EXCERPT FROM THUNDER MOON

Jermaine Coltes dropped by Steve Samples’ upscale corporate house in High Shoals around five in the morning, two days after the cookout at Kent Kramer’s house, to pick him up for the drive to Newberry for training camp.

He hadn’t been inside the house fifteen seconds before he lurched out the back door and vomited in the pool.

When his head cleared, he yanked out his cell phone and called 911.

I was sound asleep when my telephone jangled next to the bed. In a second, I sat bolt upright. Years of training had left me with an acute awareness of what it means when the telephone rings before daylight. I glanced at the clock.

“Chief Wheeler,” I said, after picking up the receiver.

“This is Sheila, the dispatcher at the Sheriff’s Department in Morgan.”

“What’s up, Sheila?”

“We have a 911 call. Sheriff Webb said we need to bounce it back your way. The caller says some guy’s been murdered. Here’s the address.”

I wrote it down, and switched the receiver to my other hand while I slipped my watch over my wrist one-handed.

“Okay, go ahead and call the ambulance. Tell Don to send some CSIs and a few deputies to handle crowd control. I’ll be at the scene before they get there, coming from Morgan. Thanks for the heads-up.”

By now, Donna was awake, but she hadn’t sat up. I looked back at her. She was staring at me from her pillow.

“I have to go,” I said. “Dispatcher in Morgan says there’s been a murder.”

“In Prosperity?” she said. “That makes two in one year.”

“Town’s going all to hell,” I said.

I stood, and began to dress in a freshly cleaned and pressed blouse and uniform pants.

“You’ll be careful,” she said.

I never had understood why women said that. It wasn’t as if I were headed into battle. Something about the presence of death, I suppose.

“I’ll be extra careful. You go back to sleep. I’ll probably be most of the day. We’ll get together for dinner tonight, okay?”

She murmured something that might have been agreement, but I could tell she was already halfway back to sleep.

* * * * *

The house Kent Kramer had provided for Steve Samples was three rows over in the High Shoals development, on a street named Appaloosa Trail. It was a silly name for a street in Prosperity, but I guess after a while you start to run out of ideas.

I had my lights and siren blaring even before I left my driveway, and I could see houselights flicker on in my wake as I turned onto Ebenezer Church Road, roared past Kent’s house, and jerked the cruiser around the next corner.

I saw Jermaine Coltes waving for me at the end of Samples’ driveway as soon as I turned onto Appaloosa Trail. I pulled into the drive and silenced the siren, but left the bubbletop twirling.

“It’s awful,” Coltes said, as I climbed out of the cruiser. “All that blood.”

“Slow down,” I said. “Tell me what’s happened.”

Coltes was on the verge of passing out from hyperventilation. I sat him down on the curb and waited for him to get his breath.

“I came by to pick Stevie up for training camp,” he said. “We were supposed to be back in Newberry by seven-thirty. When I went inside… Jesus, Chief, it’s like somebody’s been slaughtering cattle in there.”

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll take a look in a second. How’d you get inside?”

“Stevie gave me a key. He’s a real sound sleeper. Sometimes he doesn’t hear the clock, or even the telephone. He said I should come in and make sure he’s awake, and if he isn’t I ought to yank him out of bed.”

“I see. And when you went inside you found… what?”

“There’s a body in there,” Coltes said. “It might be Stevie. I couldn’t tell. It has to be him, though, right? I mean, who else would be in there?”

Far in the distance, I could hear the first faint wails of the ambulance from Morgan, and I thought I could make out the higher-pitched, faster-paced woops of the deputies’ squad cars.

“You stay here,” I said. “I’m going to take a look. The rescue squad and some sheriff’s deputies will be here in just a few minutes. I’ll be right back.”

I left him shivering on the curbside, and walked up to the front door. It was unlocked. I decided Coltes had opened it himself, since he hadn’t said anything about it being unlocked when he arrived.

I pulled out my nightstick and pushed the door open with it. My nose crinkled immediately, some kind of instinctive reflex to the faint odor of iron and organic chemicals that had suffused themselves into the air. I immediately regretted knowing that all smells are caused by aerosol particles, which meant I was huffing up parts of whatever body lay beyond the vestibule.

