Murder Mountain
Authors: Stacy Dittrich
Tags: #Police Procedural, #Murder, #Mystery & Detective, #Crime, #General, #West Virginia, #Thrillers, #Fiction
Stacy Dittrich
“When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.”
-C.P. Snow (1905-1980)
“Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.”
-W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
“…he allegedly told her that he and his girlfriend ate some of the meat from the woman’s body, which he referred to as bitchburgers…”
-The Roane County Reporter news article that inspired “Murder Mountain.”
“Heinous” is a word used by the media to describe the violent acts committed by one human being against another. Applying the word “heinous” to a murder victim, like the one I stood before now, does a great disservice and injustice to those who lost their lives as crime victims. In the eyes of a criminal investigator like myself, there is no word in the English language, or any language, that can bring forth the true emotions one has when looking down at another human being who’s been brutally murdered. If anything, your own mortality crashes down faster than you can say, “I am going to die someday.”
The victim was thirty-one years old, only two years younger than I was. She had twin boys, aged seven, and a full life ahead of her. At least, she had—until this morning. After working two jobs to get through nursing school, she tried to better her life even more by leaving her laid-off, verbally abusive, drunken husband—a husband so self-absorbed and egotistical, he wouldn’t hear of it. Instead of going the rational route and talking to his depressed wife or suggesting marriage counseling, he decided to solve their problems by stabbing her twenty-six times and severely beating her face in with a ball bat, making her virtually unrecognizable.
Then, to underscore the deplorable nature of his crime, he wrapped her in clear plastic and dumped her body in a ditch by our local airport. The Richland County Coroner, shocked even after years of viewing crimes of passion, called the crime “heinous” when he first viewed the bodies.
Yes, bodies. The husband apparently had a change of heart, or wave of guilt, when he decided to put the barrel of his nine-millimeter handgun into his mouth and pull the trigger, rather than leaving her there to rot alone. His brain matter sprayed the top layer of plastic that entombed his late wife, his body falling directly beside hers.
I’ve investigated monsters such as this man most of my career, and I had a good idea of his thoughts prior to pulling the trigger:
if I die, too, we’ll die together and bond forever.
This is a typical criminal’s way of rationalizing his behavior, giving no thought to the children he left behind—the true victims. How does anyone tell two seven-year-old boys that daddy killed mommy, and then killed himself?
It’s not like this is the first murder-suicide I’ve ever been on. These crimes are commonplace in law enforcement, with my own department handling anywhere from five to ten domestic murder-suicides per year. Why I was reacting to this particular scene with such emotion, I couldn’t understand. At least I didn’t have the misfortune of being assigned as lead detective for this crime. There’s not much to the title, by the way, just mounds of paperwork to close the file and the grueling job of getting the last minute details from survivors, but I’ll pass anyway.
Watching the coroner and his assistants place the bodies in two dark blue vinyl body bags, I thought of the last homicide I had been lead investigator on over two months ago. A man had walked into the home of his wife’s lesbian lover, shot her in the face, and left her dead on her kitchen floor. What he didn’t know, or didn’t care about, was that the woman’s two-year-old little girl was napping in her bedroom when the murder occurred. Waking up to the sound of the gunshot, the little girl found her mother on the floor and lay down next to her for the next twelve hours, occasionally eating Cheerios out of a box in the lower cupboard until both victims, mother and child, were found by the neighbor.
I happened to be out of the office that day and heard the call put out on the police radio. When I arrived on the scene, I realized I was the first detective on scene—a circumstance I gravely regretted. The two-year-old, who was then sitting on the porch with a hysterical neighbor, was covered in her mother’s blood and sucking on a bloody pacifier. That vision stayed with me—vividly—for weeks, and most likely will stay forever.
There are days when I don’t think I can bear to see another dead body—days that are getting more and more frequent. After the bodies were loaded in the coroner’s van, I asked the assigned detective if he needed my assistance, and when he said no, I left the scene, went back to my department and shut myself inside the confines of my office.
Focusing on counting the minutes until I could go home, I sat at my desk and thought about my career, looking out my office window at the city below. What the hell was I doing here?
It had been four years since I’d been promoted to detective in the Major Crimes Division of my department. I sat staring out the window over the city. I would have thought I’d have the human race figured out by this time, but I wasn’t even close. I don’t know why I ever thought I could. I decided that we couldn’t be figured out. There would always be one more surprise around the corner, one more shocking set of circumstances to prove me wrong once again.
