The Dead Will Tell (17 page)

The rain had been coming down for five days now, and the creek behind his house crested last night. By dawn, the brown, churning water had encroached another twenty feet into his backyard. If the rain didn’t let up soon, he figured by midnight it would overtake the deck, where in summer, he kept the barbecue and lawn chairs. It was hard to believe that roaring monster was the same creek he’d swum in with his kids when they were young. The same creek where he caught that eight-pound largemouth bass—the one no one had believed him about. The same creek where he and his wife had gone skinny-dipping after getting drunk the day their last child went off to Ohio State. That had been ten years ago now and he still smiled every time he walked by that deep swimming hole. He figured if he was going to die, he’d just as soon it be here, where he’d raised his family.

He’d found the second note last night when he came home from his Lions Club meeting. It was on plain notebook paper and had been left in his mailbox.
You’re guilty.
He’d known it was coming; he hadn’t been surprised. What had surprised him was the fear. He was only fifty-four years old, and frankly, he wasn’t through living yet. But what could he do? Go to the police? Tell them a dead woman was sending him notes?

He hadn’t seen her since that night in his driveway. He’d never admit to it, especially to the others, but he believed in ghosts. In fact, he knew they existed. He’d been seeing little two-year-old Tessa for years. On occasion, he still saw his wife, too, only the way she’d looked before the cancer ate her up. And so when he saw Wanetta Hochstetler, standing in the driveway, looking at him with that accusatory expression, he hadn’t questioned his eyesight, blamed it on the bad light, or even doubted his sanity. He accepted it as truth because he’d always believed that sooner or later, a man paid for his deeds.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to go down easy. He was a fighter by nature, and by God he’d just as soon live for another twenty or thirty years. He wanted to pass this house and property on to whichever of his children came home to Painters Mill, once they realized the Holy Grail wasn’t in Dallas or Sacramento or Atlanta. So far none of them had been takers, but they would. Sooner or later, everyone came home.

He poured coffee into his
BEST GRANDPA IN THE WORLD
mug, added a dollop of milk, and then opened the patio sliding door and stepped outside. Cold drizzle fell from a glowering sky the color of granite. Something inside him sank when he noticed the water was just ten feet from the deck now. He’d put a lot work into it. He’d sunk pressure-treated four-by-four posts into three-foot-deep post holes and filled them in with concrete he’d mixed himself. He’s used treated two-by-sixes for the decking, two-by-fours for the rail. Damn shame that the water was going to take it all, but then, that was the nature of the creek.

Pulling up the collar of his jacket against the chill, he walked to the edge of the deck. He sipped coffee and listened to the water take down another tree upstream. When he turned to go back inside, she was coming up the steps. Not little Tessa. Not his beloved Luann. But Wanetta Hochstetler. She was wearing an Amish dress and dark head covering pulled low and shadowing her eyes. Black shawl over her shoulders. Her shoes were covered with mud.

He dropped the mug. Coffee splashed on his pants. He glanced down where it lay in pieces, and the word
GRANDPA
stared up at him. It saddened him because in that instant, he knew he’d never see his grandchildren again.

He looked at her and shook his head, suddenly tired. “I know why you’re here,” he said.

“Do you?” She stepped onto the deck.

He took an involuntary step back when he spotted the pistol in her hand. A .22 revolver. Something resembling doubt drifted through the back of his mind. If she was a ghost, why did she need a gun? Why was there mud on her shoes?

He looked into her eyes. “I told them not to do it. I didn’t want any part of it.”

“Liar.” Keeping the weapon poised at his chest, she stepped closer. “It was you.”

“Things got out of hand,” he said. “We didn’t mean to—”

“You’re guilty,” she said. “Just like the others.”

“Please, don’t kill me.” He heard pleading in his voice and it shamed him. “I have children.”

“You’re a child killer.” She shuffled left, motioned toward the steps with the revolver. “Walk.”

Heart pounding, he obeyed. Upon reaching the base of the stairs, he hesitated, thought about running to the front of the house and calling for help. But she jabbed the weapon toward the deck closer to the creek. “There,” she said. “Go.”

