Thursday, August 27, 2009

Scandal at Shady Point

From the collection: Murder at Thompson Bog
Episode 5

By the light of the full moon, Mike Emerson climbed over the fence of the house next to Randy Turner's sisters' house and crossed the lawn to the greenhouse. There was no lock on the greenhouse. It was simply a matter of opening the door quietly, though that in itself was a challenge.

Mike climbed a ladder, put a terracotta pot on the rafter, a thin string around the base of it, a loop of string that went in two strands along the rafter and out one of the broken windows. Beneath it, another terracotta pot sat, as if waiting to be the victim of a prank.

Mike returned to the adjoining yard, gathered the two strings and waited. He waited all day, until nearly dusk. He was fast growing impatient and in danger of being discovered should the neighbor come home from work and find Mike hiding in his yard.

Randy Turner looked both ways before stepping out into his sister's back yard. He was taking no chances. He ran from the back door to the greenhouse, feeling safe once surrounded by his plants. Randy Turner felt that glass and plants could protect him from bullets.

When Mike Emerson pulled the string, the red flower pot fell from the rafter onto its brother below, making a crash that sent Randy Turner to the floor. Mike pulled the string all the way out of the greenhouse, across the yard and over the fence, wadded it up and put it in his pocket. He snuck out of the yard and down the alley to where the ugly rent-a-car was waiting. Randy Turner was sprinting to his sister's back door to call the police.

The following day, Mike returned the green Plymouth, checked out of his motel and bought a beat-up pickup truck cheap. It was on its last legs, but it got him to a town a few miles away where he could lay low and plan his next move.


It was a year of living on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. No events took me out of Shady Point to gather news, no reports of anyone shooting at Randy Turner or anyone else, nothing of interest or alarm. And yet....

Dana moved out to a home for battered women where she lived and worked. She wanted to help women whose lives had also been destroyed. That Mike never once hit her was a moot point.

Randy gave up the greenhouse and stayed in his sisters house full time. He became a hermit. Children made up stories about him.

Mike Emerson had vanished.

So when, on a chilly September evening, I was called by my editor to see what was up at the house where Turner was cloistered, it was like an old friend showing up, one I didn't really want to see again.

The police cars were parked at odd angles, their lights turning the night into a kaleidoscope of red and blue. There was crime scene tape and the police were not chuckling. It was time to take something seriously. It was up to me to determine what that was. Sergeant Gillespie was being surprisingly helpful.

“Turner has become a real piece of work since you saw him last.” Sergeant Gillespie indicated the pale figure in khaki pants and bathrobe ensemble standing at the door of the house. Turner was emaciated and looked sick. “He won't wear blue-jeans, won't own a wallet or keys. He stays in the house twenty-four-seven. His sister says she that since his savings ran out, she supports him completely. She doesn't know what else to do.”

We stood there together, watching the broken man talk to the officers at the door, looking around as if he had never seen outside before. He didn't look toward the police car with Dana Emerson getting out. She didn't look at him either. The lovers who had started this string of events couldn't face each other.

Dana was taken to the side of the house across the street from Turner's sister's house. Gillespie didn't even try to stop me from going over. Still, I held a respectful distance. On the ground was the body of Mike Emerson. He was dead. A .22 rifle lay beside him. Dana looked at the body, nodded her head and turned around to walk back to the squad car. She had identified the body and now could be taken home. She had no tears left.

“Our guess is that he was on the roof, working on getting an angle with his rifle, waiting for Turner to pass by a window or poke his head out. This house is empty, for sale. It looks like he's been here for quite a while, waiting for his shot.”

Gillespie closed his notebook and looked across the street to the squad car as Dana Emerson got in. She didn't look up at Turner.

Twenty feet away, Randy Turner took one more look at the outside and retreated into the house.

“Emerson didn't know it, but he already killed Turner – and Dana. They're both dead to the world.”

“I guess he wanted to complete the picture,” I said, closing my notebook as well. “Now they're all dead.”

