Four Murder Mysteries

By Robert Trainor

Four Murder Mysteries contains the following books, all of which can be purchased separately: Some Things Are Sweeter Than God, The Real Meaning of Life, The Road Map to the Universe, and The Murder of Nora Winters. In the space allowed, I will give brief descriptions of these novels, but if you would like more complete descriptions, you can obtain them under the separate listings for each book.

The protagonist in Some Things Are Sweeter Than God is Lorinda Rivers—she's a public defender and a highly competitive woman who doesn't like to lose…Kevin Jensen is a man who's facing the death penalty after being charged with the brutal murder of his ex-girlfriend…his fingerprints are on the murder weapon, and he's already confessed, so there isn't any real doubt as to his guilt. But when Kevin retracts his voluntary confession, refuses to consider a plea deal, and demands a jury trial, Lorinda is faced with a difficult moral dilemma. Should she ignore her conscience and defend Kevin aggressively, even if it means that he might go free?

In The Real Meaning of Life, Patrick Devlan, a twenty-seven-year-old man who has written and published a number of murder mysteries, becomes entangled in a real-life murder mystery. Neurotic, unstable, and somewhat chauvinistic, Patrick skitters around on the edge of events as Nick, his roommate and best friend, is arrested and convicted of murdering Teresa, his girlfriend. But it isn't really clear who murdered Teresa, and when Nick is sentenced to death, Patrick's world begins to crumble, and he is faced with some very difficult choices. In the end, however, despite all his evasions and pretensions, Patrick is led to the discovery of what is actually, all joking aside, the real meaning of life.

The Road Map to the Universe describes the multiple investigations into the murder of Karen Breen. Although her husband is convicted of the crime, things change when an informant tells police that her son Jeremy was the murderer. Jeremy has always been a laid-back guy who believes that none of us has any real significance in a universe of two hundred billion galaxies. Jeremy is arrested, tried, and convicted, but then, while the jury is being polled, an extraordinary revelation occurs—in fact, in the annals of courtroom history, it is probably a premiere.
Amazingly, this courtroom revelation seems to prove that Jeremy's belief system has some real potential. Because, in the end, it appears that the murder of Jeremy's mother is just one more example that everything we experience is based on the self-aggrandizing perceptions of the ego and that the belief in significance, any significance, is simply a symptom arising out of the peculiar notion that the entire universe revolves around oneself.

On Christmas morning, Nora Winters is found shot to death in her bedroom. The previous evening, she had been talking about committing suicide, and since she was shot at very close range, her family initially assumes that she took her own life. However, the police quickly discover that the gun that killed her is fifteen feet away from where her body was found. The case is baffling because it has all the elements of a classic locked-room murder mystery. The only door to the room has two sliding steel bolts that are fully engaged; the two windows are securely locked from the inside of the room; and after an extensive investigation, no hidden panels in the floor, walls, or ceiling can be found.
Detective Nick Slater is an experienced investigator who will leave no stone unturned in his search for the killer. He has five suspects—the four children of Nora Winters and Chad Winters, her husband. Eventually, Chad is arrested and brought to trial, but what happens after that will prove far more shocking than anything that has gone before

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Trainor
• Release date: Feb 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224350117

