Rose Hill
ROSE HILL
By Pamela Grandstaff
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Copyright © 2008 Pamela Grandstaff. All rights reserved.
For Betsy
Table of Contents
Theo Eldridge fortified himself with half of a bottle of good Kentucky bourbon and several lines of coke before he got behind the wheel of his bright yellow Hummer. As he wound down the two-lane mountain road toward the town of Rose Hill he reviewed his list of grievances. He was irritated about several things, but was mad as hell about being stood up for dinner, and was determined to take it out on somebody.
When he got to town he drove slowly past the veterinary clinic. He considered setting it on fire
, but decided it might be more fun to trash the place instead. It was conveniently located right across the street from the newspaper office, which was also on his list. His third target lay several miles outside of town. With three places to hit and one night in which to do it, he needed an accomplice.
He found the ferrety-looking handyman Willy Neff trying to argue his way into the Rose and Thorn, where the little man was banned for life. Theo parked the Hummer by the curb a few doors down, clamped his cigar between his back teeth, and eagerly entered the fray.
“He’s with me,” Theo told bartender Patrick Fitzpatrick, who not only refused to let him bring Willy in, but also wouldn’t sell him a bottle of whiskey he could take with him. Theo communicated his indignation at this affront by threatening to remove one part of the bartender’s body with the intention of inserting it in another.
“You could try it,” Patrick said, “but you wouldn’t survive it.”
Theo cursed the bartender but walked away with little Willy in tow. They drove out to Hollyhock Ridge to make mischief at the home of somebody else Theo hated, but found the inhabitants awake and armed. After a shot was fired over their heads, Theo decided it might be wiser to focus their efforts on less occupied premises.
When they returned to Rose Hill
, Willy dropped Theo off at the Rose and Thorn, where Patrick again refused to sell him any whiskey, telling him, “You’ve had enough to drink.”
Theo turned to the row of amused locals seated at the bar and demanded, “What are you looking at?”
When they refused to be provoked he made a crude pass at Mandy, the young waitress.
“Not in a million years,” Mandy told him. “Not if you was the last man on earth and I was so horny my pants caught fire.”
“Leave her alone, Theo,” Patrick said.
Theo turned and glared. The mirror on the wall behind the rows of liquor bottles reflected a brutish looking man, well over six feet tall, with a thick neck, a meaty red nose, bloodshot pale blue eyes, and a joker smile punctuated by a rancid cigar. Theo leaned over the bar
, and put his face very close to Patrick’s, but the bartender did not flinch.
“You’ll never have her,” Theo said, in his gravelly growl. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“That’s enough,” Patrick said.
He picked up a wooden bat that was kept behind the bar and pointed it at Theo’s head.
“You can walk out of here or get carried out. It’s up to you.”
Theo sneered at Patrick but left the bar, sweeping a table full of glassware onto the floor as he went. As he departed he could hear the locals snickering behind his back. He consoled himself by imagining violent acts of retribution for which he was sure to be credited but never arrested. The most difficult part of taking revenge on the people who crossed him was not bragging about it afterward, especially when he’d had a few too many drinks.
Having reached the next low point in what had so far been a real pisser of a day, Theo decided he needed someone to cheer him up. He turned the corner and lurched down Peony Street toward the mobile home park. As soon as he left the curb to cross the street, however, he stepped in a deep pothole full of icy water camouflaged by slush. Within seconds the frigid water had filled his boots and soaked through his socks. To make matters worse, the shock of the cold water unhinged his jaw’s vise-like grip; his cigar fell out of his mouth and landed with a plop in the icy water. Theo cursed the pothole, cursed the weather, cursed the town, and cursed everyone who had conspired to thwart and frustrate him all day.
A few minutes later, standing outside a shabby trailer where he had expected to find a warm, willing body, some booze, and an alibi for what he planned to do later, he instead found himself in the middle of another heated altercation.
“It’ll be a cold day in hell before you or that little snot-head get a penny of my money!” he yelled as he left the mobile home park.
The neighbors were used to these little dramas, and only a few curtains twitched in the nearby trailers.
With sopping, frozen feet, Theo squished his way down the icy brick-paved alley behind the businesses on Rose Hill Avenue, toward the spot where he’d told Willy to wait. The little man’s rickety truck was parked in front of the antique store, but Willy was passed out across the front seats with both doors locked. Theo pounded on the windows and the hood of the old truck but Willy didn’t stir.
“This is what I get for leaving that good-for-nothing idiot alone with a twelve-pack of beer,” Theo grumbled, and then thoroughly cursed the unconscious man.
