Sarah slapped the mobile light on Subaru’s roof, and mashed the accelerator to the floor with mostly urgency but part exasperation. “Damn, damn!” In her head, she ran through George’s directions to the little-used road that dead-ended at Lake Inola. “A dead-end road off a dead-end road. Frickin’ perfect!” She realized, though, that she was glad it wasn’t one of the main roads around the lake or they would have a lot of onlookers in the way, trampling over tracks and any evidence remaining in the area.
“This is not helping!” Sarah yelled at the universe. She slammed the flat of her hand on the steering wheel, hitting a nerve and making part of her thumb and next two fingers go numb. “Crap.” She flexed her hand, “Ok, calm down,” she coached herself as she sped up the highway.
***
After making a too-fast turn off the highway, Sarah followed, as swiftly as she could, the narrow, paved road to the narrow gravel road to the even narrower dirt road. She practically skidded to a stop behind Brett’s patrol car, clouds of loose dust rising in the still, humid air. As she clambered out of her car, another patrol car pulled in behind her and two officers got out.
“Brett, what the hell?” she hurried toward him.
Brett held one hand up to slow her progress. “Hang on. Just a word of warning…”
“Come on, Brett, I’m not a cream-filled puffball I won’t deflate or collapse. What’s going on?” Sarah demanded impatiently. “You found Rodney?”
“Yes, well, some hikers did. They’re over there, by the first car. They are staying in a camper on some relatives’ ground, other side of the lake, for a week of vacation. They decided to putt around the lake in a little pontoon boat. They wanted to pull into the bay that runs parallel to this road and as they passed the tip, there’s a break in the trees where this road ends, just where the truck is parked, and they saw…it from there.”
“It? Saw what?”
“Come on, I’ll just show you.” Brett spun on his heel and headed away from Sarah, hurrying down the road.
As they swiftly paced down the road, Sarah could see the side of a tow truck. The truck was parked almost exactly crossways in the road, as though in the midst of turning around. As she got closer, Sarah could see the lettering on the door, ‘Rooster’s Towing – You Crow We Tow.” She winced. Rodney’s truck. The low-hanging tree limbs on the left side of the road, where the winch was located, hid the end of the truck from Sarah’s side, but it would have been visible from the water. Brett looked back at her over his shoulder and pointed toward the rear of the vehicle. “Over here.”
Sarah ducked under the foliage and raised her gaze, she stopped. “Oh, God.”
“Yeah.”
The boom was elevated from its horizontal position. The metal winch cable, used to pull disabled cars onto the flatbed, encircled Rodney’s neck at least three times, serving as a noose. The cable continued down and was wrapped around his arms, pulling them so tightly behind his back that his elbows were touching.”
Sarah stood at the edge of the bumper and looked up. The position of the cable behind Rodney’s head tilted his head forward slightly. The neck was elongated, his normally ruddy complexion was pale just around the lips, which were tinged blue, and the rest of his face was florid. His jaws seemed puffed out slightly, his eyes were milky. There was a fog of flies buzzing around the entire back half of the wrecker; one crawled across a dry, hazy cornea.
Sarah walked to the side of the wrecker facing the lake and looked behind the body. The fists were dusky. “We need to get him down from there. Where is that photographer? And where is the Coroner?” Sarah asked the few officers standing near the wrecker. They all shook their heads. “Get them here now.”
“I’m sure they are on the way, Sarah.” Brett shifted uncomfortably. “Mike said he’d grab the camera and ride out with Joe. The Coroner was at his home but said he’d be here in twenty minutes. Would you like me to call them again?”
“I’m sorry, no, I’m sure they are on the way.” Sarah motioned for Brett to follow her a few yards away from the truck. “Anyone have a look through the cab yet?”
“No. We waited for you…and we didn’t want to touch the door or handle, or anything, even with gloves, until Ted had a chance to go over it. Don’t want to smear any prints that might be there. It’s pretty high off the ground; if we have to grab hold of the handle to get to the cab, so did the person who did this, if that person got in the cab at all.”
Sarah nodded thoughtfully, “Of course.” She looked into the distance and saw clouds of dust rising in a line toward their location. “Looks like the troops are arriving. I want to talk to the people who found him.”
