Stress Fracture: Book One in the Dub Walker Series Read online

  We moved toward the garage’s open side door. I examined the doorknob and lock. No signs of damage. No visible scratches. “You figure the door was unlocked?”

  T-Tommy shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. “Looks that way.”

  “Doesn’t sound like Mike.”

  “Sure don’t. The door from the garage to the kitchen looks the same. No sign it was worked.”

  We moved into the garage. I saw several of the rectangular cardboard frames Sidau liked to use around visible shoe prints. Same pattern.

  “We found a couple of prints here on the concrete and a few more on the kitchen floor,” Sidau said.

  On to the kitchen. More rectangles.

  Sidau stopped by the kitchen sink. “Killer cleaned up here.”

  I saw a teardrop-shaped stain on the splash behind the hot water handle. Dripped from his hand when he turned on the water. I could also see the faint purple hue of diluted blood in the crevices at the base of the handles and around the drain.

  “Same type as Mike,” Sidau said. “He used a dish towel to dry himself. It’s outside air-drying. Found a couple of hairs on it. If they’re from the killer, maybe we can get some DNA.”

  In the living room, nothing seemed out of place. No signs of a struggle. The sofa. The big-screen TV. Mike’s lounge chair. Everything exactly as it should be. How many Saturdays had I sat here watching college football with him? How much bourbon had we consumed? How many lies had we told?

  I walked to the large picture window and looked out toward the street. Yellow crime scene tape stretched across the front yard from the lamppost near the driveway to the pecan tree Mike loved so much and which served as a barrier to keep the growing crowd safely away. Couples, kids, joggers, housewives, one still in a robe and curlers, and other curiosity seekers. I scanned the faces. Was one of them the killer?

  I saw Claire McBride, standing near her Channel 8 News van, interviewing a man. She was a tough investigative reporter. Channel 8’s number one. She could get the story. If sugar was needed, she could be as sweet and smooth as warm maple syrup. Or she could melt down anybody and, if need be, drink most men into a coma.

  She was also my ex-wife. Long story.

  I followed T-Tommy and Sidau back down the hall to Mike’s bedroom. “When do you plan to move the body?”

  “Now,” Sidau said. “Luther wanted you to see the scene first. I’ll get the techs on it.”

  “And I need to chat with a couple of the guys,” T-Tommy said.

  After they left, I circled to the far side of the bed, searching the battered corpse for something that was Mike. Anything recognizable. My gaze settled on the USMC tattoo Mike proudly wore on his left upper arm. It looked pale and washed out and was jailed by streaks of blood. Carefully avoiding the extensive blood spattering, I examined the scene from various angles. I took a few deep breaths and swallowed hard a couple of times. Time to get to work, I told myself. Stop seeing this as Mike. See it as a crime scene. Get your head in the game. Not an easy thing to do.

  The facial trauma was extensive, but I thought I could make out an exit wound through the left jaw. Couldn’t be sure since the mandible was fractured in two places. If so, meant the bullet came from behind. The autopsy should tell the story.

  The blood spatter pattern that surrounded the bed reflected the killer’s violence. Long streaks of cast-off spatter, blood that flies off a bloody weapon when it’s swung, striped the ceiling above the bed. Typical blunt-force medium-velocity impact spatters flared out from the body in a circular array. They painted the headboard, the bedcovers, the wall, the nightstand, the lamp shade, the window curtain, everything. Except for a void wedge to the left of the bed. Where I stood. Where the killer had stood. Where his body intercepted the spatters that flew in that direction.

  Total overkill.

  I reached down and gently touched Mike’s left leg. Its coldness was shocking. I drew my hand away, but the cold lingered and seemed to penetrate my fingers. Images bounced around in my head. Mike and his wife, Mary, standing over their son in the ICU, the boy’s motorcycle accident having destroyed his brain beyond salvage. The gut-wrenching decision to remove life support. Mary’s deep depression and suicide. Mike’s second trip in a year to Maple Hill Cemetery to say good-bye to a loved one. Mike’s heart attack. His retirement from the Madison County sheriff job he loved so much. Now this.

