Fortunately, Ash came back on the air and I disconnected from the call. My wife sounded angry. “Mike-Eleven to dispatch, I’m breaking off the pursuit. All we have is misdemeanor offenses and someone is going to die out here if I keep chasing that guy. He just missed hitting a car head-on while passing that truck.”
“Pursuit being terminated,” the dispatcher said.
“Suspect vehicle last seen northbound on U.S. Three-Forty, approaching Berrytown Road.”
“I’ll pass that along in a BOL to the state police. Do you want them to continue to your location?”
Even with the scratchy radio reception, I could hear Ash sigh. “Negative. No point.”
I slumped back into the chair and silently thanked God that my wife possessed both the good sense and courage to stop pursuing the Saab. All too often, cops who become involved in dangerous vehicle pursuits forget to weigh the risk to the community against the benefit of capturing someone who’s committed a minor offense, which is exactly what a hit-and-run was. No car fender ever made is worth a human life, so Ash had made a wise choice and a ballsy one, too. Although we’d almost finished the first decade of the twenty-first century, many of the male cops around here still hold a pretty dim view of women in law enforcement. Ash had to know that some of her fellow deputies would claim she’d terminated the chase because she been too afraid to continue.
Ash was transmitting again. “Mike-Eleven to the game warden unit, any chance we can still go after your guy?”
“Negative. He’s in the wind and I’m calling it a night,” said the game warden.
“Sorry.” My wife sounded even more downcast. “Mike-Eleven to dispatch, before I come to the station to make my report, I’m going to head back to Kobler Hollow Road. I want to check out the house where the vehicle came from. Maybe they know the guy.”
“Copy.”
“And you might as well call the sheriff and tell her that I dinged up a car.”
“The sheriff has already been advised,” Gloria said smugly.
Gritting my teeth, I thought,
You little witch. When the radio went dead, you couldn’t be bothered to check on my wife’s welfare, but you didn’t waste any time ratting her out for damaging a cruiser.
I suddenly regretted not having completed that ear-scorching call to the dispatch center.
Now that the excitement was over, I finished cutting the fabric for Bear-atio’s slacks. I’d just begun to slowly stitch one of the legs together when Ash’s voice came over the scanner again.
“Mike-Eleven to dispatch, I’ll be out at one-sixty-two Kobler Hollow Road. The mailbox says it’s the Rawlins farm.”
“Copy, out at the Rawlins farm.” The dispatcher sounded distracted, and I wondered if she was struggling to come up with a four-letter word for
indolent
.
About thirty seconds passed, and when Ash came back on the air, the poorer sound quality of the transmission told me she was using her handheld portable radio. In an urgent voice, she said, “Mike-Eleven to dispatch, I have a possible murder victim here. Send me Code Three backup. We need to check the house for other victims and suspects.”
The game warden cut into the frequency before the dispatcher could reply. “Unit Five-Seventy-Eight to Mike-Eleven, I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
I thought,
God bless you, Unit Five-Seventy-Eight
, as I turned off the Bernina. I wasn’t going to finish Bear-atio’s slacks tonight.
Then Gloria came on the air, sounding flustered. “Do you need the rescue squad?”
“Not unless they can bring this poor man back to life, dispatch.” Ash’s voice was acid. “But contact Sheriff Barron and my husband and tell them to respond to this location immediately.”
Two
I changed into jeans and a long-sleeved flannel shirt and pulled out a pair of sturdy work boots. It hadn’t been raining that hard or for very long, but it doesn’t take much moisture to turn the soil around here into the sort of glutinous mud that can suck the shoes right from your feet.
Next, I retrieved my Glock pistol and shoulder holster from the sock drawer and slipped the rig on. As a civilian investigative consultant for the sheriff’s office, I had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. It wasn’t a requirement of my duties to be armed, but a quarter century of cop work has taught me that it’s better to have a gun and not need it than to need one and not have it, especially when working a fresh homicide. Believe it or not, sometimes killers
do
return to the scene of the crime.
Grabbing my rechargeable flashlight and blackthorn cane, I led Kitch downstairs and secured him inside his big plastic crate. Our dog suffers from separation anxiety, and one of his ways of dealing with stress is to chew on things, which can be a little hazardous in a house packed with expensive teddy bears. The crate’s metal-grate door faced toward the television, and I turned the tube on for Kitch. He’d be happy. The shopping network QVC was airing a “Food Fest” program, and at the moment they were selling bacon-wrapped filet mignon steaks.
