Kentucky Murders: A Small Town Murder Mystery (4 page)

He turned onto his old street, where early morning snowplows had piled four-foot high banks, blocking driveways and trapping cars left parked along the street. Neighbors, bundled in heavy coats, hats, and gloves, shoveled narrow, high-walled paths to the street so they could get out to drive to work through snow packed neighborhood streets leading to larger, plowed and salted main roads.

Zack pulled up to the high snow bank running in front of the 1950s-era, aluminum-sided, Cape Cod house. Huge icicles, hanging from blocked rain gutters, buried themselves in snowdrifts mounded high against the house.

He climbed over the mountain of snow and took high steps toward the front door, his legs disappearing below the white surface up to his knees. Finally, he reached the porch, or at least a bulge in the snow adjacent to the front door. A wooden handle stuck out from the snow mound. With a pull, Zack produced a snow shovel, which he used to clear off the porch. He pried open the storm door and knocked on the interior front door. No answer. He knocked again, waited, and still she didn’t answer. She had to be home, since her car was still parked in the driveway, buried under the snow. He tried the doorknob and found it turned, but the door wouldn’t open. It must be frozen shut. He leaned against it with his shoulder and shoved, but it didn’t budge. Then he stepped back and slammed his body hard against it. With a crack, it flew open.

Inside, the drapes were drawn closed; the living room was shrouded in darkness. “Mom, are you here?” he called. Silence answered. The heater kicked in, startling him. He turned on the hall light and walked toward the kitchen, where a dim light shone.

He found his mother sitting at a small, marbled, green formica-topped table in the center of the room. The only light came from a 25-watt bulb above the stove. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead and trickled inside his collar, making him think that the heat must be turned up to near 90 degrees.

He flipped on the overhead light and looked at his aging mother. She sat still and silent, a cup of probably cold coffee sat in front of her, and her vacant eyes pointed toward the bare wall. Her hair hadn’t been combed, and her robe hung loose from her gaunt frame. Even the bright light coming on hadn’t jolted her out of her daydream.

“Mom?” He walked over to her, put a gentle hand on her shoulder, and she slowly turned to him.

“Zack? Shouldn’t you be at work? Your father left already. He’ll be at the plant by now.” Her eyes pointed in his direction but didn’t seem to focus on him.

“What are you talking about?” he asked calmly.

“Are you hungry, son? I could fix some eggs.”

He wasn’t going to get upset. After all, it wasn’t her fault. She really had loved her worthless husband, even after all the years of pain he’d caused her. Love was a strange thing, thought Zack. “Mom, I want you to listen to me, okay?” He waited for her response, but she just stared up at him with empty eyes. He slid a chair around in front of her and sat. “Dad is dead,” he said as gently as possible. “He died a week ago, and we went to the funeral together. Remember?”

Her head tilted, and she squinted. “Your father will be home at six. You know that, Zack.” The voice wasn’t that of a fifty-four year old woman; it was high-pitched like a little girl’s.

Zack felt his patience slipping. “He’s dead, Mom. Can’t you understand? Dead!” He didn’t want to be cruel, but he didn’t know how else to reach her.

Her hands came up and caught her face on each side. She began to rock slowly, forward and back, sobbing heavy drops that ran down her hands and arms. “Don’t say that,” she said in her child’s voice. “He’s fine. I kissed him good-bye this morning.”

Zack reached over and pulled her close to him. “He is dead,” he repeated simply. “Remember the funeral, mother?” He sighed, frustrated.

She pushed him away and looked at him coldly. “He is not!” she said stubbornly. “Heeee’s nooooot, you liar,” she yelled.

Zack stood, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back. “Shit!” he yelled, and he ran out of the room.

He jumped off the porch, falling twice in the snow on the way to the car. It was no use, he told himself, as he drove away.

The next morning the phone rang, waking him. His sister repeated the same sentence three times between sobs before he knew he wasn’t dreaming. “Mom committed suicide,” she said.

---

The gas pump clicked off, bringing Zack back to the present. A cute, blonde-haired attendant, not more than eighteen, leaned against the pump, staring at him.
How long had she been standing there? She must think I’m on drugs, the way I was just spacing out.
He paid his bill and sped off toward the freeway entrance ramp.

Chapter 8

The sun hung low in the western sky, and Zack’s Camaro slipped into a long shadow as he passed a Greyhound bus. Billboards advertised three motels at the next exit leading to some small town on the northern outskirts of Dayton. He decided to check them out.

An hour later, after a long hot shower, he lay back on his motel bed. He relaxed a while, watching TV for the next hour. At about nine, he dressed and drove into town. He wanted to get a feel for the area where he would be job hunting the next morning.

“I’ll take a Bud,” said Zack to the chubby bartender at the Blue Collar Bar
,
a typical neighborhood joint with ten tables, a half-dozen video games, and three pool tables. The crowd was light, but it was still early. Zack sat drinking his beer at the short end of the L-shaped bar. Three Hispanic men sat a few tables down from him, and a wiry black guy played pool against a white, pockmarked gas station worker with “Pete” embroidered across his left breast pocket. The two appeared to be friends by the way they talked and joked with each other. Zack wondered if their friendship was the pool-room-only kind or the “bring the wife and kids over Saturday and we’ll barbecue some steaks” kind. As Zack watched them play, he knew they’d spent many an hour and hundreds of quarters working that same table. They knew the rails, and they could gauge just what odd rolls the ball would take. The game ended quickly. The gas station worker ran all but one of his balls after the break, and his friend finished him off in one turn.