He started toward the deck, wondering what she had in mind, wondering if it would be painful, if she would murder him the way she had the others.…

Upon reaching the deck, he turned to her. He noticed the length of rope in her left hand and a hot streak of panic ran through his body. “What are you going to do?”

She raised the pistol slightly. The revolver cracked. Agony zinged in his knee. His leg buckled. Crying out, he hit the ground hard. Dizzy with shock and pain, he clutched his knee, glanced down, saw blood between his fingers. “But you’re … you can’t…”

The pain took his breath. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t tell her she was a ghost and ghosts didn’t need guns.

Another shot snapped through the air. Pain exploded in his other knee. He screamed and then flopped around in the mud like a hooked fish. “Don’t,” he panted. “Dear God, please don’t.”

He tried to scream for help, but the sound that squeezed through his lips was the howl of a wounded dog. He lay on his side, wheezing, and looked up at her. “You’re not a ghost,” he croaked.

Rope in hand, she started toward him, a smile curving her mouth.

*   *   *

When you spend the entirety of your professional life in law enforcement, there are certain things you come to know. I’ve handled my share of firearms over the years, both handguns and rifles, and I know firsthand that without practice, good marksmanship is tough to come by—even by police officers. Half the cops I know couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn, especially in a high-adrenaline or shoot-from-the-hip type of scenario.

I also know that the targeting of the genitalia in the commission of a crime speaks to some kind of symbolism. I’ve seen it done in gangland murders in which some thug wants to make a point. But I’ve also seen it in revenge crimes involving sexual assault. The question in the forefront of my mind is this: Did Michaels’s killer target his genitalia, or was he simply a bad shot?

I enter the reception area to find half a dozen pails of different shapes and sizes on the floor between the reception area and the coffee station. My first-shift dispatcher, Lois Monroe, is in the hall with her headset clamped over her ears, a mop in hand. A steady drip from the ceiling plunks into an old paint can, keeping perfect time with a funky Linkin Park number on the radio.

“Be careful where you walk, Chief.” Propping the mop against the wall, she strides to the reception desk and plucks messages from my slot. “I ran out of buckets an hour ago.”

I look at the menagerie of containers set out to catch the deluge and I try not to laugh, because it’s a hell of a lot more likely that I’ll get a rash of excuses from the town council as opposed to a new roof.

“Call everyone and tell them there’s a briefing in half an hour,” I tell her.

She arches a brow. “Productive day so far?”

“If my tail were the prize, I’d have hit the jackpot.” I glance toward the hall, where a puddle is taking form on the tile floor. “I have a Tupperware container in my office,” I tell her.

“I’ll take it.”

“Make sure the computer equipment and phone systems don’t get wet.”

“Got it covered, Chief.” She grins. “Literally.”

Ten minutes later, my computer is booted and I’ve got the technician from the crime lab on the phone. “The coroner says Dale Michaels sustained a through-and-through gunshot wound,” I tell him. “Did you guys find a slug at the scene?”

“Metal detector found one that had penetrated the soil,” he tells me.

“Caliber?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Intact?”

“Enough for us to analyze striations, which we’re working on now. If we’ve got matching striations in the database, we’ll know by tomorrow.”

“Anything else?”

“We found a long hair on the victim’s clothing that doesn’t belong to the victim.”

I think of Belinda Harrington. “The daughter found the body. It could be hers.”

“Interestingly, this hair was naturally blond, but dyed brown.”

“That’s a switch.” And it rules out Harrington as the donor, since her hair is red. “You get enough root for DNA?”

“Working on it. Again, it’s going to be a few days. We’re a little jammed up here.”

“Keep me posted.”

“You know it.”

After thanking the technician, I end the call. I grab a yellow legal pad from my drawer and take a few minutes to write down everything I know about the cases, which isn’t much—at least in terms of concrete information. I have no viable suspects. No motive. No murder weapon. In terms of physical evidence, I have two Amish peg dolls, that link Dale Michaels’s murder to the murder of Julia Rutledge—and may or may not tie both murders to a thirty-five-year-old unsolved cold case. I have the notes, which tie the Rutledge case to Norm Johnston. I also have the data from Dale Michaels’s iPhone—the list of incoming and outgoing calls he made before his murder. And the text to Blue Branson. But how does it all tie together?

