Don't Cry Over Killed Milk (3 page)

Chapter 3

The following morning, Damon called his friend Gerry Sloman. Damon knew the dogged Arlington County detective would be interested to hear about the dying crepe myrtles.

“Hi, Damon, I don’t have time to speak right now,” Gerry said quickly after picking up on the third ring. “Is it urgent?”

Damon sensed Gerry’s tension. “It’s not. Jeremiah Milk and some of the other Hollydale residents are having a suspicious insect problem.”

 
“Jeremiah Milk?” Gerry parroted with disbelief. “I don’t think he’ll be worried about bugs anymore.” Gerry hesitated, and then added, “He was murdered at Tripping Falls last night.”

 
“Murdered?” Damon shouted into the receiver, “I just saw him there yesterday.”

“You saw Jeremiah at the park yesterday?”

“I went for a hike in the morning and saw him when I went into the visitor center for a drink of water.”

“What time was that?”

“I finished hiking at around eleven,” Damon said.

“Which trail were you on?”

“Cherubim’s Run.”

“Damon, can you come down to the park right now?” Gerry asked. “We want to speak with everyone who saw Jeremiah at the park yesterday. And if you were on Cherubim’s Run, the sooner you can get down here, the better.”

* * *

A bespectacled patrolman met Damon’s Saab at the Tripping Falls gate and motioned for him to turn around. Damon relayed the reason for his presence. After a brief exchange over a walkie-talkie, the officer directed Damon down the tree-lined drive to the parking lot.

It was just before nine o’clock in the morning. Five sparkling white police cars were parked side by side in tight formation at the front of the lot. Damon recognized Gerry’s blue sedan in the quarterback position behind the center cruiser.

The visitor center was cooled with overhead fans in lieu of central air. Damon scanned the lobby and spotted a top-heavy redhead who he recognized as Lieutenant Margaret Hobbes—Gerry’s supervisor. Her furrowed brow protruded angrily toward two uniform-clad men standing in front of her.

Gerry sidled up beside Damon and said, “She’s not a happy camper right now.”

“I’m sure murder doesn’t sit well with her,” Damon responded.

“True, but that’s not why she’s livid. The small man standing near her is the chief of the Fairfax County police department and the officer sucking in his gut is with the park. They’re having a pissing match over jurisdiction.”

“Are you trying to win or lose?” Damon asked with a smile.

Gerry laughed and clapped his hand on Damon’s shoulder. “Good question. The body was found on the small piece of parkland that lies in Arlington. Between that and the fact that Jeremiah Milk was a Hollydale resident, we’d like to take the lead. The rest of the park sits in Fairfax County. The Department of Conservation and Recreation cops—the Park Police—have jurisdiction over the day-to-day matters here. But they don’t have the resources for a murder investigation.”

Through the opening connecting the lobby to the theater, Damon could see a cluster of people gathered on benches. “Is that the staff?” he asked, looking in their direction.

“Yes. We’ll be interviewing them just as soon as we figure out who gets to be in the room.” They heard Margaret Hobbes bark at the man from Fairfax.

“I have free reign to interview anyone else who saw Jeremiah at the park yesterday,” Gerry said. “Let’s go into the rangers’ lounge.”

Gerry led Damon into the wing marked “Park Management.” Beyond the entrance stood closed doors on either side of a green-carpeted hallway. One door was marked “Head of Operations,” and the other, “Education Specialist.” The end of the short passage opened into a communal area, which was empty. Gerry and Damon sat across from one another on mismatched cloth sofas adjacent to a kitchenette.

“First, tell me everything you know about Jeremiah Milk,” Gerry said.

Damon filled him in on what he knew of the man’s back story, the majority of which Damon had just learned himself.

“Did you find his body on Cherubim’s Run?” Damon asked when he finished.

“A man named Colin Scott did. He’s a retiree. At seven-fifteen this morning, just after the park opened, he saw Jeremiah, stripped down to his boxer shorts, right on the trail. We found his uniform nearby—crumpled into a ball and a little stiff, as if it had been wet then dried in the overnight air.”

“Do you know how he died?”

“Grace Chu, the medical examiner, is with the body now. I saw it earlier. I think Jeremiah may have been burned to death.”

“Burned?”

“His face, arms, and chest are covered with welts and gashes,” Gerry said. “But it’s a little strange. I’ve seen burn victims before and their flesh is always blackened. Jeremiah’s gashes are clean.”

“Do any of the park buildings have fire damage?”

“Margaret has Richard, one of our seasoned officers, making the rounds right now with a woman named Alex. She’s in charge of operations here. Other than the visitor center, there are thirteen structures in the park—mostly maintenance and storage sheds.”

“I met Alex yesterday,” Damon said. “Nice looking woman.”

Gerry shook his head at his friend. “You never cease to pick up on these things, Damon.” Damon wondered how Gerry could fail to notice attractive women—probably because he had a remarkable wife at home.

“Even with the burn marks, the park workers were able to identify Jeremiah?” Damon asked.

“They were,” Gerry said. “We know that he was the last staffer here yesterday. I think the rangers take turns closing down the park after it gets dark. A Park Police officer makes a quick patrol of the parking lot and visitor center once during the overnight hours but doesn’t go down the trails.”

“The officer didn’t see any cars in the lot?”

“I haven’t had the chance to ask yet. Hold on.” Gerry paced out of the room. While he was waiting, Damon noticed a woman in her mid-thirties enter, and seconds later, exit the nearby room designated for the education specialist.

