Blood Will Tell

Copyright ©2001

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by
the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to
any unauthorized person by any means, including
without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out,
or any other method
constitutes a violation of International copyright law and
subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

Electronic rights reserved by Awe-Struck E-Books, all other rights reserved by author. The reproduction or other use of any part of this publication without the prior written consent of the rights holder is an infringement of the copyright law.

DEDICATION
To Winston, for the inspiration,
and Roberta, for the setting.
To the Murray, Kentucky, Police Department,
especially the help of
Larry Killebrew
and
Ronald Wisehart.
And, with thanks for their contributions,
Jacqueline, Judi, Katie, K. L., Lois, Margaret, and Susan

Table of Contents:

FOREWORD

Chapter One—A Corpse on the Campus

Chapter Two—Murder in Callahan County

Chapter Three—Bonnie and Clyde

Chapter Four—Cop Killer

Chapter Five—Day Off

Chapter Six—Wedding Bell Blues

Chapter Seven—The Smile on a Dead Man's Face

Chapter Eight—Arrest

Chapter Nine—Confession

Chapter Ten—Proposal

Chapter Eleven—In the Light of Day

Chapter Twelve—Thanksgiving

Chapter Thirteen—Christmas

Chapter Fourteen—Discovery

Chapter Fifteen—Invitation

Chapter Sixteen—Full Moon

Chapter Seventeen—Secrets of the Numen

Chapter Eighteen—Harvest

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author's note regarding fingerprints

FOREWORD

Welcome to a new adventure. Although I have had sixteen novels published before this one, this is only my second attempt at a contemporary work of fiction. The first is the children's book,
Nessie and the Living Stone
, in collaboration with Lois Wickstrom. As you read, please feel free to guess what is really happening in the fictional city of Murphy, Kentucky. If I've done what I intended, each time you think you know, the ground will shift under you once again.

In researching this book, I had the cooperation of the police in Murray, Kentucky. There I discovered that police procedures in small cities in America's heartland are not the big-city tactics seen in books, films and television. They simply don't have the crime scene units and forensics specialists I had in my first draft. I came away from my experience with the local police with deep admiration for their professionalism under difficult circumstances.

My fictional Murphy, Kentucky, police department is not run exactly the way the Murray police department is—that was necessary for my plot. However, good cops working hard for low pay, without high-tech equipment, yet doing an amazingly fine job despite budget restraints is an accurate picture of Murray's police. I hope I have conveyed the essence if not the actuality.

Geographically, my fictional community of Murphy sits right on Murray's site. Its people have the ingrained sense of fair play that governs the real West Kentucky community. Some of the chain stores are even the same (and some are not). However, no one in this book is based on any real person, nor do the crimes committed, to my knowledge, resemble any real crimes committed in my home town. I hope the residents of Murray will take all the favorable aspects of Murphy as a tribute, and all its unfavorable ones as fiction.

I believe in interaction between writers and readers, and invite comments on my work. Send them to [email protected].

To keep in touch with readers, I attend two or three conventions and conferences every year, and occasionally teach writing workshops. I also keep my website, www.jeanlorrah.com, updated with all my latest news and activities.

I'm happy to provide information on my projects, or answer the kinds of questions that require just a few words. While I cannot become your personal writing tutor, Jacqueline Lichtenberg and I operate WorldCrafters Guild, a professional writing school, at http://www.simegen.com. It's free—please come and have a look.

I am grateful for the encouragement my readers have given me over the years, and sincerely hope those of you familiar with my work will enjoy this new adventure. If you've never read anything else I've written, welcome! I hope you'll find something new and exciting in Blood Will Tell. To old friends, welcome back! I hope you also find something new here, along with whatever has brought you back for more.

Jean Lorrah

Murray, Kentucky

Chapter One—A Corpse on the Campus

Having come of age in the AIDS decade of the 1990's, Brandy Mather reached the millennium and the age of twenty-eight as a virgin. She was not unique among girls who grew up in West Kentucky. In high school she learned several ways to bring a human male to climax without intercourse. In college, she came very close to marrying the first man she met who knew how to reciprocate.

