On the Run (9 page)

I tried to keep myself as cool and controlled as the two officers. “There’s a note,” I said, pointing to it. “We hadn’t noticed that yet when I talked to their son.”

Sgt. Dole stepped forward to read the blood-speckled note. He looked at the bodies again and shook his head. “What would make people do something like this? Nothing’s that bad, is it?”

I assumed the questions were rhetorical, although I agreed with Sgt. Dole’s implication. Nothing warranted
this
. I remembered my own despair when our son, Colin, died in an overseas ferry accident while he was in the service, his body never recovered. For a time, life had hardly seemed worth living. But I’d had the Lord to lean on, and he’d carried me through, as he always does if we let him. Which the Northcutts, whatever their troubles, apparently had not.

Sgt. Dole extracted a cell phone from an assortment of police equipment on his belt. He moved toward the fresher air and turned his back to us as he spoke into the phone, but I could still hear most of his end of the conversation.

“Yeah, the Northcutts, those movie people out here at the old Morris lodge . . . What? Yeah, gun’s right here, a .38 it looks like . . . right. About like that old couple out on Webley Road four, five years ago. Remember them? Except the wife was the one who pulled the trigger that time . . . What? . . . Yeah, cancer or something that one was, I think. At least this time the note’s typed and more readable, with everything spelled right.” Sgt. Dole chuckled, as if some inside joke was involved here.

The possibility of illness hadn’t occurred to me. Had one of the Northcutts been painfully, perhaps terminally ill?

Sgt. Dole glanced back at the bodies, apparently in response to another question. “I’d guess two or three days. Though it could be less. It’s warm in here, and you know what that does to a body. Not pretty.”

Still on the cell phone, he looked at his watch again. “I wanted to get out to talk to that Watson kid who was a friend of Eddie’s. He’s been dodging me for three days. But I guess it’ll have to wait if the ME can’t get here right away.” He rubbed the back of his neck as if frustrated by the delay.

“They’re contacting the medical examiner,” Sgt. Dole said when he turned back to us. “But he’s out at the rollover site now, so it’s hard to tell how long it’ll take him to get here. Going to be rough on local folks, losing two fine young men so close together.”

“But this second death was an accident, wasn’t it, not like the murder of the sheriff’s nephew?”

“An accident just waiting to happen. You can’t believe where some of these kids try to take their four-wheel drives and dirt bikes. Places I wouldn’t tackle with anything but a helicopter. But they think they’re invincible at that age.” Sgt. Dole shook his head. “This kid’s Jeep rolled down an embankment and threw him a good hundred feet. The medical examiner may have to put the poor kid back together before he can autopsy him. But at least we can wrap this one up quick,” he said as he nodded toward the bodies on the sofa.

“Will the Northcutts’ bodies also be autopsied?”

“Probably, unless the family has some big objections. Although it doesn’t take an expert and a bunch of lab tests to figure out what happened here. They obviously didn’t die of infected toenails or eating tainted potato salad. Right, Mike?”

Sgt. Dole’s answer to my question had been pleasant enough, if a bit morbidly facetious, but I detected a smirk and note of hostility when he addressed his partner.

“I would assume an autopsy would be standard procedure in a situation such as this,” the younger deputy said, his manner stiff.

“’Cause that’s how they’d do it back in Chicago, right? See, we’re not as backward here in Hickville as you thought.” Sgt. Dole laughed and spoke an aside to me in mock confidential tones. “Mike was formerly with the Chicago police force. He just recently joined our little department, and he gets frustrated with our slow-movin’, backward country ways.”

Deputy Hamilton looked as if he’d like to drop one of those antlered chandeliers on Sgt. Dole’s head, but he didn’t say anything. Me, I was curious about what had brought a young, big-city police officer to rural Oklahoma.

“And even if we aren’t as high-powered as those hotshots on the Chicago force, we get the job done.” Sgt. Dole nodded. “You can bet your electropherogram and your mass spectrometry and all your other high-powered techniques that we’re gonna nail Eddie’s killer. Old-fashioned legwork is still what matters most.”

“I’m a strong believer in legwork. And I’m sure we’ll get the killer.”