I hit every light switch I could find with the stick. In stages, the house went from murky and shadowed to nearly blinding light.

The first thing I saw was a long ochre smear of blood along one wall of the living room, looking as if someone had dragged the entire torso of a gutted deer along it. I glanced at the floor, to make certain I wasn’t tramping through any pools of blood there. The CSI team from Morgan would kick my ass if I screwed up their crime scene.

I found the nude body on the other side of the living room, sprawled on the floor of the kitchen. A heavy steel meat cleaver was buried by its point in the heart pine floor. I could make out the torso, legs, and a couple of arms, but the head had been worked over with the meat cleaver to the point that it was nothing but ragged meat and splintered bone. Blood spatters a foot wide arced up the side of the refrigerator and across the cabinets. The body laid face-down. I couldn’t tell for certain that it was Steve Samples, but the shoulders were broad, and the neck was thick, the way I recalled Samples to look at Kent Kramer’s. The rest it was impossible to distinguish as human, let alone Samples.

Out front, I could hear the sirens doused as the first of the emergency vehicles arrived. I slowly backed out the way I had come, careful not to disturb the site any more than I already had. I met the EMTs at the front door.

“Nothing for you to do in there,” I said. “I’m cordoning off the scene. You guys hang loose and wait until I release you. Got it?”

The first of the paramedics nodded solemnly.

“What happened?” he asked.

I glanced back through the foyer at the smears of blood on the living room walls. It was the kind of thing that led me to wonder whether every two-legged creature really had shared a common ancestor.

“Good question,” I said.

* * * * *

Clark Ulrich and Sharon Counts, two Sheriff’s Department CSI’s who had worked the Gypsy Camarena murder the previous fall, arrived five minutes later. Ulrich was tall and broad and blond, with a round moon face and open blue eyes. Counts was his physical antithesis, a wiry, razor-faced woman with straight mousy hair and the evidence of way too much sun as a youth etching her prematurely aging features. Her eyes always looked distant and empty. I suspected she carried two or three hard lives in her past, and she wasn’t even middle-aged yet. I think I’d heard her say ten words in the last year. All of them had been laced with regret.

“I went in just long enough to establish that the guy was dead,” I said. “I tried not to disturb any evidence. You guys might want to wear masks. I have a feeling there’s still a lot of him floating around in the air.”

“Thanks, Chief,” Ulrich said, before they waded in. As I had come to expect, Sharon Counts didn’t say anything.

Five minutes later, Ulrich returned to the front door.

“You can send the Rescue Squad boys home,” he said. “We’re going to be a while. I’ll get the Sheriff’s Department’s meat wagon here to take… that stuff to the M.E.’s office.”

The sun was just peeking over the tops of the pine forest surrounding Appaloosa Trail, hard and red and foreboding. Drawn by the lights and the sirens, most of the neighborhood lingered on porches and in driveways, waiting for a glimpse of the tragedy that had befallen one of their own. A few of the more fearless ventured up the street toward Samples’ driveway.

I turned to one of the deputies who had been dispatched from Morgan.

“This is a crime scene, gentlemen,” I said. “I want to cordon off the entire yard, from the curb all the way back to the rear property line. I want these people, except for the immediate next-door neighbors, a hundred feet away at all times.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and started directing his partners.

Jermaine Coltes remained seated on the curb.

“Let’s go sit in my car,” I said.

He followed me to the cruiser. I opened the passenger side door and held it for him as he slid in, his body almost leaden. The car rocked slightly over to the right under his considerable weight. Like many football stars, Coltes was beast.

After I sat behind the wheel, I pulled out my aluminum duty folder, turned to a fresh page in the legal pad, and took out a pen.

“Tell me from the very beginning,” I said.

“Like I said, we were supposed to be at the training camp at Newberry College by seven-thirty. Normally, we would’ve been there already, but Steve and I had permission to stay off campus last night on account of we were doing a publicity thing over in Pooler.”