In college she also discovered criminal psychology, which led her first to the Police Academy, then back to her hometown of Murphy, Kentucky. Brandy was the first female police officer to move from traffic patrol into the crime division. There were no further divisions; even though Murphy was the county seat of Callahan County and boasted a regional university numbering 8000 students, the city was not large enough to require separate juvenile, vice, or homicide squads. It was all in a cop's day's work.

Brandy had just been promoted to plainclothes work—mostly because the department felt it wise to have a woman handle the increasing reports of spouse and child abuse as well as rape. That late summer the case that was to change her life occurred. It was a Friday, and Brandy looked forward to having the weekend off.

It had been one of those long, frustrating weeks when leads didn't pan out, stakeouts merely wasted hours, and the local citizenry chose to shoplift, throw eggs at each other's cars and houses, shoot out store windows in the middle of the night, and slash tires. Ex-husbands threatened former wives, visitors forged checks, and the police spent endless hours tracking delinquent husbands to serve flagrant non-support warrants. No satisfying saving of lives or solving of challenging cases. The paperwork thus generated only served to increase stress levels.

By 7:38pm Brandy had finished her final report. “Go home and hug your kids,” she told her colleague, Churchill Jones, with whom she shared the tiny detectives’ office with its single computer. “Write the rest up in the morning. If you try to do it now you'll be here till midnight.” Church was a perfectionist about his written work.

“You okay?” he asked. “Maybe you should see your mom tonight."

Brandy winced. Close to his own parents, Church couldn't fathom the gap between herself and her mother, grown even wider since her father's death. Thank God her mom was dating again; Brandy no longer her sole emotional support.

“I'll be all right,” she responded. “The VCR's been taping movies all week. I'm going to be a couch potato."

“Not all weekend,” Church told her in a tone that brooked no denial. “You're coming to Sunday dinner—noon sharp. I'm barbecuing."

“Okay. I'll bring mint chip ice cream.” It was his kids’ favorite.

So Brandy was alone when the call from Jackson Purchase State University came in: a dead body in Callahan Hall.

“After this crazy week,” she commented flippantly, “what's another corpse?"

What it was, was a mystery. The body was in the office of Professor Everett Land, but the curious students and faculty who had gathered said it was not the professor. Campus security had made sure that no one trampled through the room nor moved the body. It sat in the chair behind the desk, eyes closed, hands folded over sunken belly, as if the man had just slept away.

Not a bad theory, for the man was extremely old. Face and hands were bony, flesh shrunken, nose and knuckles protruding. Wispy white hair clung to the skull. The eyes were sunk deep in their sockets.

There was no sign of struggle or pain; the man appeared to have died peacefully, a beatific smile on his face.

But who was he?

The office was one of only three in the Classics Department, Classics being one of those subjects, like philosophy, that no one would dream of majoring in. When Brandy had attended JPSU a decade ago there had been talk of phasing out such departments in the regional universities. Who in West Kentucky needed Virgil or Sophocles?

The custodian, Mary Samuels, remembered that Land's office had been unlocked—and that was unusual, as the lights had been off. Dr. Land was normally either in with the lights on, or out with the door locked, when she came to clean.

Samuels was a good witness. “I turn on the lights,” she explained, “an’ there's this ol’ man. But he's—you know—not moving. I mean at all. I got a creepy feeling, tried to wake him up. When I touched him I knowed he was dead.” She wiped her hand on her smock at the memory.

There were no evening classes on Friday. Very few people were in the building. Next-door the Philosophy Department was dark and locked. Across the hall in the History Department, Professor Jane Mason had a meeting with a student working on a Master's Thesis. They had brought a bucket of chicken, and were just settling down to work when the commotion in Classics caught their attention. Another history professor, Miller Kramden, didn't know anything had happened until a student poked her head in to say someone had died.