Robert Trainor

Over the past twelve years (since I retired at the age of 59), I've written nineteen novels, four novellas, four non-fiction books, and seven anthologies, all of which you can find in the Kindle Store. Instead of writing a biography of myself, which seems rather irrelevant, I would prefer to write a biography of my books. Here, in the order in which they were written, is a brief sketch of the plots, themes, and subject matter of these books.1/ The Voice of the Victim describes a series of murders in a small city. I've always felt a great deal of empathy for the victims of violent crimes, especially those who are murdered by guns. What, I wondered, would these people say to us if they could speak? When reading this book, it is important to remember that my intention, from first page to last page, was to present the voice of the victim. And, to me, this voice is not a straight-line accusation of weapons and murderers but tends to veer to a pervasive mockery and total indictment of modern culture. This novel is much different than anything else I have written, and there will be many who will object to what the "voice" is saying.2/ Some Things Are Sweeter than God is somewhat along the lines of a classic murder mystery but is certainly not one of those books where the conclusion is some wild revelation that no sensible reader could ever discern beforehand. The protagonist is a forty-year-old woman lawyer who, in her role as a public defender, is required to represent a man who is accused of brutally murdering his ex-girlfriend.3/ The Road Map to the Universe is a well-constructed novel--at one time, I was a tournament chess player, and this book required a great deal of planning and analysis. Essentially, it's a highly unusual murder mystery, but the perceptive reader may be able to identify a standard plot theme lurking in the background. The Road Map also examines an interesting philosophical question: In a universe of four billion galaxies, what relevance, if any, does the human being have?4/ The Great Barrington Train Wreck, a truly offbeat social commentary, includes a unique type of murder mystery and is one of my favorite novels. Although I almost never include anything from my own life experience in my books, I was, just like the protagonist in the Train Wreck, homeless for many years. So I'm familiar with the lingo and attitude that some of the homeless have. This is a catchy, captivating book where the plot seems to materialize out of thin air until it becomes the elephant in the room. Also, to my mind, this tale could describe what happens to Holden Caulfield, the anti-hero of the Catcher in the Rye, as he approaches forty. It's not all peaches and cream! Especially when he falls in love with the daughter of a millionaire, and even more especially when he ends up on death row.5/ Your Kiss Is Like the Sweetest Fire describes a teenage romance between Jaime and Renee, who were adopted at a young age into the same family. It seems illogical to me, but in almost all states, the law views a sexual relationship between adopted siblings who live in the same family as a crime of incest--exactly as if they were related by blood. So Jaime and Renee have this difficulty to contend with, and also, their mother and father are both rather repulsive characters who are totally incapable of helping them. Wait until you meet Renee--I love her.6/ Requiem for the West is partially based on an apocalyptic poem that I wrote during the 1990's. Ten thousand hours is a lot of time to spend on a seven-hundred-word poem! Requiem is also an examination of some apparently abstract themes that seem highly relevant to me: 1/ The pervasive role of explicit sexuality in our culture and the very different ways that people react to it; 2/ The often farcical, Dilbert-like nature of the modern workplace, in this case a college; and 3/ Is doomsday just around the corner? The 1960-2000 version of myself considered a nuclear apocalypse to be inevitable, but nowadays, I'm ambivalent.7/ Frontier Justice was easy to write because once Adriana Jones arrived on page 10, she took over the book, and all I had to do was keep up with her as she overpowered every obstacle that crossed her path. I hadn't intended for that to happen, but that's the way life goes sometimes. Do I agree with, support, condone, or advocate Adriana's way of doing things? Difficult questions. Adriana is my creation, so I have to take some responsibility for her, I suppose, but I look at it this way: To be true to a character, one has to let the person speak and act in a way that is appropriate to his or her personality. I just can't legislate them into political correctness! Adriana didn't just overpower the other characters in Frontier Justice--she also overpowered me. I really like this book--I wish, as a writer, I could think of more characters who are as dynamic as Adriana.8/ A Tale from the Blackwater River is a novella that is meant to be a satire on a certain kind of story that is showing up far too frequently nowadays, but on another level, it's just kind of a humorous tale that was a lot of fun to write. This book is written in the first person by a forty-two-year-old woman named Alanda Streets. I almost published it under the pen name Alanda Streets because I thought some people might say that no woman would ever write a story like A Tale from the Blackwater River, but for those who feel that way, I hope you will ask yourself this question: If the name Alanda Streets had been on the cover of the book, instead of mine, would you have felt that a woman couldn't have written it?9/ The Blackwater Journal is another Alanda Streets novel--this time, she is only sixteen. I couldn't seem to get away from Alanda--she does have a spunky survivor's attitude towards life that appeals to me. In this book, she has to call on all her resources when her evil father imprisons her in a room and tells her that she has only a week left to live. As the days pass by, the terror mounts on her own personal death row. Does Alanda escape? Maybe so, maybe no.10/ Love Letters (Soaked in Blood) is another murder mystery that has a humorous undertone, which many will probably miss. The problem with writing a murder mystery is that anything that can be thought of has already been done about a thousand times. The only original idea left would be to have the most obvious suspect turn out to be the murderer. Think of it--that's probably never been done! And so...maybe you can guess the rest.11/ The Book of the Dead is about a man who goes to his 25th reunion and meets his high school sweetheart. The two of them embark on an impulsive twenty-four hour car ride that will take them through three southern states and bring them face-to-face with death. This is a tale where the boundaries of ordinary reality are stretched out a little bit! I'll leave it to you to decide whether The Book of the Dead is a fantasy or a reality.12/ Destroyed by Malice sees the return of a character who played a minor role in The Voice of the Victim. He's the world famous novelist Barker Drule, but unfortunately, he (and his wife) exit the book on page 1 when they are gunned down in their driveway. It isn't long before detective Jeff Willard is convinced that the murderer is a member of the Drule family. Perhaps it's Lenore, the older daughter, who was, years ago, secretly raped by her father; perhaps it's the beautiful Raylene, who wrote a novel about a rape victim that her father managed to have the publishing industry blackball; perhaps it's Ricky, the cocaine-addicted son who is desperate to get his hands on his father's money; and perhaps it's Dalton Drule, Barker's irascible eighty-two-year-old father who just happens to own the gun that was used to murder his son. In the end, when the truth finally comes out, there will be very few left to tell the tale.13/ How to Write an Imaginative Novel takes you through the whole process of writing a novel and then uploading it to Kindle. Among the many things covered are: Where will you find a plot? What is the best way to find names for your characters? How important is it to punctuate your book correctly? Is there a quick way to learn punctuation and sentence structure? What is the best way to write dialogue? What kind of things should one avoid in a novel? What is the significance of the first draft and why is it so important? How does one begin a book so that it immediately commands the reader's attention? How does one revise and edit a novel? Is it possible to create the cover for your book without spending any money? How does one convert a book to the correct format so that it can be uploaded to Kindle? And finally, how does one upload a book to Kindle?14/ I Ching 2015 contains a complete translation (minus the Confucian commentaries) of this ancient Chinese classic. Also included are detailed instructions on how to consult the I Ching using either yarrow stalks, coins, or dice. (For those who have been using coins, one should be aware that a significant error has crept into the method that many people use to cast an omen. This error, which involves using either three or four similar coins will seriously affect the accuracy of the omens you receive.) Additionally, there is extensive advice on how to interpret an omen. By using the correct method of interpretation, you will be surprised at how much clearer omens become. As part of this advice, I have posed a number of questions to the I Ching and have then interpreted the omen I received. Finally, for each hexagram, as well as many of the lines in each hexagram, I have included my own observations as to the essential meaning of these hexagrams and lines.15/ Blood and Blackmail is an elegant murder mystery with an unusual plot twist that took me some time to piece together. For those readers who enjoy the challenge of solving a crime before the final chapter arrives, this novel should provide you with a truly interesting puzzle. I doubt many people, if any, are going to see the underlying deception that runs throughout this tale because...if I say anything else, I might help the reader unravel this mystery, and I certainly wouldn't want to do that!16/ Fairy Tales by Martians takes a humorous look at the theory of evolution. Science, of course, claims that the human being originated from an amoeba that eventually became a tadpole that eventually became a frog and so on and so forth. However, I just can't conceive of the fact that ten million years ago, two frogs mated in a swamp and because of that event, I eventually arrived on the scene. What kind of a genealogy chart is that? Neither does the seven-day religious version of events appeal to me, so what I'm left with is a very cynical view of both the religious and scientific theories concerning the origins of our existence.17/ The Book of Dreams repeats a very old idea that has been used in many a novel. But here, in this murder mystery, the idea is taken to another level entirely and contains a twist that not many will see coming. The clues are there, starting with the poem in the Preface.18/ The Dark Side of the Moon is a tale about an attractive high school teacher who falls in love with one of her students. However, Carolyn Black is nervous that her sexual liaison with the student will ruin her career. Eventually, she tries to break off their relationship, but when he threatens to commit suicide, Carolyn is faced with an excruciating dilemma.19/ The Murder of Nora Winters was inspired by John Dickson Carr who wrote a number of locked-room mysteries. In this type of mystery, the murder victim is found in a room that does not allow the killer any means of exit. The doors and windows are all bolted from the inside, and it's considered very poor form for the author to create a room where there are sliding walls or secret panels. The solution to the murder of Nora Winters is, I think, relatively simple, but I've woven in enough deceit and misdirection to confuse all but the most astute readers.20/ The Vanishing Victim is a tale of a psychiatrist and a troubled woman who comes to him for counseling. What she reveals to him proves to be a confession to a brutal crime, but he is unable, because of the doctor/patient privilege, from revealing this crime to anyone, including the police. But even more troubling is that the woman's confession, although it contains a number of factual inaccuracies, turns out to have a terrifying reality of its own.21/ The Fatality Game follows a series of innocuous crimes in a rich neighborhood that seem to be more pranks than anything else. But when a woman is murdered in her bed, Detective Cody Barnes realizes that there is something evil lurking under the placid veneer of swanky mansions that are inhabited by millionaires. And when Cody becomes romantically involved with one of the earlier victims, the beautiful Lucinda Kane, the case begins to take on a life of its own that will eventually lead to the deaths of three more people.22/ How to Write an Intelligent Murder Mystery describes some of the adventures I encountered while I was writing murder mysteries (of my twenty-one novels, thirteen are murder mysteries.) This is a somewhat unusual instructional book that attempts to relate the problems encountered in the writing of a murder mystery to the more general problem of writing fiction in today's market where any new novel is almost instantaneously buried under an avalanche of new novels.23/ The Real Meaning of Life is definitely one of my favorite books. It's written in the first person by Patrick Devlan, a twenty-seven-year-old guy who writes murder mysteries. But his father, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, wants Patrick to write something that will take his readers to a "better place." Patrick decides to follow his father's advice, but a few days later, his roommate's pregnant girlfriend is murdered, and Patrick becomes entangled in a real-life murder mystery. Eventually, after his roommate is convicted of the crime and sent to death row, Patrick is faced with a dilemma that will lead him to the discovery of the real meaning of life.24/ Flight 9525 is a non-fiction book that attempts to answer the question as to why there is so much suffering in the world. For the most part, this book bypasses the usual political, psychological, and social reasons for suffering and examines the following: If God is real, then why do human beings suffer? Why would an all-merciful, all-loving, and all-powerful Being permit its creations to suffer? The usual explanations, such as the hypothesis that God granted man free will, don't answer the question at all. In fact, this is a question that's never been answered satisfactorily.25/ The Scriptwriter is the tale of a man who becomes entangled with three different women. There's the incredibly beautiful woman, the incredibly rich woman, and the incredibly homeless woman. Which one will he choose? Events, mishaps, and character flaws lead him to an interesting decision.26/ The Murder of Marabeth Waters contains a considerable amount of subtle black humor and describes the investigation that ensues after a prostitute is found strangled to death. Detective Devin Driver is quickly able to focus on a suspect; not only did this man send a threatening note to Marabeth, but also, her blood is found in his car. As it turns out, the real murderer lurks elsewhere, and unfortunately, Devin isn't a particularly perceptive detective, so it isn't surprising when the wrong person is convicted of the crime. However, even if Devin had been Sherlock Holmes on steroids, he undoubtedly wouldn't have solved this murder.27/ The Trial of Shada King--a district attorney in Hartford, Connecticut, is charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of the man who had raped her ten days before the shooting. Shada claims that she acted in self-defense, and since she was wearing a recording device at the time of the shooting, her claim of self-defense seems to be valid. But why was she wearing the recording device? The prosecuting attorney is convinced the crime scene was an elaborate stage production that was intended to deceive those who would be listening to the tape and that the victim was murdered in retaliation for the rape.28-34/ Finally, I have seven anthologies on Kindle that combine complete versions of many of the books listed above: Four Novels, 5 Novels, Four Murder Mysteries, The Blackwater Novels, Dark Tales, Six Novels, and Five Murder Mysteries. The purpose of the anthologies is that it gives the reader a chance to buy, for instance, five novels of mine at the rock-bottom price of $2.99.I spend a great deal of time revising my books. After finishing the first draft, I go through the book at least eight more times--first page to last page. Each journey through the book is slow and painstaking--no less than three hours and no more than thirty-five pages a day. From my experience, the kind of errors that pop up on some of the later readings can be rather surprising, if not downright alarming! I particularly look for inaccurate punctuation, lackluster sentence structure, and inaccurate or repetitive vocabulary. I also do not permit confusing sentences to stand--I can't imagine that any reader will want to read a sentence twice because I couldn't find a way to explain myself clearly.Finally, I would ask you all to keep an open mind about novels by an author who has no brand name. I am quite unusual because I do not advertise myself in any way, shape, or form (outside, I guess, of this little biography). My books are well-written, entertaining, and thought provoking, but they are often truly original, and I worry about the page-six syndrome. That's the point where some readers abandon a book by an unknown author because of a single sentence, idea, or attitude that seems amateurish to them. Have faith that there are some genuine diamonds in the Kindle arena and have faith that your instinct to buy one of my books was a good instinct. If you read any of my books to the finish, I think you'll feel that your time was not wasted because these novels are not cheap imitations--they are real creations.

