’s why their ‘so called’ investigation was so botched.”
“Any way we slice it, what a mess...”