I paused at the front door to put on my heavy parka and San Francisco Giants ball cap, and once outside I heard an emergency vehicle siren begin yelping from the direction of Remmelkemp Mill. I strongly suspected it was Sheriff Tina Barron on her way to assist Ash. I climbed into our Nissan Xterra, slipped a Cannonball Adderley jazz CD into the player, and headed toward the Rawlins farm. There was no need for me to rush. The corpse wasn’t going anywhere.
The rain began to taper off a little as I crossed the river and then turned south onto U.S. Route 340, otherwise known as the Stonewall Jackson Highway. Although I couldn’t see the Blue Ridge Mountains, I knew they were to my left and less than a mile away. Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic on the road, but I didn’t relax or increase my speed. There was no need for both members of the Lyon household to be involved in accidents tonight. That train of thought naturally led to Ash. I knew I would have to resist my natural inclination to give her a hug or otherwise make any sort of fuss over her having been in a hit-and-run. My wife was on duty, and cops don’t behave that way toward one another.
Besides, I had a feeling that she’d be in no mood for a pep talk or to be comforted. One of the first things that must have occurred to Ash when she found the dead body was that she’d possibly allowed a murderer to escape—not that her decision to terminate the pursuit wasn’t appropriate, given the limited information she’d possessed at the time. However, my wife is a perfectionist, and I knew it was likely she was furious with herself for having—at least in her mind—dropped the ball. That wasn’t the case, and if she brought the subject up, I was going to pass along a messy fact about a cop work that I’d learned many years ago: You can handle a situation perfectly, and things can still turn to crap.
After traveling about four miles, I arrived at the intersection with Kobler Hollow Road and made a left turn. Despite the poor illumination, I noticed what looked like fresh fishtailing skid marks on the wet pavement and wondered whether the Saab or my wife’s patrol car had made them. Incredibly, the night seemed to become even darker. The narrow road was so closely hemmed on both sides by tall evergreen trees and dense hedgerows that it was like a tunnel.
Finally, I saw the flashing blue lights of a stationary patrol car. As I got closer, I saw that it was a gray state police cruiser blocking a gravel lane that led from the road toward the mountain. The mailbox next to the driveway bore the name RAWLINS in white reflective letters. The state trooper got out of his car and walked over to my SUV as I came to a stop.
Lowering the window, I held up my sheriff’s office ID card and said, “I’m Brad Lyon. Sheriff Barron probably told you I was coming.”
“She did. Go ahead and park over there.” The state trooper pointed to the gravelly shoulder on the opposite side of the road.
“Any reason why I can’t drive in?”
“No room. The driveway isn’t that long and it’s pretty much bumper-to-bumper with police cars.”
So I’d have to walk—or more accurately, limp—the rest of the way in. I parked the SUV and discovered that the state trooper hadn’t exaggerated. The one-lane driveway was lined with tall holly shrubs and was jammed to capacity with police cruisers from the sheriff’s office, state police, an SUV that belonged to the game warden, and even a couple of cop cars from two of the nearby small towns.
Somewhere in the near distance, a dog was frantically barking, and when I arrived at the other end of the driveway I realized the sound was coming from inside the Rawlinses’ white, two-story Cape Cod-style house. There was a massive whitewashed barn opposite the home, and a light mounted high on the side of the barn lit the small yard with a dim bluish-white glow. Parked in front of the house was a sheriff’s car with its headlights still on. I assumed it was Ash’s cruiser and that the murder victim, whom I couldn’t see from my current position, was lying on the gravel driveway in the dual cones of light. Glancing back at the house, I noted that the porch light was on, as was at least one light inside the home on the first floor. The glowing exterior lights on the porch and barn suggested the victim had died after nightfall.
A flashlight blinked on and off from the direction of the barn, and I realized I was being signaled. There was a carport-like structure attached to the barn, and inside the open enclosure were a cluster of dark silhouettes. Tina had wisely established her command post away from the body, which still wasn’t visible.