Book preview

SOME THINGS ARE SWEETER THAN GOD

COPYRIGHT 2009 

BY ROBERT TRAINOR

PREFACE

After the traumatic events described in my previous book, The Voice of the Victim, I left the city I had lived in for the first forty-five years of my life and moved to a place called Marshfield—a small rural town that was almost a thousand miles away from the graves of my wife and daughter. Unattached and somewhat anti-social, I subsisted on my police pension and meaningless odd jobs as I gradually withdrew from the world and all its absurdities. 

But about a year after my arrival in the Marshfield area, I became interested in the events surrounding the murder of a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Carolyn Andrews. An arrest had been made shortly after the discovery of her body, and the evidence against the accused man, Kevin Jensen, was virtually incontrovertible. Shackled, he had been brought into court on the morning of December 31st, 2001, where his lawyer, Lorinda Rivers, entered a plea of not guilty for her morose and disheveled client. As I watched the 11 P.M. news that evening, I wondered what this woman felt as she stood beside a man who was accused of a murder that gave every appearance of being a cold-blooded execution. Could she really throw her heart into defending him? 

Because if I were his lawyer, I would have been calculating the best way to sabotage his case so that there could be no possibility of him ever walking the streets again.

CHAPTER ONE: OVERKILL 

At 4 A.M. on Christmas morning, Hunter Creek Road was dark, desolate, and depressing, but he knew what he felt was just the response of his imagination as it attempted to come to terms with the events of the last two hours. The pavement had ended, and he was driving along a narrow one-lane dirt road that because of the recent subzero weather felt like broken-up slabs of cement. He wondered if the potholes, which kept getting wider and deeper, could snap an axle, and then he’d have to walk out of this godforsaken place. Somewhere up ahead—he should have reached it by now, he thought—was Wilder Bay, which was where he planned to dump the body. Stupid idea. He should have just taken her a couple of miles down the road that ran by his house and thrown her into the woods behind the abandoned movie theatre instead of embarking on this harebrained expedition. Never should have murdered her either—not that she didn’t have it coming to her, but now that she was rolling around on the back seat and had maybe fallen onto the floor with that thud he had heard about a half-mile back, there wasn’t too much sense in thinking about the past and alternative lines of action. He had to focus on reality and stop yapping about all his supposed mistakes because it wouldn’t be all that difficult to go careening off the road and plunge into some kind of rocky morass where he could be knocked unconscious. Murderers—my God, he couldn’t believe that he had gone through with it—needed to have some backbone, some intestinal fortitude. It certainly wouldn’t be good to lose it down there! What a terrible tragedy to be caught because you left behind that kind of DNA. Everybody would be laughing at you for years. 

At least he could still dream up jokes, pathetic as they were, but he had to admit that this grisly nighttime adventure into the boondocks was a nasty piece of work. Even though there wasn’t a ghost of a chance that he could be caught—unless somebody found him wandering around out here—it was too scary and primitive for his taste. Way too scary. That look...that intense animalistic expression of fear that was permanently frozen onto her face...It looked like pleading—incredibly pitiful. What had he done? And what if God really did exist? Don’t think that way! he said to himself. He didn’t go to church, and he hadn’t read his catechism since the fourth grade, so why should he let that Ten Commandments’ gibberish get to him? It was just a woeful plate of Golden Rule rubbish that your parents fed to you so that you wouldn’t wise up, step out of line, and trim them down to pint-sized, irrelevant midgets. Anyways, if he’d been given a choice about whom to murder, it would have been his parents. Hands down! That way, he wouldn’t have to visit them anymore and attempt to explain how well his life was going—finally, after all these years—and plod through one laughable pretension after another as he described his overblown triumphs in the material world. Smirking, he tried to imagine what they would say to themselves if their precious dear boy were ever arrested for the murder of Carolyn Andrews, the jeweled-out, mudslinging tramp from the depths of the gutter. Pops probably wouldn’t be able to take it; he had two heart attacks under his belt already, and Mom always said—one of her stupid pet expressions—that the third time was the charm. 

His mind drifted back to the moments after Carolyn had croaked (not quite the right word, that’s for sure), and he’d literally stumbled over the gun when it had fallen out of her handbag as he was bringing it to the car. Just dumb luck, and now he didn’t know whether the little metal monster was a gift from God or a ticket to hell. But the gun was the reason he was here—without it, he would never have concocted this complicated plan to cover up his tracks. Of course, now that he had time to think about it rationally, there was no point in covering up his tracks because the doctors in this town were way too backwards and stupid—your classic local yokels—to ever figure this one out. Even the pros would be stumped. Not that he was a genius, but he had done some of his homework! Cursing, he realized that he had overreacted because there was just no sense in pretending that the FBI was chasing you around when all you had to worry about were the cops that sleepwalked around Marshfield. Now, if Carolyn had been the daughter of a rich, well-connected family from the hill section of town where the stupid condos were going for three hundred grand, then maybe he would have had something to worry about. But this long, agonizing drive down a road he hadn’t been on since his father took him fishing about twenty-five years ago was beginning to drive him crazy.

Enough! He slammed the brakes on, shifted into neutral, jerked up the emergency brake, and jumped out of the car. What was he so afraid of? It wasn’t like he was in the middle of the freeway with a million cars whizzing by as one driver after another hurled obscenities and threats at him. Sooner or later, somebody would come down Hunter Creek Road, but it wasn’t liable to be anytime soon—not tonight with everyone waiting patiently for Santa Claus to deliver the presents. There simply was no need for him to be a perfectionist and reach the bay because he was far enough along the road that nobody would hear the gunshots. And then, mercifully, he could leave this place and drive back to the random anonymity of civilization where he would be able to disappear without a trace.

Opening the back door on the driver’s side of the car, he could barely see her—it was so unbelievably dark out here, just absolutely black, and the headlights from the car didn’t help much since they were like two stupid soldiers who only marched in one direction—forwards, of course. Where was the flashlight that he had brought? God! He couldn’t remember anything. He thought he had put it on the floor with her handbag and coat, but she had half fallen off the seat and was sprawled on top of everything. He reached down with his gloved hands, grabbed her arms, and started to pull her out, but she was caught on something or wedged between the seats. Twisting her, he gave a violent yank and went staggering backwards as the upper half of her body came out of the car. Obviously, he thought to himself, this wasn’t going to be a formal burial with the usual decorous sermons and obligatory plaudits. Rather, this would be the quick and dirty version of the rites for the dead, which was exactly what Carolyn deserved. The Christians could dawdle around and bawl their brains out, but the gravedigger who was also moonlighting as the chauffeur of the hearse had some work to do and didn’t have the luxury of wasting his time on incantations and prayers. 

