[personal profile] seymoure
23.
“The Eye Witness”

Pappy hoped to find a little more uplifting experience in his meeting with Melanie Custer. She was the one who had talked about seeing someone on the road just around the hospital on the day of the shooting.

He had borrowed a car from Freemont, who said it was better to use one of his cars than the police car, since it was still part of the investigation of Tooley’s shooting. It was a big Cadillac, and Pappy wondered how often anyone really drove it.

But, when he got to the house no one was there. He had spoken to the woman on the phone from the beauty shop and set up the meeting today.

He had arrived 20 minutes early, so he felt okay waitng for her to show up. He returned to the big old car and sat on the hood. He looked both ways down the street and wondered where she could have gone from there. He reasoned that she might have gone someplace close for an errand, but there wasn’t really a destination possibility that he could figure out.

On the phone she had described the man as short and thin. She had been out checking out her secret “morel mushroom” sites. Such recurring sources for the prized fungus were much like gold mine claims, something that could cause fist fights over “ownership.” So she was always aware when anyone might infringe on her “domain.”

He had known people to buy land just because of mushroom outcroppings. He thought that the Mayor could sell Alantis if there were a rumor about mushrooms on the property.

After the 20 minutes passed he went up to the house and knocked on the door again. Sometimes, he thought, people take naps. Maybe she had slept through the noise of his knuckles before. He stood for a few more minutes, gave up and returned to the car.

After an hour had passed, he went back to the door for the third time and knocked once again. He thought back and checked his mental record of the discussion on the phone. He was sure of the time and the date. She had repeated it back to him, so it was pretty sure that she agreed to the same as he. He really banged on the door this time.

When he got no response he walked around the house and thought to rap on the back door. He looked in the window at the side of the house, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. He didn’t know what he would do if there was no answer at the back door. Maybe he would have to come back the next day, or, at the very least call on the telephone again.

When he got to the back of the house all of his plans changed.

The back door was wide open, clanking in the wind.

On the ground was a foot wide circular pattern of red. It looked like something red had been spilled and then a half-hearted attempt was made to wipe it up.

This was not good.

Pappy stepped around the red, used his handkerchief to open the door. He walked to the phone and again used his handkerchief when picking it up. He took his pen from his shirt pocket and used it to turn the dial.

He called Evan Turley and asked that some of the Troopers come on over and look at what was surely a new murder scene.

He told Evan that he would wait for their arrival and, of course, not touch anything.

It wasn’t needed to say that, but he knew it had to be said. What also didn’t need to be said was that the case had now become something altogether new.

If Melanie Custer was not just tardy and a bad housekeeper who didn’t lock her doors, then this had just become the first murder that was linked to the boy’s murders, that did not belong.

This, if it turned out to be what he thought it was, would also connect the violence aimed at he and Tooley with Miss Custer. But now everything that might have been thought of as “rules” flew out the window.

These were not “serial killings,” these were “tampering with the evidence” in a killing.

These were murders motivated by a killer who saw the law getting closer. It was a killer beset with a kind of siege mentality, lashing out at anyone who might provide a clue.

He wondered again what Tooley might have seen. Or was it just that Tooley and he represented “the enemy?”

Did the killer think he was closing in on him?

He wished he felt like he was getting closer, rather than just getting other people hurt.

 


© 2005 by C. Wayne Owens

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