A Shadow Fell (21 page)
Part Seven
Doubt
50
With
clear evidence that the burned bodies found at the campsite were those of Jack Parmenter and Conrad Edgerton the search for Henderson was resumed.
When an intensive aerial search proved unproductive t
hree teams of search dogs and their handlers
were brought to the mountains to comb
the woods
.
It took the dogs less than
twelve hours
to find
the buried remains of Reuben Henderson.
Blackmore and Colletti were
once again
flown
to the mountains
.
Crime scene investigators were all over the scene.
“Well, well,” Blackmore muttered viewing the disinterred and butchered body. “Reuben Henderson finally meets his just reward
.
”
“Looks like we got more of a mystery on our hands than we thought,” Colletti mused.
Blackmore turned away from the gruesome sight. “We’ll see what the forensic techs have to say, but this has got to be the strangest son-of-a-bitch of a case we’ve ever worked on.”
Colletti stood silently, letting his mind process this latest development. “It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense,” he conceded.
“Come on, bud, you must have some ideas. You always figure these things out somehow.”
Colletti smiled meekly at the compliment. “
There’s two things I’d like some answers to before we get too deep into what happened here.”
Blackmore’s compliment hadn’t been hot air. He had a great deal of respect for his partner’s powers of deduction. “Shoot,” he said.
“First of all, why would Parmenter’s dog be buried separately?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. If somebody goes to all the trouble of burning Edgerton and Parmenter to render them unidentifiable, why leave the dog’s remains for us to find?”
Blackmore arched his eyebrows but said nothing.
“And second,” Colletti continued, “the killer put a lot of effort into the cremation process. Very thorough. And yet he overlooks a boot in the woods. And doesn’t notice that Parmenter is missing a boot when he burns up the bodies.” He shook his head in a manner suggesting it was all just a little too implausible.
Blackmore studied his partner closely. “So what are you saying
, Vince?”
Colletti swatted a bug from in front of his eyes. “I’m saying this, partner: we have two positively identified corpses – Edgerton and Henderson – but no absolute evidence that the third body is Parmenter. We also have a dog, owned by Parmenter, buried separately from the bur
ned
bodies. To me this suggests the possibility
,
at
the very
least
,
of some
kind of sentimentality.
Now, it might have made some kind of sense when we believed that Henderson had killed them all. But
now we know differently.
”
“It’s possible everything went down the way we figured but somebody took out Henderson after the fact.”
Colletti looked doubtful. “Whoever did Henderson had one hell of a lot of rage going on, Harv. This looks to me like it had to have been done by somebody with a very personal grudge. Somebody like the father of a murdered little girl. A little girl,
maybe
, who
had been
decapitated.”
“Jesus,” Blackmore whispered. “You think Jack Parmenter did all this?
“That’s the way I’m seeing it, yeah.”
“This just doesn’t compute with the guy we’ve been told Parmenter is.”
“Look what he’s been through. His little girl is murdered and decapitated. His wife spends months near death in a coma. And then, to top it all off – if I’m right – Henderson kills the poor bugger’s dog
and his
neighbour who it appears is a good
friend
. I don’t think we can assume that a guy who’s been through all that is going to be thinking clearly or rationally.”
“There’s one way to find out,” Blackmore said. “We put the dogs on Parmenter’s scent from here. If they pick it up
, your theory will look pretty damn good.”
Colletti mulled that over. “
I guess it will.
It won’t be proof positive
, though,
because it’s possible his scent was here prior to all this happening.”
Blackmore looked at him sceptically. “I guess anything’s possible.
Not too likely, though, huh?
”
“No, Harv. Not too likely.
But it also leaves a big question: if Parmenter is alive, who the hell got burned up with Edgerton?
”
51
Two of the tracking teams
and their owners
were sent home after Henderson’s remains were found. Blackmore and Colletti met with the
third team owner, a guy named Albert
Two Feathers
, to suggest some additional work
.
Two Feathers
was a
Navajo from the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona. He had learned his tracking skills as a young man from the tribal elders and
had for many years
made a
good
living contracting out his services to law enforcement
agencies
around the country.
W
hen he had witnessed the incredible
results achieved by
a team of bloodhounds owned by a California tracker
, however,
Two Feathers
had
been very impressed
. He
had subsequently set about acquiring
a couple of the best
tracking
dogs
money could buy. He was now revered as the go to guy if you needed results and you needed them fast.
What his dogs couldn’t run down by scent,
Two Feathers
would locate by reading signs.
Several articles of clothing and shoes
belonging to Jack
were brought from
Florida to provide the dogs with scent.
The dogs were given the scent at the scene of Henderson’s demise. They were clearly excited but
the scent they followed just led back to the camp where the
other
bodies had been burned
and buried
.