It was amazing to him what kind of senseless chatter was going through his mind. A lot of it actually seemed funny, but he didn’t dare laugh because he wasn’t sure whether it was even remotely sane to be laughing at a time like this. By now, he had Carolyn completely out of the car, and stepping over her, he pawed around the floor of the backseat until he came across the flashlight, which was small enough to fit into his coat pocket. He dumped out her handbag, found the gun, and was going to put it into the other pocket in his jacket but thought that was too risky—it might fall out or even go off somehow and shoot him right through the heart, and then, although the evidence would hardly justify it, the official conclusion would be that it was just another murder-suicide. And inevitably, people would ask, How could anyone kill himself over someone like Carolyn Andrews? 

Leaving the gun on the back seat, he stood behind Carolyn, grabbed her by the wrists, and dragged her just off the road into some dense low-lying bushes—they were so thick and stiff and impenetrable that he couldn’t even lay her flat on the ground. Going back to retrieve the gun, he haphazardly wondered what he would have done if someone had come along while he was busy hauling her off the road. What in the world would he have said? Maybe he could have claimed that she was drunk, and he was merely helping her into the bushes so that she wouldn’t retch all over the new upholstery in the car. Talk about having to think on your feet! 

Placing the gun in his hand, he walked back to her; with the flashlight on, he rolled Carolyn’s body over because he didn’t want to be looking at her face when he shot her. At the house, he had checked to make sure the gun was loaded and the safety was off, but now he had a perverse feeling that after all this clever effort the idiotic thing would malfunction. However, the noise that resounded from out of his hand when he pulled the trigger sounded ominously loud as it echoed and reechoed across Wilder Bay. No wonder people used to call guns hand cannons! He should have followed his original idea and shot her at the edge of the bay because, for all he knew, he could be within shouting distance of someone’s house. 

But it was too late for second-guessing, and stepping closer to her, he saw that he had hit her in the right shoulder. What good was that? He knew what the plan was, but it still made him squeamish. He didn’t want to get too close to her in case the blood splattered, but he realized that was just another senseless fear since she was already dead and her blood pressure had long since fallen to zero. Standing with each foot on either side of her waist, he leaned slightly backwards as he fired his next shot in the general direction of her head. And then, leaning forward and seeing that he had entirely missed his target, he closed his eyes and fired two more shots in quick succession. 

Afterwards, he couldn’t even look at her because he didn’t care anymore. All he wanted to do was run away from his perfect crime and go downtown and have a few drinks, so he could forget that this gruesome night had ever happened. He just didn’t have the stomach for this kind of ultimate gore, and impulsively, he took the gun and hurled it away—over Carolyn’s body and into the darkness of the night. As he turned back towards the car, he heard an unusual hollow clatter from the gun landing—as if it had hit at a much lower level than the ground on which he was standing. Was there some kind of cliff just beyond her body? Lucky he hadn’t walked any further off the road. He spun around and searched ahead of him with the flashlight but couldn’t see anything. What difference did it make? He wasn’t writing a novel for the true-crime market. Get out of here! Go!

As he returned to the car, which was still idling patiently and waiting for a command from its peculiar master, he saw that he couldn’t possibly turn around on this section of Hunter Creek Road. It was far too narrow to attempt such an ill-advised stunt, and he’d have to go all the way to the end where the fishermen launched their motorboats into Wilder Bay, which meant that shooting Carolyn by the side of the road had simply been the clumsy, panicked act of an amateur murderer. Maybe he should go back and get her, he joked to himself grimly. With the car crawling along at seven miles per hour as it lurched spasmodically through the ever-deeper potholes, which were starting to look like bomb craters from a World War One movie, he tried to remember what was at the end of the road. Was it a pier? A pier that he would be rumbling down absentmindedly as he subconsciously relaxed and thanked God for miraculously removing the potholes through the awesome power of His divine disposition? Like gliding on air, which is exactly what he would be doing until, draped in his heavy one-ton metal overcoat, he plunged precipitously into Wilder Bay. Sinking remorselessly into his cold, watery tomb as he struggled savagely and desperately with the door handle, which would be obstinately, irretrievably locked to protect him from intruders. Crawling and panting around in the rapidly rising, freezing water that was about to suffocate him as he frantically attempted to lower a window. Windows that were childproofed or windows where the button to lower them was impossible to find.  Punching desperately at the glass with his fist, but the water, which by now had risen a foot over the dashboard, reduced all his violent boxing efforts to feeble slow-motion swings, and now, remorselessly, he was floating up towards the implacable, double-locked sunroof where he would be taking his last gasp—just like Carolyn took her last gasp, only she hadn’t drowned. But it would be almost exactly the same thing. 

Did God really hunt you down like that? Even if he didn’t go plunging off the pier would he be on a boat some day, maybe a luxury cruise in the Bahamas, whose journey was catastrophically cut short by a colossal explosion that destroyed all the lifeboats? Or maybe it would be more prosaic, and he’d be like his father and have some kind of heart attack that left him gasping perpetually for breath. And he knew—just absolutely knew—that if something like that happened, he’d be seeing Carolyn. Live and in color. Seeing her as if it were a blown-up photograph, complete with that remarkable digital resolution everybody was crowing about nowadays. At least, thank God for small blessings, she hadn’t been able to talk. But he would see that look forever, that terrified, desperate, horrified look. 

He’d be haunted for the rest of his life. It was something that he was going to have to deal with, and he obviously wasn’t going to be able to discuss it with a psychotherapist. Those people were crazy anyways—nothing but mother or father figures dressed up in the mangy cloak of their ludicrous degrees. If he was searching for guidance, he’d have to find it within himself. All anybody else wanted was money—like that court case he had seen on TV where the guy didn’t think he had to pay his landlady rent because he was giving her advice on her love life, which he estimated would have cost her fifty thousand dollars if she had gone to a professional. Probably would have, too. 

He just had to keep his eyes on the road and remember that within an hour, he’d be sitting in Wakefield’s Pub with a few other degenerates as he swilled down some beers and realized that he had gotten away with it, the scare was over, and all these rambling-wreck thoughts of his were just the frantic expressions of guilt. After what he had done, there was no sense in lugging around an emotion like that because guilt was for the righteous, but for him, it would be too hypocritical, so he might as well forget about hell, God’s retribution, since he had escaped from the mirage of good and evil. He didn’t go to that ancient store anymore and buy the saintly trinkets that allowed you to enter paradise. And they say God is the truth! In reality, He was just a trickster, but He wasn’t the only trickster in this world. Just ask Carolyn. 

Murderers, he thought dispassionately, have to be at least a little bit hardhearted—just to preserve their sanity, which was important because otherwise they might murder again. And murdering people was not something that he wanted to turn into a habit. Once was enough—more, much more than enough. However, it was time to put the past behind him, accept the fact that he had made a few mistakes here and there, and move on. Maybe, after all, he was wrong, and God could still take a few swipes at him, but he was beginning to realize that his fears about what he had done to Carolyn were nothing more than a four-year-old being spooked by some fleeting shadows on the wall. That was really, he mused, a spectacular definition of God: The Shadow on the Wall. What was that test the psychologists used? The Rorschach test? The one where you looked at an ink blot (The Shadow!) and told your avaricious mentor what it all meant. What do you see, my son? It might be a ghost, it might be a goblin, it might be God. So, admittedly, he was a bit freaked out, but that was perfectly natural because the whole process of actually murdering someone was gross, nauseating, and utterly repellent, and that was the reason why his thoughts were so distraught or whatever other depressing word one wanted to put to his state of mind. 

