Carved in Bone - Jefferson Bass [118]
CHAPTER 38
IT WAS THE LEAD story in the morning paper, which thudded onto my doorstep only a few short hours after I’d left the sheriff’s hospital room. “LITTLE STACY’S BODY FOUND,” read the headline; the subhead added, “CONVICTED MOLESTER CHARGED WITH MURDER.” The girl—missing for nearly a month—was found by cadaver dogs in a drainage ditch at an abandoned textile mill, a few blocks from the suspect’s seedy house. Hidden beneath old tires, rotting carpet, and other debris, the body was decomposed beyond recognition. But since Stacy Beaman was the only eight-year-old missing at the moment, it took only moments for an assistant ME to match her teeth to the dental X-rays already on hand and awaiting just such a grim discovery.
As I was turning the page to finish the story, the phone rang. “Hey,” said a glum voice that I’d known—even as I was reaching for the receiver—would be Art’s. The suspect had been arrested twelve hours earlier, while Art was helping me bag bones in Cooke County.
“Hey, yourself,” I said. “How you doing?”
“Some good, some bad.”
“Glad they found her. Glad they got him. Sorry it turned out this way.”
“Yeah.”
“How’s the case against the suspect?”
“Better than we expected. The crime scene techs found some hair and fibers on the body we think we can link to him, and we’re hoping we’ll find traces of semen—God, would you listen to me, ‘We hope we find some semen’? Also, we’ve got multiple witnesses, other kids’ moms, very credible and sympathetic on the stand. All of them put him near the school the day she disappeared. If your pal…” he trailed off, then began again. “If DeVriess doesn’t manage to bar testimony about the guy’s prior record, I don’t see how any jury in the land could fail to convict. But then again, I don’t see how any lawyer in the land could aggressively defend this guy, either. Clearly there’s a lot that’s beyond my feeble powers of comprehension.”
“Mine, too,” I said, hoping to deflect his rage at DeVriess. “I admire how hard you guys worked to find her and make the case. I’m sure her family appreciates it, too. Or will, when they’re able to.”
“Yeah, that’ll keep ’em warm at night.” He sighed. “You know, Bill, sometimes I despise this world and the vermin who infest it.”
“I know. There’s evil out there, that’s for sure, and you’ve seen more than your share of it. But there’s good, too—try not to forget that.”
“The good sure seems to take a back seat sometimes. My mama wanted me to be a dentist—‘Almost as prestigious as a doctor,’ she said, ‘and the hours are a lot better.’ Maybe Mama knew best.”
“Are you kidding? Standing around all day with your hands in other people’s slobber? Besides, people positively adore cops compared to how they feel about dentists.”
He laughed—faintly, but it was something. “You’re right, the slobber factor is a deal-breaker. Saying ‘Rinse and spit’ ain’t near as glamorous as yelling ‘Freeze, asshole!’—or dredging up bloated corpses and burned skeletons. Speaking of that, any news from the hills in the last eight hours?”
I told him about the parade of late-night visitors to the sheriff’s hospital room, and my own fruitless search for the cartridge cases. “I was hoping the TBI might be able to match the brass. Without those shells, all we’re left with is the ATV tracks Waylon found. And from what little I saw of Orbin firsthand, there could be legions of people up there who wanted him dead.”
I was leaving at noon to take Orbin’s remains—cleaned as best Miranda could clean the charred, fractured bones overnight—to the funeral home in Jonesport, I told Art; would he like to go along, and did he have the time, now that an arrest had been made in the Stacy Beaman case?
“Sure,” he said. “We have so much fun every time we go up there, wild horses couldn’t keep me away. Besides, I’ve got about a year of comp time built up. Can you swing