Middle River Murders (12 page)

“Make if fast, please,” I said. “Mom needs to get out of here
and I’m sure she doesn’t want to go anywhere covered in blood.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Cole turned and went inside. He
returned within seconds and said, “Sheriff Hudson wants to talk to you before
you do anything.”

Before anyone could reply, Sheriff Hudson walked out onto the
porch. At the same time, the two deputies in the front yard jumped into their
cruisers and pulled out of the driveway heading up the mountain.

“Where’re they going?” I asked.

“We have a real situation on our hands here,” Sheriff Hudson
said.

Sheriff Hudson is a small man, unlike his deputies who are
huge, muscular men, strong enough to bring even the toughest criminal to his
knees. They were used to running
Greene
County
with an iron fist. Before Wake
Hudson’s arrival, the old sheriff and his deputies were known to have knocked a
few heads together to bring peace to the community. They say the old sheriff
cleaned up the town, and all but eliminated the flow of drugs into
Greene
County
.
However, in the process he made a lot of enemies along the way and wasn’t
reelected. But when Sheriff Wake Hudson got elected, things changed. He kept
the communities safe without the use of too much brute force, except when absolutely
necessary. He had the respect of his men and everyone who lived in the county.
He was considered fair and just, which was just what this town needed. He
almost eliminated moonshining and illegal guns on the streets, and he kept the
drug flow to a minimum. If people in the community wanted their pot or other
illegal substances, they had to get past the new sheriff in town. Most potheads
and users of harder substances had to branch out and go to
Charlottesville
, Gordonsville or as far away as
Culpeper to make their purchases. But even those towns had their own way of
dealing with drug users and it was getting harder and harder for users to
score. The city of
Charlottesville
is a college town and we all know
that college towns often have a high rate of drug users (mostly pot) because
the new students from other cities bring their drugs with them. But the Chief
of Police took a hard stance and hopefully was winning the war on drugs… if
that’s possible. As long as crack is out there on the streets, the war is never
over.

“What’s the deal, sheriff?” Billy asked.

Sheriff Hudson looked at Mom and then to me and asked, “How
deep are you two into this mess with Daisy Clark?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I replied, acting as if I was
totally confused by his question.

“Come on, Jesse. Help me out here. I know the two of you went
to Alice Aiken’s funeral today with Daisy and Gabe Clark. I was there,
remember? Now I know you’re involved in something that you shouldn’t be. How
many times have I told you to let us do our jobs? You’re making matters worse
by being in the company of this woman and you’re hindering our investigation.
Not to mention the fact that you’re putting yourselves in danger.”

“What investigation?” Mom asked. “
Alice
came to you with her suspicions and you brushed her
off. Now she’s dead. She was a friend of mine and I plan to keep after Daisy
until I break her.”

“Or until you both get yourselves killed. Stay out of this.
We’ve had her under surveillance ever since Alice Aikens made those claims.”

“Unfortunately, you can’t seem to get anything on her,” Mom
said, belligerently. “She’s not in jail, is she?”

“We don’t have enough evidence to arrest her. As soon as we
can...”

“What about your eyewitness?”

“We can’t locate her. It seems she’s disappeared. The last
time anyone saw her was the day she came into the station and made her
statement.”

“Oh, that’s a fine how-do-you-do. Three women are dead, and
now a witness is missing. What does that tell you?”

“It tells me that we might have a serial killer on our hands
and the two of you had better stay away from Daisy Clark until we can either
eliminate her as a suspect, or put her behind bars.”

“So you do think she’s a killer.”

“Something strange is going on, that’s for sure,” Sheriff
Hudson said. “We now have a bigger problem to deal with.”

“What’s that?” Billy asked.

“The intruder lying dead on your kitchen floor is Kansas
Moon.”

“What an odd name,” Mom said. She seemed relieved to finally
be able to put a name to the face… as if that would help her deal with her
distress.

“Who would name someone after a state?
Kansas
… what kind of name is that?” I
sneered.