Five minutes later, Gerry returned.

“Margaret is going to start interviewing the staff,” Gerry said. “Fairfax County is out. We’re taking the lead with the Park Police as support. I have to get in there with Margaret in a minute, so tell me about your hike yesterday.”

 
Damon quickly provided the details of his vanilla visit.

“You didn’t see anything unusual on the trail?”

“No. The only people I saw were two Park Police officers,” Damon said. “Did you find out if there were any cars in the lot during the overnight hours?”

Gerry hesitated. Damon had lent him an ear on a recent murder case—the strangulation of a traveling carnival owner—and had uncovered details unknown to the police. But Damon had also overstepped boundaries by interviewing suspects on his own.

Gerry inhaled deeply. “There was one car,” he said. “It was Jeremiah’s, which makes sense.”

“The Park Police didn’t look into it?”

“They didn’t. I spoke with one of the officers—Davida Harkens. She said that over the past three months, Jeremiah’s car has been in the lot overnight once or twice a week. She doesn’t know why he was leaving it here, but the officers knew the vehicle was his and never considered its presence out of the ordinary.”

Gerry thanked Damon for his time and excused himself to join Margaret in the theater.

* * *

Damon stepped through the back door of the rangers’ lounge to a small patio space. It was barren save for a cracked plastic table, a full ashtray, and three folding chairs. Cigarette butts littered the area’s stone pavers.

Damon sat for a moment to consider the implications of Jeremiah Milk’s car. Why would a ranger who lived less than fifteen minutes away spend a couple of nights a week at the park? Had Jeremiah been concocting a destructive plan, as his mother’s second husband Jack had envisioned? Perhaps Jeremiah hadn’t been murdered, and an explosive he was building had prematurely detonated and burned him to death. No. Jeremiah was found on the trail in his boxer shorts. An accident didn’t fit.

Damon was about to take a path that led from the patio to the parking lot when he heard voices. A small group had entered the rangers’ lounge. There were no windows between the patio and the lounge, so Damon couldn’t see who had entered. But they couldn’t see him, either. He contemplated the door leading inside. He had fortuitously left it ajar. Damon selected a cigarette stub from the ashtray—if anyone walked outside, he would pretend to be finishing a smoke.

Damon recognized the voices of Gerry and Lieutenant Margaret Hobbes. There was another male voice as well.

“So let’s hear it, Richard,” Margaret said curtly. “You pulled us out of an interview, so it better be good.”

“I went to all of the buildings in the park with Alex, the operations manager, like you asked,” Richard said.

“And what did you find?” Margaret demanded.

“There’s one place that Alex thought looked strange. It’s a storage shed on a small path connecting Cherubim’s Run and one of the other trails. The shed is halfway in between, about fifty yards from either one.”

“Is the path wide enough for a vehicle?” Gerry asked.

“Not a car,” Richard said. “But the golf carts that the park staff use would fit.”

“Okay,” Margaret said. “What’s in this shed?”

“On ground level, it’s just a single room that houses equipment. There’s a basement, too. Alex said it’s usually pretty sparse down there—mainly cleaning supplies and small disposable items like batteries and paper towels. But when we went into the shed, all of the basement gear was piled in a corner on the main level. Other than a utility sink, the basement was totally empty.”

“Was there any evidence of a fire in the basement, like a charred smell?” Gerry asked.

“Just the opposite,” Richard said. “It was as clean as a whistle. The whole room seemed damp.”

“Was there a drain in the basement floor?” Gerry asked.

 
“I believe there was,” Richard replied, sounding confused.

Gerry put two-and-two together for him. “Someone may have recently mopped the place up with water from the utility sink.”

“We’ll get Forensics down to that basement and see if we can establish if it’s where Milk was murdered,” Margaret said. “Anything else out of place?”

“Not out of place,” Richard said. “But Alex noticed something. It may be a coincidence.” There was a pause before he continued. “The electrical outlet on the ground level is shorted out. The shed doesn’t have an overhead light, just an old lamp without a shade. I noticed that the bulb was out—it was sitting on the table next to the base. Alex screwed it in but it didn’t work. She found a package of new bulbs in the pile of supplies from the basement. Alex put in a new one, and it didn’t work either. It looks like the outlet needs to be fixed.”

“Are there any other outlets in the shed?” Margaret asked.

“There’s one in the basement over the utility sink. I walked the lamp with the new bulb down there and plugged it in. It worked fine. The old bulb worked, too, down there.”

“Okay, maybe it’s a coincidence,” Margaret said. “Is that all, Richard?”

“There’s one more thing. Alex pointed out a chart tacked to the back wall of the shed’s main floor. Every night, the last ranger at the park initials the chart and denotes the time to indicate that he or she made a series of inspections—the trash has been emptied, there are no illegal campers. Things like that. You could see a month’s worth of initials. Mr. Milk’s are there every fourth day, always around ten o’clock at night. The other initials correspond to the other three rangers. Alex said there are similar charts in two other sheds in the park.”

“They’re on a fixed schedule,” Gerry concluded. “Jeremiah Milk closed down the park every fourth night. He probably drives around in a golf cart, makes his inspections, and enters the sheds to sign off. If the killer knew the rangers’ schedules, he’d know that Jeremiah would be in the shed near Cherubim’s Run by himself at a certain time on a certain night. Easy pickings.”

“That limits the suspect list,” Margaret said. “It has to be someone who’s familiar with the schedules of the rangers. There can’t be more than a handful of people who fit that description.”