It's Murder, My Son (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (5 page)

Mrs. Miller took this as a sign that she had the job. Mac could see that Archie had made her decision also. In every room, Mrs. Miller delayed them with stories from her life.

This woman is going to drive me up the walls.
Mac rubbed his aching temples when they returned to the living room.
How am I going to get out of this?

“Oh, is that your dog?” Mrs. Miller pointed out the doors to the deck where Gnarly was chewing on a dark-colored round object covered with a stringy substance.

“He must have found some kid’s soccer ball in the lake.” Archie stepped to the door to take a closer look.

“What’s he pulling off it?” Mac asked.

“Seaweed?” Archie suggested.

The housekeeper stood between them to peer at the dog and his treasure. “Odd shape for a ball.”

“That’s no ball,” Mac breathed in a low voice while he opened the door.

Grasping the object with one hand, he stopped Gnarly when he tried to carry it inside. It felt slimy to his touch. Two empty eye sockets peered up at him. Mac announced, “That’s not seaweed. It’s hair.” Becoming entwined around his fingers, the slimy strands came loose from the skull.

“It’s a head!” Archie shrieked.

Mrs. Miller screamed and continued to scream. Too shocked to form words—Mac guessed it was probably the first time in her life—she uttered one continuous screech while grabbing her purse and running from the house to her car to peel out of the driveway.

 “I guess I should cross Mrs. Miller off our list,” Archie moaned.

“I guess so.” Mac agreed while suppressing a smile.

Chapter Three

“Until the ME tells us otherwise, we can assume this is the COD.” Mac pointed out a small hole above the ear on the side of the head.

“Shot on the left side of the head. Looks like a big caliber.” With a latex-gloved hand, David O’Callaghan pointed at a larger hole on the other side of the head. “The bullet went through and came out the other side.”

Sitting perfectly like a contestant in a dog show, Gnarly watched them and Archie through the French doors. After taking his new toy from him, Mac had set the head on a garbage bag out on the deck. David was the first police officer to arrive.

“Who is it?” Archie asked.

Mac inquired if the head fit the description of any missing persons.

David turned it over. Some long hair hung from bits of scalp. Its eyes and ears were missing due to decomposition or predators. “I can’t even tell if it’s a man or woman.” He looked up at them. “Where’s the rest of the body?”

“You’ve got me,” Mac said. “The head is all Gnarly brought back.” He quipped, “I guess the body was too heavy for him to carry.”

“Where’s he been?”

“I have no idea. He’s been gone most of the day.”

Archie suggested, “Could it have washed up from the lake? Maybe the rest of the body is at the bottom.”

Both Mac and David shook their heads.

“Bodies that have been in the water don’t look like this,” David said. “The body has to be on land.” He spread out the hair with his pen. “Look at this.”

Mac and Archie leaned over on their haunches to examine the hair. A black powdery substance covered the strands.

“Do you know what that is?” Mac asked.

“Sure do,” David answered. “It’s coal dust.”

Before he could say more, Gnarly let out a howl followed by non-stop snarling barks.

Four men rounded the corner of the house. Three of them wore police uniforms similar to David’s.

Wearing a red sweater over a white turtleneck and slacks, the fourth visitor sauntered over to the dismembered head like it was a new game introduced at a neighborhood party. “Hey, O’Callaghan, what’ve you got?”

David rose to his feet.

“Mr. Faraday?” One of the officers, whose insignias designated that he was in charge, stuck out his hand. “I’m Police Chief Roy Phillips.” His uniform hanging on his boney frame, Chief Phillips reminded Mac of Barney Fife on
The Andy Griffith Show
. He could see bald spots on the scalp through his thin, dirty-blond hair.

After giving Mac’s hand a limp shake, the police chief gestured at the visitor in the red sweater. “This is Travis Turner, the famous novelist. He’s researching Katrina Singleton’s case for a book.” He glanced at the object on the deck. “We understand you found a head without a body attached.”

His dark eyes peering at Mac, Travis firmly shook Mac’s hand. Mac noted that, with his broad chest and shoulders, the author’s flashy good looks would turn any head when he entered a room. In contrast, he recalled that when he had met Robin Spencer, she had reminded him of his third grade Sunday School teacher.

“We’re neighbors,” Travis told him with a gesture at the estate across the cove. “I heard the call about the head on the scanner. After everything that’s been going on this past year, I thought I’d better see it for myself. Who found it?”

“Isn’t it against police policy to allow civilians access to secured crime scenes?” Mac asked David.

Before the officer could respond, Travis said, “I’ve researched hundreds of murder cases during my career. You may have read some of my books. My first,
A Death in Manhattan
, won the Pulitzer.”

“Where I come from, that still wouldn’t warrant granting you access to a crime scene,” Mac argued. “A defense attorney would have all the evidence collected here thrown out of court like that.” He snapped his fingers.

