“Why not?”
“
Why not?
” Ash has a way of cocking her head and gaping at me when I’ve said something she considers irredeemably stupid. “For twenty-five years the only times we saw each other were on weekends—when you weren’t called out to some murder—or when you took vacation. And how often were those canceled because you were needed at a homicide trial?”
“More times than I’d care to remember,” I said quietly.
“Don’t feel bad. It’s simply the way things were. But now I have the chance to be with you, and that’s all I really want. Besides, I want to open Ursa Major with you, and I couldn’t do that if I were working as a full-time deputy.”
Ursa Major was our proposed name for the teddy bear shop and museum we wanted to open. The idea for the business was Ash’s brainchild. She’d unexpectedly come up with the notion back in late September, while dusting some of the antique and award-winning bears from our collection. Ash had idly commented that it was a shame other people couldn’t enjoy our bears, which sparked an epiphany. A few days and obviously a great deal of thought later, she revisited the issue and revealed to me her plan to open a teddy bear emporium that would double as a museum. The business would primarily feature stuffed animals made by the Massanutten Teddy Bear Artist Guild, a crafting club she’d established the previous year, but would also carry a selection of bears made by some of our favorite artists. Her hope was that Ursa Major would become both a tourist attraction and a successful bear shop.
I was skeptical at first, but her enthusiasm won me over and we developed a business plan. Things had progressed quickly, and we’d identified a possible site for our business—an abandoned Victorian-era home on the outskirts of Remmelkemp Mill. We’d already toured the house once and planned to meet the real estate agent tomorrow to take a second look at the property.
Ash took my hand. “I enjoy working patrol once a week as an auxiliary, but I don’t want to give up the freedom to pursue our dreams. I’ve waited too long for this part of our lives.”
“Was it worth the wait?”
Ash leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. “Absolutely. Now, let’s get back to work.”
We walked around to the back of the house, where we found what I assumed was Everett Rawlins’s Ford F-250 pickup truck parked a few yards from the back door.
Ash nodded toward the truck. “When we searched the house for other victims and suspects, I checked the hood. It was cold, so he hadn’t driven anywhere for a while.”
I took a couple of photographs, and then we moved to the east side of the house, which faced toward the mountains. Again, there wasn’t much that was noteworthy. There were another four windows, an electric utility box, and some more holly bushes. The only thing that even slightly caught my eye was a bit of damage in the vinyl siding, about six-and-a-half feet up the wall and near the front corner. It looked as if the bracket from a flag holder had once been mounted there and then been torn off by high winds. The same thing had happened at our house, back during the late spring when a hellacious thunderstorm struck the region. I took several pictures of the wall, and then we returned to the front of the house.
We mounted the porch steps and went into the home, where we were greeted by both the faint spicy smell of what was probably chili and the sound of Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey singing a sardonic ditty about the joys of money. There was a coat closet near the front door and I opened the door. Inside, I saw a pump-action shotgun leaning against the interior wall.
“Well, that’s one way to handle annoying door-to-door solicitors,” I said, taking a picture of the weapon.
“Actually, it’s pretty common for folks to have a weapon like that handy,” said Ash. “Back when I was growing up, we still had bear on our side of the river. Daddy kept a double-barreled shotgun in our front closet.”
“You want to check to see if it’s loaded?”
Ash nodded and removed the firearm from the closet. As she began removing cartridges from the shotgun, she said, “It’s a twelve-gauge, loaded with rifled slugs.”
“Which will make a doughnut-sized hole in a man. So why didn’t Ev take his miniature antitank gun with him when he went outside?”
“Because he was in a hurry?”
“Or didn’t feel there was a threat.”
“So maybe we’re back to this being a hunting accident?”
“It’s way too early to tell, my love. But you know how much I hate a mystery.”
Ash worked the gun’s pump mechanism to ensure she’d removed all the rounds. “What do you want me to do with this stuff?”
“Put the shotgun back in the closet and the rounds on the upper shelf. We’ll collect it as possible evidence later.”
