The Mournful Teddy (16 page)
“
Uh
-huh.”
I put the phone away and got the digital camera out.
“Well, let’s get started with the photos.”
“I downloaded the pictures we took yesterday and deleted them from the camera, so we should have plenty of space on the memory card.”
“Thanks, honey.” I scanned the scene and walked back over to the base of the embankment. “First we start with the orientation pictures: the truck, the river, the cornfield, and the road leading out. After that, we’ll do the close-up shots.”
Over the next fifteen minutes I shot twenty-two orientation pictures and drained two AA batteries. Now the hard work would begin of capturing more detailed images of the boot impressions and drag marks in the mud.
Barring the recovery of latent and classifiable finger
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prints from the Chevy, the shoe prints were the most valuable evidence here because they might eventually be linked to the suspect’s boots. However, I needed something to set the scale for the size of the tracks and I hadn’t thought to bring a ruler. Reaching into the knapsack, I removed the notebook and placed it on the ground next to one of the patterns in the mud.
Ash leaned closer. “What are you doing?”
“Using the notebook as a scale. It’s a standard-sized steno pad—nine-by-six—and we’ll keep this one as evidence. It isn’t perfect, but the notebook shows approximately how big the boot prints are.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be, sweetheart. This is about as amateurish as it gets. A defense attorney would begin filing his teeth in anticipation of a deliciously bloody cross-examination if these were offered as the official crime-scene photos.”
I took another thirty-seven pictures of the marks in the dirt and used up four more AA batteries. After that, I took some close-up images of the bullet gouges in the windshield, several of the cab’s interior through the truck windows, and then a couple of the empty storage bed. I was expending our supply of batteries more quickly than I’d expected. I briefly toyed with the idea of submitting an itemized bill to the Massanutten County Sheriff ’s Department requesting reimbursement, but knew that the only version of a battery I’d receive from Holcombe would be preceded by and combined with assault. Anyway, by the time I finished, there were only four fresh batteries left and I didn’t want to use them in the event we found something worth photographing at the Island Ford Bridge.
“Okay, I think we’re finished here. Let’s head upriver,”
I said.
“What time is it, honey?” Ash looked slightly worried.
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John J. Lamb
“Eleven-twenty. We’ll be home in time, I promise.”
We again churned southward on the Shenandoah.
Before, we’d had the river to ourselves, but now we occasionally saw fisherman standing on the bank or in the shallows trying to hook a contaminated trout. Most of the anglers smiled at us and waved, but one guy scowled because our boat motor scared the fish away.
This was an uncharitable reaction since we actually did the guy a favor. Nobody with a functioning brain would eat one of those fish. If the folks from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality are correct, the trout have enough mercury in them to be used as thermometers.
A little while later, we spooked a flock of about a hundred red-winged blackbirds. They rose from the undergrowth on the west bank in a mass of fluttering wings and squeaky discordant cries. I don’t know what sort of bird’s call Paul McCartney used in his old song “Blackbird”
from the Beatles’
White Album
, but it sure wasn’t any blackbird from around here. The only sound less lyrical than a flight of startled red-winged blackbirds is that of a food processor chopping raw carrots.
A couple of miles to the west we could see the summit of Massanutten Mountain, while to the east were rolling hills carpeted with emerald green alfalfa. At last, the stark rectangular concrete form of the Island Ford Bridge appeared from around a bend. It was maybe three hundred feet long, supported by twelve tall round concrete pillars, and the roadway was about twenty feet above the river.
Envision a two-lane expressway overpass and you have the general idea.
“So, this is where we’re supposed to believe that Thayer took his suicide plunge.”
Ash measured the distance with her eyes and said, The Mournful Teddy
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“You’d run a bigger risk of spraining an ankle in the shallow water than killing yourself.”
