Blackberry Spring
Sheriff Morrison couldn’t remember a spring to match this one. It had started ahead of the calendar, in February, on top of a heavy blanket of snow. The temperature soared, the crocuses bloomed, the river rose, the weather turned unbelievably mild and beautiful for a few days, and then the rains began—and went on and on and on. Always a major topic of conversation in the small town on the slope of the Cascades, the weather had now virtually become its exclusive concern. “I’m growing webs between my toes.” “Could’ve sworn I saw the sun yesterday.” “Never thought I’d be able to paddle a canoe right there in my front yard.”
The day the body was found may not have been the worst day, but it would have taken a good deal to convince the Sheriff and his two deputies otherwise. Lester Riesman showed them the path and understandably didn’t volunteer to lead the way. The blackberry vines, already heavy with blossoms and much heavier with thorns, conspired with the downpour. The gashes in their rain gear opened the way for rivulets of water.
The hundred or so yards of working through the dank underbrush finally ended under a big leaf maple where the decomposed body was almost completely hidden by vegetation. The Sheriff sighed at the thought of the miserable days ahead, of trying to clear the area without disturbing the ground around the victim, of searching a radius of fifty yards around the body for clues, of trying to do a meticulous job of crime-scene investigation in this semi-swamp.
“I was out hunting squirrels when my dog ran off into the brush and started barking his head off,” Lester explained.
The Sheriff shook his head. He had been an enthusiastic hunter himself as a teenager, but he couldn’t picture ever having been so enthusiastic as to roam the woods in this kind of weather. But then again, maybe I would’ve gone stir crazy finally, said to hell with the weather, and waded out into the rain with my dog and gun, just like Lester.
Back in the comparative comfort of the station, the outlook didn’t seem quite so dismal. Doc Grady, though no pathologist, had quickly confirmed the Sheriff’s first impression. The victim had been shot—several times. The remnants of clothing, plus Doc’s initial estimates, indicated the victim was female, young, and dead for at least a month.
In the following days, the town produced all the leads the Sheriff’s small crew could handle. A week after the discovery he decided to call a formal meeting to discuss the case with Deputies Spradley and Ash. Looking over the information they’d gathered so far, he took some satisfaction at seeing how far they had already come.
The victim had been quickly identified as Francene Cobb, a high school junior. Her parents had reported her missing three months before the discovery of the body. One day in February she had not come home from school. No one had seen her when she left. She had simply vanished. Some of her friends at school told how she had seemed to be despondent. But the further rumor she had planned to run away from home had dampened any enthusiasm on the Sheriff’s part for an all-out search.
The state pathologist’s opinion coincided with Doc Grady’s. Francene had been shot four times, and any of the wounds to the chest and throat would have been fatal. There were no signs of rape or sexual molestation. In her comments on the written report, the pathologist had noted murder following rape was unlikely to involve a shooting. Bludgeoning or strangling was more typical, and there were no signs of any trauma other than the gunshot wounds. Date of death was impossible to establish for sure. At least six weeks. Perhaps as long as three months. The pathologist picked the beginning of March as the most likely time.
Robbery as a motive was out. Francene had had no watch, no ring and no purse. Her book bag, found under her body at the scene, had a notebook and a wallet containing a crumpled dollar. Morrison was also convinced a high school student in a small rural community was a very unlikely target for a robbery. And he almost completely dismissed the likelihood of a stranger being the perpetrator. The evidence against the possibility was convincing. With no sign of rape or robbery, only a mad serial killer would have committed such a crime, and there were no reports of any similar deaths within hundreds of miles of the scene.
A painstaking search of the surroundings had finally produced the murder weapon, a small caliber revolver, evidently tossed into the brambles, eventually becoming half-buried in mud and slime. After all that time exposed to the unfriendly elements, fingerprints were out, of course. But ownership wasn’t.
Peter Faulks readily admitted to being the owner, saying the gun had been stolen from his house months before, “Maybe around the first of the year, sometime.” Asked why he had never reported the theft, the old man shrugged, “Wouldn’t a done no good. I reported a horse stole, back couple years ago. Never got him back. A horse is a damn sight easier to find than a revolver.”