Gillespie just nodded, turning back to his crime scene. I walked back to my car, reviewing the story from the not-so-innocent start. “He'll never find out,” she must have said to herself. And now here we are, in the dark of night at a crime scene, all because Randy Turner grabbed the wrong pair of jeans.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Scandal at Shady Point

From the collection: Murder at Thompson Bog
Episode 4

Mike Emerson sold his truck, took a room at a small, ramshackle motel out of town and rented a beat up hulk from “Wrent-a-Wreck.” It was a green Plymouth from back when there were green Plymouths. In it, he sat outside Rick and Lori's house watching Dana as she left in Lori's car. He followed her to the mall in town where she met briefly with a man who gave her a paper shopping bag. There were words, but no hugs, no kisses. Dana was keeping her distance and so was the man.

The man shook his head and said a single word that Mike could read on his lips. “Sorry.” He then got into an aging Honda and drove to the city, to a small bank where he stayed until it closed. Then the man drove to a house in a used-to-be-OK part of town, now a place where you wouldn't walk at night. The man appeared heart-sore about the matter, as if he wished he could go back and undo it all, just erase it. He was sick to his stomach, so much so that he never noticed the beat-up green Plymouth following him home.

Mike waited a week, watching the rhythm of the neighborhood. On a dark, cloudy day that threatened rain, he went up to the man's door, just before the bank was scheduled to close. Mike wrote the word “Adulterer” across the door in black marker. He went to the bushes across the street and waited with his rifle. He waited without moving for three-quarters of an hour.

At five-thirty, the gray Honda pulled up to the curb and the man got out. He went to the door, his keys in his hand. Mike raised the rifle to his shoulder and looked down the barrel, putting the word he had written on the house in his cross-hairs. As the man hesitated with his key, Mike could see his head turn slightly. He could see his shoulders tighten as he sucked in a deep breath. The man realized what it meant and who wrote it. Mike squeezed the trigger.


The heat of that late-spring evening was nothing compared to the day eight weeks later when I received a call that Randy Turner had been shot at again. It was outside his place of work, a small branch bank. He had been going to his car after work when a shot rang out. There was a bullet hole through the left side-mirror of his car, having passed between the car and his body as he was about to open the door.

I arrived to find a shaky Randy Turner, again surrounded by reassuring police and Sergeant Gillespie looking at all the angles. When I walked up to the tape, Gillespie was squatting down, peering through the hole in the side-mirror, guessing the trajectory of the slug.

“Somehow I knew I would see you here,” said the Sergeant.

“Where's Sheriff Willis?” I asked, looking around.

“May not be related,” the Sergeant said, wiping his hands on a crumpled handkerchief.

“That's what my father said whenever I screwed up. How is this not related?”

“Nothing written on the car, no slug found,” the Sergeant turned slightly in the direction of the front of the car where the slug would have gone, if it existed at all, then toward the other direction where the shooter, if there was a shooter, would have stood. “No shell casing. This might even have been a set-up.”

“You mean Turner might have shot his own mirror? What, for attention?”

“Something like that. There's nothing to say that the two incidents are in any way connected, save that the same man was nearly, allegedly, shot.”

“So you don't think that Mike Emerson...”

“I didn't say that. I didn't say anything. I'm not even standing here.” Sergeant Gillespie walked away, calling one of the uniforms over to him. Apparently, he had urgent business with that patrolman and none with me.

Officers continued to look over the wall in front of the car and across the street for a place where a man could have stood to fire a shot. They found nothing. There was no gunshot residue, no shell casing, no tell-tale candy wrapper or dropped library card saying “Mike Emerson” on it. In short, there was nothing to indicate that a bullet had been fired at all except Mr. Turner's statement, shards of broken mirror on the ground and a hole through the mirror-housing.

I stood by the tape barrier, trying to extend my ear to hear the whispers being exchanged by Sergeant and patrolman.

“Got something here!” yelled a patrolman, the same one who found the shell casing eight weeks earlier. Gillespie rolled his eyes; apparently, the talk they had about shouting things out at a crime scene had not had it's desired effect. “He could have stood here.”