“Where was this publicity thing?”

“Why? Is it important?”

“Not knowing is important.”

“It was at the River City Athletic Club. It was their annual awards dinner for the high school standouts.”

I wrote it down.

“Did Samples talk with anyone in particular there? I mean, to say more than passing the time of day?”

“Jeez, Chief, I don’t know. Once we got there, we kind of got taken in different directions. They even sat us at different tables for the dinner.”

“Did Samples drink?”

“Just a beer. Come to think of it, it was probably an alcohol-free beer. He said something about not wanting to take the edge off.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“You know. He hasn’t made the team yet. He’s still in competition for his position. He didn’t want to go groggy or anything, so he didn’t drink alcohol.”

“What about you? Did you drink?”

“Just a beer. Only one.”

“How did you and Steve get back and forth from the dinner?”

“They sent us a limo.”

“What time did this limo bring you back?”

“I’m not sure. Not later than midnight, I know that.”

I scribbled some notes down, slowly allowing a timeline to begin forming in my mind.

“Okay,” I said, “So you got up this morning around… what?”

“Four o’clock. I set my clock for that, and I didn’t hit the snooze.”

“Must have been tough to hold yourself back at four a.m.”

“Not so hard. You get used to early hours in training camp. I got up, took a shower, and got dressed.”

“You didn’t call Samples before coming over? Tell him you were on your way?”

“No. I had a key. He probably wouldn’t have answered the phone anyway.”

“Why’s that?”

He looked over at me, momentarily panic-stricken.

“No. Chief, I don’t mean it that way.”

“What way?”

“I don’t mean he wouldn’t have answered the phone on account of being dead or anything. I mean he wouldn’t have answered the phone because he’s such a sound sleeper.”

“Relax,” I said. “I’m not accusing anyone of anything right now. I’m just trying to pull all the information together that I can while everything’s still fresh.”

“You saw that body in there?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes I did.”

“You think that was Stevie Samples?”

“I think it probably was. I didn’t see his face though.”

“Who would do something like that to another person? He was hacked up like barbeque pork.”

“How long were you inside the house?”

“Maybe fifteen seconds. I’m afraid I got… you know. Sick.”

“Where?”

“In the pool. I saw that body in the kitchen, and I just felt my stomach turn flat over. I raced out the back door to the pool to get my breath, but it was too late. There went my breakfast.”

“In the pool.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t like I had a lot of time to think about it, Chief.”

“So you got back around midnight, and five hours later you arrived here and found Samples chopped up.”

“That’s right.”

“Did Samples say anything about expecting visitors last night?”

“Not a word.”

“So you were the last person to see him alive.”

“You mean besides whoever killed him.”

I didn’t say anything.

Coltes eyes grew wide.

“Chief. You don’t think I’m a suspect?”

“Right now, everyone’s a suspect except for me. You could sure make my job a lot easier if you’d confess or something.”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“I was only half joking.”

Someone knocked on my window. I turned my head to find Kent Kramer standing by the car. I cranked the window down.

“This is a crime scene, Kent. Please step behind the yellow tape.”

“I own this house, Judd,” Kent said. “I need to know what’s happening. Why’s Jermaine in the car with you?”

“Please,” I said, trying to put a little more steel in my voice. “Step behind the yellow tape. I’m conducting an investigation, and I don’t have time to talk right now.”

“Hold on, Ju…” Kent started. I suppose he said some more, but I couldn’t hear it because I’d cranked the window back up.

“You can piss in his grits like that?” Coltes asked.

“Yes”.

“He don’t fire you or nothing?”

“He can’t fire me. I work for the Town Council. Who did Samples hang out with here in town? I mean, besides you?”

Coltes scratched his head.

“I don’t know. He was so busy with training camp, trying to make the team, he didn’t have a lot of time to get to know people. Most of the time, we stay in the dorms down at the college in Newberry.”

I thought for a second.

“Samples is a cornerback, right?”

“That’s right. He can also play free safety, but he isn’t competing for that position on the team.”

“Who is his primary competitor for the position at cornerback?”

“What? You think he might have been killed by one of the other players?”

