| |
THE RAIN CONTINUED to come down hard as it had in the early morning hours before dawn, but the storm was moving westward and would be gone by late afternoon. Only a few scattered, bruised clouds would remain, spilling sporadic showers.
Sheriff Steven Ames stood near his white Ford Expedition wearing an oilskin overcoat as brown as his skin and a Stetson wrapped in plastic. Under his coat he wore dark blue jeans and a white canvas shirt. His sheriff’s star was clipped onto his belt, just to the right of his .38 special snub-nose revolver he carried on his hip when he was out of uniform.
He was a stunning figure of a man standing six-four, with huge shoulders, a thick neck, and a barrel chest. His biceps struggled to keep contained in his coat. He appeared rough, cold, with a square jaw that seemed to be chiseled out of stone, but to those who knew him well he was a gentle giant.
A troubled look spread across his face as he watched the firemen wash away the last of the flames from the burning automobile. There was a whirlwind of emotions in his gaze: sadness, contempt, anger, sympathy. Even fear.
Although he had no idea what had transpired, he knew for sure that someone was dead. That was all the media would care about—and broadcast continuously in every format at their disposal—when they got wind of the story and that was all the town residents would hear. And they would cast stones and make accusations. There was no praise for the good, but certainly a flood of outcry for the bad.
To hear some of them talk, murder was something common in Jasper these days; as common as Friday night fish fries at the local Baptist church. To hear his friends and neighbors talk like that disturbed him deeply. Twelve years ago, when he was sworn in as a deputy sheriff of this township, crime had been non-existent. The township was able to function with the sheriff, two deputies and two dispatchers who operated in equal twelve-hour shifts. Since those days, time had moved on, and things had changed, unfortunately, and not for the better.
Now, twelve years later as the sheriff, he was faced with the daunting task of tracking a killer. A serial killer.
With one open homicide case haunting his every waking moment, he had no doubt that a second would exhaust all his manpower and he would be forced to seek help from the state authorities before too long. That was a prospect he did not want to utilize although he was being criticized openly because he hadn’t already run to the State Police and created a task force.
And Ames had a very good idea who was starting the rumors and leading the crusade. What Thornton and the rest of the town folk who had jumped on his bandwagon didn’t understand was how complicated things could get if the state or even the feds got involved. They would turn the whole town upside down; no one would be exempt from their prying eyes. Then those same people would be banging on his door asking him to make it stop and crying about their civil liberties.
Staring at the smoking remains of the torched car, he was not sure what he would find when Phil Hodges had a chance to examine the corpse, but if it was anything as horrifying as what happened to the Thornton girl, he was determined not to let it get into the papers where they would blow things out of proportion and put one hell of a scare into the people.
The Thornton girl was the start of it and was found in a very bad way. Ames remembered clearly when the call came in. He was at home in bed with his wife. The ringing phone broke his peaceful slumber. On the other end was a nervous deputy who found the Thornton girl dead in her car at Ash and Pine. The deputy stammered out what he saw, and it took Ames five minutes to calm him down. Although he was at first angry with the deputy for not remaining cool under the circumstances and performing his job professionally, he soon realized that even though this was a trained law enforcement officer, the poor guy was never exposed to such carnage in his career.
The Thornton girl’s car was still running when Sheriff’s Deputy Frank Soames arrived. He pulled his cruiser next to the automobile, wondering if he could be of assistance to a stranded motorist. When he pulled in close enough, he saw the body slumped forward against the steering wheel and the dried remains of a bloody handprint smeared against the passenger’s window. What he found after a closer inspection rocked him. The Thornton girl had been gutted from crotch to neck. Her hands were in her lap and her internal organs had spilled out onto her palms. It appeared as if she’d been trying to put them back in when she died. Her face was cut badly. Ribbons of flesh hung from her cheeks; the tip of her nose had been loped away.
Ryerson Thornton, father of the victim Melanie Thornton, husband of Louise May Thornton of the Sweeny’s Lemonade Company fame, owner of one of the largest banking corporations in the South, and Chairman of the town committee, took the loss of his only daughter hard. And he was not a man who could easily be dealt with as Ames would come to know all too well. There was nothing that Ames could say to satiate Thornton’s rage. Although Ames was not a father, he could certainly understand and even sympathize with the man’s loss. But Thornton’s rage clouded his judgment and he let his emotion rule his decision making. He spent the last several weeks constantly hounding Ames and his men to the point that his deputies couldn’t even sit at the diner and lunch without Thornton or one of his crusaders harassing and heckling them.
And now a blazing vehicle on a deserted road with human remains behind the wheel would only add more fuel to Thornton’s already raging inferno if Hodges found anything suspicious.