There was no tape across the street, so I beat Gillespie over there. Sure enough, there was a small alcove in the side of the building across the street that could have held a man out of sight. Yes, one could have stood there out of view, aimed a rifle and fired at the car. Yes, it was possible, but only possible. There was no evidence to indicate that it was the case. Right now, it was just supposition, and supposition, as the Sergeant said, was not my job.

As I left, I heard one of the officers saying to another, “Crying wolf, isn't he?” The other one replied, “I don't know, he could have done this himself.”

After that, Randy Turner moved out of his townhouse and back with his sister. He quit his job and became a recluse.


Mike had prepared this for eight weeks. The board he had prepared was thick enough to take and hold a .22 slug. The place he had found to stand was perfect for where Randy Turner parked his car. The tarp would keep gunshot residue from being found on the short, stucco wall.

Mike already had the shot lined up when Randy Turner came out of the bank. Just as Turner walked up to the door, about to reach out and open the door, Mike squeezed off the shot. The bullet went through the mirror, shattering the glass. It then buried itself in the board behind the bush in front of the car.

Randy Turner spun around and ran back into the bank as Mike wrapped the rifle in the tarp and returned it to his green Plymouth. He drove around to the side of the building on the far side of the street, pulled the rope attached to the board and retrieved both board and slug. He was gone before the police arrived. No one would ever know he was there.


By late September, Randy Turner had stopped going out completely. The only time he left his sister's house was to go across the backyard to the greenhouse. He had been renovating the discarded greenhouse and it was his only diversion.

On the third Saturday in September, a flowerpot shattered and Randy Turner dove for the floor. He crawled to the door, sprinted to the back door of the house and called the police.

Gillespie was watching for me as I drove up. He didn't ask what I was doing there. He didn't even have tape put up.

The police were confounded. The flower pot was broken inside the glass greenhouse, and yet there was no bullet hole through the glass. No bullet could be found near the broken flower pot, no shell casing in, around or anywhere near the greenhouse.

“Unless he fired the shot inside the greenhouse, there's no way he could have done this without breaking a window,” said the patrolman. Gillespie just shook his head. He had no solution for how to shut the cop up when in the presence of the press at a crime scene.

“So there was no bullet, no shell and no possible place for the shooter to shoot from, and yet a flower pot was shattered?” I asked, making a note in my notebook.

“Here y'go!” said another patrolman, standing on a ladder and looking at the rafter above. “There's a scuff mark up here, looks like there was a pot sitting here where the scuff mark is. Must've fallen and hit the other pot.”

“Oh, yeah? How did it get up there?” yelled Turner, frantically pointing; his eyes wild with fear. “He's messing with me! He's out to get me and you've got to stop him!”

The police gathered themselves up and walked toward the squad cars, chuckling to each other. Randy Turner had gone from cheating boyfriend to hapless victim to running joke.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Scandal at Shady Point

From the collection: Murder at Thompson Bog
Episode 3

Dana sat on the couch at her friend, Lori's house. Lori had been a bride's maid at her wedding and Dana had returned the favor a month later. Now Lori and her husband, Rick, sat at the table and looked at her, not knowing what to say.

“I screwed up,” said Dana.

“Yes, you did,” replied Lori. “Won't he forgive you? Maybe if you went to him.”

“He won't even talk to me. He wants to know the name ...”

“So, tell him!” Rick raised the volume of the conversation, eliciting a harsh look from Lori.

“He'll kill him,” said Dana. “He's got a gun.”

“Oh, he wouldn't actually kill him,” said Lori. She knew Mike; he couldn't do anything like that any more than Rick could. Of course, she wasn't cheating on Rick in their bed with a stranger, either.

“Yes, he would, he will. I've never seen him like this.” Dana hung her head and let the tears flow. Lori and Rick looked at each other. Neither had a clue what to do.

As night fell, Dana was wide awake on Rick and Lori's couch, Mike was wide awake at the kitchen table and Sheriff Willis was fast asleep in his bed next to his wife, Martha.


By eleven-forty-five that night, Mike Emerson was on his third glass of rye whiskey; not a short, polite glass, but a large, soda-sized glass. He had nearly polished off the bottle.