Determined to punish Willy for being such a worthless piece of excrement, Theo looked for something with which to break the windshield. He found an aluminum baseball bat in the bed of the truck, and was just about to swing it down on the glass when he heard a trashcan fall over in the alley behind him. He turned, almost throwing himself off balance, but couldn’t see or hear anything in the darkness of the passageway.
“This whole damn town is covered with cats,” he muttered.
As he reached into his coat pocket for his cell phone he realized he’d left it in the Hummer, along with his keys. Swearing over his bad luck, he leaned back against Willy’s truck and considered his options. It was 1:45 a.m., Willy was useless, and even if he could somehow get his SUV unlocked, he was in no shape to drive back up the mountain. Looking down the street toward the Little Bear River, he could see the fog creeping steadily uphill toward him.
Music and raised voices from a party in a nearby apartment building drew his attention. He considered crashing it, if only to use the phone, but couldn’t think of anyone to call. There was no one left in this town he hadn’t pissed off or ripped off, and certainly no one who would be willing to come out in the cold and drive him home, let alone give him a place to sleep. He briefly considered rousing his previous night’s playmate, the one who’d stood him up for a repeat performance earlier in the evening, but discarded that idea as way too risky.
A dog barking in the distance reminded him of what he intended to do when he told Willy to park where he did. He gripped the bat tightly in his hand as he crossed the deserted street and stumbled up the steps to the back door of the veterinary clinic. He took a swing at the motion detection light above the door and was rewarded by the gratifying thwack of impact and shattering glass. With a swarm of bitter resentments, festering grudges, and petty irritations buzzing around inside his head, Theo attacked the back door.
Once inside he was disappointed to find only empty cages illuminated by a nightlight. He paused to catch his breath while deciding what to destroy next, and heard the crunch of someone stepping on the broken glass and splintered wood on the floor behind him. He started to turn
, but was struck on the back of the head with such force that he was already unconscious before he landed face down on the cold tile floor, where he would bleed to death within fifteen minutes.
After his assailant fled, the party music thumped and wailed for another half hour, and a few dogs in town barked back and forth to each other. Meanwhile the fog from the Little Bear River continued to creep uphill until it had engulfed the entire town of Rose Hill.
Maggie Fitzpatrick was sitting across the table from Police Chief Scott Gordon in the break room of the Rose Hill police station at just after 4:00 in the morning. Scott had hauled in one of her bookstore employees for public drunkenness at around 3:00 a.m., and she was waiting for the young man to sober up enough so she could take him back to his dorm.
The crime committed by twenty-year old Mitchell Webb, the college student currently snoring loudly on the couch in Scott’s office, consisted of standing outside the apartment building where his ex-girlfriend Yvonne lived, singing “Let’s Stay Together” in an effort to win her back. This idea had taken several shots of tequila to seem promising.
Mitchell, with his dreadlocks and multiple piercings, had frightened some of the older residents of the neighborhood, and a concerned citizen had telephoned Scott. The chief of police was a little more sympathetic to Mitchell, and felt more as if he was rescuing the young man from further embarrassment than apprehending a dangerous criminal.
Scott called Maggie partly because he didn’t want to get Mitchell in trouble with his parents or the college administration, but mostly so he could get Maggie out of bed and into the station. She had refused to have dinner with him (yet again) only hours previously.
Scott was much like Mitchell in his romantic devotion, if not his methods.
At his call, Maggie threw on a coat over her flannel pajamas, stuffed her feet into snow boots, and now sat across from him, red curls tangled about her head, mercilessly beating him at Gin Rummy.
They were listening to the radio as they played cards, and Scott was making Maggie laugh by singing along (in a flawless falsetto) with Al Green as he performed “Let’s Stay Together.”
“I can’t believe you requested that song,” she said.
“You should be impressed,” Scott said. “I have connections. I know people. I can make things happen.”
“They probably don’t get many requests this late at night.”
“This is a classic,” Scott said. “I’m surprised Mitchell has such good taste in music.”
“He loves all that old stuff,” Maggie said. “He says he has an old soul.”
“I have an old soul,” Scott said. “There is more depth to me than you can even imagine.”
“I’m not interested,” Maggie said, “and quit letting me see your cards.”
When Ed Harrison rushed into the station, Scott thought at first he must be drunk; his eyes were wide open and his face was pale. He stumbled, and when Scott grabbed his arm to keep him upright he could feel it trembling.
“A dead body,” Ed said, “at the vet’s.”
Maggie dropped her cards. From the rambling, partially coherent explanation that followed, Scott determined Ed had found someone dead behind the veterinary clinic, across the street from the office of the Rose Hill Sentinel newspaper, which Ed owned.