Brett led Sarah back toward the line of police cars. On the opposite side of the first car was a group of five people, two adults, a teenage boy who looked about 14 or 15, and two younger children, somewhere around 8 and 10. As Sarah approached, the adults turned their distressed faces in her direction with relief. “Hello, I’m Detective Sarah Vines. I would like to ask you a few questions and then we’ll let you get out of here.”
“Please do,” rushed the response from the woman, “we need to get the kids away from this. I just can’t believe…” she swallowed hard and looked at the man, who extended his hand and spoke.
“I’m Andrew Miller and this is my wife, Rosy.”
Sarah shook his hand, nodded at his wife. “Officer Maddux says you are vacationing here and found the body while out on the lake?”
“Yes. We, my family and I, are staying at my brother-in-law’s place across the lake. We come down here every other summer for a week’s vacation and to visit my wife’s family. We live in Colorado.”
“You just happened to see the body as you were cruising by in a pontoon boat? Is that right?”
“Well, yes, in a way. I mean, we were just about past the point when we decided to go up the bay we had just passed. We had to turn back a little and as we faced the shore, it was directly in front of us. We weren’t that far from shore. It was in plain view. I called the police on my cell phone immediately. They asked us to pull up to shore, away from the area, and wait for them, which we did.”
“Did you see anyone moving around the truck or in the woods near it?”
“No,” Andrew looked at each of his family members, who all shook their heads.
“Did you hear anything? Anything at all?” They shook their heads again, Sarah pressed, “Nothing? No sounds of another vehicle engine, tires on the road? See any dust rising?”
“No, nothing.” Andrew looked pained, “Can we please go?”
“Will you be here until the end of this week?” asked Sarah.
“Yes, until Saturday, when my wife’s brother will drive us back to Nashville to catch our flight back to Colorado. I gave our address here and cell phone numbers to one of the officers.”
“Ok, thank you very much. If you don’t mind, I’d also like you to give this officer your address in Colorado. I’m sorry to prolong this for you.”
Sarah crossed the road and walked back to the wrecker. An officer was busy taking photos of the body and the Coroner was unpacking his kit in preparation for on-site examination before transport. The late afternoon sun was slanting across the lake, the water sparkling like gems. Cicadas sang their raspy tunes from the trees surrounding the road. A mosquito made a high-pitched whine in Sarah’s ear and she swatted it away.
***
“Brett, why don’t you ride back to town with me? Officer Carmichael can take your car.”
“Ok, sure.” Brett tossed his keys to the other officer and followed Sarah to her Subaru. He slid into the passenger seat.
“I would like you to go with me to make the notification to Milton Sauer.”
“I thought you might. That’s fine. I dread this though. It’s a bad enough job, but with Milton, it could be hairy.”
“Exactly. I do feel for him though. No matter what a child is like, it is still losing a child.”
“Right.” Brett watched the fields pass by as they wound through the roads back to the highway. “Do you have any idea what is happening here?”
Sarah measured her words, “Well, the pieces of this mess are starting to at least seem to have some relationship to each other, I just don’t know why.”
“What do you mean?”
Sarah stopped at the stop sign then pulled out on the highway. During the fifteen-minute drive back to town, she explained to Brett what she had learned that morning from Perri and Nina.
“Did you ask those two where they were Saturday night? I know they had a couple of altercations with Rodney.”
“I did. They were at their hotel. We’ll verify it, but I don’t think they did this.” She reasoned, “It seems likely that the person who killed Amy also killed Rodney. Rodney was killed to ensure silence, not sure about Amy yet, but it appears to be for something that she knew.”
Brett smirked, “I am sure the man who hired Rodney to quietly dispose of the car had no idea what he was getting into, because Rodney was probably the last choice for discretionary work.”
Sarah frowned and wanted to rebuke Brett for making the joke, but couldn’t help smiling. “I know. Good grief.” After a couple of minutes of quiet contemplation, Sarah adjusted the a/c directly to her face and said, “What is starting to bother me, and I don’t want to make this into a bigger problem than it is, is the fact that Patricia died not long before Amy.” Brett turned in the seat to face Sarah, his face shadowed with the dawning realization of what she was saying. “So, if Amy was killed for finding out something by helping Patricia, and Rodney was killed because he disposed of the car used when Amy was killed…” she trailed off.
“Oh, say it isn’t so.” Brett puffed out a breath and let his head fall back on the headrest.