Cross Hairs (6 page)

“Isn’t there an election coming up soon?” Kelly asked.

Kelly knew how much he loved his job but how much he hated the campaigning portion of it. Kevin usually ran uncontested. But in the last election, Gerald Bachman made life uncomfortable for him. Bachman nearly pulled a stunning upset in a town where a Mendoza had served in the coroner’s position for more than 50 years.

Kevin hesitated but refused to yield to Kelly’s demand. She stepped back into his office and pressed him further.

“It’d be a shame for Bachman to come across a few photos that would give people the wrong idea about what you might do with their dead relatives.”

Kevin froze. He stared at Kelly in horror. In the hall Cal worked feverishly to pick the lock to the exam room.

“I still have pictures from when you and some of your friends got drunk one Saturday night. Remember the night you came up with the brilliant idea to break into the morgue and take pictures of the sheriff’s dead brother with a wig on, among other things”

“Seriously? You’d do that to me?”

“Yeah. You bet I would. Playing dress up with the sheriff’s deceased brother may seem like hours of hilarity when you’re 17. But when you’re 32 and an elected city official, frolicking drunk in the morgue becomes a skeleton in your political closet – especially when the press knows about it.”

Kelly let that last sentence hang in the air before making her point clear.

“My brother was with that crowd of Einsteins and just so happened to catch it all on his film. One night while rummaging through his keepsakes, I found some of those pictures from your juvenile humor. I kept a few of the snapshots and asked him about it one day. Let’s just say, his recollections are far worse than the photos and would be the least of your concerns.”

Kevin retreated slowly back to his desk. He supposed there was no way to thwart her threat – but he decided he would take his chances with her.

“Look, Kelly. You have no idea the amount of pressure I’m under. But losing an election pales in comparison to being dumped into Cold River Canyon by some goon. So, do what you’ve got to do, but I’m much more afraid for my life than I am from people seeing some embarrassing pictures of my teenage indiscretions printed in the paper.”

Kevin hung his head low and plopped down in this chair He wasn’t giving in to her demands.

***

The man in the F-250 lit a cigarette and took a long drag. He tapped the steering wheel and looked at his watch.

What is taking them so long?

The phone rang. It was the voice.

“Have they left yet?”

“Nope. They’re still inside. What do you want me to do?”

“It seems like Cagney and Lacey need more than a simple scare. You know what to do.”

The man smiled as he scrawled out a threatening note, thinking less about the note and more about the green light to do some damage.

CHAPTER 15

KELLY CONTINUED TO KEEP
Kevin occupied with other unimportant matters, making a few more worthless pleas to let her see the bodies. Meanwhile, Cal wasted no time picking the lock to the exam room door. Cal was no thief, but his penchant for losing track of his dorm room keys while he was in college forced him to acquire this skill by studying YouTube videos. The door clicked open. As Cal slipped into the room, the biting smell of formaldehyde and other chemical cleaners overwhelmed him. Cal cringed and fought the urge to cough.

Cal looked at the tag on the body’s toe. It read “Cody Murray.” Not that Cal needed to read it. He had spent plenty of time in one-on-one interviews with Cody during football season – and baseball season, too. His face seemed immune to the disfigurement but his chiseled body was barely recognizable.

As Cal edged closer to the examination table, he gasped at Cody’s body in its mutilated shape. The mountain lion rumor seemed unlikely when compared to the cuts and gashes etched deep into the quarterback’s skin. If anyone who originated such a rumor had actually seen Cody’s body in this state, Cal figured the rumor would have been more sensational, like the Statenville Sasquatch.

Long grooves one to two inches deep crisscrossed Cody’s upper body. A simple swipe wasn’t enough. The perpetrator’s nails had to gouge a new rut in his skin.

On Cody’s legs, the cuts were vertical.

“I can’t imagine a drug overdose doing this to you,” Cal said to Cody’s dead body.

Cal spent a few more seconds inspecting the body, struggling to come up with any plausible theory. He pulled out his iPhone and began taking photos. Then he took some video. No one would believe it if the told them.

