Garretsville Crimes - Chapter Three

Note:  As I’ve said, I decided to set this story in a place that I know.  Garretsville isn’t an exact mirror to my current town of residence, but it’s damn close in population and types of people.  For example, the butcher mentioned in the front of the chapter.  I don’t believe our butcher actually runs a shop (storefront), but he does do exactly as described otherwise.  I kind of feel it necessary to emphasize this since, before living here, I would’ve thought what a lot of people do: that people in towns like this are brutal like the big corporate farms.  Now, granted, we have our problem people, but we’ll get to those people too.  Man, this is cathartic!

Also, I had intended for this chapter to be much longer and actually complete the storyline in this chapter alone.  However, before I could do this, I had a situation with a donkey and his kicking me around for half an hour, and so I'll have to conclude this next week.  :(

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            Being a northern desert area that had been long irrigated and toiled into farmland, Garretsville gave way for some pretty miserable summers.  It was August by then, the worst month of the year for the entire area, Millets Peak included.  It easily breached over a hundred degrees on a daily basis.  The only thing they had going for them was the fact that it was a dry heat.  The only real humidity came from the lengthy irrigation canals that spanned through the entirety of Garretsville.

            That day was like any other, involving Michael getting into his car and cursing himself for forgetting that he needed to take his car in to get the air conditioner fixed.  Since his drive to the office was only about five minutes, depending on traffic, he forgot pretty easily.  He usually left work after sun fall when the night was in the sixties and seventies, and being a town of less than four thousand in population, his job rarely called for him to leave the office.

            So, imagine his surprise when, halfway to the office, his cell phone began to ring.  He answered after the caller ID flashed with the Sheriff’s name.  “Hey, John, what’s up?” he asked.

            “Can you meet me over at Kimball’s butcher house over on Register Lane?” John asked.  “There was a pretty huge break-in and, as I’m sure you can imagine, we have blood evidence that you’d be better at processing for us.”

            Michael made a face because that was an extra fifteen minutes of hanging his head out the window due to the heat and hoping a wasp didn’t hit him in the eye, but…  “Yeah, absolutely.  I’ll be right there.”

***

            Harold and Jessica Kimball ran a friendly little butcher business.  They had a very clean, warm and incredibly country storefront that even had a place to sit in because Jessica, Harold’s daughter, and her staff made in-store lunches and brunches for customers as well as retailing fresh meat.  Out back, Harold and his staff brought in animals for kill and slaughter.  Believing in quick kills, they tended to be popular with the people because Harold was a very, very good shot and animals didn’t suffer with him.

            Harold and Jessica were kind people.  Michael had stopped in a few times for lunch, even.  He wasn’t much of a cook, so it was lunch and not much else.  When he got there, Jessica waved to him as she held a frown on her face.  She then took to rubbing her dark hands together, pacing a little.

            Michael frowned in turn, juggling his two scene investigation bags, as he headed over to her.  “Hey,” he said.  “I’m sorry for what happened.”

            “Dad’s really upset,” she said.  Her dark eyes were puffy.  “They killed one of our dogs, we just found out.”

            “What?” Michael breathed, his frown deepening.

            She sniffed, shaking her head and closing her eyes.  “God.  The Sheriff and his Deputy were, ah, I think you call it ‘isolating the area’ and opened one of our storage closets, where we keep the floor cleaning products for the back.  Deedee was in there, and… dad’s trying to keep me away, but I want to see her.”

            Jessica was in her early twenties, and hadn’t exactly chosen a life of looking at dead bodies in the same scope as Monica and Michael.  Harold was probably just trying to protect her from nightmares.  Michael tossed one of his bags under an arm, using his freed hand to gently squeeze her shoulder.  “Tell you what.  Lemme see what happened to Deedee.  If it’s not too bad, I’ll see if I can’t convince Harold to let you back to see her, okay?”

            “…and if it is bad?” she asked, looking at him.

            Michael hesitated, but decided that he’d offer the truth to her.  “I’ll come out and tell you why you shouldn’t see her.”