Questioning of high school students produced interesting leads, though the Sheriff wasn’t too sure where they were leading. Francene had been an ex-girlfriend of the very person who had discovered her body. Lester, a senior at the high school, had a well-established reputation as a “lady killer.” The Sheriff wondered whether the description might not be taken more literally than intended. Even more interesting was the information concerning Lester’s current flame, Cher McPherson, who had developed a reputation of her own—possessive, hot-tempered and violently jealous. The Sheriff had put Spradley, a fairly recent graduate of the local high school, to work on finding out what he could about the victim as well as about both Lester and Cher.
The other deputy working on the case he assigned to follow up on Peter Faulks, the owner of the murder weapon.
Morrison had already discussed the case numerous times with Spradley and Ash. They had agreed young Lester, his girlfriend and Faulks were by far the most likely suspects, and today’s meeting was to bring everyone up to date.
“Faulks still insists the gun was stolen months ago,” Ash said. “He claims he didn’t know Francene. He did know Lester, though. Says Lester’s family used to live a couple of places down from his patch of land back a couple of years ago, and the kid packed in some groceries for him a couple of times when he had a bad back. His house is quite the place, by the way. It’s overrun with dogs. Oh yeah. That’s something else. He says Lester came early on the day he discovered the body wanting to borrow one of the dogs to go hunting with him.”
“Strange,” Morrison commented. “I thought Lester said it was his dog.”
Ash broke in, “Yeah, I remember he said something like, ‘My dog found the body.’ But I guess that was just his way of talking about the mutt.”
“Even so, Tim, see what more you can find out about the relationship between Lester and Faulks. Find out if Lester was around there about the time Francene disappeared. See if he could have lifted the gun—assuming Faulks is telling the truth. Also, check every possible way to find out if Faulks knew Francene, if he was ever seen talking to her, if she had ever been around his house—you know what I mean.
“What have you got to report, Bill?”
“I thought we had someone with a motive—Cher—but the more I talk to the students who know her and Lester, the more convinced I am the motive I figured on just isn’t there.”
“Jealousy?”
Spradley nodded. “It looks like Lester met his match in Cher. He’s got a reputation for playing the field. Francene was just one of many. Then he took up with Cher around Christmastime. She broke up with him a couple of months later—one of the few of his girlfriends who ever did—and from what I can make out, he’s been going wild trying to make up with her.”
“OK. Keep at it. Find out whatever you can about the Francene-Lester-Cher affair. And keep good notes—both of you. If you can get their OK, record what they have to say, but be careful not to scare them off with the tape recorder. Tapes are sure nice to have, though. Sometimes when you go over and over what a person said, things pop up you weren’t aware of when you first talked to them. But if they won’t talk when you turn on the tape, shut it off.
“Unless there’s a break in the case before then, let’s figure on getting together on this, day after tomorrow.”
After the deputies left, Morrison sat back in his chair to give further thought to the case. Could Cher be hiding her jealousy? A girl killing another girl over a boy was not unheard of. Could the old bachelor, Faulks, have stalked Francene and been rebuffed by her? If he had, how did he entice her back into the woods? Or did he kill her somewhere else, put her body into his old pickup and drive her out to that mass of weeds and blackberry bushes? And would he have just tossed his gun into the brambles? It seemed unlikely, but he might have panicked after he killed her. Morrison made a note to check Faulks’ old pickup, and cursed himself for not thinking about doing it earlier. He consoled himself with the thought of the months of rain which would have washed any and all evidence from the bed of the pickup, anyway.
And what about Lester? Why kill a girl he evidently no longer was interested in? And, if he did, why go out of his way to discover her body? That made no sense at all.
On the next meeting day, Spradley had reams of information which he tried to summarize. “I must have talked to fifty students. I checked and cross-checked every story. To make several long stories short, Lester definitely broke off with Francene. He wanted nothing more to do with her. On the other hand, she wasn’t giving up. Claimed Lester had gotten her pregnant. But everyone, including Lester, knew it was a lie, especially after the months went by.