We went into the living room, where, as expected, the sofa and easy chair faced in the direction of the television. I noted a small logo in the lower right-hand corner of the screen that indicated it was tuned to the Turner Classic Movies channel, which was airing
Cabaret
. A rectangular end table stood next to the easy chair and on it was a television remote control, a copy of
TV Guide
, a nearly empty bottle of Yingling beer, and a soup bowl that was about half-full of what looked like canned chili.
A lonely man’s lonely meal
, I thought. Leaning against the inside rim of the bowl was a spoon, which suggested Mr. Rawlins had been interrupted during his supper.
Nodding toward the TV, I said, “So what’s wrong with this picture?”
“How do you mean?” Ash asked.
“
Cabaret
? You knew Everett Rawlins. Does that seem like the kind of movie he—or any other guy around here—would watch?”
“As a matter of fact, no. That probably means he was watching something else when he went outside.”
“Exactly, which might help us establish a tentative timeline.” I took several photographs of the room and then picked up the
TV Guide
. Finding the listing for Thursday night, I said, “
Cabaret
started at seven. Before that, it was
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
. Interesting choice for a double feature.”
“Is that a John Wayne movie?”
“Yeah. It’s a classic guy film from an era when that didn’t mean it was full of car crashes, naked bimbos, and jokes about flatulence.”
“Well, John Wayne definitely sounds more like the sort of movie Everett would watch.” Ash looked thoughtful. “So, we’ve probably narrowed down the time of death to between five-forty-five and sometime before the movie ended at seven P.M.”
“Yep.” I leaned over to press the mute button on the TV remote. “Do you see anything else significant?”
“The unfinished dinner . . . if you can call a beer and canned chili a dinner. Poor Everett. He probably never learned to cook, and with Lois gone . . .”
“He made whatever was easiest. This guy was living my worst nightmare,” I sighed, suddenly recalling how close I’d come to losing Ash back in September when we were visiting California. “Anyway, something made him get up and leave his meal to go outside.”
“Maybe he saw Chet’s headlights up on the ridge.”
“From this chair?” I sat down in the recliner and craned my neck to look out the adjoining window. “You might be able to see the bottom of the hill from here, but not the upper part. The porch roof is in the way.”
Ash turned and headed for the kitchen. “Maybe there’s another explanation.” I pushed myself up from the chair and followed her. “What have you got?”
“Take a look at this.” Ash pointed to some items on the white tile counter. “The kitchen is pretty clean. Yet we’ve got a crumpled-up, chili-stained paper napkin and an unopened bottle of beer.”
“Which might mean he was in the kitchen getting another bottle of liquid bread when things went south. Good obs.”
Ash leaned over the counter to look out the window. “Maybe not. You can’t see the upper part of the hill from here either. The porch roof is still in the way. Could that mean Everett saw someone in his yard?”
“And that person ran to the hill? That fits the evidence we have right now, but . . .”
“What?”
“If you’re going to ambush someone, do you make a point of ensuring that your victim sees you before you spring the trap?”
“Brad, honey, none of this adds up.”
“I know, so we keeping digging until it does. Now, if you’ll move, I’ll get some pictures of the kitchen.”
I completed the photos, and then we moved on to the dining room, the laundry room, and then what looked to be Rawlins’s office at the back of the house. Unlike the kitchen, the office wasn’t tidy. Paperwork was piled in haphazard stacks on the desk and chairs and in front of the dark computer monitor.
“Ransacking?” Ash asked.
“No, it’s too neat for that. It looks more as if he was trying to find some kind of document.” I pointed to the open drawer on an old metal filing cabinet.
“I’ll bet Lois handled all the bills and paperwork.”
“Which probably meant he didn’t know where anything was.”
I photographed the office, and then we started upstairs. I don’t move fast under the best of circumstances, and stairs slow me down to the speed of a DMV clerk. Ash took my cane and I kept a death grip on the banister as I carefully mounted each step. The slow journey to the second floor afforded me a glimpse of the Rawlins family’s life in an array of framed photos on the wall. There was a faded color portrait of Everett and Lois’s wedding, a picture of a much younger Everett wearing a navy uniform, a shot of a grinning Lois holding an enormous pumpkin, and several photos of a boy I assumed was their son, Kurt, as he grew up.