This city in front of me seemed nice enough by all outward appearances, but ordinary citizens didn’t realize what a sewer Mansfield, Ohio really was. The city itself was pop. 50,000, small on the grand scale of cities. The total county population, Richland County, was 150,000. Oh, and by the way, Richland County and the City of Mansfield had the highest crime rate per capita in the entire country. We’d held that exalted position for three years.
I’d tried to leave. Within four years of graduating high school, I had stints in Florida, where my ex-husband (whom I married at nineteen) tried to make it big in the major league baseball circuit and fell flat on his face. Next was New York City, where an illustrious modeling career turned my ego into the size of a pea. Then, Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo, where I took turns attending several colleges. Unfortunately, these never filled the void I felt inside, and I kept coming home. After my hellish first marriage, a union that resulted in a non-working husband who had an addiction to strippers (it lasted less than a year,) I stayed and became a cop at the age of twenty-three. A wonderful second marriage and two kids followed shortly after. As to the weather in Cleveland, I despise it, but I’ve learned to deal with it.
As I continued to look out over this booming metropolis, I began to feel the imaginary eyes of two huge piles of cases boring a hole in my back. Whenever I feel satisfied that I’m caught up on cases, I walk into my office and there are twenty to thirty more sitting on my desk. On days like that, I feel completely overwhelmed. Now, instead of trying to lighten my load by starting to work, I lit a cigarette.
“Hey! Heads up, CeeCee!” I heard from behind me.
I turned around and saw Detective Jeff Cooper standing in my doorway. Coop was probably my closest friend in the major crimes division. He was now in his early thirties and had started in the department the same time I had. Usually, when we’re sworn in with other people, we tend to stick together for the remainder of our careers. Not always, of course, but Coop’s kids were the same age as my own and my husband, Eric, and I did a lot of things together with Coop and his wife, Cindy. I guess from an outsider’s point of view, Coop was pretty handsome—the typical dark-haired, blue-eyed babe.
Considering that I get the pleasure of hearing and watching these guys burp, fart, and scratch their balls, it’s hard for me to summon up any feeling other than sisterly affection.
“Kincaid’s on her way to see you,” he warned me, “and she looks pissed.”
I rolled my eyes, groaning, as I put out my cigarette, (there’s no smoking in our building), and turned to my computer to look as if I was doing something productive.
I paused for a minute, still staring at the screen. “Exactly what does that nosy pain-in-the-ass want now?” I said loudly.
Too loud, actually. Little did I know that Coop had scurried off to his office like a little rat.
“I beg your pardon?” I heard this from behind me. The tone of voice wasn’t exactly warm and friendly.
“Nice,” I muttered under my breath.
I slowly turned towards the door and saw Captain Naomi Kincaid, head of the major crimes division, looming before me like a terminal disease.
“What can I do for you, Captain?” I said with a half grin, my day going downhill by the minute.
“You can show me a little respect, for starters.”
I took a deep breath, and as much as I wanted to launch into a counterattack about what a worthless captain she was, I merely smiled, bit my tongue gently, and said, “That’s a fair request, what do you need?” as sweetly as I could.
“First, I need you to quit smoking in the building. I could smell it halfway down the hall. You know the rules,” she began. It was more like a verbal staccato than talking.
“I quit two weeks ago, Captain. It wasn’t me,” I lied.
“Whatever. That’s not why I’m here anyway.” She strode in and sat in one of the chairs in front of my desk.
“Feel free to come in and have a seat,” I said, allowing sarcasm to infiltrate my voice. From the look on her face, I realized I had gone too far.
“Exactly what is your problem with me, CeeCee?” she barked.
She had definitely opened a can of worms on that one. My mind was racing back and forth trying to decide whether to answer her or not. However, the sensible side of me took over—for once.
“No problem, Cap, I’m just having a bad day. I assume you’re here to see me for a reason?”
She started clicking her tongue, a habit she had when she was thinking—a habit that annoyed me to no end.
“I know you didn’t agree with the merger, but the fact is, you have to work for me and you better get used to it.”
I always notice when people ignore my questions. Ah, the dreaded merger. After September 11, city and county budgets plummeted, ours included. Our wonderful county commissioners and city councilmen decided to merge the City of Mansfield Police Department with my own Richland County Sheriff’s Department, and we are now the Richland Metropolitan Police Department, the only county in the eastern half of the United States to create such a merger.
By doing so, our department gained national attention, and other counties and municipalities are following suit. I really didn’t mind at first. My husband, father, and uncles were all with the city, so I got to see them more.
However, out of both departments, Captain Naomi Kincaid, formerly with the city, has the reputation of being the most wicked of all witches, and as luck would have it, she is now my boss.