Time Flies Ch. 02

This story is part of an ongoing series. The chronological order of my stories is listed in WifeWatchman's biography.

Feedback and constructive criticism is very much appreciated, and I encourage feedback for ideas.

This story contains graphic scenes, language and actions that might be extremely offensive to some people. These scenes, words and actions are used only for the literary purposes of this story. The author does not condone murder, racism, racial language, violence, rape or violence against women, and any depictions of any of these in this story should not be construed as acceptance of the above.

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Part 7 - The Crime Scene

Wednesday, January 8th. I was driving down Riverside Drive to the scene of the recently called-in crime.

"Okay, Carole," I said, "these are the roooools. You have to be quiet, don't touch anything, and you have to stay out of the way of the Detectives and Crime Scene people doing their jobs. If you don't, I'll make you sit in this car, under guard. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Daddy." Carole said, her excitement not dampened at all by my directives.

Riverside Drive was blocked off at the turn to MLK Jr. Drive, but of course I was waved through. When we got to the scene, I very quickly pulled up a form on my mobile computer and filled it in, then printed it. My Police SUV has a mobile printer in it. It is good to be the Police Commander.

I then got out and came around and opened the door for Carole, and she hopped out. We walked up to the marked off crime scene. I said to Patrolman Culver "Troy, Police Commander, Badge No. 1640. And this is Troy, Honorary Auxiliary Detective, Badge No. 1642." Yes, that form I filled out made Carole an Honorary Auxiliary Detective. My mother was Badge No. 1641, so Carole got 1642... and it would be her badge number for decades to come.

"Yes sir." said Culver. "Uh, sir, with respect, there's a dead body on the scene..."

"... and Auxiliary Detective Troy has been to a crime scene and seen a dead body before." I replied. (Author's note: 'Return to Apple Grove', Ch. 01.)

"Yes sir." said Culver, making the proper notations on his log.

South of the road was farm fields, laying fallow in the low winter sun. They would be snow-covered by tomorrow morning, I thought, making the quick processing of this crime scene a priority. The railroad line also turned east and crossed the River within sight of the road.

North of the road were buildings, mostly metal buildings with auto body shops, manufacturing, shipping, and warehousing in them. The 'metal junkyard', where cars and other large objects were shredded into small pieces by the huge shredding machinery was just north of this first line of buildings, and the red building where I'd been handcuffed to the nuclear weapon in the 'EMPTY QUIVER' crisis was just north of that. (Author's note: 'The Nuclear Option'.)

Thirty feet south of the east-west Depot Street road that we were on was the body of a man lying on his left side. He was white, in his 40s, with longish brown hair around a bald spot on top of his head. He was wearing a light gray windbreaker jacket, black pants, black socks, and black shoes that were made for businessmen to wear indoors, and not really for the 'working class', especially anyone who worked outdoors any length of time. The shirt under his jacket was plaid, red with white and black criss-cross stripes, but soaked with blood.

Everyone was looking strangely at Carole as I told her to stay between the pink flags as we walked up towards the body.

"Hello, Commander. Hello, Carole!" said Lieutenant Rudistan with a jovial smile on his face.

"Hello, Mr. Rood-i-stan." said Carole.

"Hello, Crowbar." said Sheriff Griswold as he knelt at the head end of the deceased. "Brought your new Detective, did you?"

"Yes sir." I said. "You caught me babysitting today. I need you to sign this." The Sheriff took the document and perused it, then grunted. He took off his latex gloves, took the ink pen from my hand, and signed it. It required two signatures, and with mine and the Sheriff's now affixed, Carole was officially a member of the Town & County Police Force... sorta.

"All right, Detective Troy." said the Sheriff as Carole stood next to him. "Let me explain how this works. You can examine the body from head-to-toe or from toe-to-head. Either way is fine, but decide now which way you are going to do it, and do it that way every time, from now on, for the rest of your Police career."

"Yes sir." said Carole. "I'll do it toe-to-head, since there might be im-por-tant cluuues on his shoes and pants." A lot of people smiled at that, and the Sheriff's mustaches twitched merrily.

As the Sheriff instructed Crime Lab people and our new Junior Detective on things he was seeing, I observed that Carole was beginning to fidget. I said "You can speak, Carole. What is it?"

"Daddy," Carole said, "what time is it?"