Upstairs, we checked the master bedroom, the bathroom, and Kurt’s boyhood bedroom. We didn’t find anything that qualified as murder evidence, but we did locate a .357 magnum revolver in Rawlins’s nightstand drawer. However, the handgun was unloaded, which suggested Rawlins hadn’t considered himself in any sort of danger.
There was a buzz of static, and then Tina’s voice sounded from Ash’s portable radio. “Mike-One to Mike-Eleven, can you come out? The ME just arrived.”
Ash keyed the mike and said, “We’re on our way out.”
We went downstairs and out into the yard, where the commonwealth’s medical examiner’s van was now parked behind Ash’s patrol car. Tina and another dark-haired woman were standing in the gentle rain beside the van. As we got closer, I recognized the ME as Dr. Dolly Grice, whom we’d met the previous year when I’d discovered a murder victim at the local history museum. Grice had impressed me as intelligent, observant, and prone to the macabre humor common among those who routinely deal with the dead. We shook hands with the ME and then went over to Rawlins’s body.
Dr. Grice did a double take when she saw the murder victim. “Whoa! So, where is the
rest
of the Seventh Cavalry?”
“I take it you haven’t seen many people killed this way?” Tina asked.
“Actually, I’ve handled a couple deaths where arrows were the COD, but I’ve never seen one where the arrow was still sticking out of the body. The other hunters always yank it out and try to stop the bleeding.” Dolly pulled out a camera and snapped two photos.
“Which brings up something we hadn’t considered,” I said. “Even if this began as an accident, it turned into a crime when whoever shot the arrow didn’t render first aid or call for the paramedics.”
“And that makes it manslaughter,” said Tina.
Dr. Grice put her camera back into her satchel and then knelt to examine the body. “I’m just speculating, but this looks like a Cupid-from-hell shot, right into the base of the heart. The victim was probably dead within a few seconds.”
“If he was shot in the heart, how come there isn’t much blood?” Ash asked.
“It’s probably all still in his chest cavity. Internal exsanguination.” The ME shifted her position and began pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “Can someone give me a hand here?”
I began to clap, but stopped when Ash gave me an I-can’t-believe-you’re-doing-that look. She said, “How can we help?”
“You can start by telling your husband to behave,” Dr. Grice said with a chuckle.
“I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.”
The ME tossed Ash a pair of latex gloves. “Then help me roll our victim over a little. I want to see if we’ve got a through-and-through wound.”
Ash immediately knelt on the gravel near the corpse. It was a rewarding moment for me. The last time we’d processed a murder scene, she’d been somewhat squeamish about touching the dead body. It was a natural reaction, but Ash obviously intended to conquer that weakness. The two women carefully rolled Rawlins over onto his left side, revealing the dead man’s back. There was no sign of blood or of the arrowhead protruding from the shirt. Ash continued to hold the body on its side until Dr. Grice and I finished our photographs.
“That’s kind of strange.” Dolly sounded thoughtful. “In every other case I’ve worked like this, there was evidence that the arrow made at least a partial exit from the opposite side of the body.”
“What would account for this one not going through?” Tina asked.
Dr. Grice shrugged. “The only thing that makes sense to me is that maybe the arrow was fired from a significant distance, which would cause it to lose velocity.”
“Less force equals less penetration,” I agreed.
“Hopefully, we’ll know more tomorrow morning, after the autopsy,” said Dr. Grice, waving for her two attendants to come and prepare the body for transportation to the regional ME’s office.
“It’s going to be a little difficult getting him into a body bag,” I said.
“Aren’t you going to remove the arrow now?” Ash asked Dolly.
“No. I don’t have the equipment to do it, and we might lose trace evidence. It’s better for us to wait until the autopsy,” the ME replied. “Oh, and Brad?”
“Yes, Dr. Grice?”
“I noticed that you didn’t torture us with any of your usual bad puns. Are you running out of material?”
“No . . . no,” I said pensively. “I just stopped because I thought it made me look like I was overconfident and full of myself. You know . . . arrow-gant.”
Five