  “Jesus, Mike. Why you? After all you’ve been through.” Tears pressed against the backs of my eyes. “I promise, old buddy, we’ll find this scumbag. He won’t walk. No way in hell.”

  I took one last look around the scene. I needed to get out of there. I had seen enough, and if not enough, all I could take in right now. In the hallway, I passed two coroner’s techs carrying plastic sheets. I hated the cold, impersonal, synthetic material. Always had. I remembered when corpses were covered with blankets for transport, at least creating the illusion of comfort and warmth and respect. Silly, I knew. The dead didn’t know the difference. I tried not to visualize Mike rolled inside the translucent plastic.

  When I reached the living room, T-Tommy was talking to a uniformed officer. The young man nodded and walked out the front door.

  “What’s the story with the other two cases?” I asked.

  “An elderly man at the Russel Erskine and a young guy out toward Madison,” T-Tommy said. “Why don’t you hustle over and see what Scotty’s got set up? I’ll be along directly.”

  CHAPTER 5

  MONDAY 9:11 A.M.

  OUTSIDE NOW, ON THE FRONT PORCH, I SAW CLAIRE HAD A MICROphone stuck in the face of the housecoat-and-hair-curler woman. Her cameraman aimed his lens over her shoulder to capture the woman’s animated jabbering.

  Claire was a beautiful woman. Thought so since the first time I saw her. Lean and fit with waist-length red hair, a great smile, a patina of freckles over her nose, and hazel-green eyes that tended toward brown when she was tired and definitely toward green when she was angry. Or laughing. Made reading her mood a bit difficult. Looked better in the flesh than she did on TV, and that was saying a lot. She had a loyal following, her best demographic being eighteen-to fifty-year-old males. At thirty-eight, I was included in that group.

  Our marriage had lasted all of fifteen months. The sex was great, the laughter better, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Began during a time when neither of us was thinking clearly, me from the abduction of my sister, her from the end of a two-year engagement, and ended because we worked out better as friends. She said it was a red-hair problem. That two redheads couldn’t stay under the same roof very long without going at it. In truth my hair was more mahogany, the ruddiness only coming out in direct sunlight. She was a true redhead, though the shade did hop around the spectrum a bit. Today, a sort of cedar color. Our real conflicts were control issues. Each of us wanted to be the boss, especially her. No, really. The divorce was inevitable and welcome. We definitely agreed on that, so it went smoothly, and we remained close friends. Occasionally the friends-with-benefits deal.

  As I approached, I heard the woman going on about how nice Mike Savage was, how she felt safe having the ex-sheriff in the neighborhood, how shocking it was that something like this could happen here, right across the street from her own home.

  Claire broke off the interview and intercepted me as I ducked beneath the crime scene tape. The woman moved away, hugged her friend, another woman in a bathrobe, and began giggling about how she was going to be on TV.

  “What’s the story?” Claire asked.

  “Good to see you, too, Claire.”

  “Yeah, yeah. We can do all the chitchat over a drink later. What’s the story?” Claire was in work mode. That meant, don’t waste her time. Get to it or go away. When I didn’t say anything, she softened. “I know it’s a homicide, and I know it’s Mike.” She touched my arm. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. It’s a tough one.”

  “What can you tell me?”

  “You didn’
t hear this from me. Okay?”

  “Dub, I know the game. Now tell me what you know or I’ll kick your ass.”

  “You’re so charming, how could I resist?”

  “Charming, schmarming, let’s have it.”

  I nodded toward her cameraman. “No film, no sound.”

  “Jeffrey.” She waved a hand toward the truck. He lowered his camera and moved that way. Out of earshot. Claire thumbed off her mic, dropped it in her blazer pocket, and retrieved a pen and pad from her shoulder bag.

  “Yes, it’s Mike. Single victim. Murdered between ten and one. In his sleep.”

  She parked a strand of hair behind her ear. It didn’t stay and fell along her cheek. “What else?”

  “That’s all I know. I got here just before you.”

  She gave me a sideways look. “You’re holding something back.” She clicked the pen a couple of times. “You know I can tell, so why try to hide it?”

  I shrugged.