The end of Hunter Creek Road did not live up to his perilous expectations and was merely a small parking area with a paved boat ramp that led down to the water. He turned around, and as he drove along, he peered out to the right to see if he could see any signs of his recent antisocial activities, when he suddenly remembered that Carolyn’s coat and the rest of her belongings were still in the back of the car. It didn’t make any difference, of course, because the car belonged to Carolyn, but he could feel a new fear creeping up on him—what if he were stopped by the cops at one of their stupid sobriety checkpoints, or if it was too late for that, maybe he’d be pulled over because no normal person would be trolling around these parts a couple of hours before dawn on Christmas morning. It would be difficult enough explaining why he was driving Carolyn’s car without having to account for all that junk of hers that he had dumped on the floor of the back seat as he searched for her gun. And what if the cops recorded the license and registration of the car? He could probably blow them off by saying that she was his girlfriend and he was too excited to sleep because he had bought her a diamond for Christmas, but once someone found Carolyn’s body, he’d be an absolute goner. He’d have to flee the state, and he had about enough money to buy a hundred-dollar bus ticket and some candy bars while he waited to depart for Timbuktu, Elba, and Points Beyond. He absolutely had to get back to town and ditch this four-wheeled albatross. 

But first, he’d clean out the car so that if the cops pulled him over, there wouldn’t be any embarrassing questions. The boys in blue would undoubtedly be curious to know why the woman who owned the vehicle had her wallet, ID, and forty-seven other things strewn around inside of it. No way! Once again, he slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the car. Walking to the passenger’s side, he used the flashlight to see if he was anywhere near where he had dumped her body—no sense leaving evidence all over the place. But he saw no sign of Carolyn, and opening the back door of the car, he began hurling everything he could find into the bushes beside the road. There wasn’t anything of his in here, was there? He stopped in alarm—real alarm—and tried to think. Anything from the house? No, there was nothing because after moving Carolyn’s car into the garage, he had just dragged her out through the kitchen and crammed her into the back seat. Right! The only thing he had brought—he actually went back into the house for it—was the flashlight. 

When he had finished tossing her things into the bushes, he shone the flashlight throughout the interior of the car—it was absolutely imperative he leave nothing behind that could be traced back to him. Thank God the government didn’t have everyone’s DNA in some gigantic reference encyclopedia for cops. Undoubtedly, he’d left a few hairs behind, but for the local cops that was like the unexpurgated version of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Undoubtedly, in a hundred years, the FBI would have special electron microscopes that could analyze the DNA footprints from your carbon dioxide, and they would then be able to prowl around people’s cars and extract the DNA from the windshield with an ultra-atomic solvent, which could only be made from dust that the space shuttle had collected on one of its erratic and scary trips to Mars. But for the dopey thugs who masqueraded as cops in Marshfield, the only thing they would be able to understand would be real evidence—like something that had fallen out of his pocket and had his name on it. 

He spent a final minute double and triple checking everything inside the car, including the floor under the driver’s seat. Here, he took the rubber mat out, and walking to the front of the car, he threw it with a scaling motion as far as he could into the blackness of the night. Once again, he had the impression that it had fallen a great distance downwards before striking the ground. Strange. It made him realize that he had no idea where he was and that he should get it into gear and leave this eerie tract of land, which might as well have been on the moon. No sense tempting fate.

CHAPTER TWO: THE GREAT EAGLE

After twenty years of marriage, Lorinda Rivers became involved in her first affair—a tacky, commonplace word to describe what was, for her, an intense emotional experience. Although Lorinda was a modern woman who felt that morality was the last bastion of the culturally challenged, she had always adhered to the sensible opinion that a single sexual liaison was more than enough for any sane person. But in the end, her principles proved to be no match for her desires, and she had fallen for Preston Ryder, who had transformed her husband into an irrelevant actor in a raunchy off-Broadway play. 

Realistically speaking, she was hardly married to Cliff anymore, except in the legal sense, but what difference did the law make unless one was filing for divorce, and she wasn’t about to do that, especially since Preston was married. However, she’d seen pictures of his wife—Ashley, poor thing, who looked like a scarecrow that had been left out for the winter in the wilds of the northern plains. Not much competition there! Puzzled, because Preston was one of the most attractive men she had ever met, Lorinda had managed to discover the reason for Preston’s marriage by using her considerable inquisitorial skills to subtly pry the relevant facts out of him. Apparently, the way his marriage worked, Ashley paid for almost all the necessities while he used his money to enhance the quality of their lives. That happy-sounding sentiment had turned out to be a cover story for Preston’s life of elegant self-indulgence where cocaine played a significant role. (Unfortunately, since Ashley was a straight arrow who disdained drugs, she was unable to partake of this particular enhancement.) Lorinda had also learned that shortly after his marriage, Preston had been forced to ditch his marijuana habit because Ashley had a nose like an Australian bloodhound, but coke was an entirely different story. Very sleek and discreet. Pop into the bathroom, do up a line or two, and nobody knew the difference. It was terribly pricy, but that was basically a good thing since it kept his consumption down to manageable levels. At least he wasn’t an addict. Ashley, Miss Mouse, occasionally wondered where all his money went, but he had become adept at the grand gesture, taking her out to the swankiest restaurant in town and spending two hundred dollars on her. Waste of money, but it kept her quiet. 

Despite these seemingly malicious sentiments, Lorinda couldn’t help but be amused by Preston’s lackadaisical honesty and relatively benign cynicism. He didn’t come across as someone who was hardhearted and mean but as a person who felt that existence was essentially a cosmic joke where people were placed in awkward positions that required them to constantly make compromises with the devil. People, observed Preston casually, would receive a lot more enjoyment from life if they didn’t take everything so seriously—as if God were looking over their shoulders and grading them rigorously on every thought, emotion, and whim that passed through their minds. That was just a lot of preposterous Calvinistic poppycock. Lorinda noticed that when Preston expressed an animosity towards something, he usually found a way to connect it to the Calvinists—those seventeenth-century zealots who made the Puritans look like prostitutes. 

Although his feelings about Ashley weren’t entirely inspiring to Lorinda, it was unique and pleasurable for her to be around someone who had plenty of money and spent it freely. Preston worked at the local newspaper, The Marshfield Post, where he had recently become the lead editor for local events, and his salary was almost sixty thousand a year. Even so, he confided to Lorinda, it was difficult for him to keep up with his credit card payments, but he wasn’t worried about it because he knew that Ashley, who was obsessed with their credit rating, would bail him out if he started to go under. 

Because of the nature of their jobs, Lorinda and Preston found it easy to sneak away for their secret afternoon trysts at the Wilder Inn in Brookshire, which was a small resort town located about ten miles north of Marshfield. Both of them still wanted to keep their relationship a secret; for Lorinda, she feared—dreaded was a better word—how Cliff would react to her transgression, and besides that, she felt Preston was more of a defiant fling than a serious romance. She was far too intelligent a woman to throw all her chips on the table with a guy whose basic attitude to life was so different than hers, but he was fun to be around—very urbane and lighthearted, with excellent manners and refined tastes. True, his relationship with Ashley was a bit depressing—not the fact he was married but the way he used his wife to finance his unfaithful life. And even though he justified this by alluding to the absurdity of our ancestors’ devotion to puritanical ethics and fire-breathing Gods, Lorinda couldn’t help but feel guilty when she realized that a room and meal at the Inn came to nearly two hundred dollars—and they were going there twice a week. That was another reason why Lorinda knew she could never become entangled with him in a formal arrangement like marriage. Because, very quickly, one of them would have to make an unacceptable compromise—either he’d have to pay his share of the bills, or Lorinda would simply become the new Ashley as Preston gallivanted around town and hit on another classy, dissatisfied woman. 