“My jeans, my wallet, my keys, my wife,” he kept repeating. He had emptied all his accounts and canceled his cards. It was unlikely the thief ― of his wallet, jeans and wife ― would spend more than the two hundred dollars now. If he tried to use the cards he would find them closed. If he tried to use the key, he would find new locks.

Mike positioned the butt of the rifle on the floor, resting his chin on the barrel as his hand slid slowly down to the trigger housing. But if the man wanted to take his truck, he could do that ― he had the key. Mike's finger found the trigger and felt the small ridges in the metal. He wondered, if he were to pull the trigger, if his head would be blown off, or would the bullet just rattle around in his skull, making scrambled eggs of his gray cells. He smiled to think of Dana having to clean up his blood and brains from the ceiling.

Mike sighed a heavy sigh, leaned forward, a ringing in his head, his finger on the trigger of the rifle and let his head fall forward. The barrel was just above his ear when the gun went off, putting a hole in the ceiling and a different ringing in Mike's ear.

Mike stood up, opened the bolt freeing the spent shell, put another bullet in the chamber and closed the bolt. He picked up a small bag of things he had packed, went out to his truck, got in and drove out of the driveway into the night. The .22 rifle was on the seat beside him.


At midnight, the Sheriff's Office got a call that a single gunshot was heard from Mike's house. Sheriff Willis was called and hurried over there to find two deputies waiting at the locked door. They had to force the door to get in. They found a single .22 caliber shell casing on the living room floor and no one inside the house. No blood, no body, no Mike.

“I've got to question him,” said Sheriff Willis to Dana. They were in the front doorway of Rick and Lori's house. Dana was wearing Lori's housecoat, her hair hadn't been touched since her restless sleep, and showed it. Her face was wrinkled from the sheets and puffy from crying.

“Can't we leave him out of it?” she pleaded.

“He's in it, up to his neck. This has gone beyond a one-time fling gone wrong, there was a shot fired and Mike is missing.”

“Randy Turner,” said Dana. She sighed heavily. “He lives in town. He's an old friend from school. We didn't mean this to happen; it just did.”

As a reporter for the local paper, I was called to the scene by my editor and asked to see if this was really a story for the Shady Point News. I dutifully wrote down the name “Randy Turner.” From town, I thought. Interesting.

Usually people from town didn't come to Shady Point, they didn't consider it a vacation or even interesting. They went to the shore or into the mountains or Disney World. Shady Point was for people who never saw a mountain or a lake. Three-quarters of the houses are empty most of the year, absentee owners who come to get away from the big city or kept as rentals for the peak season.

“Any luck with Turner?” I asked Sheriff Willis.

“It's not a story, it's a spat. Just leave it alone.”

“Mike's gone missing. His boss hasn't seen him, he hasn't been in touch with his wife or with you. So I have to ask, any sign of foul play from the boyfriend?”

“He's not a boyfriend, I don't know what he is.”

“Is he a suspect?” I was half asking as a reporter but also because I live there too. If one of Shady Point's residents was suspected of foul play to another, it was news, but it was also terrible.

“No, he's not a suspect. He's a person of interest, a possible source of information in a missing person's case, nothing more. Like I said, it's not a story.”


At Randy Turner's place in the city, it became a story.

Turner was recently divorced, living with his sister after the breakup until he moved into a less-than-attractive set of row townhouses. He was paying a staggering alimony to his ex-wife of barely three years. He had indeed gone to school with Dana but there was no sign that the two had been close.

It was shortly after Mike disappeared that Randy Turner returned home to find “Adulterer” written in marker on his door at eye-level. He stopped for a moment to look at the marking when a bullet struck the house right next to the door. Randy Turner frantically turned the key, threw open the front door and dove behind the couch.

The call went out on the police scanner, my editor heard it and called me. It was fifteen minutes later that I stood behind the yellow barrier tape at Randy Turner's townhouse.

“What are you doing here, Calvin?” asked the Sheriff.

“Might ask you the same thing, Sheriff Willis. As for me, it's a story now.”

“Just a related happening, not a story.”

“Someone shooting at Randy Turner with a .22 caliber bullet. You don't call that a story?”

Sheriff Willis was trying to ignore me. A large man in rolled shirtsleeves came up to the tape. The badge on his belt showed he was a Sergeant of Detectives.

