Crescent Gorge
Part I
by Adrienne Gordon
copyright 2014 by Adrienne Gordon
Swic, swic, swic.
It was that sound that Philip heard, late at night, as he was trying to get to sleep. It had been a long day of studying, as he had a major algebra exam the next day. He picked up his cell phone one last time and shook it, close to his ear, trying to see if it was the culprit. He didn’t hear anything loose, so he opened it one more time and flashed through the menus, making sure there wasn’t some alarm or chime he had forgotten to turn off. If it went off in the exam hall he would be tossed out, as per regulation, and whatever he completed on his final up to that point would be his grade. Her shook his head in frustration, let out a sigh, then reached over and put the phone back on the table next to his bed. It was after he put the phone down that he felt something like wet noodle surround his wrist.
“What the—”
Was all he could manage, before the wet-noodle thing constricted like an iron vise suddenly around his wrist. In under a second it sliced through skin, flesh and bone, and he watched in mute horror as what was his right hand fell to the floor. He tried to utter a cry, struggled to scream out, but found his throat had swollen suddenly, and he could barely breathe. He flailed for a moment in bed, struggled to leap out, but found he couldn’t. He felt as if his limbs were the consistency of wet cotton. He saw something greenish suckle around his stump of a wrist, then felt a euphoria settle through his mind as he died, a parting gift from his unseen, unknown killer.
2
Many shoes tread lightly through the small, dimly-lit room that harbored a dead boy violently separated from his right hand. The camera flashes punctuated the silence, but they shed no light on answers to the questions all the men had in the room. They kept their chatter low, their faces long, and their hope buried deeper than the boy’s eventual grave.
Then, the black boots came in.
“So, what do we have here?” asked the man in the black boots in a State Trooper uniform with Captain's stripes, his syllables rolling over one another in perfect precision. An early October snow had fallen, and he spent a moment wiping his boots on the rug outside the door. “Oooof! Wow does it smell like somethin’ died in here.” One of the other cops acted a guffaw, sarcastically mocking the Trooper’s poor sense of humor before returning to his work. “So what is it—suicide? Murder? The line was mostly static and garbled when you called, Roger. I was under bridges and in tunnels most o’ the way over here, doin’ over ninety, setting off my sirens every time one of your dimwits tried to make his ticket quota offa me. I mean, you guys never had a damned murder ‘round here? A drug deal? Or are those a little too hard to investigate and make too little money for your fair metropolis, so everyone ‘o your boys gotta be on the road.”
“Well, I—”
“Never mind, never mind!" cried the Captain with a dismissive wave of the hand. "What I do recall is someone said somethin’ ‘bout a hand on the floor?”
“Yes, Captain,” said Roger Mealey, the local Sheriff, who was more than happy to finally speak. He gestured to a blood-covered hand lying next to the night stand, little more than a foot from the body, which was still in the bed, under the covers, as if the young boy was still asleep. “We think—”
“So did your guys preserve this crime scene properly?” demanded the Captain as he pumped off more questions as he surveyed the scene. “Who found him? How was it called in? Who got here first? Are you sure nothing was moved? Did you guys dust for prints? Who’s taking the pics—I hope it’s one of your best guys, not one of your highway boys with a cellphone camera.” He took a breath, waiting for answers. “Well?!”
Mealey took a deep breath, resisting the urge to yell. After all, he did call in the Captain for help. The small town of Crescent hadn’t had a murder for almost ten years, and with Senator Ford in town for the presidential caucus, he needed to make sure all ‘i’s’ were dotted and ‘t’s’ crossed. “The area’s sealed off, with all the other students confined to their rooms as soon as the first call to our desk came in. The Floor Monitor, a man named James Cusher, found the body. He said the door was open, and when he called in and got no response, he went in and found the young man like this.”
“The door was open?”
“Yeah, it was open.”
“So, if it was murder,” began the Captain, as he ground his heel into the carpeted floor, “the killer left the door open when he or she left, hoping their handiwork would be discovered? Don’t think so. Not at all. Someone else came in here, after, and was sloppy when they left.”