That’s when he saw the remaining two bodies. He snapped more photos of their mangled torsos, unable to formulate any ideas as to what could have caused such an apparently painful death.

Cal quietly exited the room, careful not to tip off Kevin to the fact that someone had seen his precious bodies. Cal snuck out a side door and was sitting in Kelly’s car when she came out the front door.

She climbed in and inserted her key in the ignition and stopped.

Before she could ask Cal about what information he gathered, a note stuck between her windshield and driver’s side wiper flapped in the wind.

She got out of the car and grabbed the note. She shuddered as she read it.

Watch yourself … or you might end up like those boys

“What is it?” Cal asked.

“Somebody doesn’t like what we’re doing.”

“They need to take a number.”

“But this is a threat, Cal.”

“Let me see that.” Cal grabbed the note, read it, and handed it back to Kelly. “I get threats all the time. Nothing ever happens. Somebody is trying to intimidate us to stop. If they want to stop us, there’s only one way.”

“Well, you must’ve seen something in there that convinced you it’s worth the risk. What did you see?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I just have a hard time believing that a drug overdose caused those wounds.”

Cal began flipping through the pictures and video he took on his iPhone. He showed Kelly the most graphic one causing her to almost lose control of the car. Kelly gasped in horror before Cal continued.

“I’m sure someone can tell us what happened to these boys. But we don’t have a lot of time. Once their bodies are cremated, we’ll never have a chance to document anything. Other than these pictures, any investigation would stop with Kevin’s word.”

“Cremated?”

“Yep. I saw a sheet in the lab that said all three bodies were slated for cremation on Friday.”

“OK, now we know how much time we have to get to the bottom of this.”

Kelly pulled onto the highway in the direction of
The Register
’s office.

CHAPTER 16

WHEN CAL TURNED ON
his phone in the exam room he noticed one missed call from Guy. After he showed Kelly the pictures, he saw a notification for three new voicemails awaiting him, presumably all from Guy. He flipped through the pictures again.

Both were silent for the first few minutes of the ride, mulling over the day’s events and trying to make sense of them.

Questions mounted in Cal’s head.
Was a serial killer on the loose? Was there something in the water? Could there be a real Statenville Sasquatch? Did those boys simply kill themselves in a bizarre way? Or did they belong to a cult and take their devotion too far one day?
He barely had time to consider a theory or an idea before he had to draw a more definitive conclusion and move on to the next one.

It gave Cal a new appreciation for those days when his biggest assignment was taking grip-and-grin photos at the latest service club meeting. Covering these three bizarre deaths was like living in an episode of the
X-Files
. He glanced at Kelly… she had begun to remind him of Scully. Then he snapped back to reality.
Maybe they were murders. Maybe they were accidents. Maybe no one would ever know.
Cal was determined to uncover the truth.

Guy’s mug shot replaced the photo of Cody Murray’s body on the screen of Cal’s iPhone. The phone kept buzzing, but Cal remained frozen.

“Kelly, it’s the boss. What do you suggest that I tell him?” Cal asked.

“Tell him the truth.”

“Are you nuts? Have you seen what kind of mood he’s in today? We’ll be not-so-suspicious deaths four and five if we do that.”

“And you think lying now only to get found out later is better? You know he’ll find out Cal… sooner or later. The man has eyes and ears everywhere.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Look, just don’t tell him about your photos. Don’t tell anyone, OK? It’s for your own good. Just think of those photos as your insurance.

The phone quit buzzing. Their conversation prevented Cal from answering until he knew they were on the same page about their story.

He dialed Guy’s number.

“Where have you been?! I told you to come straight back to the office. That was over an hour ago!”

“Sorry, boss. We had to pay a little visit to the coroner.”

“The coroner? Who do you guys think you are? Starsky and Hutch? It’s not your job to investigate a murder — it’s just your job to report it.”

“I understand, boss. But almost no one has been giving us straight answers today.”

“That’s because you’re acting like a gumshoe cop instead of a journalist! Did you ever think about that, boy wonder?”