Ames was going to try to keep a lid on things until he knew more—there was no sense in getting the natives restless. Although Ames had tried to keep the grisly details of the Thornton girl’s murder out of the papers, someone had leaked the story to a reporter. The story was sensationalized to the point of exhaustion. Many of the “facts” had never been checked or verified. But the masses didn’t care about that. All they could wrap their heads and hearts around was the image of the grieving father and the graphic description of the condition of Melanie when she was found.
Now everything was a mess and he felt like he and his men could no longer perform their duties without some concerned citizen behind them, watching their every move.
The fire marshal would soon relinquish the remains of the automobile to Ames, who would comb the ruined shell for evidence of his own. There wouldn’t be much left in that charred husk of metal that would be of any use to his investigation, but he was desperate, and any clue, no matter how trivial, would be valued.
A few moments after Ames arrived on scene, Deputy Frank Soames who was currently on duty, and Deputy Arnie Powers whose tour just ended, arrived in the only police cruiser assigned to his office and he motioned for them. His third man, Jimmy Matea, worked the second shift and wouldn’t be on until two.
With no Identification Section or Mobile Crime Scene Unit available to his office he would have to rely on his two deputies to secure and preserve the scene and collect any pertinent information and evidence. If he needed, he could call Matea.
Of course, the deputies were not well trained in investigation procedures, because there had been no need until now, for a full out crime scene investigation. Ames was forced to rely on what he remembered from books he read throughout his years of service and what little he learned from colleagues and the Crime Scene Investigation seminar he took two years ago for professional development.
He turned to his two deputies and said, “Soames, I’ll want you to photograph everything from every angle and then make accurate measurements of the position of the body. Make sure you get plenty of pictures. Don’t worry about how many rolls of film you go through. Use four or five, I don’t care.
“Arnie, I’ll want you to take good notes about everything you see here. Don’t leave anything out. No matter how unimportant it may seem to you, it may be vital evidence later down the line. I want you to catalog colors, sizes, shapes, smells, textures, everything, flora, and fauna. Mark down what kind of trees, shrubs, and dirt are around the immediate vicinity. Write down what kind of debris, the weather conditions, lighting conditions, even the road material and condition.
“Let’s be thorough, boys. Take your time and be careful. I don’t want anything missed. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Arnie said, and Soames echoed the affirmative.
“I’m going to call Hodges and see if he can get down here right away. Make sure the smoke eaters don’t tamper with the body any more than they must, Frank. Watch them close because they tend to get overzealous with their hoses.”
“Okay, sheriff,” Soames said.
By the time the EMT unit arrived from neighboring Hillsboro, Ames had conducted his walk through, taking additional photographs, making notes, sketches, and measurements. He pointed out two sets of tire marks that he wanted casts of if they could find someone able to do it in the next couple of hours. If they couldn’t, he planned on returning as soon as possible, hoping the evidence would not be too damaged.
An hour and a half after Ames and his men arrived, Phil Hodges, the multi-county medical examiner, pulled up in a white Ford panel van. He was a short man with a pencil thin mustache and neat hair that was graying at the sideburns and temples. He wore a white doctor’s smock with his name stitched over his left breast pocket. He carried a small leather bag in his left hand and stuck out his right as he greeted Ames.
“Steven, what have we got?” he asked as the two men shook hands. His spectacles were wet, and his hair was sticking to the side of his forehead, but he didn’t seem to be aware of the weather.
Pointing over his shoulder, Ames said, “The call came in from the fire department dispatch that a body was found in a burning automobile. The fire’s been seen to, but I haven’t let the EMT move the body yet. I wanted you to look it over first, in-situ.”
Hodges made a quick nod and moved quickly away. He examined the scene and officially pronounced the victim dead. He informed Ames that he would start an autopsy immediately upon returning to his shop and have the results forwarded to him as soon as possible. He barked stiff orders as the EMT personnel removed the body as carefully as possible and transported the cadaver to the ambulance.
The ambulance drove off with lights flashing but the sirens muted. Hodges had gotten into his van, gave a stiff salute to Ames, then left for his office where an autopsy would be performed to determine the cause of death and an attempt to identify the body would be made. His report, good or bad, would be faxed or delivered by carrier as soon as he had any results.
Ames hoped this was just some freak accident, but he had a very bad feeling about this. Of course, he wouldn’t jump to any conclusions until Philip Hodges examined the remains and made his final report, but he knew. This was going to turn out badly.
Another murder in a town where no murder had been on the books since 1972 was bound to attract more unwanted attention. There would be plenty of finger pointing. He would have to face the press. He would have to face the angry townsfolk who would demand action and satisfaction. He would have to face Ryerson Thornton, crusader.
And, most of all, he would have to face himself.
All this and it was an election year.