South River Incident Read online

  South River Incident

  by Ann Mullen

  http://www.aftonridge.com

  Copyright © 2004 by Ann Mullen

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9828776-2-3

  This book is a work of fiction. Any characters portrayed, living or dead are imaginary. Any resemblance to actual persons is completely coincidental. Any places, business establishments, locales, events, or incidents in this book are the product of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  table of content

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  The snow was knee-deep by the time Billy and I decided to call it a night. Nothing was happening. I warned him earlier that we were wasting our time, but as always, he had his own agenda. I met him in the early spring of this year, and since then I’ve learned that once he makes up his mind about something, there was no changing it. This was one of those times.

  “I know he’s guilty,” Billy looked over at me and said. “I’m not going to give up until I can prove it. He will not get away with murder if I can help it. People like him belong behind bars!”

  “Is freezing to death another one of those things you have to do to make a point?” I could see my breath inside the cab of his truck. “Let’s get out of here. I’m tired, and I’m hungry.”

  Billy finally agreed that it was a waste of time to sit here any longer. We had been parked in the woods for over two hours watching Doug Tyler’s house, and listening to his conversations on the portable satellite snoop machine. At least, that’s what I called it. Billy had a technical name for all of his equipment, but I’m still new to this game and I haven’t learned all the proper terminology.

  It was two days until Thanksgiving, and snow had been falling off and on since Halloween. At first, I relished the white flakes, but after the first ten inches, I’d had enough. Most of the time, I could barely keep both of my feet on the ground.

  My name is Jesse Watson. I was born and raised in Newport News, Virginia. I’m thirty-two years old as of this past September, single, and not bad looking. I moved to Stanardsville with my parents about eight months ago. Mack and Minnie were seeking peace and quiet after Dad’s retirement from the Navy, while I was just seeking a life. I got a job working for Billy Blackhawk—a self-employed, private investigator with a few tricks up his sleeve.

  It was also around that same time that I met Cole James. Cole turned out to be the man of my dreams. I fell in love with him the minute I met him. He was so handsome. His blond, curly hair and his beautiful blue eyes took my breath away. His muscular body glistened with the shine of a fresh scrubbed, newly ripe apple. He towered over me by a foot, and when he looked down into my eyes, I melted under his stare.

  Cole is a deputy with the Greene County Sheriff’s Department, and is in charge of protecting the citizens where I live. Any relationship we have tried to have has been strained by the fact that he’s a cop, and I work for a private investigator. We all know how things go between cops and private eyes. They just don’t get along. To complicate matters, Cole and Billy grew up together and have their own history concerning past women in their lives.

  Dad died from a heart attack a few weeks after we moved here. He walked to the mailbox on a Sunday morning to get the mail he had forgotten to pick up Saturday, because he’d been too busy worrying about me. Not only had I been busy all day being the bad girl that I am, I had spent the night at Cole’s house, while my parents spent the evening worrying and waiting for me to call. The stress I put on both of them made me worry that I had somehow contributed to my father’s death. I would have to live with that thought for the rest of my life.

  After Dad died, I found out that my brother Jack is gay. He has a relationship with a guy named Dennis, and trying to explain this to my mother was a different tale in itself.

  My sister, Claire, has two kids, and was married to Carl until a few months ago. She caught him messing around and promptly picked up and left the rat—much to my pleasure, since I disliked him immensely.

  Unfortunately, as much as I love my sister, it didn’t sit well with me that she was going to move into Billy’s house. Billy lives in an apartment above his office, and was more than glad to offer Claire and the kids a place to live. His house had sat empty since his divorce from Ruth, his wife of many years. He wouldn’t sell the house, and he couldn’t live there without her.

  “It’s been over five years since the divorce, and I still can’t bring myself to move back into the house I shared with Ruth. We built that house ourselves, and raised our two boys in it.” I remember hearing him tell Claire that at the Blackhawk’s 4th of July party. When Claire accepted his offer, a knot started growing inside my stomach and has only gotten bigger as time passed.

  Claire has always had it all and now she was invading what little I have in my life. Billy was a part of my life and it wasn’t right that she could just slide in the back door. Not only do I work for Billy, but we also have developed a very close relationship. We’re not lovers—just friends. When you’ve been shot at and lived through some of the most terrifying moments of your life together, it’s hard not to get close. We have shared happiness, sadness, grief, fear, and an overwhelming desire to choke each other to death at times. What more could you want? Claire was now a part of all these feelings, and I didn’t like it one bit.

  The past several months played back inside my head. I’d spent most of my life doing nothing exciting, and within the span of eight months, everything had changed. I now live with my mother in a nice house in the mountains, and I have an exciting job. I have a man in my life, and I’m happy. But yes, I have always been a little jealous of my sister.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Billy said as he almost slid into the back of a truck at the intersection.

  The roads were covered in snow, and no matter how hard the Virginia Department of Transportation worked, they just couldn’t keep up with the falling flakes.