“Cher was still jealous as hell of Francene, though, and that’s what led to the break that was breaking Lester’s heart. Even after Francene disappeared, Cher told all her friends she just knew Francene and Lester were writing to each other. She insisted Francene had gone to Seattle and was waiting for Lester to join her just as soon as he graduated. Cher made it clear she wasn’t about to go steady with someone who was going to dump her once school was out.”
“Anything else?” Morrison asked.
“Nope. Except Lester and Cher are lovey-dovey again. Holding hands and drinking out of the same milk shakes.”
Ash added his report. “I’ve checked every way I could think of—neighbors, acquaintances, friends. The last was easy, because Faulks doesn’t seem to have any friends. He’s got a reputation for being a loner. Maybe if his dogs could talk, I’d have learned a lot more about him. I couldn’t find Connection One with Francene. Lester’s been seen around his house, though. I talked to Faulks about when Lester might have been there, but he mostly remembers the day Lester came by to borrow the dog.”
Ash took out his pocket tape recorder. “I asked if I could tape him. He said sure. This is what he told me about the day Lester discovered the body.”
Ash pushed the play button, and Faulks voice emerged from the machine. “The kid came by looking like a drowned muskrat and wanted to know if I’d loan him one of my hounds. He said he was going hunting. I thought he was going crazy, tramping through the soaking woods when the rain was coming down in buckets. Anyhow, I said sure. Old Banjo was lying there, and I figured a little exercise would do him good. He’s not much of a hunting dog anymore. His eyesight’s going, but he’d still be able to see the tree, even if he couldn’t see the squirrel. He wouldn’t have been much help with rabbits, though. Lost his sense of smell years ago. Wouldn’t be able to find a pair of dirty socks in a basket of fresh laundry. But the kid didn’t know that, and he went off with his rifle and Banjo, just as happy as if he had good sense.”
Ash’s voice was heard to cut in, and he pushed the off button.
“Anything else?” Morrison asked.
“Nothing, except that he now seems to think the gun was stolen right around the end of February.”
The Sheriff leaned back in his chair. “I think we’ve solved it.”
The deputies exchanged startled looks. Ash shrugged his shoulders and both of them waited patiently for the Sheriff to proceed. “Here’s the scenario. Cher is jealous as all hell. We know that. And who is she jealous of? Francene, of course—who’s still hanging on to Lester like a leech, practically stalking him. And Cher thinks he’s still sweet on Francene. So Lester gets the boot, along with an ultimatum.
“But Francene keeps coming on strong, and Lester decides the only way he can get Cher back is to get rid of her. Well, he’s been in Faulks’s house and must have seen the pistol there, which is a lot handier than a rifle for what he intended to do. So he steals it, picks up Francene after school, takes her out to the woods and persuades her to go out in the brush with him—for you know what. Maybe it was one of those nice days back in February. He kills her and doesn’t bother trying to hide the body, thinking it will be weeks before it’s found out there in the brush. He’s also smart enough to figure out he won’t need an alibi if time of death can’t be firmly established.
“And then he goes back to chasing Cher, figuring with Francene gone he’ll be welcomed with open arms. But she still won’t have anything to do with him, because she assumes Francene is still alive and waiting for him in Seattle. Lester keeps thinking someone will be finding the body soon, which will solve his problem with Cher. But he hadn’t counted on the kind of weather we got this spring. After weeks and weeks of rain, with no one out hunting or fishing, the whole countryside is so overgrown it could be fall before anyone discovers what’s left of Francene. The body has to be found—soon! So he decides to find it himself. And that’s where he made his biggest mistake.”
“What’s that?” Ash asked as both he and Spradley leaned forward, listening intently to the very plausible scenario.
“He knows it would be mighty suspicious for him to stumble across what’s left of Francene out there in the middle of all those blackberry vines. So he borrows a dog to provide a convenient explanation for finding the body. The only problem is he doesn’t realize the one he borrowed wouldn’t have been able to smell the corpse even if its nose had been pushed into it. Lester, not the dog, found the body. And the only reason he found it was because he put it there.”