The White River Killer: A Mystery Novel (3 page)

3

B
IG
F
ISH ON
S
MALL
R
IVERS

T
HERE WAS NO TIME TO WASTE
if Hubbard was going to arrive at the crime scene before the state police got there and shut out the press. Why was Andrews taking this story on? Usually, Mrs. Welsh doled out the assignments. He dashed through his house, grabbing a camera bag and notebook. Returning to Shanty Town after all these years seemed so goddamned unreal.

He stepped onto his front porch, pulled off his damp baseball cap and shielded his eyes from the bright sunlight. Minutes before, the sun had been peeking over the horizon. Now it was resting on the treetops.

Once underway, the truck flew down the highway toward the two rows of desolate wooden shacks. Leaving the two-lane, he followed an unpaved route through a line of pine trees and across a small pasture.

He eventually came to the first of several ancient cabins. Except for scattered patches of faded paint still clinging to its rough siding, it was the color of kindling with a roof of rusted tin. His childhood memories were nothing like the landscape today. Surrounding acreage, last cultivated during a long-ago summer, had devolved into feral wilderness. Scrub trees, kudzu vines, and thorn-covered brush tracked and pulled at the ruins, slowly devouring them.

At the end of the lane, he spotted Sheriff Toil and Eddie, his young deputy, at the top of a slight rise. Their hands stuffed into their coat pockets, they stared into the drainage channel that eventually emptied into the White River. Toil was wearing a regulation uniform, but Eddie had on a hunter’s orange-colored jacket.

Toil turned when he heard Hubbard’s truck. For a moment, Toil was transformed in Hubbard’s imagination into old Sheriff Conklin, waiting on the Hubbard family car as it approached on a mid-summer day. Hubbard shook his head to clear it.
Different time, different dirt road, different murder.

Hubbard gave a cursory wave to the policemen when they looked up, and then reached for his camera bag, reproaching himself for still hauling his father’s old Nikon along with the newspaper’s camera.
Carrying his old camera doesn’t get it fixed.
But somehow, having it with him, like his old tractor, kept a connection to his father alive. He got out of the truck.

Sheriff Toil was a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and an expanding waist. Eddie Pine was twenty years old, a recent escapee from high school, rail-thin, with red hair that couldn’t be tamed. Both men held these undemanding law enforcement jobs in Hayslip because the town’s lenient work schedules allowed them spare time to run their small farms.

“John Riley Hubbard, what’re you doing here?” Eddie made it sound as if they had just bumped into each other walking along the beach at Gulf Shores.

Sheriff Toil’s head tilted back and his lips compressed with sudden concern. Based on his earlier conversation with Andrews, Hubbard surmised that Toil had pocketed a nice finder’s fee for calling this in. Evidently, he had not considered how he would explain Hubbard’s unexpected appearance.

That presented a problem. Toil probably held off calling the state police too. The sheriff was engaging in unethical behavior, even for Hayslip. And how exactly was Hubbard to explain his arrival? The justification, “Just driving by” didn’t seem convincing for this remote location. Andrews should have warned him.

Hubbard gave Eddie a slight punch on the arm. “Hey, Eddie, it’s good to see you, man.”

“I saw your uncle R.J. at the Hunter’s Den the other day,” Eddie said. “He was buying a whole bunch of stuff. Is he going huntin’?”

Hubbard shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. We don’t talk much.”

“He was at Rotary on Tuesday,” Toil added.

Hubbard’s uncle was a man who never went unnoticed. The standard conversation opener, at least to his nephew, seemed to always include a recent sighting of R.J., no matter how insignificant—walking down the street, washing his car—nothing escaped comment.

Eddie glanced down at Hubbard’s writing pad and camera. “How did you hear about us finding a body?”

Hubbard looked to Toil for help, but the sheriff refused to meet his gaze.

“I thought you wrote only about high school games.”

“Timberjack games and uh, major crimes. Both topics.”
Please drop this.