“He doesn't know anything. He hasn't heard from Emerson since the incident, either one of them.”

“Um, Sergeant Gillespie, this is Jake Calvin, reporter for the Shady Point News.” Sheriff Willis emphasized the word 'reporter' for the Sergeant. The Sergeant was suitably impressed.

“Press, eh? Well, nothing much to write about. Looks like a random shooting, probably someone celebrating the Fourth of July early.”

“And calling his shots, eh?” I asked, indicating the single word written on the door. “Looks like he meant to miss. At that distance, it's hard not to.”

“Supposition is not your job, Mr. Calvin,” said Gillespie. “There is nothing to support a theory that this incident is connected with any earlier incident.”

“Except, of course, the presence of Sheriff Willis.” I smiled at Gillespie.

“Found it, sir,” came a shout from across the street. A small group of police had been searching the grounds of the opposing apartment complex and the bushes that surrounded the buildings. One of the officers was now crossing the street with his tiny find raised high.

“It's a shell casing,” he called to the Sergeant. “Twenty-two caliber, just like you thought. No other sign of Emerson.”

Gillespie looked at me like the cat was out of the bag. “See?” he said to me, “No sign of Emerson. So it's not related. No need for you to be here.”

Gillespie walked off with Sheriff Willis toward the townhouse where the shaking Turner was surrounded by police, drinking coffee like it was a cold, winter night. But it wasn't a cold, winter night, it was late spring and it was hot. After a few minutes talking with Turner, Sheriff Willis came back to the tape.

“You still here?”

“It's still a story.”

“It's a dead end. He didn't see anything, didn't hear anything, just something hitting the house, then he dove inside.”

“Yeah, but still, Turner has been served. Mike Emerson knows who – and where – he is.” The look on Willis' face told me that he knew I was right. The game was on.

Scandal at Shady Point

From the collection: Murder at Thompson Bog
Episode 2

Randy Turner had been in love with Dana since he first saw her in history class. When his folks moved to the city, he changed schools and Dana took up with Mike. Randy hadn't seen her since. Now he was lying beside her all sweaty and warm. He felt as if he had completed something, like he could strike an item off of a list and move on with his life, now that it was complete. He had wanted to bed her since junior year; now he had.

But the front door opening made them both sit up. They didn't look at each other, they jumped up in different directions. Randy scooped up his tighty-whities from the floor and put them on, then his shirt. He looked for his jeans, then remembered he had left them in the living room. He picked up his boots and one sock. The other one wasn't within his field of vision and he wasn't going to waste valuable time looking.

Dana had thrown on her cleaning shift and ran out to cut off her husband, closing the bedroom door behind her.

“You're all sweaty and I'm in the middle of cleaning our bathroom.” Dana said, pushing him away before he could smell another man's cologne on her. “Go on into the other shower and get cleaned up before you even try to kiss me.”

When the door closed and the shower could be heard running, Randy Turner came out of the bedroom with his boots in his hand. He grabbed the jeans from the back of the couch and pulled them on, trying not to make a noise or fall down. He barely got them zipped when Dana motioned to him from the front door.

“Go!” she whispered, and she pushed him out, closing the door behind him.

Randy Turner wasted no time running, barefoot and holding his boots, to his dusty gray Honda up on the road. He jumped in, pulled the visor down and caught his keys in his right hand. Randy pulled out into the lane, thankful that it was a quiet Saturday afternoon and not a busy weekday. He was hoping none of the neighbors had seen him leave. He wondered if anyone had witnessed their innocent meeting at the book store or the way they warmed up to each other at the coffee shop next door. He hoped none of Mike's friends observed one thing leading to another until they fell into bed, heaving and sweating, entwined like grapevines.

Randy Turner pulled the up to the curb in front of his small townhouse, turned off the engine and sat, staring out of the windshield. Once inside the house, he threw down his boots, flopped on the couch and reflected on the mess he had made of things. “But at least,” he thought, “I got out of there without getting caught.”