Zack drank a few more beers and continued watching the two men play. Their other games didn’t go as quickly as the first, which might have been mostly luck. The customers poured in until about ten-thirty, and another couple claimed the middle pool table just as
she
walked in. She was above-average-looking and obviously a regular, since she waved to some and hugged some other patrons. Zack reconsidered his first assessment of her as she came closer and decided that she was actually pretty. She greeted people as she worked her way slowly across the room before sitting alone at a scarred table with her back to the corner.

Zack watched her for a while as she ordered and received her drink. “No, not tonight,” he said to nobody in a low voice.

“Can I help you?” asked the friendly bartender, wiping the bar top with a rag and inspecting Zack’s bottle, which was still half full.

“I’m good, just thinking out loud.” He stood and walked over to the unused pool table, slid two quarters into the slots, slapped the wooden rack on the table, and began filling it with the balls.

“Alone?” asked a soft, female voice from the other end of the table.

Squinting from the bright, low-hanging fluorescent light over the green cloth table, he saw her. She looked good, even in the harsh light, but she was slightly older than he had first thought. The beginning of tiny wrinkles forming at the corner of her eyes put her age at about thirty or thirty-five, he guessed. She wore a low-cut, black leather halter top over heavy, firm breasts.

“I was just going to shoot around by myself. Why, do you want to play?”

“Sure.” She smiled and walked off toward the stick rack.

Zack watched as she swayed her rear end to the beat of a Merle Haggard tune playing on the jukebox. He knew she meant for him to watch. They played three games. Zack took the first two; she won the last. He’d tried to win them all, but the third game she just plain outplayed him. He wondered if she had let him win the first two.

“Well,” he said. “That’s enough for me. I’ve got a long day ahead of me tomorrow. I have to look for a job.”

“You’re not inviting me over for a nightcap?” She leaned one hand against a hip, cocking her short black skirt to the side, while her deep blue eyes accented with makeup grew wide, and her shiny red lips formed a pretty pout.

“
I
u
h
well, I don’t have any…”

“There’s a liquor store on the corner. We’ll buy a bottle on the way, unless you prefer beer.” She looped her arm through his.

Zack hadn’t come here to pick up a girl, but since he was the one who had gotten picked up, then hey, what the hell. He motioned with his free hand. “Shall we?”

---

Zack awoke the next morning alone and smelling of sex and cheap booze. His watch read 7:23 as he sat up and quickly scooped up his wallet. Empty! The last thing he remembered was downing shots of whiskey. Wait a minut
e
had she been drinking with him? He couldn’t remember actually seeing her take a drink.

He sighed and quickly pulled on his clothes. Then he realized that his keys were also gone. “Oh, my God!” he swore, thinking about the $1,180 cash locked in the glove compartment of his car.

Hurrying outside, he found his car parked where he’d left it, thank God. His happiness was short-lived, however, at the sight of the open glove box door and the crumpled brown envelope lying on the seat. Inside, he sat in the driver’s seat. He stared at the envelope, afraid to touch it. He finally picked it up and was surprised to find it wasn’t empty. He counted out two hundred dollars. She had left a tip.

---

After interviewing patrons of the bar, the police found out that the woman had only been a customer for the past few weeks. She had done her best to make friends with the regulars as she apparently looked for her next mark, which turned out to be Zack.

Zack spent the rest of the day at the police station flipping through mug shot books. The pictures all looked the same after an hour or two. He only succeeded in confusing himself on what the sexy thief had looked like.

“You’re lucky she left you anything at all,” said a hairy, overweight sergeant. “Ya musta been good in bed.” He laughed with a sneer, but seeing that Zack wasn’t smiling, he added, “All you can do now is wait.”

“How long does it usually take?”

“We may bust her today, or we may never catch her. My guess is she skipped town, maybe to Chicago, and she’s pulling the same scam. The thing is, even if we catch her, you’ll never see your money again.” He shrugged. “Sorry. Here’s my card. You can call us in a week or two to check if there is any progress on the case. I’ll write the case number on the back.”

Zack drove back to his motel and shoved his few belongings in his suitcase. He didn’t want to work in this town anymore. He headed further south.

Chapter 9

Zack spent two days reading classified ads and making phone calls in Cincinnati. He went on four interviews that resulted in zilch. “Computers,” one agency told him. “That’s where all the jobs are. The big bucks, too.” Well, that was nice, but he wasn’t interested in computers.

Motels were out from now on. His sore neck reminded him of the past two nights of sleeping in the car. How long would $172 last? He supposed it would last a week, maybe two, if he ate sparingly and drove 55 to save gas.

He entered the familiar expressway.

---

He wasn’t sure if it was the name Michaeltown that seemed to grab him and pull him off the highway or maybe, he thought, he needed to take that exit because his stomach ached for food and his gas tank was running low. Anyway, he exited and drove east along a rolling country road, where thick woods alternated with open pastures. The sign at the freeway said 8 miles to Michaeltown, but it seemed as if he’d gone much farther, and still he saw no town.

Suddenly, he caught sight of red flashing lights in his rearview mirror.
Hopefully, he doesn’t want me
, he thought. A police car roared up behind him. Slowing, Zack pulled off onto the shoulder so the patrol car could pass, but the lights didn’t go by as he expected. Through the rearview mirror, he could see that, instead of coming out of the car right away, the officer, as if to torture him, waited a few long minutes before approaching Zack. When he finally decided to come out, Zack was expecting to see an Andy Griffith-type cop. Out stepped a medium-height, but extremely thin, policeman in a tan uniform, cowboy hat, and dark sunglasses. He looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties, with gray hair, a bushy mustache, and sideburns. Zack spotted the white ticket pad in his right hand and a pen poised in his left. Reaching for the handle, he opened the door to get out of the car.

“Stay in the car,” bellowed the officer, pausing behind the rear bumper until Zack closed the door. He moved forward, leaned over, and inspected the backseat, then the front, and stepped up to Zack’s side window.