nice that you guys all work together,” I observe. “No competition issues between you then?”
“I didn’t say that,” Devo says with a roll of his eyes. “Things can get territorial at times, especially when there’s fun stuff like a big drug bust or a murder. But for the penny-ante stuff, like traffic accidents and welfare checks, it’s not a problem.”
“Murder is fun then?” I say, giving him an arch look.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” he says. He squirms in his seat and gives me an annoyed look.
I chuckle at his discomfort. “I get it. You guys are all a bunch of adrenaline junkies. You’re like the ER staff and the EMS folks.”
“I suppose,” Devo says. “Nights like last night drive me a little crazy.”
My first night on the new job was a quiet one. The only calls that came in were for a nuisance noise complaint from a man whose neighbor was having a party that lasted well into the wee hours of the morning with lots of loud revelers and pounding music, and a call from a lady who lives along the river and found a huge snapping turtle on her back deck when her dogs started barking and wouldn’t stop. Devo informed me that the cops serve as animal control during off hours, so we had to figure out a way to dispatch the critter, as the lady was afraid to let her dogs out into the yard to do their business. Devo picked the turtle up by its tail and carried it down to the river, where he then let it go. The turtle was none too happy about this ignominious dispatch and it tried its darnedest to snake its long neck over its shell and bite Devo’s hand while it was being carried, but Devo never flinched. I admit, I was impressed.
Since those two calls were the only ones we had, the rest of our eight-hour shift was spent with Devo driving and me yakking at him about everything under the sun. I downed several high-octane coffees before and during the shift so I could stay awake, and I was wired. I suspect this is why Devo didn’t look happy to see me at the start of our shift tonight, though so far we are keeping ourselves well occupied.
He turns off the highway onto a rutted dirt and gravel drive and shifts into park. His headlights had briefly illuminated a newspaper tube and a mailbox with the name Fletcher applied to the side of it in reflective, sticky letters mounted on a post at the base of the driveway. Devo gets out to check them and finds two newspapers in the tube and several pieces of mail in the mailbox.
He leaves them and gets back in the car, steering it up the drive, which takes us toward a weathered old barn with a fieldstone foundation, a common site in these parts. But before we reach the barn, the drive veers to the left and splits off, with one portion leading to the resident farmhouse and another leg going off toward a silo, some other outbuildings, and, eventually, the barn.
The farmhouse is typical for the area: white, two-story, a large propane tank positioned beside it, the exterior of the house showing its age and in bad need of a paint job. I’m betting it’s not much better on the inside. All the windows in the house are dark and it appears as if no one is home. Then again, it’s nearly two in the morning, so the occupants may simply be asleep.
“Isn’t this an odd time to be doing a welfare check?” I ask Devo. “Anyone who is home will likely be sleeping.”
“It would be for most people,” he says. “but the daughter told the sheriff’s department that her father typically gets up around two-thirty or three in the morning, a habit born out of all his years of farming. So, if we wake him at two, it’s not that far outside his normal hours. If no one answers we can take a cursory look around, but unless we find something alarming, we’ll likely come back later and try again.”
The drive forms a circle in front of the house, making its way around a giant old oak tree that I’d bet is a hundred years old or more. Devo pulls up by the front porch and shifts the car into park. He updates our location via his radio and then the two of us get out and make our way up the wooden steps to the front door. There is a screen door that creaks as Devo opens it. The main door has glass in the upper half of it, a lace curtain hanging on the inside. Devo looks for a doorbell but there is simply a hole in the wall where one might have been. With a sigh, Devo knocks hard on the door’s glass.
We wait, and I listen to the gentle soughing of the warm night breeze through the branches of the oak tree. After a minute or so, Devo knocks again, harder this time, and he announces that we are the Sorenson Police Department. Still no answer.
I reach down and try to give the doorknob a turn. It doesn’t move and Devo chastises me with a “Hey, don’t do that.”
“Should we go around back?” I suggest. “I’ll bet there’s another door.”
Frowning, Devo agrees, and he leads the way off the front porch and heads around the far side of the house, the part we haven’t put eyes on yet. He scans the windows as we go—they are all dark, just like the front windows and those on the other side of the house—and we find one near the back that is open. We round the corner to the backyard, past an older model, rust-scarred pickup parked on the grass, and a sudden gust of wind rises up and lifts the hair off my neck. With it comes a smell that seems to be coming from inside the house, a disturbing, carnal smell with underlying hints of urine and feces. It makes the tiny hairs growing out of my neck rise to attention.
I’m about to ask Devo if he caught the same whiff but I know the answer when he says, “Oh, hell.”
There is a back door, a simple, two-step, concrete stoop leading up to it. Like the front door, this one has glass in the upper half of it, but unlike the front one there is no curtain and the glass here is divided into small panes. Devo pulls on a pair of latex gloves that he takes from his pocket, and then he hands me a pair. I pull them on—they are too big for me, but they’ll do for now—and clasp my hands in front of me. I know from the training I was required to go through before starting this job that the gloves are as much for my protection as they are for ensuring that I don’t contaminate any possible crime scenes.
Devo mounts the steps and shines his flashlight through the glass to the interior of the house. He reaches down and tries the doorknob, but it doesn’t turn. With a sigh, he turns his flashlight around and uses the butt end of it to break the lower left pane of the glass window in the door. Then he carefully clears away enough shards so that he can reach his hand inside and undo the lock without cutting himself.
“You should wait out here,” he says to me, opening the door.
“I’m okay,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Wait out here until I see what’s inside.”
“I’m fairly certain you have a dead body inside,” I say.
Devo shoots me a look that is part curiosity, part perturbation. “How—”
“I smell old blood—lots of it—and excreta. That’s not a smell one easily forgets or confuses with anything else. So, the only real question at this point is whether the death is by natural causes, suicide, or suspicious circumstances.”
“Right,” Devo says, drawing the word out and continuing to look at me with wary curiosity. “And until I determine which it is, you need to stay out here. If this turns out to be a crime scene, I don’t need you traipsing about contaminating evidence.”
“I have never traipsed once in my entire life,” I assure him. “And I was required to go through those police procedure classes before starting this job, remember? I know how to handle myself at a scene.”
Devo