Still it didn't feel right. He didn't feel right. Even his pants didn't feel right. There was a lump in his jeans that didn't make sense. He felt the front pocket and found a set of keys ― truck keys, and a house key. Randy could feel the blood drain from his face. These were not his jeans!


When Mike came in, he had in a long, dusty case from the garage. In the case was a rifle. He was one of the few residents of Shady Point who did not have a firearm handy, but that changed now, he had his old rifle in the house. He opened a box of .22 shells, pulled the bolt, loaded a shell into the chamber and closed the bolt. Dana heard the sound. She shuddered to hear it.

“Sooner or later,” he said, calmly to the bedroom door, “you will tell me who he is. Then I'll kill him.”

The locksmith charged triple to come out on a Sunday. Mike didn't care.

“Double-key, I want to be able to lock the door from both sides,” he said.

“Sure, no problem,” replied the locksmith.

Mike sat in the large, central living room, with a glass of whiskey in his hand, keeping an eye on every door and window, in case the culprit should come back to speak to his wife. He doubted the man would show up at the door to return his wallet and keys.
“I'm sorry,” Mike imagined him saying, “I got your jeans by mistake when I was stumbling over myself getting out of your house after banging your wife.” Yeah, Mike could just imagine that apology going down.

“All done,” said the locksmith.

Mike stood by the door watching the locksmith drive away. He closed the door and locked it with his new key. “No one's getting in – or out – of this house now,” he thought.


“Harry,” Mike told his boss on Monday morning, “I'm taking some time. I've got leave coming, so I'm taking it.”

“Everything OK, Mike? Is Dana OK?”

“I'll get back to you on that.”

“Well if there's anything I can do...”

“Thanks, Harry. I'll let you know.”

Mike hung up the phone. The call was a courtesy to Harry; Mike didn't care about the job – not anymore. He still had on the same khaki pants and shirt. He had slept on the couch in them. He nibbled at snacks, but wasn't hungry. He hadn't drunk much of the whiskey, most of it was left. He wasn't drowning his sorrow, he was numb to it.

If he had thought about it, he would have wondered if Dana was hungry, but he didn't think about it. He didn't think about her at all.

At nine, he showered in the guest bathroom. He heard Dana moving about the house. When he came out, he saw the bedroom door open; Dana was not in sight. Mike went into the bedroom, dressed in clean slacks and a shirt and left for the bank; without his wallet, there were arrangements to make.

Upon his return, Mike found Sheriff Willis waiting for him outside the house. Sheriff Willis had caught Mike and Dana necking after the prom a few years back, warned Mike not to drive drunk at his bachelor party and later, attended their wedding in his only fitting suit. Now he was at their door in his uniform.

“Dana tells me you've locked her in,” said Sheriff Willis.

“I locked the door to keep strangers out. If she was inside when I did it, then there you are.”

Mike took out his house key and went to the front door. He opened it to find Dana standing there in blue jeans, cloth shoes and a large, cable-knit sweater. She had been crying. She wore no makeup and her hair was pulled back into a hasty pony-tail. She looked terrified.

Sheriff Willis stepped through the door and looked from Mike to Dana.

“Doors open, Dana,” said Mike. “If you want to leave, no one's stopping you. There is one thing I'd like to know: the name of your lover.”

Dana turned pale as fear overcame embarrassment. Sheriff Willis looked from her to Mike, sizing up what he had to deal with. Dana ran past them out of the door, up the drive and onto the road.

“Let me talk with her. Maybe I can help you sort this out,” said Willis.

“If she won't tell me, I'll find out sooner or later,” said Mike, throwing the keys on the counter. “Until then, she can stay out there for all I care.”

“Mike, don't do anything hasty. Let this simmer some, you and Dana have a good thing going. Don't let one stupid mistake screw it up.”

Mike just looked at the sheriff with lowered eyes, tight lips and clenched fists. It was plain that the conversation was over.

All through the night, Mike's demons danced through his head, keeping him only half asleep. His jeans, his house, his wife; his anger. The man had taken his wallet and keys. He could steal his truck anytime, but he couldn't get into the house, not anymore. He could still get into his wife, though, wherever she was. So what! He didn't care anymore. He was cold and numb. Priorities had shifted.