            Jessica sighed and nodded, looking down at her hands.  “Thank you, Michael.”

            He smiled and nodded, though both were small, and headed for the back as Deputy Vince Castillo appeared.  Castillo was a good guy.  Young, so a bit fresh still, but he handled himself with the same maturity that Michael came to expect from Monica.  Really, Garretsville had some damn fine people working crimes, even if they only had four cops and two medical examiners that acted like detectives voluntarily when more confusing things came the cops’ ways.  It saved money in bringing in outside resources from Millets Peak or further.  Michael and Monica came highly trained, so they fit the bill often (and kind of enjoyed getting to do ‘cop things’ like the people on television got to).

            “Jessica says we got a victim,” Michael said as he stepped through to the cold, massive meat locker that stood between the actual slaughterhouse and the storefront.

            “Yeah,” Castillo said as he went to guide Michael through the freezing area.  “In the actual slaughtering area.”  He walked over to the thick door that separated the meat locker from the slaughterhouse.  “The lock was broken, but here’s the weird thing.  There’s blood all over this, but the meat’s frozen.  Shouldn’t be bloody.  And the blood spatter around the dog is showing that it was killed after this part of the theft came and went.”

            Michael set his bags down and went to pull on rubber gloves.  He grabbed a bag of evidence tags, along with his camera, and went to look over the door itself.  He didn’t say anything, but Castillo didn’t take it personally, the focused look on Michael’s face saying enough about why.  There were no points of bursting blood spatter, which sounded a lot more violent than what it was.  It was just the area of origin for the bleeding to start.

            “It didn’t start as an injury on the door, it looks like,” Michael rambled quietly.  “I mean, I could be wrong, but the amount of blood means there should be a visible point of injury.”  The blood pattern showed where they pawed through the door and back out, swinging their hands as they went.  They were likely rushing.

            He collected pictures of the door on all sides, and the floor inside the meat locker, before stepping out into the hot slaughterhouse.  For a moment, he paused and thought about how much it was going to suck to have to do that again.  The human body didn’t like going from one extreme temperature to the next, after all.  He then shook his head and went to move on to the rest of the blood spatter.

            “The injury definitely happened inside the locker,” he said as he used the digital flash on his camera light a flashlight.  John and Harold stood off by about fifteen feet, and turned to look and listen to Michael as he spoke distractedly.  “There are no real conflicts to the landing points, like footsteps.  There’s a little, but not repeated.  That only happens if the blood was crossed once.”  He paused and looked over to Harold.  “You protected this place from people stepping through it, didn’t you, Harold?”

            “I knew you guys would want to see it as it is,” Harold confirmed, pursing his lips.

            “That helps a lot.  Did you see anything outside that caught your attention?”

            “I was just telling the Sheriff here, Deedee’s chain… I normally don’t leave her here, but she didn’t want to go home, so I came in early today.  Her chain was snapped right apart.  She was a border collie, they don’t have that kind of strength.”  He spoke with a few breaks in his vocal strength.  He was clearly upset, likely blaming himself.

            “Where is she?” Michael asked, frowning.

            “I’ll take you,” John said as he went to start walking over, navigating the scene carefully.

            Michael was noticing that John and Castillo had taken good care in trying to mark as much evidence as they could see it.  They did a damn good job of it too.  Michael wasn’t looking too closely as he followed John, but he wasn’t seeing anything missed for how he was looking.

            John pushed open the door as Michael turned his back to the storage closet in order to take a wide shot of the scene in the actual slaughterhouse proper.  He didn’t want to cross over the evidence any more than necessary, so he wanted to get it out of the way before he forgot.

            Then, he turned.

            …and choked a bit.

            No wonder Harold was keeping his daughter away.  Michael started to take pictures of the scene, squatting down over it to take a close look.  “Jesus, it looks like someone stuck her lower body in a blender,” he murmured.

            “That’s the exact same damn thing I said,” John replied with a snort.