As word spread, more people arrived to check out the rumor. The body could not be moved until the coroner had examined it and Brandy had taken photos and prints. She let people look from the doorway, hoping someone could identify the corpse. No one could.

Meanwhile, she tried telephoning Professor Land at home. She got an answering machine.

Budget constraints required Murphy detectives to work alone, so Brandy enlisted the help of Campus Security Chief Howard McBride, a retired cop with many more years of experience than she had, to investigate the crime scene. While they were working, Dr. Troy Sanford, the coroner, arrived. “Can't be sure till the autopsy,” he said, “but there's no signs of foul play. Looks like natural causes."

“But who is he?” Brandy asked in frustration as she searched the pockets and bagged the contents: pipe, tobacco, butane lighter, 73¢ in change, pocket knife, handkerchief—linty, as if carried unused for quite some time—and chalk in a plastic holder. She gave the man's wallet to McBride to fingerprint.

There was $62.00 in bills, a faculty I.D., and a driver's license. The laminated plastic documents showed a man in his forties, with thick curly brown hair and blue eyes. Brandy read the name on the faculty I.D.: Everett Land, Ph.D., Professor, Classics Department.

“Oh, damn,” said Brandy. A crime had been committed, even if it was only some obscene practical joke. Someone had planted Land's wallet on the corpse. The money in the wallet made it petty theft. There was a MasterCard, too, a group medical insurance card, social security card, and an automatic teller card.

There were no family photos.

Doc Sanford estimated the death as occurring between 5:30 and 7:00pm. “He could have walked in here alive."

“But someone went over the desk pretty carefully,” said McBride. “No fingerprints there or on the bookshelves. A few on the filing cabinet and the doorknob, but they'll probably turn out to be the custodian's."

“You're suggesting someone wiped the prints away?” Brandy asked.

“Looks that way—very thorough job, too. There's not even a print under here,” he showed her as he pulled the last piece of clear fingerprint tape from the bottom edge of the main desk drawer. It was one of those flat, shallow drawers without a handle, opened by sliding it out with a hand on the bottom of the drawer. “Probably not a student,” McBride said. “When we've had break-ins by kids looking for exams or grade books, even when they think to wipe away prints they always forget that spot. This is a pro."

So someone had searched the desk. “But what was he looking for?” Tired and half giddy from no supper and only microwave soup for lunch, Brandy did not like the direction this event was taking. That was how crimes went in America's Heartland: either simple and straightforward and solved within hours, or totally confused, committed by people with warped imaginations and half-baked ideas of witchcraft and Satanism.

Hardly had the thought crossed her mind than she heard the gossip start. Students, faculty, and staff began to speculate, “Who is it?” “Somebody musta stole the corpse and put ol’ man Land's I.D. on it. Show what a mean old bastard he is.” “No—it's the Satanists! That is Professor Land. They put a death curse on him!"

The headache that had been incipient all day grasped Brandy's skull with fingers of steel. She bagged the wallet and told McBride and Sanford, “Until we find out who this guy is, and locate Dr. Land, it'll be early Halloween!"

She turned to the gathered faculty and students. “You are not witnesses unless you were here earlier, between the time the secretary left..."

As she hoped, one of the students supplied, “4:30."

“If you were here between 4:30 and the time Security arrived, please try to recall anything that would tell us who brought this body in, and how. Or if you saw the man walk in alive. Did anyone notice when Dr. Land left today?"

There was only head-shaking. The earlier Land had left, the wider the window of opportunity for sneaking the corpse into his office. Brandy remembered her own days as a student assistant in Sociology; even though it was a much larger department than Classics, there were times when absolutely no one was in the suite.

A call to the department secretary produced an answer, of sorts: Land had still been in his office when Ms. Sandoval left for the day.

Criminal intent or a really stupid prank? Brandy had to proceed as if it were the former. The coroner removed the body, leaving her to witnesses with little to contribute until a man Brandy hadn't seen before entered the suite.