  “And you know I can make you talk.”

  “What are you going to do? Kick me or screw me?”

  “You wish. I’ll just keep at it until I grind you down. Save yourself some pain and just tell me.”

  I looked back toward the house. T-Tommy stood in the living room, near the picture window, talking to a uniform. “I can give you this … he was shot. Probably a single shot to the head. Won’t know for sure until the autopsy.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He was badly beaten. Postmortem.”

  The pen in her hand froze in midword, and she looked at me. “I heard rumors that happened in two other recent killings. True? Any connection?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You’re on a roll now. Don’t go wobbly on me.”

  “I really don’t. I haven’t seen anything on the other two cases yet.”

  “But you will?”

  “That’s where I’m headed.”

  “They’ve asked you to help?”

  “Looks that way.” I saw T-Tommy and the uniform come out the front door and head around the side of the house. T-Tommy had his cell phone to his ear.

  “You’ll keep me in the loop?”

  “As much as I can. Don’t want you to kick my ass.”

  “Wouldn’t want to have to, either. But business is business.”

  “Love you, too.”

  “I know.”

  I nodded toward the cameraman, who now sat in the open door of the van, fiddling with his camera. “Can he do something for me?”

  “What?”

  “Film the crowd.”

  “You know I can’t do that. It’s illegal.”

  “You can’t give it to the cops. I’m not part of that fraternity. You can give it me.”

  She hesitated a beat and then nodded. “You don’t think the killer is here, do you?”

  “Some like to hang around to watch their handiwork. See the havoc that follows. Maybe get close to the investigation, suggest clues, even offer to help solve the case.”

  “Weird.” She shook her head. “I’d be as far away as possible if I’d killed someone.”

  “Murderers don’t tend to be rational.”

  Claire motioned the young man over and introduced me to Jeffrey Lombardo. Handsome, with long hair pulled into a ponytail, he wore jeans and a gray T-shirt. Firm handshake. I explained what I needed.

  “Be discreet,” I said. “If our boy’s here, he’ll disappear if he knows what’s happening.”

  “No problem,” Lombardo said. “I’ll give the video to Claire when it’s done.”

  CHAPTER 6

  MONDAY 9:43 A.M.

  THE TASK FORCE WAS BEING SET up JUST DOWN FROM LUTHER’S office in the same second-floor, corner room where I’d worked the Billy Wayne Packwood case. Billy Wayne was a real beauty. Liked to capture, rape, torture, and kill teenage girls. Body count reached twelve before he was brought down. I had consulted on the case. Helped with the profile and the evidence analysis. When I entered the room, memories came at me. Images of Packwood’s mutilated victims. The odor of decaying bodies. The fear Packwood spread over the city. All still sharply etched in my mind.

  The room hadn’t changed. Same faded yellow walls. Same metal desks and chairs. Same tired coffeemaker sat on the same wobbly wooden table. The glass coffeepot was new, but there was always a new pot. Glass had a short life span around here.

  Six corkboard panels filled one wall. Two held pictures and pieces of paper, some typed, others scribbled, fastened into place with multicolored plastic pins. The photos revealed that the other two victims hadn’t fared much better than Mike. I knew the third panel would soon hold images of the scene I’d just left. I also knew that before this was over, most, if not all, of the other corkboards would be filled. That’s the way it worked with these types of killers.

  The sad truth is that a high body count helps solve these cases. One scene, even two or three, rarely offers enough evidence to identify the perpetrator. But as the horrors pile up, each scene and each victim adds another sliver of evidence that later rather than sooner sticks together enough to close the loop. When the loop does close, when the killer is captured or killed, when hindsight kicks in full force, you always … always … ask yourself why you didn’t close it sooner. Why the final one, two, three, pick a number victims weren’t saved. Seems like it’s always that way. I hate it, but what are you going to do? It is what it is.

  “Well, look who the cat dragged in.”

  I turned. Scotty Simpson came through the door. His premature balding made his thirty-one years look more like fifty-one, but he always had a pleasant smile, and today was no exception. “Scotty. Good to see you again.”

  We shook hands, and then Scotty’s face turned serious. “Terrible thing about Mike. I just can’t believe it.”