            Michael hung the camera around his neck and went to reach out and touch the dog’s neck.  Since Harold mentioned her chain was broken, but it was far too strong for her…

            “Her neck’s broken.  She most likely died whenever she was ripped off her chain.  We have tire marks out there?” Michael asked.  Running over a body would have created the force to rip her off the chain, and the motion needed to destroy her lower half.

            “There are, but not around her area,” John said.  “Vince thought of it shortly after Harold mentioned where she was kept.”

            Michael shook his head.  “We should get Leah Quinton out here,” he said, referring to one of a few local veterinarians, but the only one Michael personally liked.  The others took advantage of the people who didn’t have the ability or privilege to travel far for vet care.  “She’ll obviously be able to tell you more about this body than I can, but I suggest you tell her what she can expect.”  He went to stand up again, slowly backing away from the closet so it could be closed.  “I’ll talk to Jessica and see if she’s had any weird customers after getting more photos around here and trying to lift some prints.  I’ll get a sample of the blood too.”

            John agreed to that, heading back over to get more information from Harold.

***

            “I’m guessing it’s… pretty bad, isn’t it?”

            Jessica was seated at a table in the storefront, across from Michael.  She stirred one of the cups of coffee she brought out for them and just looked discouraged.  Michael was glad she wasn’t someone who fought him on the matter.  He wasn’t someone who liked to keep people away from their right to see the body of a loved one—human or animal—unless he felt the sight was too horrific for them to handle.  The best part about living in Garretsville meant if a body needed to be identified, there was no shortage of people who could be chosen from.  Small towns and all.

            “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think she suffered at all,” Michael said softly.

            “What happened?” Jessica asked.  She looked at him with a frown that reflected in her dark brown eyes.  “Please.”

            Regarding her for a moment, Michael decided he ought to let her have that much.  “Something ripped her clean from her chain.  Snapped her neck in the process.  It would’ve been so quick, she never knew what hit her.”

            Jessica let out a soft sigh of relief.  It wouldn’t help with the loss, but it would help knowing the animal she clearly loved didn’t hurt.  “Thank you,” she breathed.

            Michael nodded.  He went to take a drink of his own coffee cup, and then looked back to Jessica.  “I have to ask.  This was a theft as well… have you had anyone strange come in here recently, or have you seen anyone strange lurking around the building?”

            Pursing her lips, Jessica thought about it as she wiped a few tears trying to break free from her eyes.  “Ah.  No… well, there has been Brad Lincoln, but he’s not a stranger.  He’s just been acting strange.”

            Brad Lincoln.  He was the son of one of the town prosecuting attorneys.  A young man, he lived on his own in one of the lesser touched regions of Garretsville.  He was a good young man, though.  Michael tended to speak to him every year at the annual Christmas party for town employees and their families.  His life didn’t go without the rumor mill from older people in town, and he knew it, so it tended to push him further into an antisocial state.

            “Does he come here a lot?” Michael asked.

            “Oh, all the time, to buy fresh meat.  I think he must have his own walk-in freezer, because he stockpiles.  But he also comes a lot for lunch and to talk,” Jessica said, smiling fondly.  They were about the same age, so of course they’d get along.  “Normally he’s really social when he comes in.  Really sweet, friendly, even though he speaks really quietly.  But the last few weeks, he’s been… he doesn’t want to talk.  He just comes in, hands a paper to me with his order, pays far too much for it, and leaves before I can give him any change to pull around back.”

            Michael nodded to acknowledge what she was saying.  However, it didn’t fit the proper profile for someone frantically breaking in and stealing meat.  Maybe for killing a dog, but the dog and the theft were both connected.  There was no question about that in the slightest.  He’d keep Brad in mind, however.  If he was starting to change in personality that dramatically, something else might happen.

            Michael decided to leave Jessica alone about it, aside from saying, “Well, think about anyone else too that might have been suspicious.  I’ll look into Lincoln in the meantime, alright?”

            Jessica agreed to that, and Michael shifted the conversation to more general things.  She’d been through enough and he needed to wait until he could process the evidence, especially any lifted fingerprints.  Really, it was a simple enough situation, they just needed a name.