Eddie’s brow furrowed as if he was trying to solve a complex math problem. “Only me, the sheriff, and the state police know about the murder.”

Hubbard’s mind raced. Eddie wouldn’t stop until he came up with some explanation, no matter how lame. For a moment his mind was blank, and then he saw a way out. “Oh,
well,
I have a police scanner. You just can’t stand on your heels in the news business, you know.” He sounded like Clark Kent. He hoped Eddie wouldn’t ask him why a part-time, high school sports reporter was so dedicated that he listened to a police scanner at the break of day.

Now it was Eddie who looked concerned. “Did you have your scanner on a week ago Monday night, a little after midnight?”

Hubbard turned to the sheriff, who was staring intently at the tops of his shoes. He glanced back at the deputy. “Last week? Monday night? No. Why? Something happen?”

Eddie’s smile vanished—a rare event. “No. Nothing happened. Not a thing. Just wondered.”

Eddie walked a few dejected steps away before bending down to scoop up a small stone, which he chucked into the air.

What the hell happened last week? thought Hubbard.

With Eddie out of earshot, Hubbard looked at Toil and turned his hands up. He whispered. “You could have warned me ahead of time that I needed to come up with a story.”

Toil cleared his throat. “Don’t get mad . . .”

Hubbard sighed. “I’m not like that anymore.”
Will the town ever let it go?
“I just wished you said something.”

Toil’s head bent. “I didn’t think it through . . . If you’re going to get any shots, you better start now. When the state police arrive, they’ll chase you out of here and confiscate the paper’s camera to prevent unauthorized photos in the media. And the way Connors operates, you’ll probably never get it back.”

“Okay, okay,” Hubbard said. “Let me get a shot of you boys in front of the ditch.”

“Hurry,” Toil said.

Hubbard arranged both men in front of the channel. He glanced toward the highway, expecting each cool breeze to carry the wail of an approaching police siren. Hubbard raised the camera and sized them up in the screen. He lowered the camera.

“You know, Eddie, I think smiling for the camera is the wrong choice right now.”

Toil glared at Eddie, who immediately dropped his grin. Hubbard snapped a photo and reviewed it. Now the lawmen looked unnaturally dour, like suspects caught at the scene.

“Do you guys have the
Do Not Cross
tape they use on cop shows on TV? If you guys could hold on to it at each end, I can get a shot of it with the ditch just beyond.”

“Okay,” Eddie said.

“Yeah,” Toil said, “but we left the tape back at the office. Oh, we’ve used it a couple of times, but the state police think we always do it wrong. There doesn’t seem to be much point in going to the trouble.” Toil’s words barely concealed his bitterness. He used his right thumb and forefinger to squeeze the bridge of his nose.

“Are you okay, Sheriff?” Hubbard asked.

Toil waved the question away. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m just tired, but I got to be ready for Sergeant Connors.”

Toil and the state police were engaged in a never-ending battle for mutual respect. Hubbard heard stories about the conflict in town, but this was the first time he’d seen it played out in person. Toil, who’d recently replaced Sheriff Conklin, had scant background in law enforcement. He’d served in the Army’s military police decades ago, but only took the low-paying job for the extra cash he needed to keep his farm running. No one else had applied for the job.

Time was running out for Hubbard. He wheeled in a tight circle and took photos of the sheriff’s truck, the road, the nearest tin-roofed shanty, the rough terrain, and a blurred photo of Eddie walking to his car.

Hubbard didn’t want to do it. But he’d been ordered to get a shot of the body. “Okay so, I guess the body’s in the ditch?”

Hubbard fiddled with the paper’s digital camera while Eddie walked toward the ditch in advance of them like a tour guide. He made a broad sweep of his arm. “Right this way.”

They followed behind him like tourists. There was a long carpet roll that rose above the top of the ditch at one end, while the other end sloped downward. At the lower end, a body had slid out. It was gruesome.

The moment felt too familiar.
Different year
 . . .