"5:40pm." said Lt. Rudistan, glancing at his Police iPhone.

Carole said "The clock on this guy's arm isn't right. It's the wrong time."

We looked at the wristwatch, which had analog hands and showed 5:00 even.

"Is it running?" someone asked. "Maybe the battery died."

"It doesn't have a second hand." I said. Carole immediately put her head down, her ear to the wristwatch, shocking everyone.

"It's humming." Carole said.

"And it now says 5:01." I said, so it's running. "That was a good observation, Carole. Anything else?"

"How did he die?" asked Carole. "He didn't bleed a lot."

"Gunshot wounds to the chest." said a CSI technician. "Looks like a double tap. And she's right: his flannel shirt soaked up a lot of blood in the chest area, but there should be a lot more blood if he died here."

"No blood trails running up to here, either, sir." said Detective Teddy Parker, who'd been looking around the field as well as examining what the drone flying around was seeing. "And no footprints from the road to here. The ground's really hard from the freezing weather we've been having."

"I agree he was shot elsewhere and moved." I said. "But once his heart stopped, he wouldn't bleed a lot. So he could've been dumped on his back in the trunk of a car or the bed of a truck, brought here, and dumped on his side."

"I agree with that." growled Sheriff Griswold. The Crime Lab techs also agreed.

"Any ID on him?" I asked, and was told that there had been no ID nor wallet found.

"I'll take fingerprints and send them in after the scene is processed." said a CSI tech.

"Anybody want to see anything else?" I asked. When no one said anything, I said "Go ahead and take those prints now." As the tech did so, I turned to Theo Washington, who had come here with Parker and said "I'm sure you've already called Intel to get any video of this area?"

"Yes sir, first thing." said Theo...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Laura texted me that she was home, so after wrapping up at the crime scene, I took Carole home. Yep, dinner was going to be 'mighty exciting' tonight... but I wasn't going to be there for it.

It was 6:20pm when I returned to Headquarters. I processed Carole's Auxiliary Police form, then went to MCD. Theo Washington, Julia Rodriguez, and Teddy Parker were at their desks, and when he saw me Theo said "Sir, Captain Perlman has called a meeting for 6:30pm. We've got some video footage as well as the dead man's ID. We may have caught a break on a vehicle and a cellphone, and Officers are responding to that now."

"That's fast work." I said. "Good job." I left MCD and went to see if the Chief was still at Headquarters. He was, and Sheriff Griswold was with him in the Chief's Conference Room.

After telling them about the 6:30 meeting, I said, "Sheriff, can I ask a question?"

"Why I called you to the scene?" the Sheriff asked back.

"Yes sir." I said. "I would not have gone down there with my daughter in tow if you hadn't have directly ordered me down there."

"Call it a vibe, Crowbar." growled Griswold. "The lack of blood not only got Carole's attention, it got mine, too. And it worked out: Carole caught the wrong time on the wristwatch immediately..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The meeting in Classroom 'E' began at 6:30pm. Captain Perlman said "Shall we wait for our Auxiliary Detective before starting, Commander?"

I grinned and said "I think she's doing her homework and has early bedtime. So we'll go ahead without her." That got some laughter going, mostly started by Lt. Rudistan.

Tanya said "Okay, who is the person who did us the discourtesy of getting himself killed during rush hour traffic?"

Theo said "His name is Carlton Fisher, F-I-S-H-E-R. Goes by 'Carl'. He's 44 years old, and works as a custodial engineer for the Student Center at the University. Makes barely more than minimum wage, but that watch he was wearing was not cheap, and neither were the slacks, shoes, belt, and windbreaker he was wearing. The flannel shirt is pretty cheap, but it's incongruous with the rest of his clothing."

"Yes it is." I said. "However, it's freezing cold outside, and he was wearing just a windbreaker. So the flannel shirt makes a little bit of sense in that context. Also, it's not that people don't wear wristwatches, but the vast majority of people nowadays tell time from their cellphones. Carole even called it a 'clock' on his wrist, not a 'watch', showing what our kids are learning differently from when we grew up."

"Is that important, sir?" asked Julia Rodriguez. "That he was wearing a watch? Not to mention it was so far behind of the actual time?"

"Time zone differences?" said Teddy Parker.