So, perhaps, this affair was a good thing for both of them because no lives would have to be wrecked. There would, for instance, be no necessity for the stereotyped heartrending scene when she dropped the rejection bomb on Cliff’s balding head and told him that he had been dumped into the rubbish bin of her life. It was hard to jazz that one up! Although her husband was a problem that would eventually have to be resolved, she felt—at least at the beginning of their affair—that Preston was just a temporary fix, a distraction from a relationship that had contracted a terminal illness and was clearly on its deathbed until she could figure out a way to pull the plug on the wretched, dying patient. 

Her marriage to Cliff had become so trite that all one had to do was walk into a book store and pick up one of the usual run-of-the-mill best sellers to find a longwinded, award-winning description of the catastrophe that had befallen them. There had, of course, been the first fantastic blast of passion when they met, the groping orgies of lust that began, innocently enough, in the back seat of his car, the defiance of her parents who thought he was very pedestrian, and finally, the shotgun wedding—when she was seventeen—to cover up the birth of Christine in 1981. After the unexpected and rather unpleasant arrival of Alison in 1984, their romance drifted past its zenith and began to fade away under the dual pressures of a monotonous family life and the incessant need for money. 

Cliff was definitely not a financial wizard or one who thought that work was anything more than a horrible chore imposed by the cruel necessities of life. Given his druthers, he liked to hang around with the boys and go fishing and hunting in the spring, summer, and fall, while in the winter, he amused himself with boisterous poker games that lasted until nearly dawn. Either way, those were the times when he could really let loose and indulge his favorite passion, which invariably came packaged in a can or a bottle. How, wondered Lorinda, had she ever become embroiled in this ridiculous late-night movie with the monstrously predictable plot that was required to degenerate through one sordid scene after another until even the waves of nonsensical, insulting, blah-blah-blah commercials seemed to be entertaining? It was almost enough to make her believe in predestination because when a person was living her predicament, was walking in her shoes, an affair became a virtual certainty. Flowers need water to grow, and a person needs love to breathe—or so say the faithless as they take their merry, God-forbidden plunge into sexual ecstasy. 

Originally, Cliff had been loving, but the relentless tedium of a forty-hour work week was not something he had ever negotiated successfully—or cheerfully. He had certainly tried to fulfill his role as the male provider, and there were times when he had held on to a job for a full year (eighteen months was his all-time record), but by the time Alison was a year old, Lorinda knew that for their little family to survive, she would have to find a career where money was the principal incentive. So, shortly after Alison’s birth, she went back to high school, received her diploma at the grand old age of twenty-one, and with the aid of a substantial scholarship, she was able to graduate from a local branch of the state college in three years. Two years later, in 1990, she passed the bar exam and opened a small practice on Wilshire Street in Marshfield. 

Although some people were unkind enough to call her avaricious and bloodthirsty, Lorinda had, by December of 2001, become quite successful. Besides being a public defender, she had developed an ever-increasing list of paying clients, and on a normal week, it was not unusual for her to be juggling the various demands of ten to fifteen clients. She was, however, not involved in that many trials—perhaps two dozen a year—because in Marshfield every attempt was made to plea-bargain the cases out, which saved the public money and shortened, sometimes considerably, the defendant’s sentence. 

Lorinda was a highly competitive woman who did not enjoy losing—that’s often said about lawyers, but in her case the word competitive could sometimes mean underhanded and hostile. For instance, if a trial was clearly spinning out of control and turning against her, she would sometimes deliberately insult the prosecutor to the point where the judge would threaten her with contempt. Lorinda knew that it served as an excellent distraction and that, even better, there might be one juror (and that’s all a defense attorney needed) who would sympathize with her heroic stand against the Man. Her epic battles with the lead prosecutor for the Marshfield area, Sandra Manahan, had become legendary, and there was hardly a person in town who was not familiar with Lorinda’s name. 

Besides the fact that she was an obviously intelligent and articulate woman, Lorinda had one other important quality that had been instrumental to her success—she was, quite simply, one of the most beautiful women in town. Even now, at the age of thirty-seven, she was a ravishing woman who had instantly mesmerized many a man. So enchanting—there wasn’t a line, not even a hint of a line, on her face. Perfect hair—perfect. Dark, almost black, just touching her shoulders. Cut in a big-city way that made her look savvy and sharp. Deep brown eyes. Light olive skin, probably some Mexican or Spanish blood in her. Maybe five foot five, excellent figure—but she was as beautiful as she was sexy. The sexy ones, you looked at their bodies, but the beautiful ones, you looked at their faces. 

There was just no doubt, Lorinda said to herself as she sat at her desk and gazed at a boring deposition, that she had outgrown Cliff. The backwoods guy with his comical hip boots and grungy long jacket. Beer bottles on the floor, country music about guys who had been betrayed, probably some Playboy magazines stashed away somewhere. If not for the kids, she probably would have left him years ago. Preston was, she soon realized, neither an accident nor a twist of fate. He was the manifestation of a real desire. So what if he was semi-addicted to coke? The guy had class and polish. Just the music he played on the disc player in his car—Chopin,  Mozart, and the rest of that spaced-out nineteenth-century crowd. And, in his own way, Preston was thoughtful—since he knew that Lorinda was wary of coke, he had bought some grass, and they would ride around smoking joints while they listened to the ethereal, intense music he enjoyed so much. Lorinda had never experienced anything like it. If she had tried to describe the sensation to anyone, she would have been afraid of sounding like an old aristocratic fogy who had just come back from the opera, but the daydreams she had—especially when the two of them would go down to the ocean late that fall and sit in the car listening to Chopin’s nocturnes while they watched the waves crash onto the beach. 

And he was so well-dressed, so fashionable, so clean. Soft-spoken and someone who obviously disliked arguments or contention. He didn’t pick on her or belittle her like her husband had been doing for the last few years. All Cliff wanted her to do was strap on a backpack, grab a gun, and go out hunting with him. As if it were some great, noble event when you shot a duck down. Or that gory scene last year when he had bagged a deer and came home lugging the carcass of a once beautiful animal. 

Lorinda could be confrontational or sly as the occasion demanded, and one day, she asked Preston what he thought about hunters. I wouldn’t have the things that they do lurking in my conscience, he had said. And then he told her about an old Taoist tale of a hunter who lies in wait for the great eagle—a huge, mythic bird, which probably represented a person’s strongest desire. And while the hunter was waiting, he saw an ant being devoured by a grasshopper, who then was devoured by a frog, who then was devoured by a hawk. And just then, the great eagle flew into view and came swooping down towards the hawk. Terrified, the hunter dropped his bow, screamed hysterically, and ran out of the woods. Because, said Preston with a smile, he realized that when you’re chasing something, you become completely oblivious to what might be chasing you. 

Ah! How true—and how very true that would become for all the principal figures in the Carolyn Andrews case.

CHAPTER THREE:

THE PERSON WHO DID THIS DESERVES THE DEATH PENALTY.

The Acting Chief of Police for Marshfield, Detective Craig Cassidy, was fifty-five years old; standing six feet two and slightly overweight at two hundred twenty pounds, he was friendly, gregarious, and surprisingly shrewd—at least by the standards of Marshfield, which had never been renowned for producing intellectual prodigies. Married, with three kids between eighteen and twenty-five, Craig had been a detective for fifteen years before being placed into the chief’s position when Wiley Snyder had retired in 1999. Originally, it was assumed that the town would soon hire someone who had experience managing people, but a serious—and mysterious—shortfall in the budget had caused the City Council to let the matter slide into a state of suspended animation. Craig had received a very small raise but was not permitted to hire anyone, including replacements for the cops who retired or left for more lucrative positions elsewhere. By December of 2001, the force had dropped from thirteen to ten, and Craig was beginning to feel that the station was taking on the air of the Alamo. His protestations to the council for reinforcements were met by severe foot-dragging, and he had retreated into his office, which he called the Igloo, with the cynical thought that if the town were hit by a wave of robberies, the situation would change abruptly in his favor. Easygoing and not at all ambitious, he dressed casually in an old sport coat and jeans, encouraged those around him to call him Craig, and ran the department in an exceptionally lax and friendly fashion. As far as he was concerned, he would always be Detective Cassidy because detectives actually, at least once in a while, had crimes to investigate, while the chief of police was just a public relations agent who spent the best hours of his day wrestling with paperwork, budgets, or the City Council. Besides, he joked to himself, he liked the cachet that the word detective gave off—as if he were some awesome brain that solved complicated mysteries. 