But it wasn’t the name that repulsed me; it was the person
lying covered in blood on my mother’s floor. I was filled with hatred for him.
I thought about my mother. This is her place. How will she ever be able to
return to the final home she had shared with my father and be able to relive
her precious memories of her soul mate without thinking about what happened
here today? This place will never be the same for her. I was quickly becoming
more furious than I was when I struck the intruder in the head. Now I wanted
blood. I wanted to hurt him again. Suddenly, I realized I wasn’t as all right
as I previously thought I was. My concern for my mother overshadowed an extreme
force in me, a force that would allow me to go back in there and pulverize his
body with a baseball bat… or a hammer. I thought about my earlier vision of
kicking him in the head and I knew I had to do something to get rid of these
evil thoughts before it destroyed me and turned me into another Daisy Clark. I
was afraid I was going postal. My stomach churned.

“What’s this bigger problem you mentioned, sheriff?” Billy
asked, raising an eyebrow.

One look at the sheriff’s face and I knew there was an ocean
current getting ready to rise up and suck us all in. We were getting ready to
drown.

“Kansas Moon is Daisy Clark’s brother.”

“What?” Billy asked in shock. “Are you serious?”

“I knew who he was the minute I laid eyes on him,” Sheriff
Hudson said. “There’ve been several complaints filed against him over the
years, but never anything too serious—mostly trespassing or an occasional
newspaper theft from someone’s box, or food stolen from someone’s garden. He’s
mentally slow, if you know what I mean, and up until now, he was harmless.”

“So what you’re saying is that if he’d been locked up for his
past offenses, this might not have happened,” I said, furious at the failure of
our sheriff’s office for not protecting the community from this killer.

“That’s not entirely true. Even if he’d gone to court on the
charges, the judge probably would’ve dismissed them. They were misdemeanors.”

“It didn’t take long for his minor offenses to escalate,” I
spat back at him. I stopped as if a lightning bolt had struck me. “Oh, my God!
It just sunk in. He’s Daisy Clark’s brother! We’re really in trouble now.”

“No joke,” Mom said. Her face was flushed, but at least she
seemed to be getting it together a little bit. “She’s going to piece this
puzzle together and we’re not going to be safe.” She hesitated and then said,
“Sheriff, I’d like to go back inside my house and take a shower. I’ll leave it
up to you and your men to sort all this out.”

“That’s fine, Mrs. Watson. All I ask is that you give your
clothes to the female deputy inside so they can be sent to the crime lab.”

“I can do that, sheriff. You can keep them. I don’t want them
anymore,” Mom said as she turned to me. “Would you please come with me, Jesse?”

“Of course, I will, Mom.”

The two of us walked inside and went to Mom’s bedroom where
she had a private bathroom. She closed the bedroom door and then said, “Billy
is a good man, Jesse, and he’s right about what he said about God. He was there
to protect us and gave us the courage to do what had to be done. I don’t want you
to worry yourself about me. Everything will be all right. I’m going to make it.
Prayer will get me through this.”

“Then maybe you’ll say a few prayers for me.”

“I always do, honey.”

After Mom took a shower and I was confident she would be safe
without me, I jumped in the guest shower. Billy brought my duffel bag in from
my car. That was another thing I’d learned from him early on in our
relationship—always be prepared; carry a bag of clothes, a few toiletries and a
gun everywhere you go. As I showered, I berated myself for listening to my
mother’s request for me to leave my gun in the car. I should’ve had it on me at
all times. I will from now on, I promised myself.

We gave our bloody clothes to the female deputy and watched
her bag them.

“How do you do this?” I asked. “You’re half the size of these
men and yet you run with the big dogs as if it was nothing.”

“As my mama always told me, if you’re going to play rough,
have an ace in the hole. My ace is my gun and I’m pretty good with it. I can
hit a gnat on a …”

I think I’ve heard this one before,” Mom interrupted. “So if
you’ll excuse me, I’m going outside to be with my son-in-law.” She turned and
left the room.

After Mom was out the door, I looked at the deputy and said,
“My mother’s pretty strict about potty mouths. She really gives me the dickens
sometimes.”

“I know what you mean,” the deputy said. “My mother’s the
same way. It’s been rough on her with my being on the force. She hates it that
I’m exposed to such vile language. She doesn’t have a clue. Bad language is the
least of my worries. If I told her some of the situations I’ve been in, she’d
freak out. So I don’t tell her.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I know it’s your job, but your compassion
is comforting.”

“Here,” she said, slipping a card into my hand. “It’s the
name and number of a counselor who can help you and your mother work through
this trauma. You might not think you need help now, but you do. Make sure your
mother goes. Mothers have a tendency to think they’re invincible, but they’re
not. Sometimes they need our help.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Thanks so much for your kindness.”