"No, it was 40 minutes off, if memory serves me correctly." I said. "Time zones would be an hour apart, or 30 minutes in some rare places. But not 40 minutes. And yes, Ms. Rodriguez, that's a 'strangeness'. But you were saying, Mr. Washington?"

Theo said "Yes sir. We caught a break on his car and cellphone. The car is a 2005 Ford Taurus, and we just found it in the parking lot of the Southpoint Mall, which is just west of University Parkway near where the car dealerships all are. The Southpoint Mall is defunct, but the property owners still lease out some of the spaces with access to the outside for events, such as chess tournaments or baseball card shows, stuff like that."

Theo: "The car was in the back parking lot, that's not visible from the main roads. We found Fisher's cellphone in his car. Turned off and wrapped in a static bag that keeps it from being detected. The cellphone and bag were wiped; no fingerprints at all on either. Myron and the Techs have it now and are trying to see what they can get from it. Unfortunately, the video sent by the cameras in the parking lots at Southpoint Mall isn't recorded any longer because the recording equipment doesn't work, so we were stymied there."

"Still, that is amazingly fast work, people." I said. "Captain Perlman, my compliments to everyone involved in getting that, and so quickly. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I don't expect autopsy results yet, but has Martha given us a time of death yet?"

Tanya said "She said the cold may have had an effect, and he died earlier than the indications suggest, but probably a couple of hours before he was found."

"And who called it in?" I asked.

"Nobody." said Tanya. "One of our Patrols happened to see the body as they were going down that road. Most people are paying attention to the curve, so they might not notice the body 30 feet into the field, but Patrolman Ron McElwane, who was riding shotgun with Sergeant Carter, saw it."

"Good." I said. "So tell me about Mr. Fisher, besides the fact he's a janitor for the Student Center and that he's dead now."

Sr. Patrol Officer Penny Scott of Intelligence Branch said "Sir, Fisher has priors. Mostly drug possession in relatively small amounts, but he was once caught with $28,000 in cash in the City. He wouldn't tell the Police where he got the money nor what he was doing with it, so they seized it under Asset Forfeiture laws. That was eight years ago, and he's still fighting the State in Court over it."

"What was he charged with, in connection with the possession of the money?" I asked.

"Nothing, sir." Penny Scott said. "They just seized it. No criminal charges, no probable cause, no due process. They just took the money."

Your Iron Crowbar hates the Press more than just about anything. Your Iron Crowbar hates seizure of property for no reason and with no due process under so-called 'Asset Forfeiture' laws almost as badly.

Penny Scott continued: "I can add that the City Police considered the money to be drug money, which was their stated excuse for seizing it, but of course they never proved that nor even showed cause why they believed it. And I hope I'm not stepping on Vice's toes when I mention that Carl Fisher has come under their radar a few times in the past."

"No hard feelings." said Lt. Rudistan jovially. "Tell us what you've got."

Penny Scott: "At one time he was suspected of being the contact on Campus for dime bags of anything stronger than marijuana. But multiple attempts by the University Police posing as students to make buys from him failed; he'd just walk away from them and say he wasn't selling drugs. And the Campus Police once went so far as to bring a drug dog to sniff his janitor equipment cart and his car, with 'no joy' on either."

"Wow." I said. "Pretty cheeky to do that, bring in a drug dog like that."

Sheriff Griswold said "Before your day, Crowbar, and most of you others in here as well, the Campus Police were pretty aggressive about things like that. One time they set up drug checkpoints with dogs at the exits to every student parking lot on Campus, and forced students to submit to having dog sniff their book bags and their cars. They immediately had over 600 lawsuits filed against them, done pro bono by legal groups. The Campus Police said it was just like DUI checkpoints on the roads, but that didn't hold up, and they had to stop doing the checks."

"Thank you, sir." I said. "So we're already coming up 'drugs' in connection with Mr. Fisher, here. In which jurisdiction did he get those priors for possession?"

Penny Scott said: "One in the City, one in Pottsville, and two in Palm Creek, sir. Between seven and four years ago, sir. The most recent one was in Palm Creek. He never served any jail time, just paid fines or got the charges reduced and got community service."

"Hmm, Palmyra County." I said. "And he did the community service?"

"The records indicate that he did, sir." said Penny. "He was marked down at being present during the trash collection details."

"Okay, what else?" I asked.

Theo Washington said "As they say at football games, video evidence confirms that something strange happened with regard to the placing of that body on what is a fairly busy street, especially during the rush hour."