As I stumped toward the carport, three officers detached themselves from the group and nodded to me on their way back to the patrol cars. I saw from the shoulder patches on their uniforms that they were cops from Elkton, Grottoes, and the state police. If Tina was already sending her reinforcements back to their home jurisdictions, it meant she was confident the murderer was gone.
It was dark beneath the carport, yet I had no trouble identifying two of the three remaining people awaiting my arrival. Dressed in a brown and tan deputy sheriff’s uniform, with her wavy blond hair worn in a bun, Ash had her arms folded across her chest and her head tilted downward. Even in the gloom, I could see she wore a forlorn expression. Standing next to Ash was Sheriff Tina Barron, who wore a parka with the hood pulled up, concealing her curly brunette hair. The third person was a tall, lean, gray-bearded man attired in a game warden’s uniform, who I assumed was Unit Five-Seventy-Eight. Outside, the rain was falling a little harder, the droplets drumming on the carport’s aluminum roof.
Tina said, “I’m glad to see you dressed warmly. We’re going to be out here a while.”
“So it’s a confirmed homicide?” I asked.
“Yep. The ME is en route from Roanoke, which will give us plenty of time to process the scene and collect what little evidence hasn’t been washed away by the rain. The camera and evidence collection kit are in the trunk of my car,” said Tina, giving my wife a worried glance. “We can start whenever you’re ready.”
Ash had remained silent, which was a bad sign. Even though I’d decided against offering my wife any overt signs of affection, I reached out to give her gloved hand a reassuring squeeze. I just couldn’t help myself. She looked so sad. Ash gripped my hand tightly, and I was glad I’d trusted my instincts.
“How are you doing?” I quietly asked.
“Lousy,” Ash grumbled.
“I understand how you feel, but you made the right call to terminate the pursuit.”
“Oh, great. So you heard how I screwed everything up.”
“Honey, you know that I always monitor the scanner when you’re working. You didn’t screw up. If you’d pushed that chase any further, someone would’ve died. I’d have done the same thing you did.”
Tina nodded vigorously. “That’s what I’ve been telling her.”
Ash looked up at me with bleak eyes. “But I let a murder suspect get away.”
“We don’t know that for sure.” Tina tried to sound encouraging.
“Especially since your victim is Everett Rawlins,” said the bearded man. He extended an open right hand toward me. “I’m Game Warden Randy Kent, and I guess you must be Brad Lyon.”
As I shook hands with Randy, I decided to wait until we were alone before quietly expressing my appreciation for his backing up Ash so quickly. In her present disheartened mood, there was a good chance that Ash would misinterpret it as a tacit statement that I’d thought she’d needed rescuing. So instead, I said, “Good to meet you. Why is our victim’s identity so important?”
“Because two weeks ago, Ev Rawlins swore out a complaint against Chester Lincoln, charging poaching, trespassing, and the attempted shooting of a domestic pet.” Randy nodded toward the house, where the dog had begun to bark again. “That world be Longstreet.”
“Longstreet?” I asked.
“Ev’s dog. He’s a hundred-pound Rottweiler, and I secured him in the downstairs bathroom when we checked inside the house.”
“And I’ve already called animal control to come and take Longstreet to the shelter,” Tina added. “It’s sad. I think he knows his master is dead.”
Randy resumed his tale. “Ev told me that he just happened to be walking Longstreet one night when he came upon Chet doing some illegal hunting. He said that Chet took a shot at the dog for no reason.”
I chuckled at the improbable tale. “More likely Ev told Cujo it was all-you-can-eat night on the mountain and sent him after the guy.”
“That’s what I think, too. But it’s Ev’s word against Chet’s.” Randy glanced toward where I presumed the body lay. His voice became doleful. “Or at least it was until tonight.”
“And this Chet is the same guy you were trying to stop?” I asked.
“Yeah, Chet Lincoln. I have a warrant for his arrest. Maybe Chet thought he had a score to settle. It was no secret that Ev was dead-set on pressing charges.”
“Not much of a motive for murder, though, is it? From what I’ve seen, nobody around here goes to jail for illegal hunting.”
“Most of the time that’s true.” There was a trace of sourness in Randy’s voice. “But lots of folks have had their fill of Chet trespassing on their property, and they know he’s killing way more game than he could ever eat.”