Kelly stomped on the gas pedal.

Cal knew what she was doing. He mouthed a “thank you” to her while continuing to cringe from the verbal tirade Guy was on. Guy was never this cruel in person and Cal was eager to get back in order to stop this nonsense.

***

Trailing about one hundred yards behind Kelly’s car was the F-250. The driver carefully calculated where he would make his move.

But there wasn’t a chance just yet. Kelly was driving through a main road that led back to downtown. All the local businesses on either side of the road made it very difficult to fulfill his mission.

He eased off the gas. He knew where they were going. Tonight would give him a better chance. He would finish his assignment then.

CHAPTER 17

WHEN CAL AND KELLY
returned to
The Register
, the newsroom was still full of faithful staff, preparing as much of the paper as they could for that week’s edition slated to go to press Tuesday night. Cal’s deadline was more than 24 hours away, but he still needed to do some of his other mundane duties before he called it a day.

Cal could sense Guy’s growing angst as the day progressed, but by 5:30 in the evening, angst had given way to dirty office politics and the abuse of power. By the way Guy was acting on the phone, Cal guessed Guy hadn’t even stepped outside
The Register’s
office all day for anything other than a smoke break. But Cal never would’ve guessed what came out of Guys’ mouth next.

“I hope you’ve got something for a reaction piece cause this is all you’re writing, understand?” Guy bellowed from behind his desk.

A reaction piece?
In the journalism world, a reaction piece is slightly above a man-on-the-street poll. It’s a story that just about any numbskull can write without screwing up. You talk to people about a certain topic or issue or event. You quote them. They are the story. The “reporter” more or less transcribed an interview. Even a high school intern could do it.

With that re-assignment, Cal’s spirit was crushed. Pulitzer award-winning story? Gone. Strong article for the clip file? Doubtful. Cal’s Monday started with so much promise, but hope for a positive conclusion was fleeting faster than William Hung’s 15 minutes of fame.

He almost took it without a word. Almost.

“Seriously, Guy? A
reaction piece?
I’ve been tracking down this story all day long and there’s more to it than three teens overdosing on drugs—that much I’m sure of.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, this is Mayberry, not New York City. Sensationalizing the unfortunate death of these kids is not something that people here want to read. So, unless you’ve got something other than the off-the-record whispers and innuendos you mentioned earlier, I’m not interested.”

“But, boss—”

“Are you that slow, Cal? We’re not doing a triple deck murder story headline, especially when there wasn’t a murder. Now go get me a cutline for that board of education meeting you covered last Thursday and get out of here.”

The problem with protesting one of Guy’s decisions in
The Register
’s tiny office was that everyone heard him dressing you down. Cal took Guy’s rare tirades better than most, a sure sign that he might make it at a large daily metro. But today wasn’t one of those days. Cal left Guy’s office red-faced, thoroughly eviscerated professionally.

Cal began wondering what happened to Guy.
Was that serious newspaper editor once known as Guy Thompson really left for dead in Utah? As a newspaper man, there wasn’t one ounce of curious intrigue into the previous 24 hours’ strange happenings?
Cal had more questions than answers at this point, but he found it odd that his editor was more concerned with his whereabouts than his findings.

Cal sat down at his desk and obliged Guy. He pounded out the cutline and filed it. He spent the next hour working on some re-writes Terry requested for Wednesday’s edition. Most days, Cal didn’t mind Terry’s editing, but Cal was in a mood, thanks to Guy.
Must he make my report on the Rotary Club meeting sound like an act from a Shakespeare play?

“Thy edits are complete, my Lordship,” Cal said to Terry in a mocking tone.

Terry furrowed his brow and squinted. The context of Cal’s medieval language was obviously lost on him. He grunted a “thanks” and looked back at his computer screen. But such interactions weren’t unusual for
The Register
newsroom, known for attracting more oddball personalities than a traveling circus.

By 6:30, Cal began gathering his notes and stuffing them into his briefcase, willing to follow up with some phone calls from home. He hoped to bring something substantial into the office to change Guy’s mind.