brought it up yesterday, so I asked around and the answer is yes, about twenty years ago when the Custer Hill property was being developed.” He informed us, “It happened about five miles north of the property. One of my old-timers remembered it.”
Kate asked, “What was the outcome?”
“Hunting accident, shooter unknown.”
“And the victim?”
“Never identified.” He briefed us, “Male, about forty, clean shaven, well nourished, and so forth. Single shot to the head. It was summer, and the victim was wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and hiking boots. No ID, the body was at least two weeks dead when discovered, and some animals had gotten to it. Facial photos were taken but not shown to the general public for obvious reasons. Fingerprints were recovered, but not good ones, and they were unmatchable to any data banks that existed at the time.”
Kate pointed out, “Isn’t that a little suspicious? I mean, single shot to the head, no ID, no one reported missing, and I assume no vehicle turned up in the area.”
“Well, yeah. It’s suspicious. But according to my guy who remembered it, there was not a single clue or evidence of foul play, so, to make things simple, the sheriff and the coroner ruled it an accident, awaiting any information to the contrary.” He added, “We’re still waiting.” He paused, then said, “Even now, with this apparent homicide, I wouldn’t try to connect that death to the Custer Hill Club, which wasn’t even occupied at the time.”
I said to him, “Run the fingerprints again.”
We drove on in silence. I thought, of course, there could very well be a connection. The victim, if he had been murdered, could be some hiker who saw something he wasn’t supposed to see at the Custer Hill construction site- or maybe it was some guy working on the Custer Hill project who saw or knew too much about something. Like ELF. Or something else.
I didn’t want to start making Bain Madox into this evil genius who was responsible for everything that went wrong in the world for the last twenty years-floods, famine, war, plague, earthquakes, my extra ten pounds, and my divorce. But this guy certainly fit the part of some sort of global manipulator. I mean, the rule is, If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck.
Then, I kill the duck.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Major Schaeffer pulled off the trail onto a recently cleared patch of ground, explaining, “We needed to widen the trail here for a turnaround.”
We got out and followed him another twenty yards to where an area was staked out with yellow tape. On the trail itself, they’d used Day-Glo orange to spray paint an outline of Harry’s body. In the center of the outline was a blue jay, pecking the ground.
The sun was higher now, and light penetrated the trees and lit up the pleasant woodland trail. Birds were chirping, and squirrels scampered through the trees, dropping acorn husks. A soft breeze rustled the fall leaves, which floated down in a constant flurry.
There’s no good place to die, but I suppose if you didn’t die in your own bed, this was as good a place as any.
On the other side of the taped-off area, I saw a state police SUV on the trail.
Schaeffer said, “Those guys came in from the other direction. They’re still looking for a shell casing, but whoever did this did not leave a casing or anything else behind. And we still haven’t found the bullet that passed through the victim’s body.”
I nodded. Assuming the murder weapon was a high-velocity rifle, the chances of finding the bullet in the woods were not good. In fact, there were many spent bullets in the woods, and there was no way that any of them could be identified as the bullet that killed the victim. Even a ballistics match on one of Madox’s rifles wouldn’t prove anything except that Madox, or a guest, had once gone hunting in the woods. Bottom line-the woods were a good place to commit murder.
Schaeffer continued, “We’re keeping the tape out at fifty feet for now, but I’m going to pull it tighter today, then by tomorrow, there’s no reason to keep this as a pristine crime scene.” He informed us, “Rain forecast for tomorrow.” He added, “I think we and the CSI team did all we could. There’s nothing here.”
Again I nodded, as I kept staring at the Day-Glo orange outline. The blue jay had been joined by its mate.
Schaeffer said, “If you look up the trail, you’ll see that it’s fairly straight, so it’s hard to imagine a hunter on this trail mistaking a man for a deer. And if the hunter was in the woods, it would take a miracle shot to pass through all these trees without hitting one of them.”
“Right,” I agreed. “Looks like murder.”
“Unfortunately, other than the near impossibility of this being an accident, we don’t have a shred of evidence that it was murder.” He reminded me, “There was no robbery, and the victim had no local ties that might lead to a grudge killing, which sometimes happens up here.”
I didn’t reply. Major Schaeffer obviously suspected that Harry’s assignment was linked to his death, and that the murderer was Bain Madox, but he wasn’t going to take that step until he had a good piece of evidence.
Schaeffer asked us, “Do you want to see the photos?”
I didn’t, but I said, “Please.”
He took a stack of color photos from his overcoat pocket and handed them to me. I flipped through them as Kate stood beside me.
Harry had fallen face-first, as I already knew, and his arms were thrown out from his sides by the impact of the bullet, as shown in the spray-painted outline on the trail.
I could barely see the entry wound in the center of his back, but close-ups revealed a bloodstain in the center of his camouflage jacket.
I stared at a close-up that showed the left side of Harry’s face with his eyes open.
I could see the leather strap around his neck that was connected to the binoculars, which had landed clear of his body and were lying close to his left shoulder, near his face.
I asked Major Schaeffer, “Was that the position of the binoculars when you found the body?”
“Yes. These are the photos that were taken before we touched or moved anything.” He added, “It may be that he was holding or looking through the binoculars when he was shot, which I think is why they’re clear of the body and not under his chest. Or, the impact of the round hitting the body just caused the binoculars to swing on their strap away from the body before it hit the ground.”
Possible, but not probable. First, Harry was not looking through his binoculars before he’d been murdered by the people who brought him here. Second, the laws of physics would suggest that the binoculars would swing back to their original position, hanging on Harry’s chest, before his body hit the ground. But that was not a certainty.
Major Schaeffer continued, “You saw his personal effects laid out in the morgue, and his video camera was found in the right pouch pocket of his jacket, the camera in his left. In the right cargo pocket of his pants was the bird guide and in the left was the pair of wire cutters.”
Major Schaeffer, referring to his notebook, recited the inventory of what was found-key chain, wallet, Glock, credentials, and so forth, and where it was found on the body.
As Schaeffer spoke, I tried to reconstruct how Madox had done this, and I concluded that he’d needed at least one accomplice-probably Carl and maybe someone else, though I doubted that Madox wanted two witnesses to this.
Harry had been drugged, and his ankles had been shackled. They’d put him in the sleeping compartment of the camper and driven him out here. There could have been a second vehicle for a getaway.
Assuming, then, that Madox did not want more than one accomplice, and assuming that Harry was drugged and nearly comatose, Madox was then presented with the problem of how to stand Harry upright so he could be shot in the back as though he’d been walking.
One man could not hold a drugged man upright while the other fired, so the solution was to put Harry on his