Blackmore and Colletti were perplexed.
“I don’t get it,” Blackmore said. “It looks like
Parmenter was definitely at the scene of Henderson’s slaughter but, somehow, he ends up back here and is murdered by somebody else?”
Colletti stood quietly, trying to come up with an alternative theory.
Two Feathers stood off to the side, listening. “One other possibility,” he offered.
Both agents looked at him. “
Let’s hear it,
” Blackmore said.
“Could be whoever did the killing didn’t
walk
away,” Two Feathers announced.
Blackmore looked incredulous. “What are you saying? Somebody picked him up in a helicopter?”
“Maybe not helicopter,” Two Feathers answered.
“Something else maybe.”
“
Such as
?” Colletti wondered.
Two Feathers shrugged non-committally. “Would have to be something small to get up here. Motor cycle maybe.”
“A motor cycle?” Blackmore scoffed.
“Wouldn’t the dogs have picked up his scent even if he had been on a motor cycle?” Colletti asked
, his scepticism only slightly less apparent than Blackmore’s
.
“Heavy rain for three days,” Two Feathers pointed out. “Maybe possible.”
“So what’s next?” Blackmore wanted to know.
Two Feathers
looked up at the overcast sky
. “Now I go to work.”
It took until late in the afternoon for Two Feathers to prove his worth.
When he reported back to the agents there was no emotion
other than a little smugness
on his proud face
. “
Don’t know if it’s your killer or not,” he announced, pointing into the woods, “but someone took off
t
hat
way
o
n a dirt bike.”
Blackmore and Colletti looked at each other. “You’ve got to be kidding,” Blackmore said, his mouth hanging open.
“Nope. Not kidding,” Two Feathers responded
stoically
.
52
“Okay
,” Blackmore recapped when he and Colletti sat down to figure things out, “Henderson is dead. We got somebody who has to be the killer taking off on a dirt bike. We’ve got an unidentified body burned with Edgerton that is either Parmenter or somebody made to appear as if it were. If Parmenter is the killer, then who do the ashes belong to? If the ashes are Parmenter’s then who the fuck is the killer? Jesus H Christ, what a mess.”
Colletti, ever the calm and cool thinker, offered another view. “
It’s possible Parmenter killed Henderson but somebody else took him and Edgerton out. Or maybe – and this is my
favorite
theory – Parmenter killed them all and disguised his own death in order to throw us off his trail. As to who the unidentified body is, that’s anybody’s guess for now. I’m inclined to think it was probably some innocent dupe who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe the
right
time for Parmenter.”
“
I still don’t get it,
Vince? If it’s Parmenter what
’s his motive for killing Edgerton
?”
“Who knows,” Colletti responded. “But remember, Edgerton is a prime suspect in the murder of his wife. Even though Parmenter evidently didn’t believe th
is
– or care one way or the other
– it’s possible Edgerton developed some kind of agenda of his own.
Parmenter may have killed him in self-defence. Then
he finds Henderson and goes crazy. He kills him and then, in a frenzy, he chops him up. He figures there’s no way now that he can go to the law after what he’s done.
Then
he
comes across some dude on a dirt bike. He figures, ‘what’s one more dead body?’ He kills the guy,
burns him up
along with Edgerton
to hide his identity
,
plants the boots to make it look like it’s him,
and heads for places unknown on the bike.”
Blackmore took a while to ponder his partner’s hypothesis. “
How the fuck do you come up with this shit, Vince?”
“What, you think my theory’s no good?”
“No,” Blackmore respond
ed with great solemnity
. “I think your theory kicks ass.”
*
*
*
Once on the trail of the dirt bike the dogs were able to pick up
what Two Feathers insisted was
Parmenter’s scent.
Sixteen hours later Two Feather
s
, his dogs, and two
very tired feder
al agents arrived at the shack.
There was no sign of Jack Parmenter
,
or any
one
else
.
Blackmore and Colletti were in no shape to continue on with a chase of indefinite term. Reinforcements were called in and a team of new trackers took over from Two Feathers.
The agents returned to Tampa and met with Tom Kilborn.
The Special Agent in Charge was not a happy man. “So now you’re telling me I have to go back to Callie Parmenter and tell her we were wrong
,” he summarized bitterly
.
“
The good news is, your husband is not dead. The bad news being, we now suspect him of being a
murderer. And not just one murder, but three. And not just murder, but dismemberment.
Of the man who fathered you.
”
He stared sullenly at his two subordinates.
Blackmore and Colletti looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Sorry, boss,” Blackmore sympathized, “but that
appears to be a fair representation of the facts as we now see
them
.”