Mealey nodded, then picked up the sheet with his pen. “Wonder why—”
“Not for us, not for us—at least, not now. What’re those bloody tracks? Did your guys do that?” He threw up his hands, cursing under his breath. “Why couldn’t this have happened in Des Moines, where I can trust that no one’ll drag their pant leg through some blood and—”
“It wasn’t us!” shouted Mealey, frustrated. “God Dammit Ted, people other than you know how to preserve a crime scene!”
A small, heavy set man next to Mealy cleared his throat quite obviously, flashing Mealey a disapproving glance.
“What is it, Larry?”
“Lord’s name . . . in vain . . .”
“You sanctimonious little prick!” spat Mealey, happy to vent his rage on someone who wasn’t his technical superior. “We’re standing in front of a dead fifteen-year old, and you’re chastising me for my choice of words? Well, if I wanna say 'Jesus fuckin’ Christ,' or 'Holy shit,' the last thing that I want is shit from your damned asshole of a mouth! You got that? If and when you ever become Sheriff, and I become deputy, then you can bother me with that shit. As for now, shut your fuckin’ mouth!”
“If you two are done playing ‘Laurel and Hardy,’” said the Captain snidely, “there is a murder to solve.”
“No one knows if it’s a murder,” said a voice from behind them, in the doorway. They all turned to see a tall man dressed in a very long grey wool overcoat, with an exhausted look of fatigue on his face.
“What’s that smell?” asked the Captain.
“Dead body?” ventured Larry.
“No, smells like asshole. Federal asshole,” replied Ted, as he shook the agent’s hand. “Well looky here, a Fucked-up Bumbling Idiot has shown up on our doorstep. Here for the Caucus?”
Everyone in the room chuckled at his remark, which only brought a tired sigh from the FBI agent before them.
“Alright, guys, I know you hate me and all that, but I’ve had a really long day, and coming here is only making it longer.” He was a broad shouldered man, with a thick grey beard and a wool overcoat that was saturated down to the most innermost fiber with the smell of cigarette smoke. “I’m agent Reynolds. Now, who’s the lead here?”
“Captain Ted Parker, at your service!” said the Captain, as he clicked his black boots together.
“Thanks.” Utterly unperturbed by the Captain’s attitude, Reynolds unbuttoned his coat, and gazed over the scene, pausing not only to look at the placement of the lamp, table, chair and bed, but at who was in the room, and what they were doing. He stood with one hand on his holstered weapon, the other smoothing out his long, black tie. Usually a man with immaculate placement of all he wore, he had forgotten or lost his tie-clip sometime earlier in the day, and it caused him no end of annoyance. “Now, who actually knows all the facts?”
“I guess I do,” answered Mealey, stepping forward. “As you can see, we have a dead fifteen-year old, name; Phillip Landsberg. He was discovered by the Floor Monitor. The odd aspect of this case is that his wrist has been severed, and the color of his skin and the general wasting aspect of his body suggest that he ha
s lost much of his blood, though there is little on the floor. There was a trail of blood that was noticed when we came in, but it led to a table under that window, on which there is nothing now. By the dust and water stains, one could infer that a potted plant was once there. The killer may have put the murder weapon in the pot, to absorb the blood, so it could be carried out of the room without attracting attention. But it certainly couldn’t have held the amount of blood that it appears the young man has lost.”
“Thank you.” Reynolds thought for a moment. “Any family?”
“None. This is a boarding school, and his records show that he was put here as a result of the will from his parents.”
“Will?”
“Both his parents died,” said another man, in a corner of the room.
“Who are you?”
“Steve Mackey, headmaster of this school." Steve walked in slowly, his anxious eyes darting back and forth from one badge to another. "Phillip lost both his parents five years ago, and stood to inherit their estate. But the will had a provision that he was to complete this boarding school before he would inherit the money.”
“How much?”
“I’m unsure how much, but it’s rumored to be around seven million dollars.”