  Ain’t that the truth? I pointed toward the panels. “What’ve you got so far?”

  “One mean dude. Grab some coffee if you want, and I’ll take you through it.”

  I poured a dose of the overripe liquid into a Styrofoam cup and took a sip. Bitter, but hot and black. Not bad for task force coffee.

  Scotty moved to one side of the first panel. While he spoke I carefully examined each photo relating to the first crime scene.

  Mr. Carl Petersen. Seventy-three. Retired aerospace engineer. Worked out at the Marshall Space Flight Center for twenty years. Lived alone at the old Russel Erskine. Fifth floor. Murdered June twenty-eighth. Widower. Wife died of cancer four years earlier. Kept to himself. Withdrawn and quarrelsome since his wife’s death. Baseball nut. Collected cards, autographed balls, and bats. Entry was through the front door. No sign of force. Cause of death—blunt trauma. Multiple blows from an autographed Henry Aaron bat. Defensive wounds. Left arm fractured, bone protruding, bent at a ninety-degree angle. Two fractured fingers on right hand. Crushed skull. Face obliterated. Bat barrel split from the force of the blows. Killer drove it into the dead Mr. Petersen’s abdomen and left it. Like the fireplace poker at Mike’s.

  None of this was good news.

  The old Russel Erskine Hotel sat in the downtown area only a couple of blocks from where we stood. Once the city’s most famous hotel, it had been converted into a retirement home. Meant Petersen wasn’t a random deal. Getting in there wasn’t like crawling through someone’s window or walking through an unlocked garage door. And making it to the fifth floor and back without anyone noticing was the product of great skill and experience or incredible luck. With the lock intact, he either had a key—maybe an inside job?—or he was very good at working locks. Like Mike’s garage door. I’m certain Mike kept everything locked. Petersen was an engineer. Bet he did, too. Those NASA guys left little to chance.

  “Petersen wasn’t shot?”

  “Nope.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Scotty said. “The weird part. This psycho proceeded to the kitchen for a snack.”

  “After all this?”

  Scotty nodded. “Milk and cookies. Like it was rece
ss.”

  “It was. A break between killings.”

  “Cooling off?” Scotty asked.

  “Something like that. Once he purged his demons, whatever they are, he reverted to more normal activities. Seems odd, I know, but it’s not uncommon.”

  “We found bloody glove prints on the refrigerator handle, milk carton, glass, and the cookie bag. Chocolate chip. Also cotton fibers in the bloodstains on the glass and on the bat. A few others on the front doorjamb. Sidau says they probably came from common gardener’s gloves.”

  “Any DNA from the glass?”

  “None.”

  “Anyone in the lobby that night?”

  Scotty shook his head. “Not then. They’ve got a night guard now.”

  “Security setup?”

  “Two cameras. Not the best quality. We did get a shot of the guy. Or at least who we believe was the guy. Came across the lobby and up the stairs. Had on a hat, so we couldn’t see much.”

  “What time?”

  “The system’s clock was a little off, but best we can tell, around 1:00 a.m.”

  “Time of death?”

  “Drummond estimated somewhere between 1:00 and 3:00 a.m.”

  Dr. Lou Drummond, one of Madison County’s two medical examiners, worked under the direction of the county coroner, Edwin Dreyer. As with many jurisdictions across the country, Madison County used the coroner system of death investigation. An elected position, funeral-home owner Dreyer had been coroner for four terms and was odds-on favorite to win in the next election. Mainly because no one ever ran against him. Since Dreyer had no medical expertise, the state hired Drummond and his partner, Dr. Becka Cooksey, to perform autopsies, handle all the other medical procedures, and interpret most lab tests for Dreyer. Maybe not the most efficient system, but it worked.

  “Mrs. Cohen, his next-door neighbor, said she heard Petersen’s TV tuned to a Braves baseball game,” Scotty said. “Turned it off around eleven. Next morning she took some coffee cake over, but when he didn’t answer, she thought he had gone for a walk, which he did most mornings. By evening she still hadn’t seen him and called the security people, thinking he might be ill or injured or something.