Mac was on his way to the Bird’s Nest the next morning when the realization of what he’d overlooked slapped him like an open palm. He slammed on his brakes at the courthouse and ran up the stairs.
‘I’d like to look at a couple of death certificates,’ he told the mouse-woman in the county clerk’s office.
‘Heard you’re having a press conference this afternoon. Big news?’
‘I don’t want to leak anything beforehand.’
She frowned. ‘Which certificates?’
‘Paulus Pribilski and Betty Jo Dean.’
The frown deepened. ‘Heard the report from Springfield said you dug her up for nothing.’
‘It’s an unsolved crime.’
‘Only vultures pick at the dead.’
‘May I see those certificates?’
She walked away, huffing.
Five minutes later she was back with the same big ringbinder that contained Sheriff Milner’s death certificate. That made too much horrible sense; the deaths had occurred within days of one another.
She flipped to Betty Jo Dean’s death certificate first. ‘Both certificates were filed on July 8, 1982.’
Betty Jo’s death certificate looked ordinary, a neat listing of the dates of the girl’s birth and death. The cause of death was listed as homicidal: ‘Death resulted from a bullet wound from a .38 caliber revolver fired from behind into the base of the skull. Shot was fired by person or persons unknown.’
‘… fired from behind into the base of the skull.’
Such a simple phrase, so obviously overlooked, and so damning. Proof enough, on its own, that the skull exhumed had not belonged to Betty Jo Dean.
He turned the page to Pribilski’s certificate. At first glance, it looked just as succinct – dates of birth and death, age at death, and so on. Oddly this time, the county clerk had editorialized: ‘Death resulted from multiple bullet wounds inflicted by person or persons unknown. A .38 caliber handgun was used – bullet penetrated directly through the heart causing instant death. He was shot while with Betty Jo Dean on a lonely road parked in his car.’
Mac read it again: ‘… while with Betty Jo Dean on a lonely road parked in his car.’ Somehow, the phrase seemed to infer that Pribilski had it coming because he was out with a slut, enjoying what sluts did so well.
Different words, but in their own way, just as damning as those on Betty Jo Dean’s death certificate.
He glanced at the clerk’s name typed in the last box on the form and got another jolt. He didn’t recognize the first name, but the surname was a surprise.
He flipped forward a week, and another, to see the certificates prepared after the Pribilski and Dean murders. On none of them had she offered the sort of commentary she’d given Pribilski’s death. In mid-August, the name of the clerk changed.
He called out that he wanted copies of the two death certificates. The woman took the book, made the copies and returned.
‘That county clerk, back when the murders occurred?’ Mac asked.
The woman didn’t have to look at the form to know what he was asking. ‘Clamp’s first wife,’ she said. ‘She left town right after she filed for divorce. Bad summer all around, that year.’
That triggered a hunch. ‘When did Bud Wiley die?’
‘You want a copy of his death certificate, too?’
‘No. I’d just like to see it.’
He expected her to trundle off to get another binder, but she merely flipped forward a few pages in the same book. Emerson. G. ‘Bud’ Wiley died on September 15, 1982 of acute alcohol poisoning. He drank himself to death that same summer.
Pauly Pribilski and Betty Jo Dean had been shot to death in late June. Laurel Jessup had been run off the road two days after Betty Jo Dean was discovered. Delbert Milner had died from a gunshot wound, self-inflicted or otherwise, the next morning. A cabin down by the river had burned in July. That same month Dougie Peterson had his head bashed in, drowning.
Clamp Reems’ wife took off sometime in August, a short while before Bud Wiley drank himself to death.
Calling it a bad summer all around didn’t begin to describe it.