Ash steered the boat under the bridge and beached it on the other side at a vacant public access lot on the eastern bank. We began our hunt there because the site was lonely, isolated, and at nighttime, probably darker than the prospects I’ll be cast in Gene Kelly’s old role if they ever remake
Singin’ in the Rain
. In short, it was an ideal spot to commit a violent crime without being seen. The half-acre clearing was a mixture of gravel, rutted mud, and tufts of grass, bordered on one side by the river and on the other by a wall of tall sycamores and oaks.
I was also annoyed to discover that big corporations weren’t the only ones desecrating the river. The ground was littered with an assortment of beer and soda cans, broken glass, fast-food packaging, candy wrappers, and cigarette butts. I shifted some of the rubbish with my cane, scanning the ground while trying to keep an eye on the traffic that intermittently crossed the bridge. Although neither man was on duty, I was on the lookout for Holcombe or Trent—even though I didn’t have the faintest idea of what we’d do if they appeared. Running, at least for me, wasn’t an option.
The atmosphere was depressing and I made a feeble attempt to lighten it. “Hey, I didn’t know they still made Abba-Zabba bars. But what’s with all the Yukon Jack bottles?”
“This is absolutely disgusting and the worst part is that I know this wasn’t just caused by tourists,” said Ash as she nudged a half-crushed Pepsi can with her foot. “Why do people do this?”
“You can thank Holcombe. Folks don’t obey the little laws if they see the big ones routinely violated, especially by the cops.”
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John J. Lamb
“Well, the first chance we get, we’re coming back here with some work gloves and big trash bags.”
That’s one of the things I admire about Ash. She’s short on noisy outrage and long on action, unlike me. I’m the same as most people. I don’t like litter and will noisily complain about it, but it would never occur to me to pick the trash up myself. And, if it did and I actually got up off my butt to do something, I’m honest enough to admit that I’d want everyone to know what a noble fellow I was. Ash isn’t like that. She simply does the right thing quietly.
We searched the river access lot for another ten minutes, but there was nothing of obvious evidentiary value, so we walked up the lane to Island Ford Road. There were wide gravel shoulders on both sides of the road just before it transitioned into bridge. Ash crossed the highway to check the north side while I began to search the south.
Other than more trash, we came up dry again. That left the bridge itself and its western approach.
The ibuprofen hadn’t done much to diminish the pain in my leg, so I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of the hike. Still, I knew we had to go. Remaining on opposite sides of the road we started across the bridge.
There weren’t any sidewalks, so we carefully walked along the narrow spaces between roadway and guardrail, checking the cement pavement as we went. In fact, I was paying such close attention to the ground that I failed to notice the approach of an eighteen-wheeler as it careened across the bridge on my side of the road.
There was the sudden roar of a diesel engine and I clutched the guardrail as I was buffeted by the wind from the passing truck.
We continued our search on the west side of the bridge. I was examining the ground, poking at trash with the tip of my cane, when Ash called to me from the The Mournful Teddy
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other side of the road, “Brad! You need to come look at this!”
She stood in a grassy lot on the north side of Island Ford Road, just west of the bridge and about twenty feet from the pavement. I crossed the highway to join her and bent over to take a better look. A pair of expended brass cartridges lay on the grass within inches of each other, their positions indicative of two shots fired from the same location.
Ash said, “Is this what we’re looking for?”
“Two rounds here and two dings in the windshield. I think so.”
I walked a few yards back toward the bridge, my gaze riveted to the earth. “The ground is too hard to show any tire impressions, but I’m pretty certain the truck was parked somewhere near here.”
“How can you tell?”
“Auto-pistols eject their brass to the right, usually three or four feet depending on the bounce.” I walked back to the cartridges and then took a couple of sidesteps to the left. “Which means the shooter was right about here.”
I got the camera out and took a series of photographs of the expended cartridges. Then I bent over and picked up one of the brass cylinders. I used my bare hands and didn’t bother with that nonsense you see on television where the brilliant detective uses a ballpoint pen or forceps to carefully pick up a cartridge so as not to obliterate a latent fingerprint. And invariably, the TV sleuth finds an amazingly distinct and complete fingerprint on the expended pistol cartridge; however, it’s a little different in real life. In fact, in all the years I’d been a homicide inspector I’d probably picked up a couple of hundred cartridges with a pen and never once did we find a usable latent print.