  “Watch it, Billy!” I screamed. I slammed my hands on the dashboard and stomped an invisible brake pedal. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack? It’s too nasty out here for you to be driving so fast! Slow down!”

  “I’m not driving that fast. Did you hear what I said?”

  “All I heard was the sound of us smashing into the rear end of that pickup truck, and our guts splattering all over the road. I don’t know why you have to drive so reckless. The roads are dangerous.”

  “Jesse, you’re too melodramatic. I had everything under control,” he said as he drove down Rt. 33 at a crawl. “What’s your problem? You’ve been tense about something for the last two weeks. So give, `ge ya, tell me what’s making you so crazy. Is it this case?”

  Billy is a Cherokee Indian and he looks just like the ones you see on TV: a big man with a long, braided ponytail, and skin the color of cherry wood. He’s 48, I think, and sort of good-looking. He has the kindest heart in the world, but y
ou don’t want to get him riled.

  “Can’t you see there is no case?” I hissed. “Doug Tyler hired us to chase down the people who wrote him those bad checks, and we did the job. I can’t help it if one of them turned up dead—big deal. One doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the other. Besides, the police cleared him of any wrongdoing. We’re out of it, or we should be. I just went along with you on this because you were so intent on proving they were wrong. Let it go, Billy. It’s over.”

  “I can’t let it go because I led him right to her. If it wasn’t for me, she’d still be alive. It’s my fault.”

  “How can you say that? The police said she was killed during a struggle with a mugger. Why would Doug Tyler rob her if she had already made good on the check? It doesn’t make sense. It was just a coincidence that he was looking for her, and later, she turned up dead.”

  “Oh, Jesse, you’re not seeing the big picture. He didn’t care about the money. It was all a ruse. He gave us a list of names, explaining that some of them had moved, and he just didn’t have the time to track each one of them down. So we did it for him. I even gave him a detailed itinerary of their whereabouts at any given time. A few days later, one is murdered.”

  “I’m sure that’s it, Billy. I can see it all now. Tyler and the dead woman were having an affair. He got tired of her, and broke it off. She wouldn’t let go, things got ugly, so he killed her. It’s the same scenario played over and over. What I don’t understand is, why involve us in some stupid check thing? What would be the point?”

  “I haven’t figured that one out, yet.”

  “Would you still think Tyler was guilty if the deceased had been a man?”

  “I would if the man’s name had been on that list.”

  “I think we should just write this one off and forget about it. Let the police do their job. We have other fish to fry.”

  “Maybe it’s time to move on. We can’t seem to get anything on the guy.”

  Billy appeared to be ready to throw in the towel, but knowing him as I do; I knew he would not forget about the case. He would pretend to put it aside, and when I least expected it, the case would come back to haunt us both.

  We crept across the South River Bridge. The new snow had covered the already packed-down snow left over from two days before, making driving treacherous and turning me into a nervous wreck. One thing I’ve learned from my first winter in the mountains is, when it snows, it usually stays around forever.

  “You still didn’t answer my question. What’s eating at you, if it’s not this case?” Billy looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

  “Nothing’s eating at me!” I yelled at him. I wasn’t about to tell him that I was irked about Claire moving into his house. If I told him that, he would think I was being petty.

  “Whatever,” he mumbled under his breath as we pulled into the driveway. “Have it your way.”

  Claire came out onto the porch with an afghan wrapped around her shoulders. She waved at us to come inside. Whatever was going on, I could tell from the look on her face she was frantic.

  “What do you think that is all about?” Billy asked, parking the truck under the big poplar tree in the front yard. “She’s going to freeze to death out here. It must be twenty degrees.”

  “I don’t know, but she looks like there’s a fire somewhere.” I jumped out of the truck, slipped, and then stumbled my way up to the porch.

  “We tried to call you on the cell phone, but all we got was a recording. Hurry, we have something to show you.” She grabbed me by the arm and led me into the house.

  Mom ran from the kitchen in a tizzy. She was visibly upset and could barely get the words out of her mouth. “Athena and Thor dragged something up in the front yard. They were barking and fighting over it, and by the time I went out to check on them, they had carried it up onto the front porch. It’s awful. You won’t believe it.”

  “Calm down, Mom. They’re just dogs. They’re always dragging stuff up in the yard.” I tried to soothe her. “It can’t be that bad.”

  Coming from a family that wasn’t used to having pets (my brother Jack being allergic to animal hair), Athena and Thor turned out to be a real challenge. I acquired Athena when my roommate, Becky, moved out on me, and deserted her. Thor became a part of our family this past Labor Day. We were having a cookout and a thunderstorm rolled in. Everybody hustled inside, except Athena, who was across the road barking like a mad dog. I braved the lightning and the thunder and went over to see what all the fuss was about. To my surprise, I saw a tiny ball of brown hair, with four scarred-up legs. The puppy was whimpering, yet trying to hold his own ground. I scooped him up and ran back to the house. As soon as I put him down on the floor, Athena came over and started licking the scared, little pooch. They’ve been playmates ever since. Due to the terrible storm, we named the puppy, Thor—God of Thunder.