“Oh no, n
ot Drew,” Maggie said.
Drew Rosen was the new veterinarian they were all still getting to know.
Ed shook his head, saying, “I don’t know. It’s dark. The back door’s gone. The dog’s gone.”
Maggie’s face paled as she looked back and forth between Ed and Scott.
Scott called Frank, his full-time deputy, and asked him to meet them at the veterinary clinic.
“Are you well enough to come back with me?” he asked Ed, and got a nod in return.
Ed’s color was a little better, but Scott felt some prescient nausea at what he was going to find behind the clinic, based on Ed’s demeanor. Ed was the most no-nonsense, level-headed person Scott knew. If he was this upset, it must be bad.
Scott asked Maggie, who was trying to stay quietly out of the way yet still hear everything, if she would remain in the station to keep an eye on Mitchell. She reluctantly agreed.
Rose Hill Avenue was lit by streetlights that seemed to float in the thick mist. Scott could hear the sound of ice melting and dripping from every roof, which was not a good thing to hear in January. A freak thaw like the one they were experiencing could loosen an entire roof-full of snow and ice, sending it sliding onto the sidewalks below, or right on top of someone’s head. If the temperature stayed warm there would be flash floods and empty ski resorts; if it plunged back below freezing everything would be covered with a thick layer of ice.
As the patrol car drew up in front of the newspaper office, Ed said, “Tommy’s not here.”
Twelve-year-old Tommy Wilson was Rose Hill’s only paper carrier, but he wasn’t waiting outside the newspaper office, as he usually would be at this hour. Tommy delivered the daily paper, published in the nearby town of Pendleton, and delivered Rose Hill’s weekly Sentinel on Sundays.
“He probably overslept,” Scott said. “We’ll check on him.”
Scott made a three point turn in the alley between Ed’s newspaper office and the new antique store, and parked in front of the veterinarian clinic across the street. Ed sat frozen in the passenger seat, staring ahead, his jaw clenched.
“Where’s the body, Ed?” Scott asked him.
Ed moved stiffly, as though he were sleep-walking. He looked over toward the newspaper office, then turned and pointed toward the driveway that led to the back of the clinic, where there were two additional parking spaces and a dumpster. He got out of the cruiser and led Scott around to the back of the building, but slowly, as if his limbs didn’t want to carry him back to the scene.
The motion-
sensitive light was missing above the back entrance, and the beam from Scott’s flashlight reflected off broken glass sparkling against the melting snow on the concrete porch and stairs. What was left of the back door dangled from hinges still attached to the battered doorframe. Scott’s boots crunched the broken glass as he climbed up three steps to the entrance and looked inside. There was a nightlight on inside the room, which was lined with three levels of kennel cages along each wall. A man was lying face down in a dark puddle on the tiled floor.
Scot
t directed the beam of light over the body from the feet to the back of the man’s head. He could see the skull was caved in near the crown, and the hair on the scalp was sticking up around the indentation in clotted, bloody clumps. The coppery, sour smell of blood was rank and overwhelming. Scott stepped quickly to the edge of the small cement stoop and vomited in the snow.
When he turned back around, Ed said, “I puked too.”
Scott pulled the neck of his parka and sweatshirt up over his mouth and nose so he couldn’t smell anything. His eyes watered and his stomach rolled but he forced himself to look at the scene until he gained control of himself. Except for the violence done to the light, the door, and the man, the back room looked untouched. What seemed likely to be the murder weapon, a metal baseball bat, was lying on the floor next to the body.
There were bloody paw prints on the tile floor, and from the size of them, Scott thought they probably belonged to Duke, the veterinary clinic cat. He entered the backroom, carefully picking his way through the glass and splintered wood. He stepped over the body and crouched down next to it, bracing his back against one of the kennel cages.
The man was lying on top of his left arm, with the right arm outstretched from his body toward the nearby kennels. Scott reached out and felt the underside of the exposed wrist. There was no pulse. Blood covered the part of the face that was visible, so Scott couldn’t tell who the man was, but from the size of him Scott could tell it wasn’t the vet. This man had a very large frame, with short hair, and Dr. Andrew Rosen was thin and lanky, with longish brown hair and sideburns.
Scott stepped back over the body and went out the way he came in, just as Frank’s SUV pulled in the driveway behind the clinic. With dismay Scott realized he had not asked his deputy to park on the street, and now his slushy tire tracks had corrupted any evidence beneath them. He thought ruefully that he and Ed had already ruined any footprint evidence left by the murderer in the driveway and on the steps and porch.