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John J. Lamb
Anyway, I squinted at the writing that encircled the base of the bullet and said, “It’s Winchester nine-millimeter—
the same brand of ammo the Sheriff ’s Department uses.”
“So, the truck was coming west on Island Ford Road and stopped here. Why?”
“More than likely pulled over for running an imaginary red light.”
“Trent?”
“He’d have been on duty at ten p.m.”
Ash looked northward toward Caisson Hill, which was a low green hump in the distance. “And if Thayer was traveling in this direction he might have been coming from his aunt’s house with the Mourning Bear.”
“Makes sense. He was supposed to have delivered it to the auctioneer on Friday night and this is the road you’d take to go to Harrisonburg.” I slowly exhaled and frowned. “However, the problem is that even if Trent is the killer, none of this makes any damn sense. If he robbed and murdered Thayer, why did Trent strangle him instead of shooting him? And here’s an even bigger freaking mystery: Why strangle Thayer here and then carpool his body over to the Henshaw Farm to toss it in the river—”
“Three hours later.”
“Exactly. What do you do with a dead man for three hours? Stick him in the passenger seat of a car so you have enough passengers to use the HOV lane on the Interstate?”
“That’s terrible.” Ash tried to suppress a laugh.
“Trent could have just dumped Thayer here from the top of the bridge. He’s got the muscles to lift a corpse over the guardrail. So, why run the risk of transporting the body?”
“And who has the Mourning Bear?” Ash stroked my arm. “But I have absolute faith you’ll figure it all out.
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“Honey, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but there’s no getting around the fact that we have more unanswered questions right now than when we began this morning.”
Chapter 12
I collected the other cartridge from the ground and put both in my pants pocket. Although they’d never yield any latent fingerprints, the bits of metal nonetheless possessed some potential evidentiary value. The primer cap located on the base of each bullet bore a tiny round depression caused by the impact of the firing pin. This indentation was a unique tool mark that could be matched to a specific pistol by a firearms criminalist. However, unless Trent—and Holcombe for that matter—loaned us their pistols so that we could submit them to the Virginia State Police Crime Lab for examination, that identification wasn’t going to happen any time soon.
On the way back to the boat, I took some more orientation photos of the western bridge approach, the span itself, and then finally some of the trash-strewn lot next to the river. I’d put the camera away and was preparing to climb back into the boat when the wireless phone trilled.
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“This is Brad.”
“Where are you guys?” Tina asked urgently.
“At the Island Ford Bridge—”
“Oh God! Get out of there fast! Sheriff Holcombe just called out over the radio and said he was on his way to the office from home.”
“So?”
“So, he lives over at the base of the Blue Ridge and uses the Island Ford Bridge to get to town.”
I motioned for Ash to untie the boat. “Do you think he knows what we’re up to?”
“I don’t know, but he
never
works on Sunday.”
“How much time do we have before he gets here?”
“That depends on when he radioed that he was in service. If he was at his house, maybe ten minutes, but if he called along the way—”
“He could be here any minute. I’ll call you later, Tina.”
I hung up and climbed into the boat. “Let’s be shepherds and get the flock out of here.”
“Sheriff Holcombe?” Ash held the rope until I was seated and then climbed in.
“Yeah, on his way to the office from home and he uses this bridge.”
“I really don’t like tucking tail and running,” said Ash as she yanked on the starter rope and the engine grumbled to life.
“Me either, but if we stay here we’ll lose the evidence and once he finishes looking at the pictures on our camera he’ll throw it into the river.”
We pulled away from the bank and headed northward at top speed, which probably wasn’t much more than fifteen miles-an-hour. I was seated near the prow facing to the rear, watching the bridge intently while Ash kept her eyes on the river. We’d traveled about seventy-five yards and were entering a looping curve that led eastward when 140
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