He plugged his laptop into the hookup, and a video appeared on the 5x4 monitor array as he said "This is Riverside Drive going south. At 4:35pm, this happens: just before getting to the curve, where Jesse Jackson Street dead-ends at Riverside, this Gas Company truck stops, turns on its hazards, and the driver, wearing a fluorescent yellow and orange vest, gets out puts out cones. About five minutes later, he takes up the cones, gets in the truck, and drives away, having created some slow vehicle traffic. "

Theo: "On Depot Street east of where the body was found, something very similar happens. Another Gas Company truck does the same thing, stopping traffic for about five minutes."

Theo: "There is a street camera right at the corner where Riverside turns into Depot Street, but it's been inoperable for nearly a week, and the work order to fix it hasn't been processed yet. I don't know if the perps knew that, but there's nothing there for us. And no other cameras had a view of that particular spot where the body was found."

"Did you run the plates on the trucks?" I asked.

"Yes sir." said Theo. "They're reported as stolen. And the Gas Company says they're not missing any trucks."

I said "Mocked up to look like Gas Company vehicles. That's premeditation. Planned in advance. And it helps prove my point that these guys must've wanted us to find this body. Otherwise, they cap the guy and leave him were he fell. Or they move his body to a dumpster behind a building, or take it down to where County Road 5 and County Road 2 meet. But no, they get cute, and block traffic in two places to give them clearance to dump a body. And even Carole knows what I call that."

"A 'strangeness'." said a chorus of Detectives.

"You've trained them well, Crowbar." growled the Sheriff, his mustaches twitching merrily.

"Yes sir." I said. "My work here is done." Well, maybe not, judging from the looks on some of their faces.

"Okayyyyy," said Captain Perlman. "We need the autopsy report, and anything y'all can dig up on this Carl Fisher guy. But unless you get a really hot lead, I don't want any of you working past 10:00pm on this. If there's something you need checked out, call the Precincts, let their Uniformed Officers work on it. Anything else, Commander?"

I said "I'd like to know where Mr. Fisher did his shopping for his clothes. See if he had credit cards records of that..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When I got home to the Mountain Nest, I found a pouting six-year-old on the near sofa, petting an outstanding Police dog. Laura guided me to her office, the 'Puter Room, and said "She was all excited about visiting that crime scene, and was telling us about it at supper, when I had to tell her that we shouldn't discuss things like dead bodies at the dinner table. I told her I don't discuss surgery at the table, either. Then she started up about the watch and what the people at the scene were doing, and Jim yelled 'We don't care!'. And then she realized that we did not share her enthusiasm, and she has become increasingly upset since."

"O-kay." I said. "Time to take the dogs and the dogs's owner out." I went into the main room and said "Who needs to go out?" Nothing moved: the dogs were already at the door, and Carole was already right behind them with her coat on.

Going outside, the dogs went to do their business while Carole and I sat on the metal mesh loveseat on the patio. "Everything okay?" I asked.

"I guess." Carole said, though miserably.

"So they weren't as excited about the case as we are, eh?" I 'guessed'.

"They didn't want to hear about it at all." Carole said.

"Well," I said, "when I was in high school, I participated in this big State-level event, called 'Governor's Honors'. I was competing with others from other schools, in the foreign language division, in French. I didn't win, I only came in third place, but when I went back to school, I wanted to tell everyone about it."

"And then one of my teachers pulled me aside," I continued, "and said 'Don't talk about that. Nobody cares.' And I felt bad that no one was interested in what I was interested in. But I also realized that teacher was right, and that other people simply don't care about anything but their own issues."

I finished up: "So don't talk about any of this at school, because nobody cares, and because you shouldn't talk about Police business, anyway. And don't worry about it that others may not care as much as you do. You don't care as much about the boys's Lego City as they do, do you?"

"Not really." Carole admitted.

"All right, then." I said. "So cheer up. I'm hungry. What did you have for supper?"

"Fried chicken." Carole said. "And mashed potatoes and gravy. And Mommy and Jim had stringbeans, but I didn't eat any of those."

"Good!" I said. "I'll eat your helping as well as mine." We went inside, where I fixed a full plate for me, and some mashed potatoes and gravy for Carole. And I listened with a great deal of interest as Carole recited back to me what she had learned at the crime scene...