Chief Roy Phillips declared, “Well, we’re a small town here—rich—but small, and we welcome any help, especially from someone of Mr. Turner’s caliber. Now, who found the head?”

“My dog did.” Mac gestured in the direction of Gnarly, who was pressed up against the doors in his effort to get out at them. The German shepherd had been barking so hard that the window was covered with dog drool. “I don’t know where the rest of the body is.”

“Will somebody shut that dog up?” Chief Phillips yelled before kneeling next to his two subordinates to examine the head. While the chief had been talking to Mac, they had been photographing and collecting evidence from the head.

Excusing herself, Archie squeezed through the doors in order to keep Gnarly from charging out while she went in. Mac saw her lead him by his collar in the direction of the entertainment room downstairs.

“Ah, give him a break, chief.” Travis smiled to display a wide mouth filled with straight teeth. They appeared bright white against his dark tan. “Lee Dorcas killed his mistress and beat him half to death.”

Standing over the head while looking down at it, Chief Phillips asked, “What do you think, Turner?” He brought the end of his thumb up to his mouth. Mac winced when he saw he had bitten each of his fingernails down to the quick until they were raw.

“Dorcas didn’t disappear off the face of the earth like we thought. The psycho offed himself,” Travis said.

“Dorcas?” David repeated the name. “We don’t know for sure that this is Lee Dorcas.”

“He was reported missing a few days before he killed Katrina,” Travis said.

“We still don’t have any real evidence to prove that,” David argued.

The writer said, “You put out an APB and no one has seen him. Why else would he disappear if he wasn’t guilty of something? Like murder?”

“What about the petty thefts?”

“What petty thefts?” The theft of his butter and bacon quickly came to Mac’s mind.

David explained, “Shortly after Pay Back showed up we started getting reports of stuff disappearing here on the Point. Wallets, purses, cell phones, keys, towels. You name it. So small that some victims don’t even bother reporting everything that’s been stolen.”

“What about food?” Mac inquired. “Like bacon from out of a kitchen?”

“That’s our guy’s M.O.” David nodded his head. “Since Pay Back was clearly unstable and the thefts have been occurring in the same vicinity, it’s likely that they’re connected. Just two weeks ago, the Holdens reported two wallets and a handbag stolen from their patio during an Easter party. That’s almost two months after Katrina’s murder.”

Travis chuckled. “Did it ever occur to you and the Holdens that one of their caterer’s staff had sticky fingers?”

“That was the first thing I checked into,” David said.

Chief Phillips asked him, “Are you sure you checked into it thoroughly? Two wallets and a handbag sound more like something some hired help would steal than a psychopathic murderer.”

“The staff is clean.”

“I appreciate your tenacity, Officer O’Callaghan,” the police chief interjected, “but you should leave the investigating up to the professionals.”

“I’m a professional,” Mac said.

From where he knelt next to the skull, Travis peered up at him.

“Almost twenty years in homicide. I stopped counting how many murders I investigated after my hundredth case,” Mac told them. “I suggest before you go jumping to any conclusions about this head being connected to Katrina Singleton’s murder that you get a positive ID on it.”

Chief Phillips looked down at Travis.

Mac asked, “Do you have any evidence to prove that Dorcas—Is that your suspect?”

“Lee Dorcas,” David answered. “He was once a client of Katrina Singleton.”

“Do you have any evidence to put him on the scene the night she was killed?”

The police chief responded by sticking the side of his pinkie finger into his mouth and biting down on it.

Mac continued, “Other than the bullet hole where the shot was fired above his ear on one side of the head and out the other, what positive evidence do you have to prove that he, or she since we—you—have yet to determine the sex of this head—inflicted the fatal wound himself?”

While his question was met with silence from the police chief, Mac saw David cover up his mouth with his hand. He guessed that he was covering up a smirk, which he also saw on the faces of the other two officers.

“You need more evidence before closing this case along with the murder of Katrina Singleton. I suggest you start with finding the rest of the body,” Mac said. “Of course, that’s only my humble and professional opinion.”

“That’s what I intend to do.” Chief Phillips called out, “Okay, men. Let’s split up and search the Point. We need to find the rest of this body.”

Travis Turner said, “I’d love to help, but I have some writing to do.”

The writer, chief of police, and one of the officers went off in different directions. David stayed on the deck while the remaining officer wrapped the head in the garbage bag and placed it in a box for transport to the state lab.

“Where on the Point can we find coal dust?” Mac whispered to David.

“Nowhere,” he replied in a soft voice.

*   *   *   *

“What do you think?” Mac blocked a tree branch threatening to stab him in the eye.

While he led Mac up a mountain trail, David explained how coal dust, like that coating the head’s tangled hair, could be found in the Spencer Mine. Since it had been abandoned the century before, the mine had become popular with hikers seeking a strenuous trek.