Scott turned to look at his friend Ed, whose eyes were shut tight, gloved hands clinging to one of the iron poles holding up the porch roof.
“You touch anything in there?” he asked.
Ed shook his head ‘no,’ but did not open his eyes.
“It’s not Drew,” Scott told him.
“That’s good,” Ed said, but still did not open his eyes.
Frank walked up, looked past Scott into the room, and said, “Holy shit!” Scott told the younger man to put Ed in his SUV, park on the street, and wait for him there.
The paper delivery truck pulled up in front of the newspaper office with a loud huff and squeal of air brakes, and then idled at the curb while the driver unloaded bundles of papers onto a bench in front of the press office.
“I need to deliver the papers,” Ed said, finally opening his eyes.
“Just wait with Frank until I get us some help,” Scott said. “If the kid shows up, Frank will give me a shout.”
To Frank he said, “Call Skip and tell him to go get the vet and bring him down here. He’ll know if anything was taken. And tell him to park on the street.”
Scott used his cell phone to call the county sheriff’s dispatcher. A movement caught his eye as he punched in the speed dial number for the county desk, and he turned quickly, but it was only Duke, the clinic’s huge tabby tomcat. Scott shooed him away from the back door, and wondered how he was going to keep him out of the crime scene. Duke quickly returned and twined around Scott’s legs, purring loudly. They were old friends.
Scott Gordon had only recently been promoted to chief of police, and had no illusions about his abilities as a police officer. He considered himself more of a watchdog than a detective, and he was by no means a skilled crime scene investigator. Since he had established the victim was in fact dead, and it was obviously not from natural causes, he didn’t want to contaminate the scene any more than he already had for those who knew what they were doing. The county sheriff’s office had the resources and the expertise Rose Hill’s small station lacked, and when there was a serious crime in Rose Hill, the county stepped in. Scott told the officer on duty at the county dispatch desk what he had, and the officer forwarded his call to Sarah.
Sarah Albright was the lead homicide investigator for the county sheriff’s department. She had trained at Quantico and worked several years on a violent crimes unit in DC before moving back to the area. Overqualified for her current position and a woman, she could have had a miserable time of it save the county sheriff was an intelligent woman herself, and was confident and secure enough to skillfully manage team members with more specialized expertise than she possessed.
By the time Sarah arrived at the crime scene it was 5:30 a.m., and Scott’s part-time deputy Skip had secured the area with yellow tape.
“What the hell, Gordon?” she said. “When I saw your number I thought maybe I was finally getting that booty call I’ve been dreaming about.”
Scott gave her what facts he had. He had the vet in the patrol car (with the cat Duke, who wasn’t happy about being stuffed into a pet crate), and the man who found the body, Ed Harrison, in Frank’s SUV.
“You probably ruined any evidence there is,” she said, “but we’ll see what we can do.”
Sarah was a petite woman with a shiny cap of d
ark hair and sharp, dark brown eyes. She, Scott, and a deputy with a camera donned surgical gloves and paper booties and then entered the veterinary office from the front. Scott followed Sarah in at her invitation, and only came forward as she directed him. It was a courtesy he was allowed in at all, and if not for his curiosity and a sense of obligation to the town, he would have preferred to wait outside in the fresh air.
The veterinary clinic was a small cottage conversion with a cinder block addition built on the back. The waiting room and reception area looked clean and tidy, and the examining room and bathroom seemed to be in good order. Sarah pushed open the door
that led to the addition that housed the surgery, office, and kennel room, and flipped on the light switch using the end of her pen. Scott took a deep breath before he followed her in, and steeled himself for the smell.
“There’s hardly room to turn around in here,” Sarah said.
The deputy began taking pictures of everything in the room, careful not to step in the puddle of blood. Scott studied the dead man’s bloody profile, now bathed in bright fluorescent light, as Sarah surveyed the scene and spoke into a hand-held digital recorder.
Scott estimated the victim was around six feet tall and weighed over 200 pounds. The hair on his head not gummy with blood was salt-and-pepper gray, in a longish brush cut, as if it were overdue for a trim. He was wearing khaki pants, dark brown leather boots, and an expensive looking dark brown leather coat; a far cry from the durable, insulated canvas coats most of the local men wore, or the puffy nylon ski parkas the college students and tourists wore.
Scott got a whiff of the blood smell and turned his head, hoping Sarah wouldn’t notice.
“What’s wrong, Gordon?” Sar
ah said with a smirk.
A seemingly idle thought drifted into Scott’s head just then and he stopped to allow it to the forefront. Scott looked at the dead man and mentally applied the features of the person who had come to mind.