She handed me another card and said, “My name’s Deputy
Katherine Kingsley. If you ever need me, my number’s on the card.”

The now infamous wall phone in the kitchen rang, resonating
off the walls like the bell at St. Andrews Cathedral.

I looked over at the clock on the living room wall and saw
that it was ten minutes past six. We had missed our dinner engagement with
Daisy and Gabe. The phone call had to be from her.

“Sheriff,” I called out. “That’s probably Daisy
Clark
calling. We had a dinner engagement over in
Madison
County
with her and her husband ten minutes ago.”

He came over, took me by the arm and said, “I want you to
talk to her. Don’t let on about her brother. I need to buy some time. Can you
handle this? You’d really be helping me out.”

“You bet I can,” I said. “But why do you need to buy some
time? Don’t you have a responsibility to notify the family immediately? I’m not
going to be the one to tell her, that’s for sure.”

“While I assess the situation, I’m waiting for a warrant to
search Kansas Moon’s place. I sent my deputies up there and they’re just
waiting to hear from me. By the time the deceased is bagged, tagged and in the
morgue, and I’ve searched his place, then I’ll notify his family.”

“How will you keep this out of the news?”

“You let me worry about that,” he replied. “Just answer the
phone, please.”

Sheriff Hudson walked over, picked up the receiver and then
handed it to me. “Make up something, but be convincing,” he whispered. “We
don’t want to tip our hand.”

“Hello,” I said into the phone, huffing as if I were out of
breath. “Hold on a minute,” I raised my voice and pretended to be talking to
someone in the room. “I’m sorry,” I said back into the receiver. “Can I help
you?”

“It’s me, Daisy. Is this Jesse?”

“Daisy! Oh, I’m so sorry about dinner. Mom just had one of
her episodes and the ambulance is here, so I have to go. I’ll call you later,
if you want me to.”

“I hope your mother’s going to be all right.” The concern in
her voice sounded genuine.

“She thinks it’s just an anxiety attack, but we have to be
sure. Please tell Gabe that I’m sorry about dinner. I’ll call you as soon as we
know anything. I have to go.” I ended the conversation. I didn’t want to give
her the opportunity to ask which hospital Mom was going to, and I wanted to
convey a sense of urgency. I put the receiver back into its holder and turned
to Sheriff Hudson.

“How was that?” I asked, proud of myself for coming up with
such a convincing lie at the spur of the moment. I’m getting pretty good at
that.

“You do well under pressure, Mrs. Blackhawk.”

“Oh, sheriff, I’ve told you before to call me Jesse. I think
we know each other well enough now that you can call me by my first name, and
I’ll call you Sheriff Hudson. That is your name, isn’t it?” I forced a smile.

“We have been through a lot together.” He winked. He looked
over at the body lying on the floor. “We’ve done the crime scene preliminaries
and the M.E. should be here any minute. He’ll take the body to the morgue and
begin an autopsy.”

“Can he do an autopsy without the family’s consent?”

“This is a violent crime. Of, course, he can.”

“What will an autopsy prove? You know all the facts.”

“It’s standard procedure. I do the crime scene and I leave
the rest to the M.E.”

The sheriff’s walkie-talkie buzzed. The call was from the
dispatcher at the Sheriff’s Office.

“You have your warrant, Sheriff Hudson,” the voice on the
other end said.

Sheriff Hudson immediately buzzed one of his men. “It’s a go,
Deputy Hayden. Get back with me if you find anything.” He released the hold
button.

“What do you expect to find?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Hopefully, we’ll find something
that will explain his behavior. I’d like to know what made him go off the deep
end. He went from petty theft to attempted murder. Something made him snap. He
didn’t just wake up this morning and decide to break into your mother’s house
and steal something or do bodily harm. But if he did, I’m sure he saw the cars
parked out front. He must’ve known someone was here. He’s never broken into
anyone’s house. The M.O. doesn’t fit.”