I wondered if Sgt. Dole caught Deputy Hamilton’s meaningful inflection on
we
, as if the younger man were subtly reminding the older one that he was part of
this
force now.

The whole exchange irked me. This was no time for personal infighting. We had two dead bodies here. Sgt. Dole’s conversation with the sheriff’s department headquarters indicated he thought what had happened here was exactly what it looked like: Jock Northcutt had killed his wife and then himself, a mutually agreed upon homicide/suicide. But it also seemed to me that there were questions that shouldn’t be ignored, just in case.

“Will a comparison be made between the bullets that caused the deaths and the gun there on the sofa?” I asked.

Sgt. Dole’s head jerked around as if to ask,
Where else do you
think the bullets came from? Serial killer hiding up in the rafters
with an Uzi?
“Big city police forces may have the time and money for frivolous investigations—” Here a meaningful glance in Deputy Hamilton’s direction. “But we don’t. We have our hands full with Eddie Howell’s murder where we
don’t
know where the bullet came from.”

“But maybe
this
is murder. Murder has been made to look like suicide.”

My mouth dropped open in surprise. Even though I’d tried to discard it, that was exactly what had been niggling in the back of my mind. But I wasn’t the one who said it. The two officers and I all turned to look at Abilene. I hadn’t realized she’d slipped in behind us. I was almost as surprised that she said anything at all as by what she said. I was certain that drawing attention to herself was the last thing she wanted.

And draw attention was exactly what her comment did. Both officers studied her appraisingly, but this time she kept her chin high and met their gazes without faltering. “I know it looks like the man killed the woman and then himself, and probably that’s what happened. But maybe not.”

I took a step forward. “There are some oddities in the situation,” I pointed out in support of her statement.

Sgt. Dole’s gaze flicked to me. “Such as?”

“Doesn’t it seem odd that a man who loves his wife would shoot her in the throat
?”

“You think there’s a polite, considerate way to shoot someone?”

“No, but wouldn’t a head shot be more appropriate? Something probably quicker than . . . bleeding to death?”

“People in a suicidal state of mind don’t necessarily consider the fine details. Or, under the circumstances, his hand may have been too unsteady for an accurate shot. And if he didn’t happen to know much about guns—”

“I think he knew a lot about guns. Probably they both did. There’s a cabinet full of them in the bedroom.”

I could see “How do you know that?” coming as the next question, and I rushed on like one of those high-speed speakers giving details in a radio ad. “Shouldn’t an expert be called in to determine if the handwriting on the suicide note is authentic? Shouldn’t Mr. Northcutt’s hands be checked for gunshot residue? I don’t suppose it’s
probable
, but it’s
possible
he didn’t fire the shots and someone just set it up to look as if he did. That someone else murdered both of them.”

Sgt. Dole looked at me as if I’d just suggested one of the emus had sneaked in and assassinated the Northcutts, but his voice was patient when he said, “Gunshot residue tests aren’t as reliable as many people think. Gunshot residue has been known to show up when a gun was merely fired in the vicinity of someone’s hand, but not necessarily fired
by
that hand.”

Okay, I’d read that somewhere too. “But two shots were obviously fired, and if Mr. Northcutt’s hands show
no
gunshot residue—”

“Residue can also deteriorate in a fairly short time, so that wouldn’t necessarily prove anything.” Sgt. Dole frowned as if he was annoyed with himself for giving this murder scenario even minimal credibility by arguing with me. But he was still polite and somewhat resigned sounding when he added, “Deputy Hamilton or I will be present at the autopsy, Mrs. Malone. We’ll keep your concerns in mind. But at this point I see nothing to suggest anything other than exactly what the note says, a suicide pact.”

I felt a little foolish then. Did police officers often have to cope with amateurs who thought they were experts because they’d watched a few too many TV cop shows?

“There is one other thing,” I added almost reluctantly. “I’m almost certain when I was here yesterday that I heard a noise inside the house. But the Northcutts were surely already dead then.”

“Old houses creak and groan. In heat, they sometimes even snap and pop.”

“Also, I think the chain and padlock on the gate may have been different today than yesterday, as if someone had been in or out.”

