The Michigan Murders by Edward Keyes

Author:Edward Keyes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504025591
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Less than ten minutes after the doctor’s telephone call, Sheriff Harvey arrived alone in an unmarked car. He had instructed Corporal Ritter to put out no bulletin, say nothing to anyone, until he had personally verified the report and phoned in. Harvey was working on an idea.

The Stonemans, recovering from their initial shock, were waiting for him at the site. It was a hilly, wooded hermitage of secluded custom-built homes, just off Huron River Drive. The Stone-mans’ house, a few hundred feet up an unpaved access lane called Riverside Drive, overlooked a thickly overgrown gully. The couple, halfway up Riverside, motioned the sheriff toward the gully. From the side of the road, Harvey peered over the edge and grimaced. The lifeless form lay about twenty feet down the embankment, sprawled on its belly in shrubbery. Harvey asked the Stone-mans if he could use their telephone.

The first person Harvey contacted was Dr. Craig Barlow, the deputy county medical examiner. Next, Booker Williams at the prosecutor’s office, to whom he spoke in lowered, urgent tones. Finally, Harvey rang his own headquarters and got Lieutenant Stan Bordine.

“Stan,” he said after filling him in, “we’re going with Operation Stakeout. We need just a few people—ours, preferably. If we need more, see if John Hayes can give us some campus guys. Now look: I want the lid on this thing. No radio dispatches—nothing. Tell only those you have to, and tell them this is top secret. When everything’s in the works, get out here yourself—I want you in charge. Get somebody solid to fill in for you. How about Mulholland—is he off the goddamned mind reader yet?… Okay, as soon as he’s clear, have him and Fuller stand by at the crime center. It could be a long night.…”

Harvey sat back when he’d finished and regarded the Stone-mans, who fidgeted across the living room trying hard to appear not to have overheard anything. He got up and walked over to them.

“Folks,” he began with a tight smile, “we’re going to need your cooperation. For the time being, we’re not going to publicize finding that poor girl. We’re going to try something.…”

The first to respond to Sheriff Harvey’s summons was the deputy medical examiner. Clambering down into the gully, black bag in hand, Dr. Barlow went over the corpse as thoroughly as possible without moving it, that grisly task being reserved to the forensic experts from the police lab. The chief responsibility of the medical examiner in such a circumstance was to verify death, place a probable time, ascribe the likely cause, and note any attendant or contributory factors that might be evident.

From the victim’s physical appearance—the body was completely nude except for brown leather-strapped sandals still on the feet—Barlow put the young woman’s age in the late teens, twenty at the most. He estimated that she’d been dead three days or more: decomposition had begun, with discoloration and some putrefaction of skin and tissues, but rigor mortis was no longer present. She had not

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.