“Daisy,” I suggested, finally seeing the light. “She’s on to
us. There’s no doubt in my mind. She found out she was being tailed, tracked Jonathan
down and shot him, then realized he was related to my mother by marriage. She
found out that the guy she shot is the brother of the man who is married to her
friend’s daughter. I’m sure she felt betrayed by her dear friend, Minnie. She
put two and two together and came up with twenty to life and decided to change
the tables on us. She was going to eliminate the problem—us. She set this whole
thing up. She called my mother and told her about
Alice
, knowing that my mother would want to attend the funeral
and then invited Mom to go with her and Gabe. The idea was to go to the funeral
and then after they dropped Mom off, the brother would break in and kill Mom.
Having me along was just the icing on the cake. She could kill two birds… as
the saying goes. She’s sneaky. She enlists the help of her mentally challenged
brother to do the deed and she has her husband as an alibi. She was scared. She
did her homework. She knows all about Billy, his agency, his brother the bounty
hunter, and me the troublemaker, but she didn’t know what we had on her. She’s
no dummy. What she didn’t count on was her brother failing to kill us. She
thought we were just two helpless women. Boy was she ever wrong.”

“I guess she didn’t know what she was up against,” Sheriff
Hudson said with a slight grin. “I admire your strength, Jesse. Now that I know
you better, I regret some of the things I thought about you in the past. You
have good intentions; sometimes you just don’t know how to put them to proper
use.”

“Thanks, sheriff. I like you, too.”

“So she called here to find out why you didn’t show up for
dinner, establishing yet another alibi,” the sheriff pondered.

“I bet she just about wet her pants when I answered the
phone. That means she probably called her brother and when she couldn’t reach
him, she panicked. I wouldn’t be surprised if she isn’t hiding out in the woods
watching us at this very minute. We don’t know that she actually called from
the restaurant in
Madison
, but if she did, she could be here
in fifteen minutes. We’ve been talking that long.”

We both looked at each other and then looked around as if we
were being watched.

“I don’t like what I’m thinking,” I said.

“I don’t either.”

Sheriff Hudson got on the walkie-talkie and alerted his men.
He told them to be on the lookout for Daisy Clark.”

“Do your men know what Daisy looks like?”

“Sure, they do. I told you we have her under surveillance.
Let’s go outside and wait for the M.E. That way we can keep our eyes open for
Daisy, just in case she does show up.”

“What about the body?”

The sheriff looked over at the deputy standing by the utility
room door. “Deputy Kline will stay with the body. Besides,
he’s
not
going anywhere.”

“Why Sheriff Hudson, I think you were making a joke.”

“I have to find humor wherever I can.” He smiled at me and
led me to the front door.

The medical examiner showed up with his group of technicians
as we were walking out onto the porch.

The sheriff turned to me and said, “Fill everybody in on our
suspicions while I talk with the M.E., okay?”

“Sure,” I said.

Just then, the sheriff got a call on his walkie-talkie. “Go
ahead,” he said.

“Sheriff, you need to come up here and see this,” the voice
on the other end said.

“Just tell me, Deputy Cash. I’m busy at the moment.”

“Sir, I think this is something you need to see for
yourself.”

“Where’s Deputy Hayden?”

“He’s down in the basement. I’m at point. Sir, you really
need to come up here. We’re going to secure the area and wait for you.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in ten minutes.” The sheriff fiddled
with his walkie-talkie and then greeted the M.E. He shook the man’s hand and
said, “Hope I didn’t drag you away from anything too important, Snake.”

“Nothing I couldn’t put on hold, Spider.”

The sheriff turned, smiled at all of us and said, “We all
have nicknames, but I’d better never hear mine come out of the mouths of any of
you, or I’ll lock you up for sure.” He looked over at Cole. “I need you inside,
deputy.”

Cole turned and followed the two men into the house while the
rest of us stayed on the porch, talking about our feelings and fears.

“I wonder what they found up at that guy’s house,” Mom said.

“They probably found the carcasses of all the animals that
have been missing in
Dogwood
Valley
,”
I blurted out.

Mom and I looked at each other and for a brief moment an
eerie feeling passed between us. I could feel it, so I knew she could, too.

“You were inside for a long time. What did you and the
sheriff talk about, Jesse?” Billy asked. “I hope you didn’t say anything you
shouldn’t have. I started to come inside, but…”

“I wanted him here with me,” Mom said. “I don’t know how I
feel about killing someone. I don’t think it has hit me, yet, otherwise, I’d
probably be hysterical.”