I go to a second page and write down what I remember from my conversation with a dying Julia Rutledge:
When I asked, “Who did this to you?” she replied with: “We didn’t mean to.” I pressed and she responded with: “Kill her.” When I asked who, she said, “Ghost.”

I’m staring down at my notes, trying to decide how to put all of it into meaningful order when Lois peeks her head in. “Everyone’s here, Chief.”

“Thanks.” Gathering the three files and my legal pad, I start toward the meeting room to find that my small department has already converged at the rectangular table, including my third-shift dispatcher, Mona, who should be home sleeping. My chest swells a little when I notice everyone’s in uniform. T.J. and Skid are embroiled in a conversation. Glock is thumbing something into his phone. Pickles is nursing a mug of coffee, a legal pad and pen in front of him.

I take my place behind the half podium at the head of the table. “I want to give everyone a quick briefing on what we’ve got so far on the Michaels and Rutledge murders,” I begin. “Doc Coblentz just completed the Michaels autopsy. Cause of death was strangulation from hanging. In addition to being hanged, the victim sustained two gunshot wounds. One to the abdomen. The other to the genital area, which was a through and through.”

“Ouch,” Skid interjects.

That earns him a few nods from the other men in the room.

“The lab retrieved a slug. We’re looking at a .22 caliber. They’re working on matching striations now.” I look around the room. “At this point, no one knows if the gunshot wound to the genitals was on purpose or by chance. I think you know that if it’s the former, we could be looking at the work of a gang or revenge for a sex crime.

“Regarding Michaels’s iPhone: We’ve run all the names through LEADS and we’re working our way through the list. So far I’ve interviewed three of the individuals he made his final calls to: Blue Branson, Jerrold McCullough, and Julia Rutledge. As you know, Rutledge was murdered last night, which I’ll touch on in a moment. All three individuals have alibis and claim no knowledge of the victim or the crime.

“Interestingly, Michaels sent a text to Blue Branson shortly before his murder.” I look down at my notes and read: “‘Meet is on. Will call 2 let you know outcome.’” I turn my attention back to my team. “Blue Branson says he doesn’t know anything about the meeting and he doesn’t recall receiving the text.”

“You believe him?” Glock asks.

“He showed me his phone,” I tell him. “He wasn’t lying about having not read the text. But I don’t believe him one hundred percent.”

“Is he a suspect?” Skid asks.

“He’s a person of interest.”

“Emphasis on ‘interest,’” Glock mutters.

A few chuckles ensue, and I resume the briefing. “We were able to tie the two homicides together by way of similar objects found at both scenes.” I hold up a photocopy of the Amish peg doll. “This figurine was found in Dale Michaels’s mouth. A second figurine was found inserted into a knife wound inside Julia Rutledge’s body. Both figurines have been sent to the lab to see if we can come up with latents or other identifying marks. We’re not releasing any of this to the public.” I tap the surface of the podium for emphasis. “The information doesn’t leave this room. Everyone got that?”

Everyone nods. Glock gives me a thumbs-up.

“What are your thoughts on those Amish dolls, Chief?” Pickles asks.

“We believe both dolls were made by a member of the Hochstetler family, back when they had that furniture operation in the 1970s. As most of you know, the Hochstetler family were victims of a crime back in 1979. We don’t know if the dolls left at the scene are in any way related to that incident or if they were left for some other reason.”

“One of the kids survived that night, didn’t they?” Skid asks.

I nod. “Fourteen-year-old William Hochstetler was the only survivor. He was adopted and legally changed his name to Hoch Yoder. He still lives in the area.”

“You talk to him?” Skid asks.

I nod. “He claimed he was home. His wife alibied him. He remains a person of interest.” I let the statement hang and go back to my notes. “Aside from the phone calls and the text, we have nothing concrete that ties Blue Branson or Jerrold McCullough to Dale Michaels, but in the coming days, we’re going to be putting some pressure on them. Hoch Yoder, too.”

I scan the faces of my team, speaking from memory now. “A couple of other interesting developments that are not for public consumption. A search of Julia Rutledge’s gallery netted three threatening notes.” I pull out copies and hand them to Skid to pass around. “Councilman Johnston has also been receiving notes of a similar nature.”