Below them in the mud was the body of a young man wearing an expensive-looking blue suit, white shirt, and a red-patterned tie. There was a rough crater of dried blood and bone in the center of his chest. The bottom half of his tie was missing below the gaping hole. A lock of black hair curled across his forehead like a comma. Hubbard took a breath, trying to keep his nausea at bay.

There was a moment of quiet as storm water at the bottom of the ditch worked its way to the White River. Several footprints in the mud surrounded the floor covering, probably made by Eddie or Toil, opening the carpet upon its discovery and then returning it to an approximation of its original, rolled-up state. If the state police, coming from Monticello, knew what was happening to their crime scene, they would be speeding here with the same urgency as Pony Express riders of the Old West.

Hubbard fired off three photos of the carpet roll and murder victim, although he couldn’t imagine the graphic shot finding a spot in the local paper. Mrs. Welsh, the editor, wouldn’t allow it. She was the only one in town who could tell the Boy King “no” and make it stick.

Eddie ran back to his car to answer a radio call.

“How long before they get here?” Hubbard asked.

Toil checked his watch. “Any minute I guess.” He rubbed his eyes with the back of his right hand.

“Any idea how long he’s been dead?”

“Eddie didn’t think he’s been out here very long by the looks of him,” Toil said. “No more than a day. Killed yesterday morning? Um, Sunday morning? Yeah—Sunday.”

“Okay, so how did Eddie stumble on this?”

“He was uh, on patrol,” Toil said. It was a lie and the sheriff didn’t sell it well.

Hubbard raised an eyebrow in disbelief—Eddie wasn’t on patrol among a bunch of abandoned shacks. But Toil didn’t flinch, so he let it pass.

Eddie finished his call and trotted up to them.

Toil said, “Was that anything?”

“Nah. Somebody reported that a couple of drunk Mexicans got into some kind of scrap on Main Street last night. No one was reported hurt.”

Toil shook his head with a resigned air. “Well, we’ll look into it after this. Probably kids raising some hell. But if they were illegals in a scrap, we’ll never hear from them.” Toil turned to his deputy. “Eddie, we’ve got to find those Mexicans working the still in the deer woods.”

Eddie nodded, but shrugged as if the moonshiners were the phantoms of the forest.

Hubbard recalled Andrews’s serial killer theory. He looked down at the carpet roll. He knew that Andrews wanted him to check out his ridiculous theory, and he reminded himself he was being paid to do so. Was there a way to ask the question and not sound half-witted? He came up empty.

“So, ah, do you think it’s the work of The White River Killer?”

Sherriff Toil looked at him and blinked several times as if he was having trouble understanding the question.

Eddie’s forehead furrowed like a field of freshly planted corn and he looked down at the brown braided carpet like he had never seen one before.

“Th—The White . . . River Killer?” Toil asked.

“The rug’s wet ‘cause it was raining last night,” Eddie said. “I don’t think it were in no river.”

Toil shook his head. “The White River Killer’s victims were all young women. They were strangled, cut up, and shoved into some kind of plastic bags used in hospitals. They found those bags scattered along the banks of the White River up around Pine Bluff.” He pointed at the carpet roll with the detached air of a college professor. “Our victim is a dude who was put down with a shotgun. He was wrapped in a carpet with all his body parts still attached and tossed into a ditch.”

“In Hayslip, not Pine Bluff,” Eddie said, finishing the mercy killing of the lame theory. “But if you drive ten minutes or thereabouts, you could get to our neck of the White River,” the deputy added the last part with southern diplomacy.

The sheriff ignored Eddie and examined Hubbard intently. “The crimes are nothing alike. Why do you think the White River Killer did this?”

“Yeah, I know. It looks unrelated.” Hubbard paused. “And how do you know the victim is a student at Monticello College, an Arab?”

Eddie perked up. “How’d
you
know he were a student?”

“I . . . uh, heard it on the scanner.”

Eddie’s brow creased, probably trying to imagine a radio call providing so much information.

Toil pulled a wallet from his coat pocket. “Eddie got his ID when he discovered the body.”