The Judas Murders by Ken Oder

Author:Ken Oder [Oder, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781939889959
Publisher: SkipJack Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Naked Corpse

March 6, 1967, Monday afternoon

Cole and Mabel sat at Cole’s desk after Rachel and Reba left his office. Cole wiped the sweat off his face with a kerchief. “I’d give my badge to catch the man with the leather mask.”

Mabel dabbed her own flushed brow with a tissue. “Reba gave us a slim lead, you know.”

“The wound.”

She nodded. “Thirty years ago the state didn’t require a doctor to report a gunshot wound to the authorities, but if we’re lucky, the man went to Dolley Madison. They keep records going back decades. Down in some dank basement archive there may be a cardboard box containing the name of a patient the hospital treated for a small-caliber gunshot wound between April one and May thirty, 1937.”

“See what you can find.”

“Will do.” She looked over her notes. “One thing Reba said puzzles me. She claimed Betty Lou hated their mother.”

“That’s consistent with what I’ve learned. Betty Lou told Elwood Critzer she was glad Hazel died, and Reverend Chatham says she blamed her mother for ruining her life.”

Mabel looked perplexed. She went to the file cabinets, withdrew a file, and placed it on Cole’s desk. It was labeled “Emley, Hazel.”

“Read this while I type up my notes of the meeting with Reba.” Mabel left the room.

Since Hazel Emley died of natural causes, the sheriff’s office conducted no investigation of her death and the file contained only three documents: notes from dispatch about the discovery of Hazel’s body, Deputy Karson Deford’s report about his response to dispatch’s call, and a copy of the death certificate.

The notes from dispatch indicated that Hazel’s neighbor, Jerry Caldwell, reported the discovery of her body at 11:15 p.m., December 25, 1966. The dispatcher sent Karson Deford to Hazel’s home at 43 Blackberry Road in Saddleback Cove and called the rescue squad and the medical examiner, Randy Hotchkiss.

Karson Deford was in his midforties, six foot five, lean, with a long, thin face, fierce black eyes, and a complexion the color of pecan shells. He was the only black man on the force. Five years ago, he resigned from his twenty-year position as a Virginia state trooper and accepted Cole’s offer of a job as a county deputy to be closer to home after his wife suffered a spinal injury that rendered her a paraplegic. He was a good officer, calm under fire, quiet, but forceful.

Cole turned to Karson’s report about Hazel Emley’s death. “Arrived at 43 Blackberry Rd at 11:45 p.m. Jerry Caldwell and Elizabeth Louise Mundy, Hazel Emley’s daughter, met me at the door.” Cole paused. That was the detail about Hazel’s death he hadn’t been able to recall. Betty Lou’s presence at her mother’s house had seemed insignificant when he scanned Karson’s report in December and he had forgotten it, but it took on new meaning in light of Betty Lou’s comments to Elwood. If she hated her mother, what was she doing at her house on Christmas night? Mabel’s photographic memory had recalled the detail and noticed the inconsistency.

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