Sgt. Dole didn’t sigh out loud, but I suspected he did a mental sigh. “We’ll see what Sheriff Howell says.”

Now that I was really thinking about it, there were other points that interested me. Why had the Northcutts called 911 a couple of times, as their son said they’d done? Had there been trespassers on the property? Or threats? Why did they own such an impressive arsenal, if not for protection from some danger?

“I could check out the gun cabinet and dust for fingerprints,” the younger man, Deputy Hamilton, suggested. “Photos of the scene might also be helpful.”

Sgt. Dole’s verbal response was cooperative. “Sure. Cover all bases.” But something in his attitude said he thought Deputy Hamilton was playing big-time Chicago cop and wasting time with frivolous investigation.

“I’ll go get the camera.”

Sgt. Dole once more looked at his watch when Deputy Hamilton left. “No need for you two to hang around any longer. But keep yourselves available in case we need to talk to you again.”

“Available how?” I said.

“A phone number will do.” He pulled a notebook out of a pocket.

“No phone,” I said.

“An address then.”

“Sorry. No address either.”

Sgt. Dole frowned at me as if he thought I was playing games, and he was not in a game-playing mood. “You’re telling me you’re homeless?”

“No, we’re not
homeless
. We live in the motor home, the one parked out there by the gate. We just don’t have any . . . fixed place of residence.”

I didn’t say Abilene and I had always been together, but I used “we” as if we had. Abilene might be nine inches taller and thirty or forty pounds heavier, but I felt protective of her.

Sgt. Dole gave our no-phone-no-address status a frown and then said, “I’ll need to see some identification, please.”

“I left my purse and driver’s license and everything in the motor home. I’ll have to go get it.”

Sgt. Dole looked pointedly at Abilene. I had the impression that it was her identity more than mine that really interested him anyway. She, with obvious reluctance, extracted the leather pouch and loosened the drawstring. She pulled out a small card and handed it to him.

He glanced at it. “I need something other than a Social Security card. Something with photo identification, please, Ms.—” He looked at the card again. “Ms. Morrison.”

I looked at Abilene sharply. Ms. Morrison?

“I don’t have a driver’s license.”

No driver’s license?

“The Social Security card is all I have,” she added.

“I see. I think you’d both better hang around for a while, then.” He wrote the name and number from the Social Security card in his little notebook and handed the card back to Abilene. I had the feeling this would shortly be run through some criminal database.

“Ivy Malone,” I put in helpfully. I rattled off my own Social Security number, as if this were some standard system of handling identification, although I knew it wasn’t. He wrote both down, though I doubted he had much interest in me or my number. “I’ll run on out to the motor home and get my identification.”

“You stay here.” Sgt. Dole pointed a commanding forefinger at Abilene, as if he suspected that once she got to the motor home she might just keep going.

“I’d appreciate it if Abilene could come with me. The heat and stress and all, you know.” I gave a genteel flutter of fingertips that suggested I might go into a swoon at any moment.

I’d asked for Abilene’s company partly for her benefit, because I doubted she wanted to be left alone with officers asking nosy questions. Partly for my own benefit, because, who knows? Maybe I would feel swoonish in the heat.

But mostly I’d asked because there were a whole lot of questions I wanted to ask Abilene myself.

10

Sgt. Dole muttered something that didn’t sound particularly gracious, but he didn’t stop Abilene when I started toward the door and motioned her to follow. Along the way we met Deputy Hamilton coming in with a camera and what I thought might be a kit for dusting for latent fingerprints. He didn’t say anything, but he gave us a friendly smile.

I waited until we were around the bend in the green tunnel before jumping into my questions for Abilene. She was walking along with her head down and thumbs jammed in her front pockets, apparently not intending to bring up the subject herself.

“Okay, now, about these names. Tyler and Morrison. What’s going on here? Which is it?”

Her chin flew up with that hint of stubbornness I was beginning to recognize. “I was under the impression a person could call herself whatever she wanted. I read that somewhere in a book. That it’s okay as long as it isn’t for criminal purposes.”

“Then perhaps we’d better talk a little more about what’s
criminal
. You were in a car accident, right?”