However, his job was hardly one that would have attracted the great Sherlock, and at this time of year, his most important task consisted of tracking down those unruly souls who had violated the numerous hunting laws that the state legislators thought were so important. Starting in October, at least twice a week, he would receive a call from Franky Hayes, the cranky geezer who served as the state’s game warden for the Marshfield area. Invariably, Franky would be all riled up over some trivial infraction; only the week before, he had barged into Craig’s office and told him that gunshots had been reported from somewhere northwest of Wilder Bay. Unfortunately, Franky had connections, and if Craig didn’t jump to attention when he hollered, the demented coot would come after him like he went after the wayward hunters. Craig had found that out more than once, much to his dismay. 

Marshfield was a quiet, gruff, well-mannered town of thirteen thousand people where most of the folks had at least a passing familiarity with each other. Drugs, outside of coffee and alcohol, were virtually unknown except for a caper or two from some of the kids at the high school who would occasionally be caught smoking marijuana behind the gymnasium. Horrors! 

Although there had been little snow, November and December of 2001 had been exceptionally cold. The 6th of December had brought December’s only heavy snowfall—a six-inch storm with howling gale-force winds, which was followed by a short warming spell that produced a cold, raw mist. Most of the snow had melted by the 10th when the wind shifted to the northwest and a truly frigid mass of artic air came sweeping down from the distant mountains. The high temperature for Marshfield on the 11th had been two degrees above zero, and that night it plunged to eighteen below. The week that followed put the issue of global warming on the burned-out back burner, and the subzero temperatures became the subject of lively, politically incorrect jokes from the locals who hung out at Bertha’s Coffee Shop and passed the time by mocking the fancy scientific ideas of the youngsters. Daytime highs rarely reached positive figures, and the nighttime lows were at least twenty degrees below zero. 

The severe weather culminated dramatically on the night of the 18th when the high for that day was eleven below, and the nighttime low, which smashed the all-time record set in 1884, was variously reported as being somewhere between thirty-five and fifty below, which latter was certainly an exaggeration. Winds were clocked as high as fifty-five miles per hour with the wind chill supposedly reaching eighty degrees below zero. 

After the 18th, the temperature slowly began to moderate, and by Christmas Day, the weather had become more seasonable with highs around twenty and lows just above zero. The skies were perpetually cloudy with an occasional windswept snow flurry but no significant storm, and life returned to normal. The Christmas shopping season, which had been constrained by the cold snap, sprang to life, and the huge Highgate Mall, located about three miles to the south of Marshfield, was jammed with impatient, voracious shoppers who were eager to spend their money on baubles and bubbles. 

Around noon on Thursday, December 27th, 2001, the phone on Craig’s desk rang; probably, he thought, Franky was chasing Bigfoot, who had become hopelessly confused by the modern mayhem and was stomping around the outskirts of town. 

Instead of Franky, however, he heard the voice of Gary Jenkins, a cop he had known for over twenty years. Craig! We just received a call from a jogger who says he found a body near the end of Hunter Creek Road. According to him, it‘s a woman, and she’s been shot to death. 

Hunter Creek Road? Where the devil is that? 

Gary laughed. I thought you knew everything, man. All you have to do is go north on Route 4 and take the second dirt road after the high school. Follow that for about a mile and a half, and you’ll come to a paved road—that’s East Park Street; turn right and in about a hundred yards, on the left, you’ll see a sign for the Wilder Bay Natural Preserve. Hunter Creek Road is just after that—I’ve started down it, but I think you better get out here right away. According to the dispatcher, the jogger guy is all freaked out, and I don’t have the slightest idea of what I’m going to find when I reach there. 

Twenty minutes later, Craig arrived to find Gary and another cop, Lisa Moore, standing near the body. Gary had already taken a statement from the jogger, whom he had met near the beginning of Hunter Creek Road. According to his driver’s license, he was a forty-five-year-old man named Wayne Oakes who lived near the entrance to the Preserve on East Park Street and often jogged down to the bay. Because of the holidays, he hadn’t used the road since the 23rd, and he was positive that the lady had not been there then as it was not something that you could possibly miss. After seeing her, he had used his cell phone to call 911 before running back down the road in a state of near panic. Since he had nothing further to add, Gary wrote down his address and phone number and sent him home. 

Craig stood there with Gary and Lisa beside the body, which was frozen solid with the left arm extended and slightly raised in an unnatural position. A murder victim presents a ghastly sight to the world they have just left, and this one was no exception as the top third of her head, on the right side, was almost entirely gone. Who would do such a thing to another human being? Who granted themselves that right? 

Curiously, although the woman was fully clothed, she was not wearing a coat. Craig also noticed the position of her head, which because of the contour of the bushes along the side of the road, was almost a foot lower than the rest of her body. Looking closer, he saw that she also had a bullet wound to her right shoulder. Had she been trying to run from her attacker? And maybe the shot to the shoulder had brought her down and left her defenseless? But where was she running to? Craig could see he was standing high above a narrow inlet of Wilder Bay; walking forward another ten feet, he saw that Hunter Creek Road, which must have been nearly a hundred years old, had been built, at least on this side, upon a sheer rock wall that was fifteen to twenty feet high. There was no railing at the top, but the wall had been built so that it extended another two feet above the ground that bordered the road. 

Lisa had brought a police dog, Pike, and she had already found, about a hundred yards further up the road, some possessions that seemed certain to belong to the victim. Quietly, they walked towards the bay until they came to a collection of items that were strewn haphazardly along the same side of the road as the victim’s body—the left hand side if one was driving towards the bay. It was obvious to them that what they found scattered through the brush belonged to a woman—they could see a comb, a mirror, lipstick, and a bit farther back a handbag and a long navy-blue coat. The ground here had the same low dense hardwood bushes as that at the murder site, and Craig zigzagged between them until he was within a foot of the precipice—here it was probably twenty-five feet to the ice below. 

Gary called to him; he had found a wallet, and inside was a driver’s license and pay stub. Her name was Carolyn Andrews—she was twenty-eight and lived at 64 Morgan Street. Worked at Anderson Jewelers in the Highgate Mall—full time, made ten dollars and fifty cents an hour. 

Any money in the wallet? asked Lisa. 

Twelve dollars. 

Craig was looking down at the iced-over waters of the inlet and wondering if anything connected to the crime was down there. Was it worth checking? The wind off the bay could have lifted something over the low wall in front of him, but by now, that same wind would have swept it far away. They had already found the victim’s name, address, and workplace. 

After walking back to Gary and Lisa, he pointed to where he had been and said, What do you two think? It’s possible that some evidence might have blown over the wall. 

Gary went over to the edge and said, If only we had brought the rope ladder, Craig. Besides, I doubt that the ice is frozen deep enough for us to walk on it. We’re too close to the open bay—don’t forget, that’s salt water. 

It’s not that hard to reach, said Lisa, who was obviously upset by the murder. My folks used to take me camping here; about a half mile back, there’s an old trail that goes down to the water. It’s just a swamp, actually—not very deep at all, and it’s undoubtedly frozen over. I’ll take Pike, and we’ll see if we can find anything. 

Go for it, said Craig. He knew the area should be checked, but there was no way he was taking his two hundred plus pounds out onto the ice. To keep Pike on the scent, Lisa took the empty handbag of the murdered woman and walked back towards her patrol car. 

Craig called the Brookshire Police Department and requested that the medical examiner and some evidence technicians be sent out to Hunter Creek Road. Because of the budget constraints in Marshfield, all the scientific aspects of serious crimes had been contracted out to Brookshire. 