“I don’t know that he’s dead, truth be told. All I saw was a lot of meat and blood. If that is Samples in there, though, I’d imagine there are at least a couple of cornerbacks in Newberry who just got bumped up the cut list.”

Coltes shook his head.

“I don’t see it. Samples was a second round pick. By that point the teams aren’t dicking over Upland Trophy winners. At best, he was going to be third string this year. Coach likes to develop his players, and Ryan Kiper is still in good shape.”

Ryan Kiper was the Pythons’ star defensive player. He was famous for his vertical leap, which had allowed him to lead the league in interceptions the previous season.

“So Kiper’s going to be first string again this year.”

“Yeah, and second string is pretty secure, too. That’s what I meant. At best, Stevie would have been third string.”

“So I want to look at the fourth and fifth best cornerbacks.”

“I don’t think so. The organization keeps a pretty tight lid on training camp. Once you arrive on campus, you’re pretty much there until you get cut, or the team needs you to make an appearance somewhere.”

“Like the one you and Samples made last night.”

“That’s right.”

“Okay. I’ll check with the team officials, see if any other players were allowed off campus last night. Have you called to let the team know you won’t be there?”

“Yeah. I called while the crime scene folks were inside the house.”

“You didn’t tell them Samples was murdered, did you?” I asked.

“Not exactly. I told them someone had been killed at his house.”

“Who did you talk to?”

“Harve Lucanian. He’s the offensive coordinator.”

“I know. Give me his telephone number.”

“Why?”

“I need to ask him to keep this under his hat until we know what’s going on.”

Coltes recited Lucanian’s number, and I wrote it down.

“So, besides you, Samples didn’t have any friends here in Prosperity?”

“Well…”

“What?”

“He knew the Kramers, of course. Mr. Kramer is putting him up while he’s in training camp.”

“Ah ha,” I said.

“What?”

“Cop talk. That’ll be all for now, Mr. Coltes.”

“Please, call me Jermaine.”

“Maybe after this whole thing is over. If you’d like to step out of the car, I think I can make time now for Mr. Mayor.”

* * * * *

“That’s twice in one week you’ve blown me off, Judd,” Kent complained as he closed the car door. “I can’t say I like it.”

“You still don’t get it,” I said. “When I’m interviewing a witness, you don’t figure in the picture, unless you’re the witness. Which brings us to our current conversation.”

“What?”

“Here’s what I know right now. Someone was murdered in that house last night. The hot money says it was Steve Samples.”

For a second, I thought Kent was going to cry.

“What happened?” he asked, after a few seconds.

“It’s too early to say. According to Jermaine Coltes, Samples didn’t know many people here in Prosperity. He did know you. When was the last time you spoke with Samples?”

“Yesterday. Why?”

“What was the nature of the conversation?”

“He dropped by the house for a few minutes. He was out running.”

“What time was this?”

“I don’t know. Around five. I had just gotten home.”

“Who else was at your house at the time?”

“Crystal and Seth. Why?”

“Just being complete. What did you and Samples discuss?”

“There was a problem with the house. Nothing major. He had seen a water spot on one of the upstairs ceilings. He wanted to let me know so I could have it fixed.”

“A water spot?”

“It’s a new house. It happens. When they nail the roofing shingles in place, sometimes you get a leak. I told him I’d take care of it.”

“Did he talk with Crystal or Seth?”

“I don’t know. I excused myself for a few minutes. He might have talked with them then.”

“Why’d you excuse yourself?”

Kent just looked at me.

“Why’d you…” I repeated.

“To go to the bathroom, okay?” he said, irritated.

“For a few minutes.”

Again the stare.

“All right,” he said at last. “I’m having a little… trouble. You know. Prostate.”

I nodded, and made a note.

“You’re not putting that in a report, are you?”

“Just a note,” I said. “Might be important, might not.”

“Now how in hell could something like that be important in a murder investigation?” he blurted.

“Can’t say,” I said. “But it would sure be embarrassing if I ignored it and found out later it was a clue. I’m going to need to talk with Crystal and Seth.”