  “It’s in the utility room,” Mom pointed to the closed bi-fold doors that separated the dining area and utility room.

  “It must be bad, you never close those doors.” I looked at Billy, who was just as confused as I was. “Shall we go check it out, Mr. P.I.?”

  “Lead the way.”

  I was not prepared for what we encountered. On top of the washing machine, resting on a piece of newspaper was what appeared to be the mangled hand of a woman. A huge diamond ring was embedded in the ring finger. There was very little flesh left and the pinkie finger and thumb were missing. I gagged, and fled to the bathroom. What little food I had in my stomach was soon in the toilet. Slowly, I emerged from the bathroom, wiping my face with a wet washcloth.

  Billy was still standing in front of the washing machine examining the grotesque sight, while Mom and Claire stood back, probably fearful it was going to jump up and bite them. Thor and Athena were curled up in a corner in the living room, licking each other, and ignoring what was going on around them. They could have cared less.

  It took everything I had to make myself go back into the utility room. I’m the kind of person who gags at the sight of someone spitting on the sidewalk, or the sound of someone clearing his or her throat. So you can imagine what this was doing to my stomach. I heaved a couple times, but managed to keep control as I looked at the hand.

  “What do you think, Billy?” I asked.

  He made a few grunting noises, blew out his breath, and turned to look at Mom. “Do you have any idea where this came from? I mean, where the dogs were before they brought it to you?”

  “I heard them barking way off in the woods behind the house. The next thing I knew, they were on the porch. You need to ask Claire. She saw them running across the yard.”

  “That’s right,” Claire said. She moved a little closer to Billy. “I was sitting at the kitchen table when I saw Athena and Thor come running out of the woods. Thor had something in his mouth, and Athena was chasing after him, barking like crazy. I went to the front door, and Thor dropped it at my feet. I almost died. Between Mom and I, we managed to pick it up with a pair of tongs and lay it on the washing machine. That’s when we called you, but all we got was your recording. We didn’t know what to do except close the doors to the utility room, and wait.”

  As usual, Billy took control of the situation. He told Mom to bring him a Zip-lock bag so we could preserve any trace evidence. “The sooner we get this thing on ice, the quicker we can slow down further decomposition. The temperature inside this house is working against us. We have to keep it cold. Call the sheriff, Jesse, and let me talk to him.”

  Mom retrieved a plastic bag for Billy while I made the phone call. Claire sat down at the kitchen table, away from the hand, and lit a cigarette. She offered me one, which I gladly took, and started puffing away. It seems old habits die hard.

  By the time I got through the dispatcher to the sheriff, Billy had the hand safely tucked away in the refrigerator—against the loud protests of Mom and Claire. They just couldn’t fathom the idea of putting a human’s body part in the refrigerator.

>   “We can’t put it outside,” Billy explained. “One of the neighborhood dogs might come along and carry it away. What about the wild animals roaming the woods? There are more of them out there than you can possibly imagine. This time of year they’ll do anything to fill their bellies. They’re hungry, and there’s not much food. I’m sorry, but you ladies need to realize that you have a crucial piece of evidence. We have to do everything we can to see that it gets the proper care until the authorities take possession. Besides, it’s sealed up, for heaven’s sake. What’s the big deal? They put bodies in the freezer at the morgue.” He chuckled to himself as he gave the refrigerator a gentle tap.

  Mom and Claire flinched.

  I snickered, then handed him the phone. “Sheriff Hudson is on the line.”

  Wake Hudson is our newly elected sheriff and has been in office barely two weeks. Rumor was that although Wake Hudson was quite young for the job, the citizens of Greene County refused to go another round with the old sheriff. Innuendo of drug use and pay-offs to public officials ranked high on the list of bad behavior, and those were just some of the complaints. However, those were also the same complaints made about other men who had held that position in the past.

  Some people say the old sheriff cleaned up the town, but made a lot of enemies along the way. They also said the rumors were a bunch of lies—lies spread by envious, jealous, no-good bible thumpers and flag burners who wanted to ruin the reputation of a good man. Either way, Wake Hudson now had the job. I guess you just can’t please everybody.

  I hadn’t paid much attention to the rumor mill. I’d been busy going to night school at the community college in Charlottesville for the last two months to get my private eye’s license—something Billy and Cole had insisted upon. I’ve had my sister Claire to deal with, and we won’t even go into how the situation with my brother Jack and his partner, Dennis, has affected us. In August, Athena was bitten in the face by a copperhead, and even though Chief Blackhawk and his wife, Sarah, rushed out in the middle of the night to attend to her, she hasn’t been the same. She sleeps a lot, and is scared of her own shadow. So between my move to the mountains and what has happened to me since I got here, the happenings of a small town sheriff’s department didn’t seem important—until now.