Afterwards, he and Gary continued to sift through the evidence at their feet, and it was the inscribed photo of Carolyn with her mother that set him off. I’d like to get my hands on the person who did this, he said to Gary. 

A real knight in shining armor, isn’t he? said Gary sarcastically. "Take the gun out of his hand and all you’re going to find is a cocky, arrogant guy who thinks he’s God, but then if you place a gun to his head and threaten him, he’ll start shaking in his boots and pleading for mercy." 

That’s the trouble with the legal system, Gary. We’ll never be able to lay a hand on him, or we’ll be accused of brutality. Meanwhile, he’ll get a defense lawyer who’ll have no conscience at all and will do anything he can to put him back on the streets. 

And then, even if he gets convicted, he’ll probably only get fifteen years because he’ll have some big sob story about what a tough life he’s had. 

We have to catch him, Gary. Crimes like this cannot go unavenged. 

What if it were random, Craig? That’s what worries me. Maybe this guy only met her the night of the murder. 

I doubt it—I think this was personal; the gun shows premeditation because if it had been random or spontaneous, he would have strangled her. But even if you’re right and she didn’t know him, he probably lives near here since this is a road that very few people know about. First thing, when we get back to the station, is to run that jogger’s name through the database. 

He didn’t do it, said Gary. 

I know—it wouldn’t make any sense for him to discover the body and call us, but we can’t ignore anything. There aren’t that many houses around here, so we’re going to be able to give each and every occupant a good look. We can’t even ignore the fact that the murderer might have been a jealous woman. 

Gary laughed. I don’t think so, Craig. Women aren’t that vicious—this crime was committed by a man. Ten thousand to one. 

True—but one of them might be married to the murderer. Just remember, Gary, that we have to do everything by the book. The person who did this deserves the death penalty, and we know that his lawyer will pounce on technicalities like a shark swarms to blood. If this guy is ever set free because of some trivial mistake we’ve made, I might do something crazy. 

The two of them walked the quarter mile to the bay where there was a small unpaved parking lot. If the murder was preceded by a rape, Craig thought that it would have occurred here. The wind was blowing in strongly from the distant ocean, and they realized that this area, where the ground was clear and flat, would not have held any evidence unless it was as heavy as a brick. There were some tire tracks, but they looked old and had probably been frozen into the earth during the cold wave. To the right of where they were standing, the land dropped off fairly sharply, and they could see a frozen Hunter Creek as it made its way into the bay. Bleak, windswept, barren—there was nothing here. 

As they were about halfway back, they heard some loud, sharp, excited whistles from below. It must be Lisa! Running down the road, they could tell that she was down by where Carolyn’s body had been found. Craig hoped that she hadn’t fallen through the ice. 

Gary was slightly ahead of him and was the first to spot her. Oh man, Craig heard him say. Wait until you see what she has in her hand. 

Craig looked down to see Lisa waving a gun in the air. Pay dirt!

CHAPTER FOUR: INTO THE WHIRLWIND

In September, when Lorinda first began to spend time with Preston, she had been hesitant to commit herself sexually. Although she was flattered by his attention and generosity, her instinct was to avoid being swept away by what was probably a fleeting passion. However, by the middle of October, her mind became preoccupied by a longing to become intimate with him—but no, she shouldn’t. Lorinda could still remember the time, during her first pregnancy, when she had suffered through a month of anguish because of an irrational fear that Cliff was having an affair. Did she really want to be the one to inflict that kind of pain on someone else? 

Lorinda also realized that she would be extremely embarrassed if either one of her daughters discovered that she had been unfaithful to their father. Her eldest, Christine, was now twenty and in her junior year at the state college in Evansville. Somewhat plain, but beautiful in an angelic way, Christine still attended church and believed that a woman should not have sexual relations with a man until after they were married. Very archaic! Her other daughter, Alison, a senior in high school, was a straight A student who invariably kept to herself and spent all her free time on the internet. 

Finally, and not to be forgotten, there was her professional status to consider. Obviously, an affair with Preston Ryder could be seen as an attempt to influence the Marshfield Post, and while it wasn’t as bad as consorting with a judge, it would do nothing to enhance her reputation—especially in Marshfield, which was a conservative, God-fearing town. There was something about the concept of an affair that bothered people, including her. Inevitably, when one broke the vows of marriage, it created an image in another person’s mind of a sleazy person who couldn’t face up to reality and, worse yet, couldn’t be trusted. That’s why it was called cheating. And, speaking of reality, how many affairs ever became anything more than a heartache? Although the movies were a highly dubious standard to judge one’s conduct by, they served as a grim warning to the sexual wanderer because every time a person committed adultery on the big screen, something terrible happened to them. Lorinda felt certain that there must be millions of unfaithful people who were suffering no ill effects from their sexual transgressions, but as might be expected, these triumphs of the heart (or flesh) weren’t talked about in polite society. For some reason, when a person broke free from an abusive relationship everyone applauded, but when that same person escaped from a loveless marriage, everyone cursed. Logically, it didn’t make sense. No wonder Preston always complained about the Calvinists! 

Although she had known Preston casually in his role as a reporter, her first real contact with him had occurred the Friday after Labor Day at a cocktail party hosted by the Marshfield Post. Lorinda had gone there hoping to find Bill Allen, who was the lead prosecutor in the Jamie Peters’ case—a twenty-year-old thug from a rich family whom she was defending for armed robbery and attempted kidnapping. Lorinda was hoping that after a few drinks, Bill might be susceptible to a deal, but before she could find him, she ran into Preston, who began talking to her in an amiable and chatty way. 

Well, Lorinda, he said with a twinkle in his eye, I’ll be interested to see what you can do for Jamie Peters. I’m surprised that you decided to defend him. 

Lorinda assumed he was fishing for information and shot the ball back into his court. Why’s that, Mr. Ryder? 

Mr. Ryder? I hope you’re not always this formal, Ms. Rivers. 

Hardly—but when I’m around the press, I have to assume that anything I say could find its way into the Post. 

I swear to you, he said with a laugh as he held up his right hand in a mock oath, that our conversation is off the record. In fact, I find my job tedious, and I apologize for even mentioning Jamie. 

I have a hard time trusting reporters, Mr. Ryder. 

Have I ever written anything that’s bothered you? he said, with a quizzical expression. 

No...not that I can think of, but you probably will one of these days. 

He laughed in a friendly way. I think Sandra Manahan has a lot more to worry about on that score. If I wasn’t afraid that she’d sue me, I’d suggest that she make an appointment with a psychotherapist for some long-term therapy. 

This was music to warm Lorinda’s heart, and she felt it might be best to keep the conversation going. So how does it work at the Post, Preston? Will you be writing the articles about the Peters’ trial? 

He gazed at her shrewdly for a moment before he said, Perhaps. It depends on my mood—now that I’m in charge of the local news, I can write the story myself or pawn it off on somebody else. How about if I come by your office on Monday afternoon, and we can talk more about it then? I really know next to nothing about the case. 

They had spent over an hour together on Monday, and after he left, Lorinda felt as if she had been placed under a trance. He was just so attractive to her—six feet tall, thin but not gaunt, sandy-blond hair that fell almost to his shoulders, a captivating smile, a leisurely attitude. Like a movie star. Fluent, almost glib, with a wonderful vocabulary—not one swear word in ninety minutes, which broke her husband’s record by about eighty-nine minutes and forty seconds. Brown loafers, tan chinos, a white shirt, and an expensive grey sport jacket. He had also made it clear that he liked her—and not just as a lawyer. When it came to serving out sexual flattery, he phrased his words carefully and tactfully. Under the guise of praising her performance in the courtroom, he told her that he had long thought her the best attorney in Marshfield and that he didn’t understand how a jury could possibly convict a person who had such a beautiful (this word he accentuated with a pleasant wink) lawyer. 

Preston knew Lorinda was married, but he was fascinated by her and couldn’t leave until