A couple of the men whistled in amazement.
“And who does the money go to now?”
“Charity.”
“Charity?”
“Yeah. The lawyer for the family did check up on Phillip once in a while, and one time we had a nice cup of coffee and a long talk. He told me that the estate would all go to charity, with almost nothing going to him.”
“What charity?”
Steve smirked. “It’s a charity! They wouldn’t—”
“Steve, I’m very tired, with a lot of things to do. What charity?!”
“The American Red Cross.”
“The Red . . . why?” asked Reynolds.
“Apparently when this town was all but destroyed back in the thirties, the Red Cross set up a shelter that cared for the boy’s parents. They wanted to give back to them.”
Reynolds nodded to himself. “Alright, thanks Steve," said Reynolds, motioning to the door, "that's all we'll need."
Steve nodded meekly, and scurried out the door. Ted unsuccessfully muffled a guffaw.
"What?" asked Reynolds.
"We have our eyes on Steve," said Mealey. "He has a couple of problems, one of which led him to stripping down to his underwear in front of the Deli last year."
"A drunk?"
"Yeah."
"But he's got himself some help," offered Larry.
"You mean the AA across from the bar?" scoffed Ted. "Yeah, loads of help there."
"You think he's good for this?" asked Reynolds.
"No. He's good for a lot of things, but not this."
Reynolds nodded, coming to a decision. "And the Red Cross wouldn’t go around slashing wrists for the little bit of money he mentioned. Ted, I’m going to need you to wash this one away.”
“Wash it away?!” cried Mealey. “A boy just died here, and we don’t know who did it!”
“Yeah, and we’re on caucus night, with Senator Ford in town. If this got out – the mysterious way this boy died – the media would swarm around not only this school but the entire town as well. I think they call it a ‘frenzy.’ And even though Senator Ford has been involved in meeting after meeting all through the day and night, this would inevitably be attached to her name, and possibly ruin her chances of election. Now I may be an impartial government employee, but I do like her, where she comes from, and what she stands for.”
“She is a good woman,” said Mealey, nodding solemnly. “She grew up poor, just like me, and made it all the way.”
“That’s right,” said Reynolds. “So no one’s gonna miss this boy, and it appears no one will profit from his death. This is a suicide, and you need to delay reporting it for another couple of days, when the primaries are firmly planted in New Hampshire.
“But . . . what about how he died?” pressed Mealey, reluctant to let it go. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“My friend,” answered Reynolds, as he buttoned his coat back up, “I’ve seen case files on three hundred different murders, all in the past two years that can’t be explained. Just plain weird stuff that boggles even our brilliant boys and girls. Stuff like this just happens—we can’t solve everything. I don’t like it, but we have other considerations. Now if another murder happens, and it’s just like this, then you can always ‘revisit’ the case, and say you found new evidence linking the murders. But I think this is just a one-off, and your sleepy little town can go back to bed and not have to put on the nightlight.”
“Oh . . . dammit,” said Larry, as he backed away from something, his face white and drawn.
“Oh dammit what?!” demanded Mealey as he pushed Larry aside, and saw what he had done. “You dumb sonofa—”
“Wait a minute,” said Reynolds, as he examined the scene. Larry had accidentally backed into the hand, stepping onto the stump, squishing blood and flesh on the carpet. “Maybe little dumber boy here’s got the right idea.” Reynolds yanked the body out of the bed, dropping it on the floor, and then stomped on the stump on its right arm. “Now, it looks like the corpse was mutilated, before you guys got here. The blood seeped into the carpet, which you guys will hafta throw away anyway. Right, Steve?”
“Yes. I think that’s what would normally be done.”
“‘Course it would! Now let me get back to my Senator, and you guys back to whatever deli or donut shop gives you free shit. And call me, Mealey, if anything else goes wrong around here. I don’t forget favors.”
They watched as he wiped off his boot, and then rushed out the room.
“Fuckin’ FBI—God’s gift to the common man.”