“We’ll help each other through this, Mom.”

“I know what you’re going through,” Billy said. “The first
time I killed someone, I had no remorse. I thought that was odd, and that’s
what scared me. It was self-defense, but still, you should feel some sadness
just for the fact that a life is lost, shouldn’t you?”

“I have no remorse,” I said, softly. “I am sorry a life was
taken, but I’d rather it be him than my mother. That’s how I’ll get through the
day.”

“You can feel however you feel,” Russ said. “However, if you
show no remorse the police will think you have something to hide.”

“We have nothing to hide. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Russ said. “But it’s usually
through the bars of a jail cell. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve been
called in to represent who said the same thing.”

“I need to sit down,” I said. “I have something to tell
y’all.”

Billy got up from the swing and motioned for me to sit, but
instead, I turned and walked the length of the porch searching for a sign that
Daisy might be lurking behind a tree. The deputies who were in the front yard
were gone and the only people left besides Mom, Billy, Russ and me, were in the
house. I walked back over to the swing and sat down. I began my story with the
phone call from Daisy and ended it with my suspicions.

“Sheriff Hudson agrees with me.”

“I think I need to get the two of you out of here and take
you back home,” Billy said. “This day has been one we won’t forget for some
time.”

“That’s true,” Russ agreed.

“We can’t leave now, Billy,” I said. “Don’t you want to know
what they found at Kansas Moon’s house? It sounds as if they found something
terrible from the way that deputy talked.”

“I agree with Jesse,” Mom said. “She seems to be handling
this tragedy better that I am. If she wants to go snooping around, go with her.
I’m sure I can drive my van back to your house by myself.”

“No way! You’re not driving all the way to
Charlottesville
by yourself. It’s not safe. What if
Crazy Daisy gets behind you? You could be her next victim. Absolutely not!” I
was adamant.

“Do you have any of those anxiety pills in that duffel bag of
yours, Missy? I’m going to need one or two if I have to go snooping around a
dead man’s house with you.” She looked at me and then at Billy. “I’m not
staying around here by myself. I’m going with you guys.”

“Zoloft? They don’t work like … oh, you mean the other
ones—the tranquilizers. I’m sure there’s probably a few left. I don’t take them
anymore, but I never got around to throwing them or the other ones out. I think
I kept them because I was afraid one day I might need them. How did you know
they were in my duffel bag, Mom?”

“I snooped a while back. I just wanted to see what you carry
in that bag. You and Billy both carry a bag everywhere you go, so I wanted to
see what I needed to carry in mine. He told me to put one together when we
first started out on our endeavor.”

“I call them my crazy pills, Mom, because I used them when I
had a full-blown anxiety attack. I would’ve gone crazy without them. They’re
strong, so I’ll give you a half of one if you’re serious.”

“Go get the bag.”

“It’s on the sofa in the living room. I’ll be right back.”

“This is getting out of hand,” Russ said. “Billy, you need to
take your family home, not go snooping around a dead man’s house. But knowing
you as I do, I know I’m wasting my breath.” He looked at each one of us. “I
can’t believe it.” He looked back at Billy. “What have you done to these women?
This time last year, you and Jesse were trying to keep her mother from finding
out all the stuff you get into, and now, she’s as much a part of your little
posse as the rest of the Blackhawk clan.”

“The family that snoops together, stays together,” I said as
I got up to go into the house.

Mom snickered, which was a sure sign that she wasn’t going to
fall apart on me just yet, and after I gave her one of my pills, she’d be even
better. Relief would work its way back into my life, if only for a little
while.

I opened the front door, walked in and pointed to the duffel
bag lying on the sofa when the sheriff looked up at me. He shook his head in
acknowledgement. When I grabbed the bag and turned to leave, I overheard the
M.E. tell the sheriff that when he went to check body temp, he noticed scars on
the stomach indicative of a dog’s bite. He’d be able to tell more when he got
the body back to the morgue. I acted as if I wasn’t paying attention to the
conversation as I headed out the door, but the minute I got on the porch, I
blabbed everything.

“He has dog bites on his stomach!” I blurted out.

“He’s the dognapper!” Mom yelled. “I’d bet my paycheck on it
if I had one.”

“Not so loud, Mama,” I whispered to emphasize the urgency.
“Sheriff Hudson might hear you and know I was listening in.”